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Title: The Heart of Rachael

Author: Kathleen Norris

Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4915]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 26, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

THE HEART OF RACHAEL

VOLUME VI





TO MY TERESA



BOOK I

THE HEART OF RACHAEL



CHAPTER I


The day had opened so brightly, in such a welcome wave of April
sunshine, that by mid-afternoon there were two hundred players
scattered over the links of the Long Island Country Club at
Belvedere Bay; the men in thick plaid stockings and loose striped
sweaters, the women's scarlet coats and white skirts making
splashes of vivid color against the fresh green of grass and the
thick powdering of dandelions. It was Saturday, and a half-
holiday; it was that one day of all the year when the seasons
change places, when winter is visibly worsted, and summer, with
warmth and relaxation, bathing and tennis and motor trips in the
moonlight, becomes again a reality.

There was a real warmth in the sunshine to-day, there was a
fragrance of lilac and early roses in the idle breezes. "Hot!"
shouted the players exultantly, as they passed each other in the
green valleys and over the sunny mounds. "You bet it's hot!"
agreed stout and glowing gentlemen, wiping wet foreheads before
reaching for a particular club, and panting as they gazed about at
the unbroken turf, melting a few miles away into the new green of
maple and elm trees, and topped, where the slope rose, by the
white columns and brick walls of the clubhouse.

Motor cars swept incessantly back and forth on the smooth roadway;
a few riders, their horses wheeling and dancing, went down the
bridle path, and there was a sprinkling of young men and women and
some shouting and clapping on the tennis-courts. But golf was the
order of the day. At the first tee at least two scores of
impatient players waited their turn to drive off, and at the last
green a group of twenty or thirty men and women, mostly women,
were interestedly watching the putting.

Mrs. Archibald Buckney, a large, generously made woman of perhaps
fifty, who stood a little apart from the group, with two young
women and a mild-looking blond young man, suddenly interrupted a
general discussion of scores and play with a personality.

"Is Clarence Breckenridge playing to-day, I wonder? Anybody seen
him?"

"Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite
girls, with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few
weeks ago, had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond
young man, Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold
him by a charm she suspected she did not possess for him, and at
the same time to give her mother and sister the impression that
Parker was so deeply in her toils that she need make no further
effort to enslave him.

She had really nothing in common with Parker; their conversation
was composed entirely of personalities about their various
friends, and Leila felt it a great burden, and dreaded the hours
she must perforce spend alone with her future husband. It would be
much better when they were married, of course, but they could not
even begin to talk wedding plans yet, because Parker lived in
nervous terror of his aunt's disapproval, and Mrs. Watts
Frothingham was just now in Europe, and had not yet seen fit to
answer her nephew's dignified notification of his new plans, or
the dutiful and gracious note with which Miss Leila had
accompanied it.

The truth, though Leila did not know it, was that Mrs. Frothingham
had a pretty social secretary named Margaret Clay, a strange,
attractive little person, eighteen years old, whose mother had
been the old lady's companion for many years. And to Magsie, as
they all called her, young Mr. Hoyt had paid some decided
attention not many months before. Mrs. Frothingham had seen fit to
disapprove these advances then, but she was an extraordinarily
erratic and cross-grained old lady, and her silence now had forced
her nephew uncomfortably to suspect that she might have changed
her mind.

"Darn it!" said the engaging youth to himself "It's none of her
business, anyway, what I do!" But it made him acutely uneasy none
the less. He was the possessor of a good income, as he stood
there, this mild little blond; it came to him steadily and
regularly, with no effort at all on his part, but, with his aunt's
million--it must be at least that--he felt that he would have been
much happier. There it was, safe in the family, and she was
seventy-six, and without a direct heir. It would be too bad to
miss it now!

He thought of it a great deal, was thinking of it this moment, in
fact, and Leila suspected that he was. But Mrs. Buckney, aside
from a half-formed wish that young persons were more demonstrative
in these days, and that the wedding might be soon, had not a care
in the world, and, after a moment's unresponsive silence, returned
blithely to her query about Clarence Breckenridge.

"I haven't seen him," responded one of her daughters presently.
"Funny, too! Last year he didn't miss a day."

"Of course he'll get the cup as usual, this year," Mrs. Buckney
said brightly. "But I don't suppose young people with their heads
full of wedding plans will care much about the golf!" she added
courageously.

To this Miss Leila answered only with a weary shrug.

"Been drinking lately," Mr. Hoyt volunteered.

"You say he has?" Mrs. Buckney took him up promptly. "Is that so?
I knew he did all the time, of course, but I hadn't heard lately.
Well--! Pretty hard on Mrs. Breckenridge, isn't it?"

"Pretty hard on his daughter," Miss Leila drawled. "He has all
kinds of money, hasn't he, Park?"

"Scads," said Mr. Hoyt succinctly. Conversation languished. Miss
Leila presently said decidedly that unless her mother stood still,
the sun, which was indeed sinking low in the western sky, got in
everyone's eyes. Miss Edith said that she was dying for tea; Mr.
Hoyt's watch was consulted. Four o'clock; it was a little too
early for tea.

At about five o'clock the sunlight was softened by a steadily
rising bank of fog, which drifted in from the east; a mist almost
like a light rain beat upon the faces of the last golfers. There
were no riders on the bridle path now, and the long line of motor
cars parked by the clubhouse doors began to move and shift and
lessen. People with dinner engagements melted mysteriously away,
lights bloomed suddenly in the dining-room, shades were drawn and
awnings furled.

But in the club's great central apartment--which was reception-
room, lounging-room, and tea-room, and which, opened to the
immense porches, was used for dances in summer, and closed and
holly-trimmed, was the scene of many a winter dance as well--a
dozen good friends and neighbors lingered for tea. The women, sunk
in deep chairs about the blazing logs in the immense fireplace,
gossiped in low tones together, punctuating their talk with an
occasional burst of soft laughter. The men watched teacups, adding
an occasional comment to the talk, but listening in silence for
the most part, their amused eyes on the women's interested faces.

Here was a representative group, ranging in age from old Peter
Pomeroy, who had been one of the club's founders twelve years ago,
and at sixty was one of its prominent members to-day, to lovely
Vivian Sartoris, a demure, baby-faced little blonde of eighteen,
who might be confidently expected to make a brilliant match in a
year or two. Peter, slim, hard, gray-haired and leaden-skinned,
well-groomed and irreproachably dressed, was discussing a
cotillion with Mrs. Sartoris, a stout, florid little woman who was
only twice her daughter's age. Mrs. Sartoris really did look young
to be the mother of a popular debutante; she rode and played golf
and tennis as briskly as ever; it was her pose to bring up the
subject of age at all times, and to threaten Vivian with terrible
penalties if she dared marry before her mother was forty at least.

Old Peter Pomeroy, who had a shrewd and disillusioned gray eye,
thought, as everyone else thought, that Mrs. Sartoris was an
empty-headed little fool, but he rarely talked to a woman who was
anything else, and no woman ever thought him anything but markedly
courteous and gallant. He was old now, rich, unmarried, quite
alone in the world. For forty years he had kept all the women of
his acquaintance speculating as to his plans; marriageable women
especially--perhaps fifty of them--had been able in all
maidenliness to indicate to him that they might easily be
persuaded to share the Pomeroy name and fortune. But Peter went on
kissing their hands, and thrilling them with an intimate casual
word now and then, and did no more.

Perhaps he smiled about it sometimes, in the privacy of his own
apartments--apartments which were variously located in a great
city hotel, an Adirondacks camp, a luxurious club, his own yacht,
and the beautiful home he had built for himself within a mile of
the spot where he was now having his tea. Sometimes it seemed
amusing to him that so many traps were laid for him. He could
appraise women quickly, and now and then he teased a woman of his
acquaintance with a delightfully worded description of his ideal
of a wife. If the woman thereafter carelessly indicated the
possession of the desired qualities in herself, Peter saw that,
too, but she never knew it, and never saw him laughing at her. She
went on for a month or two dressing brilliantly for his carefully
chaperoned little dinners, listening absorbed to his dissertations
upon Japanese prints or draperies from Peshawar, until Peter grew
tired and drew off, when she must put a brave face upon it and do
her share to show that she realized that the little game was over.

He had not been entirely without feminine companionship, however,
during the half-century of his life as a man. Everybody knew
something--and suspected a great deal more--of various friendships
of his. Even the girls knew that Peter Pomeroy was not over-
cautious in the management of his affairs, but they did not like
him the less, nor did their mothers find him less eligible, in a
matrimonial sense. Sometimes he met the older women's hints quite
seriously, with brief allusions to some "little girl" who was
always as sweet and deserving and virtuous as his own fatherly
interference in her affairs was disinterested and kind. "I did
what I could for her--risking what might or might not be said,"
Mr. Pomeroy might add, with a hero's modest smile and shrug. And
if nobody ever believed him, at least nobody ever challenged him.

Vivian Sartoris, girlishly perched on the great square leather
fender that framed the fireplace, was merely a modern, a very
modern, little girl, demurely dressed in the smartest of white
taffeta ruffles, with her small feet in white silk stockings and
shoes, a daring little black-and-white hat mashed down upon her
soft, loose hair, and, slung about her shoulders, a woolly coat of
clearest lemon yellow. Vivian gave the impression of a soft little
watchful cat, unfriendly, alert, selfish. Her manner was studiedly
rowdyish, her speech marred by slang; she loved only a few persons
in the world besides herself. One of these few persons, however,
was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol, affectionately known
to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in Miss Breckenridge's
defence that Vivian was speaking now. A general yet desultory
discussion of the three Breckenridges had been going on for some
moments. And some particular criticism of the man of the family
had pierced Miss Sartoris' habitual attitude of bored silence.

"That's all true about him," she said, idly spreading a sturdy
little hand to the blaze. "I have no use for Clarence
Breckenridge, and I think Mrs. Breckenridge is absolutely the most
cold-blooded woman I ever met! She always makes me feel as if she
were waiting to see me make a fool of myself, so that she could
smile that smooth superior smile at me. But Carol's different--
she's square, she is; she's just top-hole--if you know what I
mean--she's the finest ever," finished Miss Sartoris, with a
carefully calculated boyishness, "and what I mean to say is, she's
never had a fair deal!"

There was a little murmur of assent and admiration at this, and
only one voice disputed it.

"You're not called upon to defend Billy Breckenridge, Vivian,"
said Elinor Vanderwall, in her cool, amused voice. "Nobody's
blaming Billy, and Rachael Breckenridge can stand on her own feet.
But what we're saying is that Clarence, in spite of what they do
to protect him, will get himself dropped by decent people if he
goes on as he IS going on! He was tennis champion four or five
years ago; he played against an Englishman named Waters, who was
about half his age; it was the most remarkable thing I ever saw--"

"Wonderful match!" said Peter Pomeroy, as she paused.

"Wonderful--I should say so!" Miss Vanderwall sighed admiringly at
the memory. "Do you remember that one set went to nineteen--
twenty-one? Each man won on his own service--'most remarkable
match I ever saw! But Clarence Breckenridge couldn't hold a racket
now, and his game of bridge is getting to be absolutely rotten.
Crime, I call it!"

Vivian Sartoris offered no further remark. Indeed she had drifted
into a low-toned conversation with a young man on the fender.
Elinor Vanderwall was neither pretty nor rich, and she was
unmarried at thirty-four, her social importance being further
lessened by the fact that she had five sisters, all unmarried,
too, except Anna, the oldest, whose son was in college. Anna was
Mrs. Prince; her wedding was only a long-ago memory now.
Georgiana, who came next, was a calm, plain woman of thirty-seven,
interested in church work and organized charities. Alice was
musical and delicate. Elinor was worldly, decisive, the social
favorite among the sisters. Jeanette was boyish and brisk, a
splendid sportswoman, and Phyllis, at twenty-six, was still
babyish and appealing, tiny in build, and full of feminine charms.

All five were good dancers, good tennis and golf players, good
horsewomen, and good managers. All five dressed well, talked well,
and played excellent bridge. The fact of their not marrying was an
eternal mystery to their friends, to their wiry, nervous little
father, and their large, fat, serene mother; perhaps to themselves
as well. They met life, as they saw it, with great cleverness,
making it a rule to do little entertaining at home, where the
preponderance of women was most notable, and refusing to accept
invitations except singly. The Vanderwall girls were rarely seen
together; each had her pose and kept to it, each helped the others
to maintain theirs in turn. Alice's music, Georgiana's altruistic
duties, these were matters of sacred family tradition, and if
outsiders sometimes speculated as to the sisters' sincerity, at
least no Vanderwall ever betrayed another. And despite their
obvious handicaps, the five girls were regarded as social
authorities, and their names were prominently displayed in
newspaper accounts of all smart affairs. While making a fine art
of feminine friendships, they yet diffused a general impression of
being involved in endless affairs of the heart. They were much in
demand to fill in bridge tables, to serve on club directorates, to
amuse week-end parties, to be present at house weddings, and to
remain with the family for the first blank day or two after the
bride and groom were gone.

"Queer fellow, Breckenridge," said George Pomeroy, old Peter's
nephew, a red-faced, florid, simple man of forty.

"Well, he never should have married as he did, it's all in a
mess," a woman's voice said lazily. "Rachael's extraordinary of
course--there's no one quite like her. But she wasn't the woman
for him. Clarence wanted the little, clinging, adoring kind, who
would put cracked ice on his forehead, and wish those bad
saloonkeepers would stop drugging her dear big boy. Rachael looks
right through him; she doesn't fight, she doesn't care enough to
fight. She's just supremely bored by his weakness and stupidity.
He isn't big enough for her, either in goodness or badness. I
never knew what she married him for, and I don't believe anyone
else ever did!"

"I did, for one," said Miss Vanderwall, flicking the ashes from
her cigarette with a well-groomed fingertip. "Clarence
Breckenridge never was in love but once in his life--no, I don't
mean with Paula. I mean with Billy." And as a general nodding of
heads confirmed this theory, the speaker went on decidedly: "Since
that child was born she's been all the world to him. When he and
Paula were divorced--she was the offender--he fretted himself sick
for fear he'd done that precious five-year-old an injury. She
didn't get on with her grandmother, she drove governesses insane,
for two or three years there was simply no end of trouble. Finally
he took her abroad, for the excellent reason that she wanted to
go. In Paris they ran into Rachael Fairfax and her mother--let's
see, that was seven years ago. Rachael was only about twenty-one
or two then. But she'd been out since she was sixteen. She had the
bel air, she was beautiful--not as pretty as she is now, perhaps--
and of course her father was dead, and Rachael was absolutely on
the make. She took both Clarence and Billy in hand. I understand
the child was wearing jewelry and staying up until all hours every
night. Rachael mothered her, and of course the child came to
admire her. The funny thing is that Rachael and Billy hit it off
very well to this day.

"She and Clarence were married quietly, and came home. And I don't
think it was weeks, it was DAYS--and not many days--later, that
Rachael realized what a fool she'd been. Clarence had eyes for no
one but the girl, and of course she was a fascinating little
creature, and she's more fascinating every year."

"She's not as attractive as Rachael at that," said Peter Pomeroy.

"I know, my dear Peter," Miss Vanderwall assented quickly. "But
Billy's impulsive, and affectionate, at least, and Rachael is
neither. Anyway, Billy's at the age now when she can't think of
anything but herself. Her frocks, her parties, her friends--that's
all Clarence cares about!"

"Selfish ass!" said a man's voice in the firelight.

"I KNOW Clarence takes Carol and her friends off on week-end
trips," some woman said, "and leaves Rachael at home. If Rachael
wants the car, she has to ask them their plans. If she accepts a
dinner invitation, why, Clarence may drop out the last moment
because Carol's going to dine alone at home and wants her Daddy."

"Rachael's terribly decent about it," said the deep voice of old
Mrs. Torrence, who was chaperoning a grandson, glad of any excuse
to be at the club. "Upon my word I wouldn't be! She will breakfast
upstairs many a morning because Clarence likes Carol to pour his
coffee. And when that feller comes home tipsy--"

"Five nights a week!" supplemented Peter Pomeroy.

"Five nights a week," the old lady agreed, nodding, "she makes him
comfortable, quiets the house, and telephones around generally
that Clarence has come home with a splitting headache, and they
can't come--to dinner, or cards, or whatever it may be. But of
course I don't claim that she loves him, nor pretends to. I can
imagine the scornful look with which she goes about it."

"Well, why does she stand it?" said Mrs. Barker Emory, a handsome
but somewhat hard-faced woman, with a manner curiously compounded
of eagerness and uncertainty.

"Y'know, that's what I've been wondering," an Englishman added
interestedly.

"Why, what else would she do?" Miss Vanderwall asked briskly.

"Rachael's a perfectly adorable and brilliant and delightful
creature," summarized Peter Pomeroy, "but she's not got a penny
nor a relative in the world that I've ever heard of! She's got no
grounds for divorcing Clarence, and if she simply wanted to get
out, why, now that she's brought Billy up, introduced her
generally, whipped the girl into some sort of shape and got her
the right sort of friends, I suppose she might get out and
welcome!"

"No, Billy honestly likes her," objected Vivian Sartoris.

"She doesn't care for her enough to see that there's fair play,"
Elinor Vanderwall said quickly.

"Why doesn't she take a leaf from Paula's book," somebody
suggested, "and marry again? She could go out West and get a
divorce on any grounds she might choose to name."

"Well, Rachael's a cold woman, and a hard woman--in a way," Miss
Vanderwall said musingly, after a pause, when the troubles of the
Breckenridges kept the group silent for a moment. "But she's a
good sport. She gets a home, and clothes, and the club, and a car
and all the rest out of it, and she knows Billy and Clarence do
need her, in a way, to run things, and to keep up the social end.
More than that, Clarence can't keep up this pace long--he's going
to pieces fast--and Billy may marry any day--"

"I understand Joe Pickering's a little bit touched in that
quarter," said Mrs. Torrence.

"Yes--well, Clarence will never stand for THAT," somebody said.

Little Miss Sartoris neglected the Torrence grandson long enough
to say decidedly:

"She wouldn't LOOK at Joe Pickering! Joe drinks, and Billy's had
enough of that with her father. Besides, he has no money of his
own! He's impossible!"

"Where's the mother all this time?" asked the Englishman. "I mean
to say, she's living, isn't she, and all that?"

"Very much alive," Miss Vanderwall said. "Married to an Italian
count--Countess Luca d' Asafo. His people have cut him off;
they're Catholics. She has two little girls; there's an uncle
who's obliged to leave property to a son, and it serves Paula
quite right, I think. Where they live, or what on, I haven't the
remotest idea. I saw her in a car on Fifth Avenue, not so long
ago, with two heavy little black-haired girls; she looked sixty."

"Her sister, you know, was thick with my niece, Barbara
Olliphant," said Peter Pomeroy. "And funny thing!--when Barbara
was married..."

It was a long story, and fortunately moved away from the previous
topic; so that when it was presently interrupted by the arrival of
two women, everybody in the group had cause to feel gratitude for
a merciful deliverance.

The two women were Rachael and Carol Breckenridge, who came in a
little breathless, the throbbing engine of their motor car still
sounding faintly from the direction of the club doorway. Carol, a
slender, black-eyed, dusky-skinned girl of seventeen, took her
place beside Miss Sartoris on the fender, granting a brief
unsmiling nod to one or two friends, and eying the group between
the loose locks of her smoky, cropped black hair with the
inscrutable, almost brooding, expression that was her favorite
affectation. Her lithe, loosely built little body was as flat as a
boy's, she clasped her crossed knees with slender, satin-smooth
little brown hands, exposing by her attitude a frill of
embroidered petticoat, a transparent stretch of ash-gray silk
stocking, and smart ash-gray buckskin slippers with silver
buckles.

She was an effective little figure in the mingled twilight and
firelight, but it was toward her beautiful stepmother that
everybody looked as Rachael Breckenridge seated herself on the arm
of old Mrs. Torrence's chair and sent a careless greeting about
the circle.

"Hello, everybody!" she said, in a voice of extraordinary richness
and sweetness, "Peter, Dolly, Vivian--HELLO, Elinor! How do you
do, Mrs. Emory?" There was an aside when the newcomer said
imperatively to a club attendant, "We'll have some light here,
please!" Then she resumed easily: "I do beg your pardon, Mrs.
Emory, I interrupted you--"

"I only said that you were a little late for tea," said Mrs.
Emory, sweetly, wishing with a sort of futile rage that she could
learn to say almost nothing when this other woman, with her
insulting bright air of making one feel inferior, was about. The
Emorys had lived in Belvedere Hills for two years, coming from
Denver with much money and irrefutable credentials. They had been
members of the club perhaps half that time, members in good
standing. But Mrs. Emory would have paid a large sum to have
Rachael Breckenridge call her "Belle," and Rachael Breckenridge
knew it.

The lights, duly poured in a soft flood from all sides of the
room, revealed in Mrs. Breckenridge one of those beauties that an
older generation of diarists and letter writers frankly spelled
with a capital letter as distinguishing her charms from those of a
thousand of lesser degree. When such beauty is unaccompanied by
intellect it is a royal dower, and its possessor may serenely
command half a century of unquestioning adoration from the sons of
men, and all the good things of life as well.

But when there is a soul behind the matchless eyes, and a keen wit
animates the lovely mouth, and when the indication of the white
forehead is not belied, it is a nice question whether great beauty
be a gift of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room
or in any room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge
without a pang; her supremacy was beyond all argument or dispute.
And yet there was neither complacency nor content in the lovely
face; it wore its usual expression of arrogant amusement at a
somewhat tiresome world.

Both in the instant impression it made, and under closest
analysis, Rachael Breckenridge's beauty stood all tests. Her
colorless skin was as pure as ivory, her dark-blue eyes,
surrounded by that faint sooty color that only Irish eyes know,
were set far apart and evenly arched by perfect brows. Her white
forehead was low and broad, the lustreless black hair was swept
back from it with almost startling simplicity, the line of her
mouth was long, her lips a living red. Her figure, as she sat
balancing carelessly on a chair-arm, showed the exquisite curves
of a woman slow to develop, who is approaching the height of her
beauty, and from the tip of her white shoe to the poppies on her
soft straw hat there was that distinction in her clothing that
betrayed her to be one of the few who may be always individual yet
always in the fashion. She was a woman, quick, dynamic, impatient,
who vitalized the very atmosphere in which she moved, challenging
life by endless tests and measures, scornful of admiration, and
ambitious, even in this recognized ambition of finding herself
beautiful, prominent, and a rich man's wife, for something further
and greater, she knew not what. She was an important figure in
this world of hers; her word was authority, her decree law. Never
was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so biting, or satire
so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a target for her
glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to arouse in
her anything but doubt and scorn.

"I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now, in the
astonishingly rich voice that seemed to fill the words with new
meaning. "And I won't allow the Infant to have any--no, Billy, you
shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides,
you've just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds--
it's six o'clock. We're looking for Clarence--we seek a husband
fond, a parent dear--"

"Clarence hasn't showed up here at all to-day," said Peter
Pomeroy, stretching back comfortably in his chair, appreciative
eyes upon Clarence's wife. "Shame, too, for we had some good golf.
Course is in splendid condition. George beat me three up and two
to play, but I don't bear any malice. Here I am signing for his
highball."

"Well, then, we'll go on home," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without,
however, changing her relaxed position. "Clarence is probably
there; we've been playing cards at the Parmalees', or at least I
have. Billy and Katrina were playing tennis with Kent and--who's
the red-headed child you were enslaving this afternoon, Bill?"

"Porter Pinckard," Miss Breckenridge answered, indifferently,
before entering into a confidential exchange of brevities with
Miss Sartoris.

"I'll call him out, and run him through the liver," said Peter
Pomeroy, "the miserable catiff! I'll brook no rivals, Billy."

Billy merely smiled lazily at this; her eyes were far more
eloquent than her tongue, as she was well aware.

"Let her alone, Fascination Fledgerby!" said Mrs. Breckenridge
briskly. "Why can't we take you home with us, Elinor? We go your
way."

"You may," said Miss Vanderwall, rising. "You're dining at the
Chases', aren't you, Billy? So am I. But I was going to change
here. Where are you dining, Rachael?"

"Change at my house," Mrs. Breckenridge suggested, or rather
commanded. "I'm dining in my room, I think. I'm all in." But the
clear and candid eyes deceived no one. Clarence was misbehaving
again, everybody decided, and poor Rachael could not bespeak five
minutes of her own time until this particular period of
intemperance was over. Miss Vanderwall, settling herself in the
beautiful Breckenridge car five minutes later, faced the situation
boldly.

"Where's Clarence, Rachael?"

"I haven't the remotest idea, my dear woman," said Mrs.
Breckenridge frankly, yet with a warning glance at the back of her
stepdaughter's head. Billy was at the wheel. "He didn't dine at
home last night--"

"But we knew where he was," Billy said quickly, half turning.

"We knew where he was," agreed the older woman. "Watch where
you're going, Bill! He told Alfred that he was dining in town,
with a friend, talking business."

"I thought it was the night of Berry Stokes' dinner," suggested
Miss Vanderwall.

"He wasn't there--I asked him not to go," said Billy.

"Oh--" Miss Vanderwall began and then abruptly stopped. "Oh!" said
she mildly, in polite acquiescence.

They were sweeping through the April roadsides so swiftly that it
was only a moment later when Rachael, reaching for the door,
remarked cheerfully, "Here we are!"

The car had entered a white stone gateway, and was approaching a
certain charming country mansion, one that was not conspicuous
among a thousand others strewn over the neighboring hills and
valleys, but a beautiful home nevertheless. Vines climbed the
brick chimneys, and budding hydrangeas, in pots, topped the white
balustrades of the porch. A hundred little details of perfect
furnishing would have been taken for granted by the casual
onlooker, yet without its lawns, its awnings, its window boxes and
snowy curtaining, its glimpse of screened veranda and wicker
chairs, its trim assembly of garage, stable, and servants'
cottages, its porte-cochere, sleeping porches, and tennis court,
it would have seemed incomplete and uncomfortable to its owners.

Rachael Breckenridge neither liked it nor disliked it. It had been
her home for the seven years of her married life, except for the
month or two she spent every winter in a New York hotel. She had
never had any great happiness in it, to be sure, but then her life
had been singularly lacking in moments of real happiness, and she
had valued other elements, and desired other elements more. She
had not expected to be happy in this house, she had expected to be
rich and envied, and secure, and she was all of these things. That
they were not worth attaining, no one knew better than Rachael
now.

The house was of course a great care to her, the more so because
Billy was in it so little, and was so frankly eager for the time
when she should leave it and go to a house of her own, and because
Clarence was absolutely indifferent to it in his better moods, and
pleased with nothing when he was in the grip of his besetting sin.
The Breckenridges did little formal entertaining, but the man of
the house liked to bring men down from town for week-end visits,
and Billy brought her young friends in and out with youthful
indifference to domestic regulations, so that on Rachael, as
housekeeper, there fell no light burden.

She carried it gracefully, knitting her handsome brows as the
seasons brought about their endless problems, discussing bulbs
with old Rafael in the garden when the snow melted, discussing
paper and paint in the first glory of May, superintending the
making of iced drinks on the hot summer afternoons, and in October
filling her woodroom duly with the great logs that would blaze
neglected in the drawing-room fireplace all winter long. The house
was not large, as such houses go; too much room was wasted by a
very modern architect in linen closets and coat closets, bathrooms
and hall space, dressing-rooms, passages, and nooks and corners
generally. Yet Rachael's guest-rooms were models in their way, and
when she gave a luncheon the women who came were always ready to
exclaim in despairing admiration over the beauty of the gardens,
the flower-filled, airy rooms, the table appointments, and the
hostess herself.

But when they said that she was "wonderful"--and it was the
inevitable word for Rachael Breckenridge-the general meaning went
deeper than this. She was wonderful in her pride, the dignity and
the silence of her attitude toward her husband; she had been a
wonderful mother to Clarence's daughter; not a loving mother,
perhaps--she was not loving to anyone--but a miracle of
determination and clearness of vision.

Who else, her friends wondered, could have cleared the social
horizon for Paula Breckenridge's daughter so effectively? With
what brisk resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless
European wanderings, cropped the child's artificially curled hair,
given away the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks
and hats. Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had
entered Miss Proctor's select school, entered Miss Roger's select
dancing class, entered Professor Darling's expensive riding
classes. Billy, in dark-blue Peter Thompsons, in black stockings
and laced boots, had been dropped in among other little girls in
Peter Thompsons and laced boots, little girls with the approved
names of Whittaker and Bowditch, Moran and Merridew and Parmalee.

Billy had never doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the
new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed
with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and
discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied
little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress,
knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he
could ever do himself.

But Rachael, if she had expected reward, reaped none. Her husband
was a supremely selfish man, and his daughter inherited his
sublime ability to protect his own pleasure at any cost. Carol
admired her step-mother, but she was an indolent and luxury-loving
little soul, and even as early as her twelfth or fourteenth year
she had been deeply flattered by the evidences of her own power
over her father. Into her youthful training no reverence for
parents--real or adopted--had been infused; she called her father
"Clancy," as some of his intimate friends called him, and he
delighted to take her orders and bow to her pretty tyranny.

Before she was sixteen he began to take her about with him: to
dances, to the theatre, and for long trips in his car. He entered
eagerly into her young friendships, frantic to prove himself as
young at heart as she. He paid her the extravagant compliments of
a lover, and gave her her grandmother's beautiful jewelry, as well
as every trinket that caught her eye.

And Billy accepted his attentions with a finished coquetry that
was far from childlike, a flush on her satin cheek, a dimple
puckering the corner of her mouth, and silky lashes lowered over
her satisfied eyes. She was inevitably precocious in many ways,
but she was young enough still to fancy herself one of the
irresistible beauties and belles of the world, and to flaunt a
perfectly conscious arrogance in the eyes of all other women.

All this was bewildering and painful to Rachael. She had never
loved her husband--love entered into none of her relationships--
her marriage had been only a step in the steady progress of her
life toward the position she desired in the world. But she had
liked him. She had liked his child, and she had come into the new
arrangement kindly and gallantly determined to make the venture at
least as profitable to them both as it was to her.

To be ignored, to be deliberately set aside, to be insulted by a
selfishness so calculating and so deliberate as to make her own
attitude seem all warmth and generosity by comparison, genuinely
astonished her. At first, indeed, a sort of magnificent impatience
had prevented her from feeling any stronger emotion than
astonishment. It was too ridiculous, said the bride to herself
tolerantly; it could not go on, of course, this preposterous
consideration of a child of ten, this belittling consideration of
her own place in the scheme as less Clarence's wife than Billy's
mother. It must adjust itself with every week that they three
lived together, the child slipping back to her own life, the
husband and wife sharing theirs. When Clarence's first fears for
his daughter's comfort under the new rule were set at rest, when
his confidence in the wisdom and efficiency of his wife was fully
established, then a normal relationship must ensue. "Surely
Clarence wouldn't ask a woman to marry him just to give Billy a
home and social backing?" Rachael asked herself, in those first
puzzled days in Paris.

That was seven years ago. She knew exactly that for truth now.
Long ago she had learned that whatever impulse had moved Clarence
Breckenridge to ask her to marry him was quickly displaced by his
vision of Billy's need as being greater than his own.

It had been an unpalatable revelation, for Rachael was a woman
proud as well as beautiful. But presently she had accepted the
situation as it stood, somehow fighting her way, as the years went
by, to fresh acceptances: the acceptance of Billy's ripening
charms, the acceptance of Clarence's more and more frequent times
of inebriated irresponsibility. Silently she made her mental
adjustments, moving through her gay and empty life in an
unsuspected bitterness of solitude, won to protest and rebellion
only when the cold surface she presented to the world was
threatened from within or without.

It was distinctly threatened now, she realized with a little sick
twist of apprehension at heart, when her casual inquiry to a maid
upon entering was answered by a discreet, "Yes, Mrs. Breckenridge,
Mr. Breckenridge came home half an hour ago. Alfred is with him."

This was unexpected. Rachael did not glance either at her guest or
her stepdaughter, but she disposed of them both in a breath.

"Someone wants you on the telephone, Billy," she repeated after
the maid's information. "Take it in the library. Run right up to
my room, Elinor, and I'll be there in two minutes. I'll send some
one in with towels and brushes; you've time for a tub. Take these
things, Helda, and give them to Annie, and tell her to lookout for
Miss Vanderwall."

The square entrance hall was sweet with flowers in the early
spring evening, Oriental rugs were spread on the dull mirror of
the floor, opened doors gave glimpses of airy colonial interiors,
English chintzes crowded with gay colored fruits and flowers,
brick fireplaces framed in classic white and showing a brave gleam
of brass firedogs in the soft lamplight. Not a book on the long
tables, not an etching on the dull rich paper of the walls, struck
a false note. It was all exquisitely in tone.

But Rachael Breckenridge, at best, saw less its positive
perfections than the tiniest opening through which an imperfection
might push its way, and in such an hour as this she saw it not at
all. Her mouth a trifle firm in its outline, her face a little
pale, she went quickly up the wide white stairway and along the
open balcony above. There were several doors on this balcony,
which was indeed the upper hall. Mrs. Breckenridge opened one of
them without knocking, and closed it noiselessly behind her.

The room into which she admitted herself presented exactly the
picture she had expected. The curtains, again of richly colored
cretonne, were drawn, a softly toned lamp on the reading table,
and another beside the bed, cast circles of pleasant light on the
comfortable wicker chairs, the cream-colored woodwork, and the
scattered books and magazines. Several photographs of Carol,
beautifully framed, were on bookcase and dresser, and a fine oil
painting of the child at fourteen looked down from the mantel. On
the bed, a mahogany four-poster, with carved pineapples finishing
the posts, the frilled cretonne cover had been flung back; Mr.
Breckenridge had retired; his blond head was sunk in the pillows;
he clutched the blankets about him with his arms, his face was not
visible.

A quiet manservant, who was by turns butler, chauffeur, and valet,
was stepping softly about the room. Rachael interrogated him in a
low tone:

"Asleep, Alfred?"

"Oh, no, ma'am!" the man said quickly. "He's been feeling ill. He
says he has a chill."

"When did he get home?" the wife asked.

"About half an hour ago, Mrs. Breckenridge. Mr. Butler telephoned
me. Some of the gentlemen were going on--to one of the beach
hotels for dinner, I believe, but Mr. Breckenridge felt himself
too unwell to join them, so I went for him with the little car,
and Mr. Joe Butler and Mr. Parks came home with him, Mrs.
Breckenridge."

"Do you know if he went to bed last night at all?"

"No, ma'am, he said he did not. All the gentlemen looked as if
they--looked as if they might have--" Alfred hesitated delicately.
"It was Mr. Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner," he presently added.

At this moment there was a convulsion in the bed, and the red face
of Clarence Breckenridge revealed itself. The eyes were
bloodstained, the usually pale skin flushed and oily, the fair,
thin hair tumbled across a high and well-developed forehead.
Rachael knew every movement of the red and swollen lips, every
tone of the querulous voice.

"Does Alfred have to stay up here doing a chambermaid's work?"
demanded the man of the house fretfully. "My God! Can you or can't
you manage--between your teas and card parties--to get someone
else to put this room in order?" He ended in a long moan, and
dropped his head again into the pillows.

"Do you know what he wants?" Rachael asked the man in a quick
whisper. "Go down and get it, then!"

"I'm co-o-old!" said the man in the bed, going into a sudden and
violent chill. "I've caught my death, I think. Joe made a punch--
some sort of an eggnog--eggs were bad, I think. I'm poisoned. The
stuff was rotten!" He sank mumbling back into the pillows.

Rachael, who had been hanging his coat carefully in the big closet
adjoining his room, came to the bedside and laid her cool fingers
on his burning forehead. If irrepressible distaste was visible in
her face, it was only a faint reflection of the burning resentment
in her heart.

"You've got a fever, Clarence," she announced quietly. The answer
was only a furious and incoherent burst of denunciation; the
patient was in utter physical discomfort, and could not choose his
terms. Rachael--not for the first nor the hundredth time--felt
within her an impulse to leave him here, leave him to outwear his
miseries without her help. But this she could not do without
throwing the house into an uproar. Clarence at these times had no
consideration for public opinion, had no dignity, no self-control.
Much better satisfy him, as she had done so many times before, and
keep a brave face to the world.

So she placed a hot-water bag against his cold feet, went to her
own room adjoining to borrow a fluffy satin comforter with which
to augment his own bed covering, laid an icy towel upon his
throbbing forehead, and when Alfred presently appeared with a
decanter of whisky, Rachael watched her husband eagerly gulp down
a glass of it without uttering one word of the bitter protest that
rose to her lips.

She was not a prude, with the sublime inconsistency of most women
whose lives are made the darker for drink; she did not identify
herself with any movement toward prohibition, or refuse the
cocktails, the claret, and the wine that were customarily served
at her own and at other people's dinner-tables. But she hated
coarseness in any form, she hated contact with the sodden, self-
pitying, ugly animal that Clarence Breckenridge became under the
influence of drink.

To-night, when he presently fell asleep, somewhat more comfortable
in body, and soothed in spirit by the promise of a visit from the
doctor, Rachael went into her own room and sinking into a deep
chair sat staring stupidly at the floor. She did not think of the
husband she had just left, nor of the formal dinner party being
given, only half a mile away, to a great English novelist--a
dinner to which the Breckenridges had of course been asked and
upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her heart. She was tired, and
her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at all, or into some
opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of the body
might not follow.

Presently Miss Vanderwall, clothed in a trailing robe of soft
Arabian cotton, came briskly out of the bathroom, her short dark
hair hanging in a mane about her rosy face.

"Why so pensive, Rachael?" she asked cheerfully, pressing a button
that lighted the circle of globes about the dressing-table mirror,
and seating herself before it. But under her loose locks she sent
a keen and concerned look at her hostess' thoughtful face.

"Tired," Rachael answered briefly, not changing her attitude, but
with a fleeting shadow of a smile.

"How's Clancy?"

"Asleep. He's wretched, poor fellow! Berry Stokes' bachelor
dinner, you know. That crowd is bad for him."

"I KNEW it must have been an orgy!" Miss Vanderwall declared
vivaciously. "That was a silly slip of mine in the car. Billy
doesn't know he went, I suppose?"

"No, he promised her he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner.
Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept
quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I
suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it
was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no
idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was
worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping it up. It's a
shame, of course--"

Her uninterested voice dropped into silence.

"Men are queer," Miss Vanderwall said profoundly, busy with ivory-
backed brushes, powders, and pastes.

"The mystery to me--about men," mused Mrs. Breckenridge, her
absent eyes upon the buckled slipper she held in her hand, "is not
that they are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong
with their poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but
that they work so hard, in spite of that, to increase the general
discomfort of living. Women have a great deal of misery to bear,
they are brave or cowardly about it as the case may be, but at
least they endure and renounce and diet and keep early hours--or
whatever's to be done--they TRY to lessen the sum of physical
misery. But men go cheerily on--they smoke too much, and eat too
much, and drink too much, and they bring the resulting misery
sweetly and confidently to some woman to bear for them. It's
hopeless!"

"H'm!" was Miss Vanderwall's thoughtful comment. Presently she
added dubiously: "Did you ever think that another child might make
a big difference to Clarence, Rachael? That he might come to care
for a son as he does for Billy, don't you know--"

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of Clarence," Mrs. Breckenridge said
coldly. And Elinor, recognizing a false step, winced inwardly.

"No, I didn't suppose you were!" she assented hastily.

"If there's one thing I AM thankful for," Rachael presently said
moodily, "it's that I haven't a child. I'm rather fond of kiddies-
-nice kiddies, myself; and Clarence likes children, too. But
things are quite bad enough now without that complication!" She
brushed the loosened hair from her face restlessly, and sighed.
"Sometimes, when I see the other girls," said she, "I think I'd
make a rather good mother! However"--and getting suddenly to her
feet, she flung up her head as if to be rid of the subject--
"however, my dear, we shall never know! Don't mind me to-night,
Elinor, I'm in a horrible mood, it will take nothing at all to set
me off in what Bill used to call a regilyer tant'um!"

"Tantrum nothing," said Elinor, in eager sympathy, feeling with
the greatest relief that she was reinstated in Rachael's good
graces after her stupid blunder. "I don't see how you stand it at
all!"

"It isn't the drinking and headaches and general stupidity in
themselves, you know," Rachael said, reverting to her original
argument, "but it's the atrocious UNNECESSITY of it! I don't mind
Clarence's doing as other men do, I certainly don't mind his
caring so much for his daughter"--her fine brows drew together--
"but where do _I_ come in?" she demanded with a quizzical smile.
"What's MY life? I ask only decency and civility, and I don't get
it. The very servants in this house pity me--they see it all. When
Clarence isn't himself, he needs me; when he is, he is all for
Billy. I must apologize for breaking engagements; people don't ask
us out any more, and no wonder! I have to coax money out of him
for bills; Billy has her own check-book. I have to keep quiet when
I'm boiling all over. I have to defend myself when I know I'm
bitterly, cruelly wronged!"

Neither woman had any scruples about the subject under discussion,
but even to Elinor Rachael had never spoken so freely before, and
the guest, desperately attempting to remember every word for the
delectation of her family and friends later on, felt herself at
once honored and thrilled.

"Rachael--but why do you stand it?"

Mrs. Breckenridge threw her a look full of all conscious
forbearance.

"Well, what would YOU do?"

"Well. I'd"--Miss Vanderwall arrested the hand with which she was
carefully spreading her lips with red paste, to fling it, with a
large gesture, into the air--"I'd--why don't you GET OUT? Simply
drop it all?" she asked.

"For several reasons," the other woman returned promptly with a
sort of hard, bright pride. "One very excellent one is that I
haven't one penny. But I tell you, Elinor, if I knew how to put my
hand on about a thousand dollars a year--there are little towns in
France, I have friends in London--well"--and with a sudden
straightening of her whole body Rachael Breckenridge visibly
rallied herself--"well, what's the use of talking?" she said. But,
as she rose abruptly, Elinor saw the glint of tears on her lashes,
and said to herself with a sort of pleased terror that things
between Clarence and Rachael must be getting serious indeed.

She admired Mrs. Breckenridge deeply; more than that, the younger
woman's friendship and patronage were valuable assets to Miss
Vanderwall. But the social circle of Belvedere Hills was a small
circle, and Elinor had spent every one of her thirty-five summers,
or a part of every one, in just this limited group. There was
little malice in her pleasure at getting this glimpse behind the
scenes in Rachael's life; she would repeat her friend's
confidence, later, with the calm of a person doing the accepted
and expected thing, with the complacence of one who proves her
right to other revelations from her listeners in turn. It was by
such proof judiciously displayed that Elinor held her place in the
front ranks of her own select little group of gossips and
intimates. She wished the Breckenridges no harm, but if there were
dark elements in their lives, Elinor enjoyed being the person to
witness them. Thoughtfully adding a bloom to her cheeks with her
friend's exquisite powder, Miss Vanderwall reflected sagely that,
when one came to think of it, it must really be rather rotten to
be married to Clarence Breckenridge.

Rachael presently came back, with the signs of her recent emotion
entirely effaced, and her wonderful skin glowing faintly from a
bath. Superbly independent of cosmetics, independent even of her
mirror, she massed the thick short lengths of dark hair on the top
of her head, thrust a jewelled pin through the coil, and began to
hook herself into a lacy black evening gown that was loose and
comfortable. Before this was finished her stepdaughter rapped on
the door, and being invited, came in with the full self-
consciousness of seventeen.

"All hooked up straight?" asked Rachael. "That gown looks rather
well."

"Do you good women realize what time it is?" Miss Breckenridge
asked, by way of reply.

"Has she got it a shade too short?" speculated Rachael, thoughtful
eyes on the girl's dress.

"Well--I was wondering!" Carol said eagerly, flinging down her
wrap, to turn and twist before a door that was a solid panel of
mirror. "What do you think--we'll dance."

"Oh, not a bit," Rachael presently decided. "They're all up to the
knees this year, anyway. Car come round?"

"Long ago," said Billy, and Elinor, reaching for her own wrap,
declared herself ready. "I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl
added as she turned to follow their guest from the room.

"Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said casually,
seating herself at the dressing-table without a glance at her
stepdaughter. For a moment Miss Breckenridge stood irresolute in
the doorway, then she reluctantly came in.

"You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman
indifferently. "When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you
may do as you please. But until then--either see a little less of
Joe Pickering, or else come right out in the open about it, and
tell your father you want to see him here. This silly business of
telephoning and writing and meeting him, here, there, and
everywhere, has got to stop."

Billy stared steadily at her stepmother, her breath coming quick
and high, her cheeks red.

"Who said I met him--places?" she said, in a seventeen-year-old-
girl's idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this
was a shrug, a smile, and a motherly request not to be a fool.

There was silence for a moment. Then Billy said recklessly:

"I like him. And you can't make me deny it!"

"Like him if you want to," said Mrs. Breckenridge, "although what
you can see in a man twice your age--with his particular history--
However, it's your affair. But you'll have to tell your father."

Billy shut her lips mutinously, her cheeks still scarlet.

"I don't see why!" she burst forth proudly, at last.

To this Mrs. Breckenridge offered no argument. Carefully filing a
polished fingertip she said quietly:

"I didn't suppose you would."

"And I think that if you tell him YOU interfere in a matter that
doesn't in the LEAST concern you," Billy pursued hotly,
uncomfortably eager to strike an answering spark, and reduce the
conversation to a state where mutual concessions might be in
order. "You have no BUSINESS to!"

Her stepmother was silent. She put on a ring, regarded it
thoughtfully on her spread fingers, and took it off again.

"In the first place," Billy said sullenly, "you'll tell him a lot
of things that aren't so!"

Silence. Outside the motor horn sounded impatiently. Billy
suddenly came close to her stepmother, her dark, mobile little
face quite transformed by anger.

"You can tell him what you please," she said in a cold fury, "but
I'll know WHY you did it--it's because you're jealous, and you
want everyone in the world to be in love with YOU! You hate me
because my father loves me, and you would do anything in the world
to make trouble between us! I've known it ever since I was a
little girl, even if I never have said it before! I--" She choked,
and tears of youthful rage came into her eyes.

"Don't be preposterous, Bill. You've said it before, every time
you've been angry, in the last five years," the older woman said
coolly. "This only means that you will feel that you have to wake
me up, when you come in to-night, to say that you are sorry."

"I will not!" said the girl at white heat.

"Well, I hope you won't," Rachael Breckenridge said amiably, "for
if there is one thing I loathe more than another, it is being
waked up for theatricals in the middle of the night. Good-bye. Be
sure to thank Mrs. Bowditch for chaperoning you."

"Are you going to speak to Clancy?" the girl demanded imperiously.

"Run along, Billy," Rachael said, with a faint show of impatience.
"Nobody could speak to your father about anything to-night, as you
ought to know."

For a moment Billy stood still, breathing hard and with tightly
closed lips, her angry eyes on her step-mother. Then her breast
rose on a childish, dry sob, she dropped her eyes, and moved a
shining slipper-toe upon the rug with the immortal motion of
embarrassed youth.

"You--you used to like Joe, Rachael," she said, after a moment, in
a low tone.

"I don't dislike him now," Rachael said composedly.

"He's awfully kind--and--and good, and Lucy never understood him,
or tried to understand him!" said Billy in a burst. The other
woman smiled.

"If Joe Pickering told you any sentimental nonsense like that,
kindly don't retail it to me," she said amusedly.

In a second Billy was roused to utter fury. Her cheeks blazed, her
breath came short and deep. "I hate you!" she said passionately,
and ran from the room.

Mrs. Breckenridge sat still for a few moments, but there was no
emotion but utter weariness visible in her face. After a while she
said, "Oh, Lord!" in a tone compounded of amusement and disgust,
and rising, she took a new book from the table, and went slowly
downstairs.

In the lower hall Alfred met her, his fat young face duly
mysterious and important in expression.

"Mr. Breckenridge got a telephone message from Doctor Jordan, Mrs.
Breckenridge; the doctor's been called into town to a patient, so
he can't see Mr. Breckenridge to-night."

"Oh! Well, he'll probably be here in the morning," Rachael said
carelessly.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Breckenridge, but Mr. Breckenridge seemed to be a
good deal worried about himself, and he had me call Doctor
Gregory," the man pursued respectfully.

"Doctor GREGORY!" echoed his mistress, with a laugh like a wail.
"Alfred, what were you THINKING of! Why didn't you call me?"

"He wouldn't have me call you," Alfred said unhappily. "He spoke
to the doctor himself. We got the housekeeper first, and she said
Doctor Gregory was dressing. 'Tell him it's a matter of life and
death,' says Mr. Breckenridge. Then we got him. 'I'm dining out,'
he says, 'but I'll be there this evening.'"

"Oh, dear, dear, dear!" Mrs. Breckenridge said half to herself in
serio-comic desperation. "Gregory--called in for a--for a--for
this! If I could get hold of him! He didn't say where he was
dining?"

"No, Mrs. Breckenridge," the man answered, with a great air of
efficiency.

"Well, Alfred, I wish sometimes you knew a little more--or a
little less!" Rachael said dispassionately. "Light a fire in the
library, will you? I'll have my dinner there. Tell Ellie to send
me up something broiled--nothing messy--and some strong coffee."




CHAPTER II


The coffee was strong. Mrs. Breckenridge found it soothing to
rasped nerves and tired body, and after the dinner things had been
cleared away she sat on beside the library fire, under the soft
arc of light from the library lamp, sipping the stimulating fluid,
and staring at the snapping and flashing logs.

A sense of merely physical well-being crept through her body, and
for a little time even her active brain was quieter; she forgot
the man now heavily sleeping upstairs, the pretty little tyrant
who had rushed off to dinner at the Chases', and the many
perplexing elements in her own immediate problem. She saw only the
quiet changes in the fire as yellow flame turned to blue--sank,
rose, and sank again.

The house was still. Kitchenward, to be sure, there was a great
deal of cheerful laughter and chatter, as Ellie, sitting heavily
ensconced in the largest rocker, embroidered a centrepiece for her
sister's birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred
imitated the supercilious manner of a lady who had called that
afternoon upon Mrs. Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane
with pink-rimmed eyes, laughed with infantile indiscrimination at
everything, blushing an agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's
admiring eye met her own.

But the kitchen was not within hearing distance of the quiet room
where Rachael sat alone, and as the soft spring night wore on no
sound came to disturb her revery. It was not the first solitary
evening she had had of late, for Clarence had been more than
usually reckless, and was developing in his wife, although she did
not realize it herself, a habit of introspection quite foreign to
her real nature.

She had never been a thoughtful woman, her days for many years had
run brilliantly on the surface of life, she knew not whence the
current was flowing, nor why, nor where it led her; she did not
naturally analyze, nor dispute events. Only a few years ago she
would have said that to an extraordinary degree fortune had been
kind to her. She had been born with an adventurous spirit, she had
played her game well and boldly, and, according to all the
standards of her type, she had won. But sitting before this quiet
fire, perhaps it occurred to her to wonder how it happened that
there were no more hazards, no more cards left to play. She was
caught in a net of circumstances too tight for her unravelling.
Truly it might be cut, but when she stood in the loose wreckage of
it--how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it
was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling
darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond.

And yet she raged, and her hurt spirit flung itself again and
again at the bars. Young and beautiful and clever, how had life
tricked her into this deadlock, where had been the fault, and
whose?

For some undefined reason Rachael rarely thought of the past. She
did not care to bring its certainties, its panorama of blinded
eyes and closed doors before her mental vision. But to-night she
found herself walking again in those old avenues; her thoughts
went back to the memories of her girlhood.

Girlhood? Her eyes smiled, but with the smile a little twinge of
bitterness drew down her mouth. What a discontented, eager,
restless girlhood it had been, after all. A girlhood eternally
analyzing, comparing, resenting, envying. How she had secretly
despised the other girls, typical of their class, the laughing,
flirting, dress-possessed girls of a small California town. How
she had despised her aunts, all comfortably married and
prosperous, her aunts' husbands, her stodgy, noisy cousins! And,
for that matter, there had never been much reverence in her regard
for her mother, although Rachael loved that complaining little
woman in her cool way.

But for her father, the tall, clever, unhappy girl had a genuine
admiration. She did not love him, no one who knew Gerald Fairfax
well could possibly have sustained a deep affection for him, but
she believed him to be almost as remarkably educated and naturally
gifted as he believed himself to be. Her uncles were simply
country merchants, her mother's fat, cheerful father dealt in
furniture, and, incidentally, coffins, but her father was an
Englishman, and naturally held himself above the ordinary folk of
Los Lobos.

Nobody knew much about him, when he first made his appearance in
Los Lobos, this silky-haired, round-faced, supercilious stranger,
in his smart, shabby Norfolk coat, which was perhaps one reason
why every girl in the village was at once willing to marry him, no
questions asked. His speech was almost a different tongue from
theirs; he was thirty-five, he had dogs and a man-servant, instead
of the usual equipment of mother, sisters, and "hired girl," and
he seemed eternally bored and ungracious. This was enough for the
Los Lobos girls, and for most of their mothers, too.

The newcomer bought a small ranch, three miles out of town, and
lounged about it in a highly edifying condition of elegant
idleness. He rode a good horse, drank a great deal, and strode out
of the post-office once a week scattering monogrammed envelopes
carelessly behind him. He had not been long in town before people
began to say that his elder brother was a lord; a duke, Mrs. Chess
Baxter, the postmistress said, because to her question regarding
the rumor he had answered carelessly: "Something of that sort."

Thirty years ago there were a great many detached Englishmen in
California, fourth and fifth sons, remittance men, family
scapegraces who had been banished to the farthest frontier by
relatives who regarded California as beyond the reach of gossip,
and almost beyond the reach of letters. Checks, small but regular,
arrived quarterly for these gentry, who had only to drink, sleep,
play cards, and demoralize the girls of the country. Here and
there among them, to be sure, were pink-skinned boys as fresh and
sweet as the apple-blossoms under which they rode their horses,
but for the most part the emigrants were dissipated, disenchanted,
clinging loyally to the traditions of the older country that had
discarded them, and scorning the fragrant and inexhaustible
richness of the new land that had made them welcome. They were, as
a class, silent, only voluble on the subject of the despised
country of their adoption, and absolutely non-committal as to
their own histories. But far from questioning their credentials,
the women and girls everywhere accepted them eagerly, caught
something of an English accent and something of an English
arrogance.

So Clara Mumford, a rose of a girl, cream-skinned, blue-eyed, and
innocent with the terrible innocence of the village girlhood that
feels itself so wise--Clara, who knew, because her two older
sisters were married, where babies come from, and knew, because of
Alta Porter's experience, that girls--nice girls, who went with
one through the high school--can yield to temptation and be
ruined--Clara only felt, in shyly announcing her engagement to
Gerald Fairfax, that Fate had been too kind.

That this glittering stranger twice her age--why, he was even a
little bald--a man who had travelled, who knew people of title,
knew books, and manners, and languages--that he should marry an
undertaker's daughter in Los Lobos! It was unbelievable. Clara's
only misgiving during her short engagement was that he would
disappear like a dream. She agreed with everything he said; even
carrying her new allegiance to the point of laughing a little at
her own people: the layer cakes her mother made for the Sunday
noonday dinner; the red-handed, freckled swain who called on her
younger sister in the crisp, moonlighted winter evenings; and the
fact that her father shaved in the kitchen.

A few weeks slipped by, and Clara duly confided her youth and her
innocence and her roses to her English husband, a little ashamed
of the wedding presents her friends sent her, even a little
doubtful of her parents' handsome gift of a bird's-eye maple
bedroom set and a parlor set in upholstered cherry.

On her side she accepted everything unquestionably: the shabby
little ranch house that smelled of wood smoke, and tobacco smoke,
and dogs; the easy scorn of her old friends on her husband's part
that so soon alienated her from them; the drink that she quickly
learned to regard with uneasiness and distrust. It was not that
Jerry ever got really intoxicated, but he got ugly, excitable,
irritable, even though quite in control of his actions and his
senses.

Clara was a good cook, although not as expert as her fond mother's
little substitutions and innocent manipulations during their
engagement had led Gerald to believe. But she loved to please him,
and when flushed and triumphant she put down some especially
tempting dish before him, and felt his arm about her, tears of
actual joy would stand in her bright eyes. They had some happy
days, some happy hours, in the first newness of being together.

Gerald's man, Thomas, was an early cause of annoyance to Clara.
She would not have objected to cooking for a farm "hand"; that was
a matter of course with all good farmers' wives. But Thomas was
more British, in all that makes the British objectionable, than
his master, and Thomas was quite decidedly addicted to drink. He
never thought of wiping a dish, or bringing Clara in a bucket of
water from the well. He ate what she set out upon the kitchen
table for him, three times a day, chatting pleasantly enough of
the farm, the horses, chickens, and vegetable garden, if Clara was
in an amiable mood, but if, busy at the sink, or clearing the
dining-room table, she was inwardly fuming with resentment at his
very existence, Thomas could be silent, too, and would presently
saunter away, stuffing his pipe, without even the common courtesy
of piling his dishes together for her washing. Thomas held long
conversations with his master as they idled about the place; Clara
would hear their laughter. The manservant slept in a small shed
detached from the main house, and there were times when he did not
appear in the morning. At such times Gerald with a pot of strong
coffee likewise disappeared into the cabin.

"Pore old rotter!" the husband would say generously. "He's a
decentish sort, don't you know? I meanter say, poor old Thomas did
me an awfully good turn once--and that!"

Clara inferred from various hints that Gerald had once been in the
English army, and had met Thomas, and befriended him, or been
befriended by him, at that period of his existence. But, greatly
to the little bride's disappointment, Gerald never spoke of his
old home or his connections there. Clara had to draw what comfort
she could from his intimation that all his relatives were
unbelievably eminent and distinguished, the least of them superior
in brain and achievement to any American who ever drew the breath
of life.

And presently she forgot Thomas, forgot the petty annoyance of
cooking and summer heat and dogs and physical discomfort, in the
overwhelming prayer that the coming child, about whose advent
Gerald, at first annoyed, had later been so generously good-
natured, might prove a boy. Gerald, living uncomplainingly in this
dreadful little country town, enduring Western conditions with
such dignity, and loving his little wife despite her undertaker
father, would be seriously disgusted, she knew, if she gave him a
daughter.

"A--a girl?" Clara stammered, her wet eyes on the doctor's face,
her panting little figure lost in the big outline of her mother's
spare-room bed. She managed a brave smile, but there was a bitter
lump in her throat.

A girl!

And she had been so brave, so sweet with Jerry, who had not
enjoyed the three or four days of waiting at her mother's house;
so strong in her agonies, as became the healthy, normal little
country girl she was! Fate owed her a son, she had done her share,
she had not flinched. And now--a girl! Fresh tears of
disappointment came to take the place of tears of pain in her
eyes. She remembered that Jerry had said, a few days before,
"It'll be a boy, of course--all the old women about seem to have
settled that--and I believe I'll cable Cousin Harold."

"Ma says it'll be a boy," Clara had submitted hopefully, longing
to hear more of "Cousin Harold," to whom Gerald alluded at long
intervals.

"Of course it will--good old girl!" Jerry had agreed. And that was
only Thursday night, and this was in the late dawn of cold, wintry
Saturday morning.

Her mother bent over her and kissed her wet forehead. Mrs.
Mumford's big kind face was radiant; she had already four small
grandsons; this was the first grand-daughter. More than that, the
nurse was not here yet; she had been supreme through the ordeal;
she had managed one more birth extremely well, and she rejoiced in
the making of a nation.

"Such a nice baby, darling!" she whispered, "with her dear little
head all covered with black hair! Neta's dressing her."

"Where's Gerald?" the young mother asked weakly.

"Right here! I'll let him in for a moment!" There was a
satisfaction in Mrs. Mumford's voice; everything was proceeding
absolutely by schedule. "And just as anxious to see you as you are
to see him!" she added happily. These occasions were always the
same, and always far more enjoyable to this practised parent than
any pageant, any opera, any social distinction could have been. To
comfortably, soothingly lead the trembling novice through the long
experience, to whisk about the house capably and briskly busy with
the familiar paraphernalia, to cry in sympathy with another's
tears, to stand white-lipped, impotent, anguished through a few
dreadful moments, and then to laugh, and rejoice, and reassure,
before the happy hours of resting, and feeding, and cuddling
began--this was the greatest satisfaction in her life.

Clara, afraid in this first moment to face his disappointment,
felt in another the most delicious reassurance and comfort she had
known in months. Jerry, taking the chair by the bedside, was so
dear about it! The long night had much impressed the new-made
father. They had had coffee at about two o'clock--Clara remembered
wondering how they could sit enjoying it, instead of dashing the
hideous cups to the floor, and rushing out of the horrible
enclosure of walls and curtains--and as he bent over her she knew
he had had something stronger since--but he was so dear!

"Well, we've had a night of it, eh?" he said kindly. "Funny how
much one takes the little beggars for grawnted until it's one's
own that kicks up the row? You've not seen her--she's a nice
little beggar. You might get some sleep, I should think. I'm going
to hang around until some sort of a family jamboree is over, at
one o'clock--your mother insists that we have dinner--and then
I'll go out to the rawnch. But I'll be in in the morning!"

"Girl!" said Clara, apologetically, whimsically, deprecatingly,
her weak fingers clinging tightly to his.

"Ah, well, one carn't help that!" he answered philosophically.
"We'll have a row of jolly little chaps yet!"

But there was never another child. Clara, having cast her fortunes
in with her lord, was faithful to him through every breath she
drew. But before Rachael's first crying, feverish little summer
was over there had been some definite changes at the ranch. Thomas
was gone, and Clara, pale and exhausted with the heat, engaged
Ella, a young woman servant of her mother's selecting, to bake and
wash and carry in stove-wood. Clara managed them all, Gerald, the
baby, and the maid. Perhaps at first she was just a little
astonished to find her husband as easily managed as Ella and far
more easily managed than Rachael. Gerald Fairfax was surprised,
too, lazily conceding his altered little wife her new and
energetic way with a mental reservation that when she was strong
and well again and the child less a care, things would be as they
were. But Clara, once in power, never weakened for a moment again.
Rachael grew up, a solitary and unfriendly, yet a tactful and
diplomatic, little person on the ranch. She early developed a
great admiration for her father, and a consequent regard for
herself as superior to her associates. She ruled her mother
absolutely from her fourth year, and remained her grandmother's
great favorite among a constantly increasing flock of
grandchildren. Some innate pride and scorn and dignity in the
child won her her own way through school and school days; her
young cousins were bewildered themselves by the respect and fealty
they yielded her despite the contempt in which they held her
affectations.

Clara had never been a religious woman and, married to an utter
unbeliever, she had little enough to give a child of her own. But
Clara's mother was a church woman, and her father a deeply
religious man. It was his mother, "old lady Mumford"--Rachael's
great-grandmother--who taught the child her catechism whenever she
could get hold of that restless and lawless little girl.

Rachael had great fear and respect for her great-grandmother, and
everything that was fine and good in the child instinctively
responded to the atmosphere of her little home. It was an
unpretentious home, even for Los Lobos: only a whitewashed
California cabin with a dooryard full of wall flowers and
geraniums, and pungent marigolds, and marguerites that were
budding, blossoming, and gone to rusty decay on one and the same
bush. The narrow paths were outlined with white stone ale-bottles,
turned upside down and driven into the soft ground, and under the
rustling tent of a lilac bush there were three or four clay pots
filled with dry earth. There was a railed porch on the east side
of the house, with vines climbing on strings about it, and here
the old woman, clean with the wonderful, cool-fingered cleanness
of frail yet energetic seventy-five, would sit reading in the
afternoon shade that fell from the great shoulders of the blue
mountains.

Inside were three rooms; there was no bathroom, no light but the
kerosene lamps the old hands tended daily, no warmth but the small
kitchen stove. All the furniture was old and shabby and cheap, and
the antimacassars and pictures and teacups old Mrs. Mumford prized
so dearly were of no value except for association's sake.
Rachael's great-grandmother lived upon tea and toast and fruit
sauce; sometimes she picked a dish of peas in her own garden and
sometimes made herself a rice pudding, but if her children brought
her in a chicken or a bowl of soup she always gave it away to some
poorer neighbor who was ill, or who was "nursing that great
strapping baby."

She read the Bible to Rachael and exhorted the half-believing,
half-ashamed child to lay its lessons to heart.

"Your life will be full of change and of pleasure, there will be
many temptations and much responsibility," said the sweet, stern,
thin old voice. "Arm yourself against the wickedness of the
world!"

Rachael, pulling the old collie's silky ears, thought nothing of
the wickedness of the world but much of possible change and
pleasure. She hoped her aged relative was right; certainly one
would suppose Granny to be right in anything she said.

The time would have swiftly come when the child's changing heart
would have found no room for this association, but before Rachael
was twelve Granny was gone, the little house, with its few poor
treasures shut inside it, was closed and empty. And only a year or
two later a far more important change came into the girl's life.
She had always disliked Los Lobos, had schemed and brooded and
fretted incessantly through her childhood. It was with astonished
delight that she heard that her parents, who had never, in a
financial sense, drawn a free breath since their marriage, who had
worried and contrived, who had tried indifference and bravado and
strictest economy by turns, had sold their ranch for almost two
thousand dollars more than its accumulated mortgages, and were
going to England.

It was a glorious adventure for Rachael, even though she was too
shrewd not to suspect the extreme hazard of the move. She talked
in Los Lobos of her father's "people," hinted that "the family,
you know, thinks we'd better be there," but she knew in her heart
that a few months might find them all beggars.

Her father bought her a loose, big, soft blue coat in San
Francisco, and a dashing little soft hat for the steamer. Rachael
never forgot these garments throughout her entire life. It
mattered not how countrified the gown under the coat, how plain
the shoes on her slender feet. Their beauty, their becomingness,
their comfort, actually colored her days. For twenty dollars she
was transformed; she knew herself to be pretty and picturesque.
"That charming little girl with the dark braids, going to
England," she heard some man on the steamer say. The ranch, the
chickens, weeds, and preserving, the dusty roads and shabby stores
of Los Lobos were gone; she was no longer a gawky child; she was a
young lady in a loose, soft, rough blue coat, with a black quill
in her soft blue hat.

England received her wandering son coolly, but Rachael never knew
it. Her radiant dream--or was it an awakening?--went on. Her
mother, a neat, faded, querulous little woman, whose one great
service was in sparing her husband any of the jars of life, was
keyed to frantic anxiety lest Jerry be unappreciated, now that he
had come back. Clara met the few men to whom her husband
introduced her in London with feverish eagerness; afraid--after
fifteen years--to say one word that might suggest her own concern
in Jerry's future, quivering to cross-examine him, when they were
alone, as to what had been said, and implied, and suggested.

Nothing definite followed. They lived for a month or two at a
delightful roomy boarding-house in London, where the modest meals
Clara ordered appeared as if by magic, and where Miss Fairfax
never sullied her pretty hands with dishwashing. Then they went to
visit "Aunt Elsie" in a suburban villa for several weeks, a visit
Rachael never thought of afterward without a memory of stuffy,
neat, warm rooms, and a gushing of canaries' voices. Then they
went down to Sussex, in the delicious fullness of spring, to live
with several other persons in a dark country house, where "Cousin
Harold" died, and there was much odorous crepe and a funeral.
Cousin Harold evidently left something to Gerald. Rachael knew
money was not an immediate problem. Hot weather came, and they
went to the seaside with an efficient relative called Ethel, and
Ethel's five children. Later, back in London, Gerald said, in his
daughter's hearing, that he had made "rather a good thing of that
little game of Bobbie's. Enough to tide us over--what? Especially
if the Dickies ask us down for a bit," he had added. The Dickies
did ask them down for a bit. They went other places. Gerald made a
little money on the races, made "a good thing" of this, and
"turned a bit over on that." Weeks made months and months years,
and still they drifted cheerfully about, Gerald happier than he
had ever been in exile, Clara fearful, admiring, ill at ease,
Rachael in a girl's paradise.

She grew beautiful, with a fine and distinguished beauty definite
in its appeal; before she was seven-teen she had her little
reputation for it; she moved easily into a circle higher than even
her father had ever known. She was witty, young, lovely, and in
this happier atmosphere her natural gayety and generosity might
well develop. She went about continually, and every year the
circle of her friends was widened by more distinguished names.

At seventeen Mrs. Gouveneur Pomeroy of New York brought the young
beauty back with her own daughter, Persis, for a winter in the
great American city, and when Persis died Rachael indeed became
almost as dear to the stricken parents. When she went back to
London they gave her not only gifts but money, and for two years
she returned to them for long visits. So America had a chance to
admire the ravishing Miss Fairfax, too, and Rachael had many
conquests and one or two serious affairs. The girls had their
first dances at the Belvedere Club; Rachael met them all, who were
later to be her neighbors: the Morans and Parmalees, the
Vanderwalls and the Torrences, and the Chases. She met Clarence
Breckenridge and his wife, and the exquisitely dressed little girl
who was Billy to-day.

And through all her adventures she looked calmly, confidently, and
with conscious enjoyment for a husband. She flirted a little, and
danced and swam and drove and played golf and tennis a great deal,
but she never lost sight for an instant of the serious business of
life. Money she must have--it was almost as essential to her as
air--and money she could only secure through a marriage.

The young Englishman who was her first choice, in her twentieth
year, had every qualification in the world. When he died, two or
three months before the wedding-day, Rachael's mother was fond of
saying in an aside to close friends that the girl's heart was
broken. Rachael, lovely in her black, went down to stay with
Stephen's mother, and for several weeks was that elderly lady's
greatest comfort in life. Silent and serious, her manner the
perfection of quiet grief, only Rachael herself knew how little
the memory of Stephen interfered with her long reveries as she
took his collies about in the soft autumn fogs. Only Rachael knew
how the sight of Trecastle Hall, the horses, the servants, and the
park filled her heart with despair. She might have been Lady
Trecastle! All this might so easily have been her own!

She had loved Stephen, of course, she told herself; loving, with
Rachael, simply meant a willingness to accept and to give. But
love was of course a luxury; she was after the necessities of
life. Well, she had played and lost, but she could play again. So
she went to the Pomeroys' for the winter, and in the spring was
brought back to London by her father's sudden death.

Gerald Fairfax's life insurance gave his widow a far more secured
income than he had ever given his wife. It was microscopic, to be
sure, but Clara Fairfax was a practised economist. The ladies
settled in Paris, and Rachael was seriously considering a French
marriage when, by the merest chance, in the street one day, a
small homesick girl clutched at her thin black skirt, and sent her
an imploring smile. Rachael, looking graciously down from under
the shade of her frilly black parasol, recognized the little
Breckenridge girl, obviously afflicted with a cold and
lonesomeness and strangeness. Enslaving the French nurse with
three perfectly pronounced sentences, Rachael went home with the
clinging Carol, put her to bed, cheered her empty little interior
with soup, soothed her off to sleep, and was ready to meet her
crazed and terrified father with a long lecture on the care of
young children, when, after an unavoidable afternoon of business,
he came back to his hotel.

The rest followed. Rachael liked Clarence, finding it agreeable
that he knew how to dress, how to order a dinner, tip servants,
and take care of a woman in a crowd. His family was one of the
oldest in America, and he was rich. She was sorry that Billy's
mother was living, but then one couldn't have everything, and,
after all, she was married again, which seemed to mitigate the
annoyance. Rachael said to herself that this was a wiser marriage
than the proposed one with poor Stephen: Stephen had been a wild,
romantic boy, full of fresh passion and dazed with exultant
dreams; Clarence was a man, longing less for moonshine and roses
and the presence of his beloved one than for a gracious,
distinguished woman who would take her place before the world as
mistress of his home and guardian of his child.

She had sometimes doubted her power to make Stephen happy--
Stephen, who talked with all a boy's heavenly shyness of long days
tramping the woods and long nights over the fire, of little sons
and daughters romping in the Trecastle gardens; but she entered
into her marriage with Clarence Breckenridge with entire self-
confidence. She had been struggling more or less definitely all
her life toward just such a position as this; it was a
comparatively easy matter to fill it, now that she had got it.

Carol she considered a decided asset. The child adored her, and
her services to Carol were so much good added to the beauty,
charm, and wisdom that she brought into the bargain. That Clarence
could ask more in the way of beauty, wisdom, and charm was not
conceivable; Rachael knew her own value too well to have any
doubts on that score.

And had her husband been a strong man, her dignified and ripened
loveliness must inevitably have won him. She stood ready to be
won. She held to her bond in all generosity. What heart and soul
and body could do for him was his to claim. She did not love him,
but she did not need love's glamour to show her what her exact
value to him might be; what was her natural return for all her
marriage gave her.

But quick-witted and cold-blooded as she was, she could not see
that Clarence was actually a little afraid of her. He had been too
rich all his life to count his money as an argument in his favor,
and although he was not clever he knew Rachael did not love him,
and hardly supposed that she ever could.

He felt with paternal blindness that she had married him partly
for the child's sake, and returned to the companionship of his
daughter with a real sense of relief.

Rachael, in turn, was puzzled. Carol was undeniably a pretty
child, with all a spoiled child's confident charm, but in all
good-natured generosity Rachael could not see in her the subtle
and irresistible fascinations that her father so eagerly
exploited. Surely no girl of ten, however gifted, could be
reasonably supposed to eclipse completely the woman Rachael knew
herself to be; surely no parental infatuation could extend itself
to the point of a remarriage with the bettering of a small child's
position alone the object.

Philosophy came promptly to the aid of the new-made wife. Billy
was a child, and Clarence a greater child. The situation was
annoying, was belittling to her own pride, but she would meet it
with dignity nevertheless. After all, the visible benefits of the
marriage were still hers: the new car, the new furs, the new and
wonderful sense of financial ease, of social certainty.

She schooled herself to listen with an indulgent smile to her
husband's fond rhapsodies about his daughter. She agreed amiably
that Billy would be a great beauty, a heart-breaker, that "the
little monkey had all the other women crazy with jealousy now, by
Jove!" She selected the little gowns and hats in which the radiant
Billy went off for long days alone with "Daddy," and she presently
graciously consented to share the little girl's luxurious room
because Billy sometimes awakened nervously at night. Rachael had
been accustomed to difficulties in dealing with the persons
nearest her; she met them resolutely. Sometimes a baffling sense
of failure smote the surface of her life, like a cold wind that
turns to white metal the smooth waters of a lake, but she held her
head proudly above it, and even Clarence and his daughter never
guessed what she endured. What did it matter? Rachael asked
herself wearily. She had not asked for love. She had resolutely
exchanged what she had to give for what she had determined to get;
Clarence had made no blind protestations, had expected no golden
romance. He admired her; she knew he thought it was splendid of
her to manage the engagement and marriage with so little fuss;
perhaps his jaded pulses fluttered a little when Rachael,
exquisite in her bridal newness, stooped at the railway station to
give the drooping Billy a good-bye kiss, and promise that in three
days they would be back to rescue her from the hated governess;
but paramount above all other emotions, she suspected, was the
tremendous satisfaction of having gained just the right woman to
straighten out his tangled domestic affairs, just the mother, as
the years went by, to do the correct thing for Billy.

Of some of these things the woman who sat idly before the library
fire was thinking, as the quiet evening wore on, and the purring
of the flames and the ticking of the little mantel clock accented
rather than disturbed the stillness. She was unhappy with a cold,
dry wretchedness that was deeper than any pang of passion or of
hate. The people she met, the books she read, the gowns she
planned so carefully, and the social events that were her life,
all--all--were dust and ashes. Clarence was less a disappointment
and a shame to her than an annoyance; he neglected her, he
humiliated her, true, but this meant infinitely less than that he
bored her so mercilessly. Billy, with her youthful complacencies
and arts, bored her; the sympathy of a few close friends bored her
as much as the admiration and envy of the many who were not close.
Cards, golf, dinners, and dances bored her. Rachael thought
tonight of a woman she had known closely, a beautiful woman, too,
and a rich and gifted woman, who, not many months ago, had quietly
ended it all, had been found by horrified maids in her gray-and-
silver boudoir lovelier than ever, in fixed and peaceful beauty,
with the soft folds of her lacy gown spreading like the petals of
a great flower about her and the little gleam of an empty bottle
in her still, ringed hand...

A voice broke the library stillness. Rachael roused herself.

"What is it, Helda?" she asked. "Doctor Gregory? Ask him to come
in. And ask Alfred--is Alfred still downstairs?--ask him to go up
and see if Mr. Breckenridge is awake.

"This is very decent of you, Greg," she said, a moment later, as
the doctor came into the room. "It doesn't seem right to interfere
with your dinner for the same old stupid thing!"

"Great pleasure to do anything for you, Rachael," the newcomer
said promptly and smilingly with the almost perfunctory courtesy
that was a part of Warren Gregory's stock in trade. "You don't
call on me often! I wish you did!"

She said to herself, as they both sat down before the fire, that
it was probably true. Doctor Gregory was notoriously glad of an
opportunity to serve his friends. He had not at all regretted the
necessity of leaving his dinner partner at the salad for a
professional call. He was quite ready to enjoy the Breckenridge
sitting-room, the fire, the lamplight, the company of a beautiful
woman. Rachael and he knew each other well, almost intimately;
they had been friends for many years. She had often been his guest
at the opera, had often chaperoned his dinner-parties at the club,
for Warren Gregory's only woman relative was his old mother, who
was neither of an age nor a type to take any part in his social
life.

He was forty, handsome, dignified, with touches of gray in his
close-clipped hair, but no other sign of years in his face or his
big, well-built figure. He had clever, fine eyes behind black-
rimmed glasses, a surgeon's clever hands, a pleasant voice. He
lived with his mother in a fine old house on Washington Square, in
New York City, and worked as tirelessly as if he were a penniless
be ginner at his profession instead of a rich man, a rich woman's
heir, and already recognized as a genius in his own line.

All women liked him, and he liked them all. He sent them books,
marked essays in magazines for their individual consideration,
took them to concerts, remembered their birthdays. But his only
close friends were men, the men with whom he played tennis and
golf, or with whom he was associated in his work.

With all his cleverness and all his charm, Warren Gregory was not
a romantic figure in the eyes of most women. He had inherited from
his old Irish mother a certain mildness, and a lenience, where
they were concerned. He neither judged them nor idolized them.
They belonged only to his leisure hours. His real life was in his
club, in his books, and in the hospital world where there were
children's tiny bones to set. He was conscious, as a man born in a
different circle always is conscious, that he had, by a series of
pleasant chances, been pushed straight into the inner heart of the
social group whose doors are so resolutely closed to many men and
women, and he liked it. His grand father had had blood but no
money, his mother money but no social claim. He inherited, with
the O'Connell millions, the Gregory name, and for perhaps ten
years he had enjoyed an unchallenged popularity. He had inherited
also, without knowing it, a definitely different standard from
that held by all the men and women about him. In his simple,
unobtrusive way he held aloof from much that they said and did.
Greg, said the woman, was a regular Puritan about gossip, about
drinking, about gambling.

They never suspected the truth: that he was shy. Sure of his touch
as a surgeon, pleasantly definite about books and pictures,
spontaneous and daring in the tennis court or on the links, under
his friendly manner with women was the embarrassment of a young
boy.

Before his tenth year his rigidly conscientious mother had
instilled into the wondering little-boy mind certain mysterious
yet positive moral laws. Purity and self-control were in the air
he breathed while at her side, and although a few years later
school and college had claimed him, the effect of those early
lessons was definite upon his character. Diffidence and a sort of
fear had protected him, far more effectually than any other means
might have done, from the common vices of his age, and in those
days a certain good-natured scorn from all his associates made him
feel even more than his natural shyness, and marked him rather
apart from other young men.

Keenly aware of this, it had been a tremendous surprise to the
young physician, returning from post-graduate work in Germany a
few years later, to find that what had once been considered a sort
of laughable weakness in him was called strength of character now;
that what had been a clumsy boy's inarticulateness was more
charitably construed into the silence of a clever man who will not
waste his words; and that mothers whose sons he had once envied
for their worldly wisdom were turning to him for advice as to the
extrication of these same sons from all sorts of difficulties.

Being no fool, he accepted the changed attitude with great
readiness, devoting himself to his work and his mother, and
pleasantly conscious that he was a success. He let women alone,
except where music and art, golf and the club theatricals were the
topic of interest, and, consequently, had come to his fortieth
year with some little awe and diffidence still left for them in
his secret heart. Rachael had told him, not long ago, that she
believed he took no interest in women older than fourteen and
younger than fifty, and there was some truth in the charge. But he
was conscious to-night of taking a distinct interest in her as he
sat down beside her fire.

He had never seen her so beautiful, he thought. She had dressed so
hastily, so carelessly, that an utter simplicity enhanced the
natural charm. Her dark hair was simply massed, her gown was
devoid of ornament, her hands bare, except for her wedding-ring.
On her earnest, exquisite face the occasion had stamped a certain
soberness, she was neither hostess nor guest to-night; just a
heartsick wife under the shadow of anger and shame.

"Well, what is it to-night?" Warren Gregory asked kindly.

"Oh, the same old thing, Greg. The Berry Stokes' dinner, you
know!"

"Shame!" the doctor said warmly, touched by her obvious
depression. "I'll go up. I can give him some pills. But you know,
he can't keep this up forever, Rachael. He's killing himself!"

In her sensitive mood the mildly reproachful tone was too much.
Rachael's breast rose, her eyes brightened angrily.

"Perhaps you'll tell me what more I can do, Greg!"

He looked at her in surprise; the shell of Mrs. Breckenridge's
cool reserve was not often pierced.

"My dear girl--" he stammered. "Why, Rachael--!"

For battling with a moment of emotion she had flung her beautiful
head back against the brilliant cretonne of the chair, her eyes
closed, her hands grasping the chair-arms. A tear slipped from
under her lids.

"I didn't for one second mean--" he began again uncomfortably.

Suddenly she straightened herself in her chair, and opened her
eyes widely. He saw her lovely breast, under its filmy black
chiffon, rise stormily. Her voice was rich with protest.

"No, you didn't mean anything, Greg, nobody means anything! Nobody
is anything but sorry for me: you, Billy, Elinor, the woman who
expected us at dinner to-night, the servants at the club!" she
said hotly. "Nobody blames me, and yet every one wonders how it
happens! Nobody thinks it anything but a little amusing, a little
shocking. I am to write the notes, and make the excuses, and be
shamed--and shamed--shamed--"

Her voice broke. She rose to her feet, and rested an elbow on the
mantel, and stared moodily at the fire. There was a silence.

"Rachael, I'm sorry!" Gregory said presently, impulsively.

Instantly her April smile rewarded him.

"I know you are, Greg!" she answered gratefully. "And I know," she
added, in a low tone, "that you are one of the persons who will
understand--when I end it all!"

"End it all!" he echoed sharply.

"Not suicide," she reassured him smilingly. She flung herself back
in her chair again, holding her white hand, with its ring, between
her face and the fire. "No," she said thoughtfully, "I mean
divorce."

There eyes met; both were pale, serious.

"Divorce!" he echoed, after a pause. "I never thought of it--for
you!"

"I haven't thought of it myself, much," Rachael admitted, with a
troubled smile.

As a matter of fact she had thought of it, since the early days of
her marriage, but never as an actual possibility. She had
preferred bondage and social position to freedom and the
uncomfortable status of the divorced woman. She realized now that
she might think of it in a slightly different way. She had been a
penniless nobody seven years ago; she was a personage now. The
mere fact that he was a Breckenridge would win some sympathy for
Clarence, but she would have her faction, too.

More than that, she would never be younger, never handsomer, never
better able to take the plunge, and face the consequences.

"I'm twenty-eight, Greg," she said reasonably, "I'm not stupid,
I'm not plain--don't interrupt me! Is this to be my fate? I'm
capable of loving--of living--I don't want to be bored--bored--
bored for the rest of my life!"

Warren Gregory, stunned and surprised, eyed her sympathetically.

"Belvedere Bay bore you?" he asked, smiling a little uneasily.

"No--it's not that. I don't want more dinners and dances and
jewels and gowns!" Rachael answered musingly. She stared sombrely
at the fire, and there was a moment's silence.

Suddenly her mood changed. She smiled, and locking her hands
together, as she leaned far forward in her chair, she looked
straight into his eyes.

"Greg," she said, "do you know what I'd like to be? I'd like to be
far away from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean
shore, with a baby coming every year, and just the delicious sea
to watch! I could be a good wife, Greg, if anybody really--loved
me!"

Laughing as she looked at him, she did not disguise the fact that
tears misted her lashes. Warren Gregory felt himself stirred as he
had not been before in his life.

"Well," he said, with an unsteady laugh, "you could be anything!
With you for his wife, what couldn't a man do!"

Hardly conscious of what he did or said, he got to his feet, and
she stood, too, smiling up at him. Both were breathing hard.

"To think," he said, with a sort of repressed violence, "that you,
of all women, should be Clarence Breckenridge's wife!"

"Not long!" she answered, in a whisper.

"You mean that you are really going to leave him, Rachael?"

"I mean that I must, Greg, if I am not to go mad!"

"And where will you go?" she asked.

"Oh--to Vera, to Elinor." She paused, frowning. "Or away by
myself," she decided suddenly. "Away from them all!"

"Rachael," he said quickly, "will you come to my mother?"

Rachael smiled. "To your mother!"

He read her incredulity in her voice.

"But she loves you," he said eagerly. "And she'd be--we'd both be
so proud to show people--to prove--that we knew where the right
lay!"

"My dear Don Quixote," she answered affectionately, "I love you
for asking me! But I will be better alone. I must think, and plan.
I've made a mess of my life so far, Greg; I must take the next
step carefully!"

He was clinging to her hands as she stood, in all her grave
beauty, before him.

"If I hadn't been such a bat, Rachael, all those eleven years
ago!" he said, daringly, breathlessly.

"Have we known each other so long, Greg?"

"Ever since that first visit of yours with little Persis Pomeroy!
And I remember you so well, Rachael. I remember that Bobby
Governeur was enslaved!"

"Dear old Bobby! But I don't remember you, Greg!"

"Because I was thirty then, my dear, and you were seventeen! I was
just home from four years' work in Germany; I was afraid of girls
your age!"

"Afraid--of ME?" The three words were like a caress, like holding
her in his arms.

"I'm afraid so!" he said, not quite steadily. "I'm afraid I've
always liked you too well. I--I CARE--that you're unhappy, that
you're unkindly treated. I--I--wish I could do something,
Rachael."

"You DO do something," she said, deeply stirred in her turn. "I'm-
-you don't know how fond I am of you, Greg!"

For answer she felt his arms about her, and for a throbbing minute
they stood so; Rachael braced lightly, her beautiful breast rising
and falling, her breath coming quickly. Her magnificent eyes,
wide-open, like a frightened child's, were fixed steadily upon
him. He caught the fragrance of her hair, of her fresh skin; he
felt the softness and firmness of her slender arms.

"Rachael!" he said, in a sharp whisper. "Don't--don't say that--if
you don't--mean it!"

"Greg!" she answered, in the same tone. "Don't--frighten me!"

Instantly she was free, and he was standing by the fire with
folded arms, looking at her.

"You have missed love, and I have missed it," Warren Gregory said
presently. "We'll be patient, Rachael. I'll wait; we'll both wait-
-"

"Greg!" she could only answer still in that stricken whisper,
still pale. She stood just as he had left her.

A silence fell between them. The physician took out a cigarette
from his gold case with trembling ringers.

"I'm a little giddy, Rachael," he said after a moment. "I--on my
honor I don't know what's happened to me! You're the most
wonderful woman in the world--I've always thought that--but it
never occurred to me--the possibility--"

He paused, confused, unable to find the right words.

"You've been facing this all alone," he continued presently. "Poor
Rachael! You've been splendid--wonderfully brave! You have me
beside you now; I'll help you if I may. Some day we may find a way
out! Well," he finished abruptly, "suppose I go up and see
Clarence?"

For answer she rose, and without speaking again went ahead of him
up the stairway and left him at the door of her husband's room. He
did not see her again that night.

Half an hour later he came down, dismissed his car, and walked
home under the spring stars. In his veins, like a fire, still ran
the excited, glorious consciousness of his madness. In his ears
still echoed the wonderful golden voice; he could hear her very
words, and he took certain phrases from his memory, and gloated
over them as another man might have gloated over strings of
pearls: "I'd like to be far away from cities and people, a
fisherman's wife on an ocean shore with a baby coming every year
and just the delicious sea to watch!" "Greg--don't frighten me!"

Exquisite, desirable, enchanting--every inch of her--her voice,
her eyes, her slender hand with its gold circle. What a woman!
What a wife! What radiant youth and beauty and charm--and all
trampled in the mire by Clarence Breckenridge, of all insensate
brutes! How could laughter and courage and beauty survive it?

He was going to the club, a mile away from the Breckenridge house,
but long before the visions born that evening were exhausted, he
saw the familiar lights, and the awninged porches, and heard the
faint echoes of the orchestra. They were dancing.

Warren Gregory turned away again, and plunged into the darkness of
the roadside afresh. "My dear Don Quixote!" With what a look of
motherly amusement and tenderness she had said it. What a woman!
He had never kissed her. He had never even thought of kissing
Clarence Breckenridge's wife.

He thought of his mother, tried to forget her with a philosophical
shrug, and found that the slender, black-clad, quiet-voiced vision
was not to be so easily dismissed. It was said of old Madam
Gregory that she had never been heard to raise her voice in the
course of her sixty honored years. Of the four sons she had borne,
three were dead, and the husband she had loved so faithfully lay
beside them. She was slightly crippled, her outings confined to a
slow drive every day. She was solitary in a retinue of servants.
But that modulated voice and those cool, temperate eyes were still
a power. His mother's displeasure was a very real thing to Warren
Gregory, and the thought of adding another sorrow to the weight on
those thin shoulders was not an easy one for him to entertain.

It would be a sorrow. Mrs. Gregory was a rigid Catholic, her
life's one prayer nowadays was that her beloved son might become
one, too. Her marriage at seventeen to a non-Catholic had been
undertaken in the firm conviction that faith like hers must win
the conversion of her beloved James, the best, the most honorable
of men. When her oldest son was born, and given his father's name,
she saw, in her husband's willingness to further plans for the
baptism, definite cause for hope. Another son was born, there was
another christening; it was the father's own hand that gave the
third baby lay-baptism only a few moments before the tiny life
slipped back into the eternity from which it had so lately come.

A year or two later a fourth son was born. Presently the dignified
Mrs. Gregory was taking a trio of small, sleek-headed boys to
Sunday-school, watching every phase in the development of their
awakening souls with terror and with hope. What fears she suffered
in spirit during those years no one but herself knew. Outwardly,
the hospitable, gracious life of the great house went on; the
Gregorys were prominent in charities, they opened their mountain
camp for the summer, they travelled abroad, they had an audience
with the Pope. Time went on, and the twelve-year-old George was
taken from them, breaking the father's heart, said the watching
world. But there was a strange calm in the mother's eyes as they
rested on the dead child's serene face: Heaven had her free
offering, now she must have her reward.

A few months later James Gregory became a convert to her religion.
Charles, the second son, had never wavered from his mother's
faith, and rejoiced with her in this great event. But the first-
born, Warren, as all but his mother called him, to avoid confusion
with his father, was a junior in college when these changes took
place, and when he came home for the long vacation his mother knew
what her cross must be for the years to come. He listened to her
with the appalling silence of the nineteen-year-old male, he
kissed her, he returned gruff, embarrassed answers to her
searching questions of his soul, and he escaped from her with
visibly expanding lungs and averted eyes. She knew that she had
lost him.

Men called him a good man, and she assented with dry lips and
heavy eyelids. Charles died, leaving a young widow and an infant
son, the father shortly followed, and Warren came home from his
interne year, and was a good son to her in her dark hour. When
they began to say of him that he would be great, she smiled sadly.
"My father was a doctor," she said once to an old friend, "and
James inherits it!" But at a memory of her own father, erect and
rosy among his girls and boys in the family pew, she burst into
tears. "I would rather have him with his father, with George and
Charles, and with my angel Francis, than have him the greatest man
that ever lived!" she said.

But if she had not made him a good Catholic she had made him a
good man, and it was a fair and honorable record that Warren
Gregory could offer to the woman he loved. Love--it had come to
him at last. His thoughts went back to Rachael. It seemed to him
that he had always known how deeply, how recklessly he loved her.

He had a thrilling memory of her as Persis Pomeroy's guest, years
ago, an awkward, delightful seventeen-year-old, with her hair in
two thick braids, looped up at the neck, and tied with a flaring
black bow. He remembered watching her, hearing for the first time
the delicious voice with its English accent: "Well, I should say
it was indeed!"

"Well, I should say it was indeed!" Across more than ten years he
recalled the careless, crisp little answer to some comment from
Persis, his first precious memory of Rachael. The girls, he
remembered, were supposedly too young for a certain dance that was
imminent, they were opposing their youthful petulance--baffled
roses and sunshine--to Mrs. Pomeroy's big, placid negatives.
Gregory could still see the matron's comfortably shaking head, see
Persis attacking again and again like a frantic butterfly, and see
"the little English girl," perched on the porch rail, looking from
mother to daughter smilingly, with her blue, serious eyes.

Why had he never thought of her again until Clarence Breckenridge
brought her back with him, a bride, six years later? Or, rather,
having thought of her, as he undoubtedly had, why had he not found
the time to cross the water and go to see her? Nothing might have
come of it, true. But she might have yielded to him as readily as
to Clarence Breckenridge!

"I love her!" he said to himself, and it seemed wonderful, sad,
and sweet, joyous and terrible to admit it. "I love her. But she
doesn't love me or anyone, poor Rachael! She's forgotten me
already!"




CHAPTER III


As a matter of fact, Rachael thought about him very often during
the course of the next two or three days, and after he had left
her that night she could think of nothing else. To the admiration
of men she was cheerfully accustomed; perhaps it would be safe to
say that not in the course of the past ten years had she ever
found herself alone in a man's company without evoking a more or
less definite declaration of his admiration for her. But to-
night's affair was a little distinctive for several reasons.
Warren Gregory was a most exceptional man, for one thing; he was
reputedly a coldblooded man, for another; and for a third, he had
been extraordinarily in earnest. There had been no hesitation, he
had committed himself wholeheartedly. She was conscious of a
pleasurable thrill. However gracious, however gallant Warren was,
there had been no social pretence in his attitude to-night.

And for a few moments she let her imagination play pleasantly with
the situation. It was at least a new thought, and life had run in
a groove for a long, long time. Granted the preliminaries safely
managed, it would be a great triumph for the woman whom Clarence
Breckenridge had ignored to come back into this group as Warren
Gregory's wife.

Rachael got into bed, flinging two or three books down beside her
pillow and lighting the shaded lamp that stood at the bedside. She
found herself unable to read.

"Wouldn't Florence and Gardner buzz!" she thought with a smile.
"And if they buzzed at the divorce, what WOULDN'T they say if I
really did remarry? But the worst of it is"--and Rachael reaching
for The Way of All Flesh sighed wearily--"the worst of it is that
one never DOES carry out plans, or _I_ never do, any more. I used
to feel equal to any situation, now I don't--getting old, perhaps.
I wonder"--she stared dreamily at the soft shadows in the big
room--"I wonder if things are as queer to most people as they are
to me? I don't get much joy out of life, as it is, and yet I don't
DARE cut loose and go away. No maid, no club, living at some cheap
hotel--no, I couldn't do that! I wish there was someone who could
advise me--some disinterested person, someone who--well, who loved
me, and who knew that I've always tried to be decent, always tried
to play the game. All I want is to be reasonably well treated; to
have a good time and be among pleasant people--"

Her thoughts wandered about among the various friends whose
judgment might serve at this crisis to clear her own thoughts and
simplify the road before her. Strangely enough, Warren Gregory's
own mother was the first of whom she thought; that pure and
austere and uncompromising heart would certainly find the way.
Whether Rachael had the courage to follow it was another question.
She loved old Mrs. Gregory; they were good friends. But Rachael
dismissed her with a little shudder, as from the spatter of icy
water against her bared breast. The bishop? Rachael and Clarence
duly kept a pew in one of the city's fashionable churches; it was
the Breckenridge family pew, rented by the family for a hundred
years. But they never sat in it, although Rachael felt vaguely
sometimes that for reasons undefined they should, and Clarence was
apt in moments of sentiment to reproach his wife with the
statement that his grandmother had been a faithful church woman,
and his mother had always attended church on pleasant mornings in
winter.

But the bishop called on Rachael once a year, and Rachael liked
him, and mingled an air of pretty penitence for past negligences
with a gracious promise of better conduct in future. His Grace was
a fine, breezy, broadminded man, polished in manner, sympathetic,
and tolerant. He had not risen to his present eminence by too
harsh a rebuke of the sinner.

His handsome young assistant, Father Graves, as he liked to be
called, was far more radical. But a great deal was forgiven this
attractive boyish celibate by the women of the Episcopal parish.
They enjoyed his scoldings, gave him their confidences, and asked
his advice, though they never followed it. His slender, black-clad
figure, with the Roman collar, was admired by many bright eyes at
receptions and church bazaars.

Still, Rachael could not somehow consider herself as seriously
asking either of these two clergymen for advice. She could see the
bishop, fitting finely groomed fingers together, pursing his lips
for a judicial reply.

"My dear Mrs. Breckenridge, that Clarence is now passing through a
most unfortunate, most lamentable, period in his life is, alas,
perfectly true. His mother--a lovely woman--was one of my wife's
dearest friends, one of my own. His first marriage was much
against her wishes, poor dear lady, and--as my wife was saying the
other day--had she lived to see him happily married again, and her
grandchild in such good hands, it could not but have been a great
joy to her. Yes. ... Now, you and I know Clarence--know his good
points, and know his faults. That's one of the sad things about us
poor human beings, we get to know each other so well! And isn't it
equally true that we're not patient enough with each other?--oh,
yes, I know we try. But do we try HARD enough? Isn't there
generally some fault on both sides, quick words, angry, hasty
actions, argument and blame, when we say things we don't mean and
that we are sure to regret, eh? We all get tired of the stupid
round of daily duty, and of the people we are nearest to--that's a
sad thing, too. We'd all like a change, like to see if we couldn't
do something else better! And so comes the break, and the cloud on
a fine old name, and all because we aren't better soldiers--we
don't want to march in line! Bless me, don't I know the feeling
myself? Why, that good little wife of mine could tell you some
tales of discouragement and disenchantment that would make you
open your eyes! But she braces me up, she puts heart into me--and
the first thing I know I'm marching again!"

And having comfortably shifted the entire trend of the
conversation from his parishioner to himself and found nothing
insurmountable in his own problem, the good bishop would chuckle
mischievously at finding his eminent self quite human after all,
and would suggest their going in to find Mrs. Bishop, and having a
cup of tea. These women, always restless and dissatisfied, were a
part of his work; he prided himself upon the swiftness and tact
with which he disposed of them.

Rachael's mouth twisted wryly at the thought of him. No, she could
not bare her soul to the bishop.

Nor could she approach Father Graves with any real hope of a
helping word. To seek him out in his study--that esthetically bare
and yet beautiful room, with its tobacco-brown hangings and
monastic furnishing in black oak--would be to invite mischief. To
sit there, with her eloquent eyes fixed upon his, her haunting
voice wrapping itself about his senses, would be a genuine cruelty
toward a harmless, well-intentioned youth whose heroism in
abjuring the world, the flesh, and the devil had not yet been
great enough to combat his superb and dignified egotism. At best,
he would be won by Rachael's revelation of her soul to a long and
frankly indiscreet talk of his own; at worst, he would construe
her confidences in an entirely personal sense, and feel that she
came not at all to the priest and all to the man.

Dismissing him from her councils, Rachael thought of Florence
Haviland, the good and kind-hearted and capable matron who was
Clarence's sister and only near relative. She and Florence had
always been good friends, had often discussed Clarence of late.
What sort of advice would Florence's forty-five years be apt to
give to Rachael's twenty-eight? "Don't be so absurd, Rachael, half
the men in our set drink as much as Clarence does. Don't jump from
the frying-pan into the fire. Remember Elsie Rowland and Marian
Cowles when you talk so lightly of divorce!"

That would be Florence's probable attitude. Still, it was a
bracing attitude, heartily positive, like everything Florence did
and said. And Florence was above everything else a church member,
a prominent Christian in her self-sacrificing wifehood and
motherhood, her social and charitable and civic work. She might be
unflattering, but she would be right. Rachael's last conscious
thought, as she went off to sleep, was that she would take the
earliest possible moment to extract a verdict from Florence,

She went into her husband's room at ten o'clock the next morning
to find Billy radiantly presiding over a loaded breakfast tray,
and the invalid, pale and pasty, and with no particular interest
in food evinced by the twitching muscles of his face, nevertheless
neatly brushed and shaved, propped up in pillows, and making a
visible effort to appear convalescent.

"How are you this morning?" Rachael asked perfunctorily, with her
quick glance moving from the books on the table to the wood fire
burning lazily behind brass firedogs. Everything was in perfect
order, Helda's touch visible everywhere.

"Fine," Clarence answered, also perfunctorily. His coffee was
untouched, and the cigarette in his long holder had gone out, but
Billy was disposing of eggs, toast, bacon, and cream with youthful
zest. Clarence's hot, sick gaze rested almost with hostility upon
his wife's cool beauty; in a gray linen gown, with a transparent
white ruffle turned back from her white throat, she looked as
fresh as the fresh spring morning.

"Headache?" said the nicely modulated, indifferent voice.

To this solicitude Clarence made no answer. A dark, ugly look came
into his face, and he turned his eyes sullenly and wearily away.

"How was the Chase dinner, Bill?" pursued the cheerful visitor,
unabashed.

"Same old thing," Carol answered briefly.

"You're not up to the Perrys' lunch to-day, are you, Clancy?"

"Oh, my God, no!" burst from the sufferer.

"Well, I'll telephone them. If Florence comes in this morning I'm
going to say you're asleep, so keep quiet up here. Do you want to
see Greg again?"

"No, I don't!" said Clarence, with unexpected vigor. "Steer him
off if you can. Preaching at me last night as if he'd never
touched anything stronger than malted milk!"

"I don't imagine I'll have much trouble steering him off," Rachael
said coldly. "His Sundays are pretty well occupied without--sick
calls!"

There was a delicate and scornful emphasis on the word "sick" that
brought the blood to Clarence Breckenridge's face. Billy flushed,
too, and an angry light flamed into her eyes.

"That's not fair, Rachael!" the girl said hotly, "and you know
it's not!"

The glances of the three crossed. Billy was breathing hard;
Clarence, shakily holding a fresh match to his cold cigarette,
sent a lowering look from daughter to wife. Rachael shrugged her
shoulders.

"Well, I'll have my breakfast," she said, and turning she went
from the room and downstairs to the sunshiny breakfast porch.
There were flowers on the little round table, a bright glitter was
struck from silver and glass, an icy grapefruit, brimming with
juice, stood at her place. The little room was all windows, and
to-day the cretonne curtains had been pushed back to show the
garden brave in new spring green, the exquisite freshness of elm
and locust trees that bordered it, and far away the slopes of the
golf green, with the scarlet and white dots that were early
players moving over it. Sunshine flooded the world, great plumes
of white and purple lilac rustled in their tents of green leaves,
a bee blundered from the blossoming wistaria vine into the room,
and blundered out again. Far off Rachael heard a cock breaking the
Sabbath stillness with a prolonged crow, and as the clock in the
dining-room chimed one silver note for the half-hour, the bells of
the church in the little village of Belvedere Bay began to ring.

Of the comfort, the beauty, and the harmony of all this, however,
Rachael saw and felt nothing. Her brief interview with her husband
had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt neither courage nor
appetite for the new day. Annie carried away the blue bowl of
porridge untouched, reporting to Ellie: "She don't want no eggs,
nor sausage, nor waffles--nothing more!"

Ellie, the cook, who boarded a four-year-old daughter with the
gardener and his wife, at the gate-lodge, was deep in the robust
charms of this young person, and not sorry to be uninterrupted.

"Thank goodness she don't," she said. "Do you want a little waffle
all for yourself, Lovey? Do you want to pour the batter into Ma's
iron yourself? Pin a napkin round her, Annie! An' then you can eat
it out on the steps, darlin', because it just seems to be a shame
to spend a minute indoors when God sends us a mornin' like this!"

"It must have been grand, walking to church this morning, all
right," said Alfred, who was busy with golf sticks and emery on
the vine-shaded porch.

"It was!" said Ellie and Annie together, and Annie added: "Rose
from Bowditch's was there, and she says she can't get away but
about once a month. She always has to wait on the children's
breakfast at eight, and then down comes the others at half-past
nine, or later, the way she never has a moment until it's too late
for High! I told her she had a right to look for another place!"

"There's worse places than this," Ellie said, watching her small
daughter begin on her waffle. A general nodding of heads in a
contented silence indicated that there was some happiness in the
Breckenridge household even though it was below stairs.

Rachael's sombre revery was presently interrupted by the smooth
crushing of wheels on the pebbled drive and the announcement of
Mrs. Haviland, who followed her name promptly into the breakfast-
room. A fine, large, beautifully gowned woman, with a prayer book
in her white-gloved hand, and a veil holding her close, handsome
spring hat in place, she glanced at the coffee and hot bread with
superiority only possible to a person whose own breakfast is
several hours past.

"Rachael, you lazy woman!" said Florence Haviland lightly,
breathing deep, as a heavy woman in tight corsets must perforce
breathe on a warm spring morning. "Do you realize that it's almost
eleven o'clock?"

"Perfectly!" Mrs. Breckenridge said. "I slept until nine, and felt
quite proud of myself to think that I had got through so much of
the day!"

Mrs. Haviland gave her a sharp look in answer, not quite
disapproving, yet far from pleased.

"I started the girlies off to eight o'clock service," she said
capably. "Fraulien went with them, and that leaves the maids free
to go when they please." This was one of Mrs. Haviland's favorite
illusions. "Gardner begged off this morning, he's been so good
about going lately that I couldn't very well refuse, so I started
early and have just dropped him at the club."

"Was Gardner at the Berry Stokes bachelor dinner on Friday night?"
asked Rachael. Mrs. Haviland was all comprehension at once.

"No, he couldn't. Mr. Payne of the London branch was here you
know, and Gardner's been terribly tied. He left yesterday, thank
goodness. Clarence went of course? Oh, dear, dear, dear!"

The last three words came on a gentle sigh. Clarence's sister
compressed her lips and shook her handsome head.

"Is he very bad?" she asked reluctantly.

"Pretty much as usual," Rachael answered philosophically. "I had
Greg in." And suddenly, unexpectedly, she felt a quick happy
flutter at her heart, and a roseate mist drifted before her eyes.

"It's disgraceful!" Mrs. Haviland said, eying Rachael hopefully
for a wifely denial. As this was not forthcoming, she went on
briskly: "However, my dear, Clarence isn't the only one! They say
Fred Bowditch is actually"--her voice sank to a discreet undertone
as she added the word--"violent; and poor Lucy Pickering needed a
rest cure the moment she got her divorce, she was in such a
nervous state. I'm not defending Clarence--"

"What are you doing, then?" Rachael asked, with her cool smile.

"Well, I--" Mrs. Haviland, who had been drifting comfortably along
on a tide of words, stopped, a little at a loss. "I hope I don't
have to defend your own husband to you, Rachael," she said
reproachfully.

"I'm getting pretty tired of it," said Rachael moodily.

Mrs. Haviland watched the downcast beautiful face opposite her
with a sense of growing alarm.

"My dear," she said impressively, "of course it's hard for you; we
all know that. But just at this time, Rachael, it would be
absolutely FATAL to have any open break with Clarence--"

Rachael flung up her head impatiently, then dropped her face in
her hands.

"I don't want any open break," she muttered.

"You do? Oh, you DON'T?" Mrs. Haviland questioned anxiously. "No,
of course you don't. He's not himself now, for several reasons.
For one--and that's what I specially came to speak to you about--
for one thing, he's terribly worried about Carol. Carol," repeated
Mrs. Haviland significantly, "and Joe Pickering."

Rachael raised sombre eyes, but did not speak.

"Is Carol here?" her aunt asked delicately.

"Dressing," Rachael answered briefly.

"Do you realize," Mrs. Haviland said, "that everyone is beginning
to talk?"

"Perfectly," Rachael admitted. "But what do you expect me to do?"

"SOMETHING must be done," said the other woman firmly.

"By whom?" Rachael countered lightly.

"Well--by Clarence, I suppose," Mrs. Haviland suggested
discontentedly.

"Clarence!" Rachael's tone was but a scornful breath. Her glance
toward the ceiling evoked more clearly than any words a vision of
Clarence's condition at the moment.

"Well, I suppose he can't do anything just now, anyway," his
sister conceded ruefully. "Can't you--couldn't you talk to her,
Rachael?"

"Talk to her?" Mrs. Breckenridge smiled at some memory. "My dear
Florence, you don't suppose I haven't talked to her!"

"Well, I suppose of course you have," Mrs. Haviland said hastily.
"But my dear, it's dreadful! People are beginning to ask
questions; a reporter--we don't know who he was--telephoned
Gardner. Of course Gardner hung up--"

"I can say no more than I have said," Rachael observed
thoughtfully. "What authority have I? Clarence could influence
her, I think, but she lies simply and flatly to Clarence."

Mrs. Haviland winced at the ugly word.

"Joe drinks," Rachael went on, "but he doesn't drink as much as
her adored Daddy does. Joe is thirty-nine and Billy is seventeen--
well, that's not his fault. Joe is divorced--well, but Carol's
mother is living, and Clarence's second wife isn't exactly
ostracised by society! A clergyman of your own church married
Clarence and me--" The little scornful twist of the beautiful
mouth stung a church woman conscious of personal integrity, and
Mrs. Haviland said:

"A great many of them won't! The church is going to take a stand
in the matter. The bishops are considering a canon. ..."

Mrs. Breckenridge shrugged her shoulders indifferently. Theology
did not interest her.

"And as Billy is too young and too blind to see that Joe isn't a
gentleman," she continued, "or to realize that Lucy got her
divorce against his will, to believe that her money might well
influence a gentleman of Joe's luxurious tastes and dislike for
office work--why, I suppose they will be married!"

"Never!" said Florence Haviland, with some heat, "DON'T!"

"Unless Clarence shoots him," submitted Rachael. A look of intense
anxiety clouded Mrs. Haviland's eyes.

"I believe he would," she said, in a wretched whisper, with a
cautious glance about.

"He might," his wife said seriously. "If ever it comes to that, we
shall simply have to keep them apart. You see Billy--the clever
little devil--"

"Oh, Rachael, DON'T use such words!" said the church woman.
"Father Graves was saying only the other day that one's speech
should be 'yea, yea' and--"

"I daresay!" Mrs. Breckenridge's smile was indulgent. It had been
many years since Florence had succeeded in ruffling her. "Billy,
then," she resumed, "keeps her father happy in the thought that he
is all the world to her, and that her occasional chats with Joe
are of an entirely uplifting and impersonal character."

"Impersonal! Uplifting!" Mrs. Haviland repeated indignantly.
"There wasn't very much uplift about them the other night. Gardner
and I stopped in to see if we couldn't take you to the Hoyts', but
you'd gone. Carol had on that flame-colored dress of hers, her
hair was fluffed all over her ears in that silly way the girls do
now; Joe couldn't take his eyes off her. The only light they had
in the drawing-room was the yellow lamp and the fire; it was the
coziest thing I ever saw!"

"Vivvy Sartoris was here!" Rachael said quickly.

"Don't you believe it, my dear!" Mrs. Haviland returned
triumphantly. "Carol was very demure, 'Tante' this and 'Tante'
that, but I knew right away that something was amiss! 'Oh,' I said
right out flatly, 'are you alone here, Carol?' and she answered
very prettily: 'Vivian was to be here, but she hasn't come yet!'
This was after half-past seven."

"I understood Vivian WAS here," said Rachael, flushing darkly.
"Let me see--the next morning--where was I? Oh, yes, it was your
luncheon, and Billy had gone out for some tennis when I came
downstairs. I supposed of course--but I didn't ask. I DID ask
Helda what time she had let the gentleman out and she said before
eleven--not much after half-past ten, in fact."

"You see, we mustn't go on suppositions and halftruths any more,"
said Mrs. Haviland in delicate reproach. "When we have that
wonderful and delicate thing, a girl's soul, to deal with, we must
be SURE."

"I suppose I'd better tell Clarence that--about Wednesday night,"
Rachael said, downing with some effort an impulse to ask Florence
not to be so smug.

"Well, I think you had," the other agreed, with visible relief.

"As for me," Mrs. Breckenridge said, nettled by her sister-in-
law's attitude, and mischievously interested in the effect of her
thunderbolt, "I'm just desperately tired of it. I can't see that
I'm doing Clarence, or Billy, or myself, any good! I'd like to
resign, and let somebody else try for a while!"

Steel leaped into Mrs. Haviland's light-blue eyes. She felt the
shock in every fibre of body and soul, but she flung herself
gallantly into the charge. Her large form straightened, her
expression achieved a certain remoteness.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked sharply.

"The usual thing, I suppose," Rachael answered indifferently.

The older woman, watching her closely, essayed a brief, dry laugh.

"Don't talk absurdities," she said boldly. But Rachael saw the
uneasiness under the assured manner, and smiled to herself.

"It's not absurd at all," she protested, still with her smiling,
half-negligent air; "I've put it off years longer than most women
would; now I'm getting rather tired."

"It's a great mistake to talk that way, whether you mean it or
not," Mrs. Haviland said, after an uncomfortable moment, during
which her face flushed, and her breath began to come rather fast.
"But you're joking, of course; you're too sensible to take any
step that would only plunge you into fresh difficulties. Clarence
is very trying, I know--we all know that--but let's try to face
the situation sensibly, and not fly off the handle like this! Why,
Rachael dear, I can hardly believe it's your cool-headed,
reasonable self talking," she went on more quietly. "Don't--don't
even think about it! In the first place, you couldn't get it!"

"Oh, yes, I could. Clarence wouldn't contest it," Rachael said.
"He'd agree to anything to be rid of me. If not--if he wouldn't
agree to my filing suit under the New York law, I could establish
my residence in California or Nevada, and bring suit there. ..."

Mrs. Haviland gasped.

"Give up your home and your car and your maids for some small
hotel?" she questioned, with her favorite air of neatly placing
her fingertip upon the weak spot in her opponent's armor. "No
clubs, no dinners, none of your old friends--have you thought of
that?"

"You may imagine that I've thought of it from a good many angles,
Florence," Rachael said coldly, finding that what had been a mere
drifting idea was beginning to take rather definite form in her
mind. It was delightful to see the usually complacent and
domineering Florence so agitated and at a loss.

"I never dreamed--" Mrs. Haviland mused dazedly. "How long, in
Heaven's name, have you been thinking about it?"

"Oh, quite some time," said Rachael.

"Well, it's awful!" the other woman said. "It'll make the most
awful--and as if poor Clarence hadn't been all through it all
once! I declare it makes me sick! But I can't believe you're
serious. Rachael, think--think what it means!"

"It's a very serious thing," the other assented placidly. "But
Clarence has no one but himself to blame."

"Only Clarence won't BE blamed, my dear; men never are!" Mrs.
Haviland suggested unkindly. Rachael reddened.

"_I_ don't care what they say or whom they blame!" she answered
proudly.

"Ah, well, my dear, we aren't any of us really indifferent to
criticism," the older woman said, watching closely the effect of
her words. "People are censorious--it's too bad, it's a pity--but
there you are. 'There must have been something we didn't
understand,' they say, 'there must be another man!'"

Rachael raised her head a little, and managed a smile.

"That's what they say," Mrs. Haviland went on, mildly triumphant.
"And no matter how brave or how independent a woman is, she
doesn't like THAT." There came to the speaker suddenly, under her
smooth flow of words, a sickening shock of realization: it was of
Rachael and Clarence she was speaking, her nearest relatives; it
was one of the bulwarks of her world that was threatened! Without
her knowledge her tone became less sure and more sincere. "For
God's sake, think what you are doing, dear," she said pleadingly;
"think of Carol and of us all! Don't drag us all through the
papers again! I know what Clarence is, poor wretched boy; he's
always had too much money, he's always had his own way. I know
what you put up with week in and week out--"

Mrs. Haviland's usual attitude of assured superiority never
impressed her sister-in-law. Her pompous magnificence was a source
of unmitigated amusement to Rachael. But now the older woman's
emotion had carried her on to genuine and honest expression in
spite of herself, and listening, Rachael found herself curiously
stirred. She looked down, conscious of a sudden melting in her
heart, a thickening in her throat.

"I've always been so fond of you, Rachael," Florence went on.
"I've always stood your friend--you know that--"

"I know," Rachael said huskily, her lashes dropped.

"Long before I knew how much you would be liked, Rachael, and what
a fuss people were going to make over you, I made you welcome,"
continued Florence simply, with tears in her eyes. "I thanked God
that Clarence had married a good woman, and that Carol would have
a refined and a--I may say a Christian home. Isn't that true?"

"I know," Rachael said again with an effort, as she paused.

"Then think it over," besought the other woman eagerly. "Think
that Carol will marry, and that Clarence--" Her ardent tone
dropped suddenly. There was a moment's pause. Then she added
dryly, "How do, dear?"

"How do, Tante Firenze!" said Carol, who had come abruptly into
the, room. "How are the girls? Say, listen! Is Isabelle going to
the Bowditches'?"

"I don't even know that Charlotte is going," Mrs. Haviland said,
with an auntly smile of baffling sweetness that yet contained a
subtle reproof. "Uncle Gardner and I haven't made up our minds.
Isabelle in any case would only go to look on, so she is not so
much interested, but poor Charlotte is simply on tenterhooks to
know whether it's to be yes or no. Girls' first parties"--her
indulgent smile included Rachael--"dear me, how important they
seem!"

"I should think you'd have to answer Mrs. Bowditch," said Carol in
plain disgust at this maternal vacillation.

"Mrs. Bowditch is fortunately an old enough friend, dear, to waive
the usual formalities," her aunt answered sweetly.

"But, my gracious--Charlotte's two months older than I am, and she
won't know any of the men!" Carol protested.

"Don't speak in that precocious way, Bill," Rachael said sharply.
"You went to your first dances last winter!"

Carol gave her stepmother a look conspicuously devoid of
affection, and turned to adjust her smart little hat with the aid
of a narrow mirror hanging between the glass dining-room doors.

"You couldn't drop me at the club, on your way to church, Tante?"
she presently inquired. And to Rachael she added, with youthful
impatience, "I told Dad where I was going!"

Mrs. Haviland rose somewhat heavily.

"Glad to. Any chance of you coming to lunch, Rachael? What are
your plans?"

"Thank you, no, woman dear! I may go over to Gertrude's for tea."

The little group broke up. Mrs. Haviland and her niece went out to
the waiting motor car purring on the pebbled drive. Rachael idly
watched them out of sight, sighed at the thought of wasting so
beautiful a day indoors, and went slowly upstairs. Her husband,
comfortably propped in pillows, looked better.

"Clarence," said she, depositing several pounds of morning papers
upon the foot of his bed, "who's Billy lunching with at the club?"

Clarence picked up the uppermost paper, fixed his eyes attentively
upon it, and puffed upon his cigarette for reply.

"Do you know?" Rachael asked vigorously.

No answer. Mr. Breckenridge, his eyes still intent upon what he
was reading, held his cigarette at arm's length over the brass
bowl on the table beside the bed, and dislodged a quarter-inch of
ash with his little finger.

Rachael, briskly setting his cluttered table to rights, gave him
an angry glance that, so far as any effect upon him was concerned,
was thrown away.

"Don't be so rude, Clarence," she said, in annoyance. "Billy said
you agreed to her going to the club for golf. Who's she with?"

At last Mr. Breckenridge raised sodden and redshot eyes to his
wife's face, moistening his dark and swollen lips carefully with
his tongue before he spoke. He was a fat-faced man, who, despite
evidences of dissipation, did not look his more than forty years.
There was no gray in his thin, silky hair, and there still
lingered an air of youth and innocence in his round face. This
morning he was in a bad temper because his whole body was still
upset from the Friday night dinner and drinking party, and in his
soul he knew that he had cut rather a poor figure before Billy,
and that the little minx had taken instant advantage of the
situation.

"I just want to say this, Rachael," Clarence said, with an icy
dignity only slightly impaired by the lingering influences of
drink. "I'm Billy's father, and I understand her, and she
understands me. That's all that's necessary; do you get me?" He
put his cigarette holder back in his mouth, gripped it firmly
between his teeth, and turned again to his paper. "If some of you
damned jealous women who are always running around trying to make
trouble would let her ALONE" he went on sulkily, "I'd be obliged
to you--that's all!"

Rachael settled her ruffles in a big wing-chair with the innocent
expression of a casual caller. She took a book from the reading
table, and fluttered a few pages indifferently.

"Listen, Clancy," said she placatingly. "Florence was just here,
and she says--and I agree--that there is no question that Joe
Pickering is devoted to Bill. Now, I don't say that Billy is
equally devoted--"

"Ha! Better not!" said Clarence at white heat, one eye watchful
over the top of the paper.

"But I DO say," pursued Rachael steadily, "that she is with him a
good deal more than she will admit. Yesterday, for instance, when
she was playing tennis with the Parmalees and the Pinckard boy,
Kent came up to the house to get some ginger ale. I happened to be
dummy, and I went out on the terrace. Joe's horse was down near
the courts, and Joe and Billy were sitting there on one of the
benches--where the others were I don't know. When Kent went down
with the ginger ale, Joe got on his horse and went off. Of course
it was only for a few minutes, but Billy didn't say anything about
it--"

Her voice, with a tentative question in it, rested in air.
Clarence turned a page with some rustling of paper.

"Then Florence says," Rachael went on after a moment, "that when
she and Gardner stopped here Wednesday night Joe was here, and
Vivvie Sartoris wasn't here. Now, of course, I don't KNOW, for I
didn't ask Alfred---"

"There you go," said the sick man witheringly. "That's right--ask
the maids, and get all the servants talking; all come down on the
heels of a poor little girl like a pack of yapping wolves! I
suppose if she was plain and unattractive--I should think you'd be
ashamed," he went on, changing his high and querulous key to one
of almost priestly authority and reproof, "Upon my word, it's
beneath your dignity. My little girl comes to me, and she explains
the whole matter. Pickering admires her--she can't help that--and
she has an influence over him. She tells me he hasn't touched a
thing but beer for six weeks, just because she asked him to give
up heavy drinking. He told her the other day that if he had met
her a few years ago, Lucy never would have left him. She's wakened
the boy up, he's a different fellow--"

"All that may be true," Rachael said quickly, the color that his
preposterous rebuke had summoned to her cheeks still flushing
them, "still, you don't want Billy to marry Joe Pickering! You
know that sort of pity, and that business of reforming a man--"
She paused, but Clarence did not speak. "Not that Billy herself
realizes it, I daresay," Rachael added presently, watching the
reader's absorbed face for an answering look.

Silence.

"Clarence!" she began imperatively.

Clarence withdrew his attention from the paper with an obvious
effort, and spoke in a laboriously polite tone.

"I don't care to discuss it, Rachael."

"But--" Rachael stopped short on the word. Silence reigned in the
big, bright room except for the occasional rustle of Clarence's
newspaper. His wife sat idle, her eyes roving indifferently from
the gayly papered walls to the gayly flowered hangings, the great
bowl of daffodils on the bookcase, the portrait of Carol that,
youthful and self-conscious, looked down from the mantel. On the
desk a later photograph of Carol, in a silver frame, was duly
flanked by one of Rachael, the girl in the gown she had worn for
her first big dance, the woman looking out from under the narrow
brim of a snug winter hat, great furs framing her beautiful face,
and her slender figure wrapped in furs. Here also was a picture of
Florence Haviland, her handsome face self-satisfied, her trio of
homely, distinguished-looking girls about her, and a small picture
of Gardner, and two of Clarence's dead mother: one, as they all
remembered her, a prim-looking woman with gray hair and
magnificent lace on her unfashionable gown, the other, taken
thirty years before, showing her as cheerful and youthful, a
cascade of ringlets falling over her shoulder, the arm that
coquettishly supported her head resting upon an upholstered
pedestal, a voluminous striped silk gown sweeping away from her in
rich folds. There was even a picture of Clarence and Florence when
they were respectively eight and twelve, Clarence in a buttoned
serge kilt and plaid stockings, his fat, gentle little face framed
in damp careful curls, Florence also with plaid stockings and a
scalloped frock. Clarence sat in a swing; Florence, just behind
him, leaned on an open gate, her legs crossed carelessly as she
rested on her elbows. And there was a picture of their father, a
simple-faced man in an ample beard, taken at that period when
photographs were highly glazed, and raised in bas relief. Least
conspicuous of all was a snapshot framed in a circle of battered
blue-enamel daisies, the picture of a baby girl laughing against a
background of dandelions and meadow grass. And Rachael knew that
this was Clarence's greatest treasure, that it went wherever he
went, and that it was worn shabby and tarnished from his hands and
his lips.

Sometimes she looked at it and wondered. What a bright-faced, gay
little thing Billy had been! Who had set her down in that field,
and quieted the rioting eyes and curls and dimples, and anchored
the restless little feet, while Baby watched Dad and the black box
with the birdie in it? Paula? Once, idly interested in those old
days before she had known him, she had asked about the picture.
But Clarence, glad to talk of it, had not mentioned his wife.

"It was before my father died; we were up in the old Maine place,"
he had said. "Gosh, Bill was cute that day! We went on a drive--no
motor cars then--and took our lunch, and after lunch the kid comes
and settles herself in my arms--for a nap, if you please! 'Say,
look-a-here,' I said, 'what do you think I am--a Pullman?' I
wanted a smoke, by George! She wasn't two, you know. Her fat
little legs were bare, we'd put her into socks, and her face was
flushed, and she just looked up at me through her hair and said,
'Hing!' Well, it was good-bye smoke for me! I sang all right, and
she cuddled down as pleased as a kitten, and off she went!"

To-day Rachael's eyes wandered from the picture to Clarence's
face. She tried to study it dispassionately, but, still shaken by
their recent conversation, and sitting there, as she knew she was
sitting there, merely to prove that it had had no effect upon her,
she felt this to be a little difficult.

What sort of a little boy had he been? A fat little boy, of
course. She disliked fat little boys. A spoiled little boy, never
crossed in any way. His mother made him go to Sunday-school, and
dancing school, and to Miss Nesmith's private academy, where he
was coaxed and praised and indulged even more than at home. And
old Fanny, who was still with Florence, superintended his baths
and took care of his clothes, and ran her finger over the bristles
of his toothbrush every morning, to see if he had told her the
truth. He rarely did; they used to laugh about those old
deceptions. Clarence used to laugh as violently as the old woman
when she accused him of occasional kicking and biting.

Other boys came in to play with him. Was it because of his magic
lantern and his velocipede, his unending supply of cream puffs and
licorice sticks, or because they liked him? Rachael knew only a
detail here and there: that he had danced a fancy dance with Anna
Vanderwall when he was a fat sixteen, at a Kermess, and that he
had given a stag dinner to twenty youths of his own age a few days
before he went off to college, and that they had drunk a hundred
and fifty dollars' worth of champagne. She knew that his allowance
at college was three hundred dollars a month, and that he never
stayed within it, and it was old Fanny's boast that every stitch
the boy ever wore from the day he was born came from London or
Paris. His underwear was as dainty as a bride's; he had his first
dress suit at fifteen; at college he had his suite of three big
rooms furnished like showrooms, his monogrammed cigarettes, his
boat, and his horse.

The thought of all these things used to distress his mother when
she was old and much alone. She attempted to belittle the luxury
of Clarence's boyhood. She told Rachael that he was treated just
as the other boys were. Her conscience was never quite easy about
his upbringing.

"You can't hold a boy too tight, you know, or else he'll break
away altogether," old lady Breckenridge would say to Rachael,
sitting before a coal fire in the gloomy magnificence of her old-
fashioned drawingroom and pressing the white fingers of one hand
against the agonized joints of the other. "I was often severe with
Clarence, and he was a good boy until he got with other boys; he
was always loving to me. He never should have married Paula
Verlaine," she would add fretfully. "A good woman would have
overlooked his faults and made a fine man of him, but she was
always an empty-headed little thing! Ah, well"--and the poor old
woman would sigh as she drew her fluffy shawl about her shoulders-
-"I cannot blame myself, that's my great consolation now, Rachael,
when I think of facing my Master and rendering an account. I have
been heavily afflicted, but I am not the first God-fearing woman
who has been visited with sorrow through her children!"

Clarence had visited his mother often in the weeks that preceded
her death, but she did not take much heed of his somewhat
embarrassed presence, nor, to Rachael's surprise, did her last
hours contain any of those heroic joys that are supposedly the
reward of long suffering and virtue. An unexpressed terror seemed
to linger in her sickroom, indeed to pervade the whole house; the
invalid lay staring drearily at the heavy furnishings of her
immense dark room, a nurse slipped in and out; the bloody light of
the westering sun, falling through stairway windows of colored
glass, blazed in the great hallway all through the chilly October
afternoons. Callers came and went, there were subdued voices and
soft footsteps; flowers came, their wet fragrance breaking from
oiled paper and soaked cardboard boxes, the cards that were wired
to them resisting all attempts at detachment. Clergymen came, and
Rachael imitated their manner afterward, to the general delight.

On the day before she died Mrs. Breckenridge caught her son's
plump cool hand in her own hot one, and made him promise to stop
drinking, and to go to church, and to have Carol confirmed.
Clarence promised everything.

But he did not keep his promises. Rachael had not thought he
would; perhaps the old lady herself had not thought he would. He
was sobered at the funeral, but not sober. Six weeks later all the
bills against the estate were in. Florence had some of the family
jewels and the family silver, Rachael had some, some was put away
for Billy; the furniture was sold, the house rented for a men's
club, and a nondescript man, calling upon young Mrs. Breckenridge,
notified her that the stone had been set in place as ordered. They
never saw it; they paid a small sum annually for keeping the plot
in order, and the episode of Ada Martin Langhorne Breckenridge's
life was over.

Clarence drank so heavily after that, and squandered his
magnificent heritage so recklessly, that people began to say that
he would soon follow his mother. But that was four years ago, and
Rachael looking dispassionately at him, where he lay dozing in his
pillows, had to admit that he had shown no change in the past
four--or eight, or twelve--years. Like many a better woman, and
many a better wife, she wondered if she would outlive him, vaguely
saw herself, correct and remote, in her new black.

Involuntarily she sighed. How free she would be! She wished
Clarence no ill, but the fact remained that, loose as was the bond
between them, it galled and checked them both at every step. Their
conversations were embittered by a thousand personalities, they
instinctively knew how to hurt each other; a look from Clarence
could crush his poised and accomplished wife into a mere sullen
shrew, and she knew that it took less than a look from her--it
took the mere existence of her youth and health and freshness--to
infuriate him sometimes. At best, their relationship consciously
avoided hostility. Rachael was silent, fuming; Clarence fumed and
was silent; they sank to light monosyllables; they parted as
quickly as possible. Would Clarence like to dine with this friend
or that? Rachael didn't think he would, but might as well ask him.
No, thank you! he wouldn't be found dead in that bunch. Did
Rachael want to go with the Smiths and the Joneses to dine at the
Highway, and dance afterward? Oh, horrors! no, thank you!

It was only when she spoke of Billy that Rachael was sure of his
interest and attention, and of late she perforce had for Billy
only criticism and disapproval. Rachael read the girl's vain and
shallow and pleasure-loving little heart far more truly than her
father could, and she was conscious of a genuine fear lest Billy
bring sorrow to them all. Society was indulgent, yes, but an
insolent and undeveloped little girl like Billy could not snap her
fingers at the law without suffering the full penalty. Rachael
would suffer, too. Florence and her girls would suffer, and
Clarence--well, Clarence would not bear it. "What an awful mix-up
it is!" Rachael thought wearily. "And what a sickening, tiresome
place this world is!"

And then suddenly the thought of Warren Gregory came back, and the
new curious sensation of warmth tugged at her heart.




CHAPTER IV


Mrs. Gardner Haviland, whirling home in her big car, after church,
was hardly more pleased with life than was her beautiful sister-
in-law, although she was not quite as conscious of dissatisfaction
as was Rachael. Her position as a successful mother, wife,
housekeeper, and member of society was theoretically so perfect
that she derived from it, necessarily, an enormous amount of
theoretical satisfaction. She could find no fault with herself or
her environment; she was pleasantly ready with advice or with an
opinion or with a verdict in every contingency that might arise in
human affairs, as a Christian woman of unimpeachable moral
standing. She knew her value in a hectic and reckless world. She
did not approve of women smoking, or of suffrage, but she played a
brilliant game of bridge, and did not object to an infinitesimal
stake. She belonged to clubs and to their directorates, yet it was
her boast that she knew every thought in her children's hearts,
and the personal lives and hopes and ambitions of her maids were
as an open book to her.

Still, she had her moments of weakness, and on this warm day of
the spring she felt vaguely disappointed with life. Rachael's
hints of divorce had filled her with a real apprehension; she felt
a good aunt's concern at Billy's reckless course, and a good
sister's disapproval of Clarence and his besetting sin.

But it was not these considerations that darkened her full
handsome face as she went up the steps of her big, widespread
country mansion; it was some vaguer, more subtle discontent. She
had not dressed herself for the sudden warmth of the day, and her
heavy flowered hat and trim veil had given her a headache. The
blazing sunlight on white steps and blooming flowers blinded her,
and when she stepped into the dark, cool hall she could hardly
see.

The three girls were there, well-bred, homely girls, in their
simple linens: Charlotte, a rather severe type, eyeglassed at
eighteen, her thick, light-brown hair plainly brushed off her face
and knotted on her neck, was obviously the opposite of everything
Billy was; conscientious, intellectual, and conscious of her own
righteousness, she could not compete with her cousin in Billy's
field; she very sensibly made the best of her own field. Isabelle
was a stout, clumsy girl of sixteen, with a metal bar across her
large white teeth, red hair, and a creamy skin. Little Florence
was only nine, a thin, freckled, sensitive child, with a shy,
unsmiling passion for dogs and horses, and little in common with
the rest of the world.

Their mother had expected sons in every case, and still felt a
little baffled by the fact of her children's sex. Charlotte
proving a girl, she had said gallantly that she must have a little
brother "to play with Charlotte." Isabelle, duly arriving,
probably played with Charlotte much more amiably than a brother
would have done, and Mrs. Haviland blandly accepted her existence,
but in her heart she was far from feeling satisfied. She was, of
course, an absolutely competent mother to girls, but she felt that
she would have been a more capable and wonderful mother to boys.

More than six years after Isabelle's birth Florence Haviland began
to talk smilingly of "my boy." "Gardner worships the girls," she
said, with wifely indulgence, "but I know he wants a son--and the
girlies need a brother!" A resigned shrug ended the sentence with:
"So I'm in for the whole thing again!"

It was said that Mrs. Haviland greeted the news that the third
child was a daughter with a mechanically bright smile, as one
puzzled beyond all words by perverse event, and that her spoken
comment was the single mild ejaculation: "Extraordinary!"

Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her
bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress.
Florence junior, in passionate argument with the butler over the
death of one of the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs.
Mrs. Haviland, casting the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed,
took a new embroidered pongee from a box, and busied herself with
its unfamiliar hooks and straps. Charlotte and Isabelle were never
quite spontaneous in their conversations with their mother, their
attitude in talking with her being one of alert and cautious self-
consciousness; they did not breathe quite naturally, and they
laughed constantly. Yet they both loved this big, firm, omnipotent
being, and believed in her utterly and completely.

"We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning,
M'ma," volunteered Isabelle.

"And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch's dance," Charlotte added with
a little innocent craft. "But I said that M'ma had been unable to
decide. Of course I said that we would LIKE to go, and that you
knew that, and would allow it if you possibly could."

"That was quite right, dear," Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest
daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle
she added kindly: "M'ma doesn't quite like to hear you calling a
young man you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle. Of course,
there's no harm in it, but it cheapens a girl just a LITTLE. While
Charlotte might do it because she is older, and has seen Charlie
Gregory at some of the little informal affairs last winter, you
are younger, and haven't really seen much of him since he went to
college. Don't let M'ma hear you do that again."

Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and
was silent. The younger girl's shamed eyes met her mother's, and
she nodded in quick embarrassment. But this tacit consent did not
satisfy Mrs. Haviland.

"You understand M'ma, don't you, dear?" she asked. Isabelle
murmured something indistinguishable.

"Yes, M'ma!" said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly.
Isabelle duly echoed a husky "Yes, M'ma!"

"Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?" pursued the
matron.

"She wasn't at church, M'ma," said Charlotte, taken unawares and
instinctively uneasy. "Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she
said she'd been sleeping on the sleeping porch."

"So M'ma's message was forgotten?" the mother asked pleasantly.

Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous
position. Long ago both girls had lost, under this close
surveillance and skilful system of cross-examination, their
original regard for truth as truth. That they usually said what
was true was because policy and self-protection suggested it.
Charlotte had time now for a flying survey of the situation and
its possibilities before she answered, somewhat uncertainly:

"I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M'ma. Wasn't that--" Her voice
faltered nervously. "Was it something you would have rather
telephoned about?"

"Would rather have telephoned about?" Mrs. Haviland corrected
automatically. "Well, M'ma would rather FEEL that when she sends a
message it is given to JUST the person to whom she sent it, in
JUST the way she sent it. However, in this case no harm was done.
Don't hook your heel over the rung of your chair, dear! Ring the
bell, Isabelle, I want Alice."

"I'll hook you, M'ma!" volunteered Charlotte.

"Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice. And now you girls
might run along. I'll be down directly."

A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid's
hands. Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she
owed Alice as well as herself this little office. Charlotte might
have hooked her gown for her; indeed, she might with a small
effort have done it herself, but it was Alice's duty, and nothing
could be worse for Alice, or any servant, than to have her duties
erratically assumed by others on one day and left to her on the
next. This was the quickest way to spoil servants, and Florence
never spoiled her servants.

"They have a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now,
kindly. Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied
herself with the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her
two brothers had borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and
with a score of cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches,
sardines, camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller
number of chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable
baby or two, were making a day of it on the river. Alice had
timidly asked, a few days before, for a holiday to-day, that she
might join them, but Mrs. Haviland had pointed out to her
reasonably that she, Alice, had been at home, unexpectedly,
because of her mother's illness, not only the previous Sunday, but
the Saturday, too, and had got half-a-day's leave of absence for
her cousin's wedding only the week before that. Alice was only
eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely
exhausted long before her mistress's pleasant voice had stopped.
Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day.

"I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point,"
said Alice, rising from her knees.

"Well, I hope they'll be careful; one hears of so many accidents
among foolish young people there!" Mrs. Haviland answered, going
downstairs to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by
them, proceeding to her own lunch.

For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was
maintained between the older girls and their governess. Charlotte
and Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly. Little
Florence presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile
cutting a channel across her timbale through which the gravy ran
in a stream.

Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they
were well-educated girls, and any mother's heart must have been
proud of them. But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied
with them. She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the
days of the week. Other days had their duties: music, studies,
riding, tennis, or walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead
weight upon her. Somehow, they were not in the current of good
times that the other girls and boys of their ages were having. If
she suggested brightly that they go over to the Parmalees' or the
Morans' and see if the young people were playing tennis, she knew
that Charlotte would delicately negative the idea: "They've got
their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to, unless they
specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of course, and
greet their friends decorously, and watch the game smilingly for a
while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not forgetting to
say good-bye to their hostess. But, although Charlotte played a
better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played a
good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in dashing
costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made
the Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull. They would come
home and tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the
boys jump her over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent
Parmalee's panama all afternoon, and called out to him, right
across the court, "Come on down to the boathouse, Kent, and let's
have a smoke!"

"Poor Vivian--poor Billy!" Mrs. Haviland would say. "Men don't
really admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although
the silly girls may think they do! But when it comes to marrying,
it is the sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!"

She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it,
but, if they discussed it when they were alone together, before
Mamma, they were always decorously impressed.

"Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?" she asked now, when the
forced strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was
trying to eat the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time
carefully avoid the cake itself and the frosting.

"What's Carol doing, M'ma?"

"When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with
another question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think
Aunt Rachael means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs.
Whittaker's for tea."

"We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she
very sweetly said that you were to--that is, that she hoped you
would bring us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she,
Isabelle?"

"I don't want to go!" Isabelle grumbled. But her mother ignored
her.

"That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude. I think I will go over to
the club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going,
and then I could pick you girls up here."

"I'm going over to play with Georgie and Robbie Royce!" shrilled
Florence. "They're mean to me, but I don't care! I hit George in
the stomach---"

Mrs. Haviland looked as pained as if the reported blow had fallen
upon her own person, but she was strangely indulgent to her
youngest born, and now did no more than signal to the nurse, old
Fanny, who stood grinning behind the child's chair, that Miss
Florence might be excused. Florence was accordingly borne off, and
the girls drifted idly upstairs, Isabelle confiding to her sister
as she dutifully brushed her teeth that she wished "something"
would happen! Alice muttered to Sally, another maid, over her
strong hot tea, that you might as well be dead as never do a thing
in God's world you wanted to do, but the rest of the large staff
enjoyed a hearty meal, and when Percival brought the car around at
three o'clock, Mrs. Haviland, magnificent in a change of costume,
spent the entire trip to the club in the resentful reflection that
the man had obviously had coffee and cream and mutton for his
lunch--disgusting of him to come straight to his car and his
mistress still redolent of his meal, but what could one do? In
Mrs. Haviland's upper rear hall was a framed and typewritten list
of rules for the maids, conspicuous upon which were those for
daily baths and regular use of toothbrushes. But Percival never
had seen this list, and he was a wonderful driver and a special
favorite with her husband. She decided that there was nothing to
be done, unless of course the thing recurred, although the
moment's talk with Percival haunted and distressed her all day.

She duly returned to the house for her daughters a little after
four o'clock, and in amicable conversation they went together to
the tea, a crowded, informal affair, in another large house full
of rugs and flowers, rooms dark and rich with expensive tapestries
and mahogany, rooms bright and gay with white enamel and chintz
and wicker furniture.

Everybody was here. Jeanette and Phyllis, as well as Elinor
Vanderwall, Peter Pomeroy and George, the Buckneys and Parker
Hoyt, the Emorys, the Chases, Mrs. Sartoris and old Mrs. Torrence
and Jack, all jumbled a greeting to the Havilands. Of Carol they
presently caught a glimpse standing on a sheltered little porch
with Joe Pickering's sleek head beside her. They were apparently
not talking, just staring quietly down at the green terraces of
the garden. Rachael was pouring tea, her face radiant under a
narrowbrimmed, close hat loaded with cherries, her gown of narrow
green and white stripes the target for every pair of female eyes
in the room.

Charlotte Haviland, in her mother's wake, chanced to encounter
Kenneth Moran, a red-faced, well-dressed and blushing youth of her
own age. Her complacent mother was witness to the blameless
conversation between them.

"How do you do, Kenneth? I didn't know you were here!"

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? How do you do, Isabelle? I didn't
know you were here!"

Isabelle grinned silently in horrible embarrassment but Charlotte
said, quick-wittedly:

"How is your mother, Kenneth, and Dorothy?"

"She's well--they're well, thank you. They're here somewhere--at
least Mother is. I think Dorothy's still over at the Clays',
playing tennis!"

He laughed violently at this admission, and Charlotte laughed,
too.

"It's lovely weather for tennis," she said encouragingly. "We--"

"You--" Mr. Moran began. "I beg your pardon!"

"No, I interrupted you!"

"No, that was my fault. I was only going to say that we ought to
have a game some morning. Going to have your courts in order this
year?"

"Yes, indeed," Charlotte said, with what was great vivacity for
her. "Papa has had them all rolled; some men came down from town--
we had it all sodded, you know, last year."

"Is that right?" asked Mr. Moran, as one deeply impressed. "We
must go to it--what?"

"We must!" Charlotte said happily. "Any morning, Kenneth!"

"Sure, I'll telephone!" agreed the youth enthusiastically. "I'm
trying to find Kent Parmalee; his aunt wants him!" he added
mumblingly, as he began to vaguely shoulder his way through the
crowd again.

"You'd better take a microscope!" said Charlotte wittily. And Mr.
Moran's burst of laughter and his "That's right, too!" came back
to them as he went away.

"Dear fellow!" Mrs. Haviland said warmly.

"Isn't he nice!" Charlotte said, fluttered and glowing. She hoped
in her heart that she would meet him again, but although the
Havilands stayed until nearly six o'clock they did not do so;
perhaps because shortly after this conversation Kenneth Moran met
Miss Vivian Sartoris, and they took a plateful of rich, crushy
little cakes and went and sat under the stairs, where they took
alternate bites of each other's mocha and chocolate confections,
and where Vivian told Kenneth all about a complicated and
thrilling love affair between herself and one of the popular
actors of the day. This narrative reflected more credit upon the
young woman's imagination than upon her charms had the listener
but suspected it, but Kenneth was not a brilliant boy, and they
had a lovely time over their confidences.

Charlotte's romantic encounter with the gentleman, however, made
her happy for several hours, and colored her cheeks rosily.

"You're getting pretty, Carlotta!" said her Aunt Rachael,
observing this. "Don't drink tea, that's a good child! You can
stuff on cakes and chocolate of course, Isabelle," she added, "but
Charlotte's complexion ought to be her FIRST THOUGHT for the next
five years!"

"I don't really want any," asserted Charlotte, feeling wonderfully
grown-up and superior to the claims of a nursery appetite. "But
can't I help you, Aunt Rachael?"

"No, my dear, you can't! I'm through the worst of it, and being
bored slowly but firmly to death! Gertrude, I'm just saying that
your party bores me."

"So sorry about you, Rachael!" said the slim, laceclad hostess
calmly. "Here's Judy Moran! Nearly six, Judy, and we dine at seven
on Sundays. But never mind, eat and drink your fill, my child."

"Billy's flirtin' her head off out there!" wheezed stout Mrs.
Moran, dropping into a chair. "Joe and Kent and young Gregory and
half a dozen others are out there with her."

Mrs. Breckenridge, who had begun to frown, relaxed in her chair.

"Ah, well, there's safety in numbers!" she said, reassured. "You
take cream, Judy, and two lumps? Give Mrs. Moran some of those
little damp, brown sandwiches, Isabelle. A minute ago she had some
of the most heavenly hot toast here, but she's taken it away
again! I wish I could get some tea myself, but I've tried three
times and I can't!"

She busied herself resignedly with tongs and teapot, and as Mrs.
Moran bit into her first sandwiches, and the Haviland girls moved
away at a word from their mother, Rachael raised her eyes and met
Warren Gregory's look.

He was standing, ten feet away, in a doorway, his eyelids half
dropped over amused eyes, his hands sunk in his coat pockets.
Rachael knew that he had been there for some moments, and her
heart struggled and fluttered like a bird in a snare, and with a
thrill as girlish as Charlotte's own she felt the color rise in
her cheeks.

"Come have some tea, Greg," she said, indicating the empty chair
beside her.

"Thank you, dear," he answered, his head close to hers for a
moment as he sat down. The little word set Rachael's heart to
hammering again. She glanced quickly to see if Mrs. Moran had
overheard, but that lady had at last caught sight of the maid with
the hot toast, and her ample back was turned toward the teatable.

Indeed, in the noisy, disordered room, which was beginning to be
deserted by straggling groups of guests, they were quite
unobserved. To both it was a delicious moment, this little
domestic interlude of tea and talk in the curved window of the
dining-room, lighted by the last light of a spring day, and sweet
with the scent of wilting spring flowers.

"You make my heart behave in a manner not to be described in
words!" said Rachael, her fingers touching his as she handed him
his tea.

"It must be mine you feel," suggested Warren Gregory; "you haven't
one--by all accounts!"

"I thought I hadn't, Greg, but, upon my word---" She puckered her
lips and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a
little shake. Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look,
sighed, and stirred his tea.

"If ever you discover yourself to be the possessor of such an
organ, Rachael," said he dispassionately, "you won't joke about it
over a tea-table! You'll wake up, my friend; we'll see something
besides laughter in those eyes of yours, and hear something
besides cool reason in your voice! I may not be the man to do it,
but some man will, some day, and--when John Gilpin rides--"

The eyes to which he referred had been fixed in serene confidence
upon his as he began to speak. But a second later Rachael dropped
them, and they rested upon her own slender hand, lying idle upon
the teatable, with its plain gold ring guarded by a dozen blazing
stones. Had he really stirred her, Warren Gregory wondered, as he
watched the thoughtful face under the bright, cherry-loaded hat.

"You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for
laughter in my life, Greg," she said, after a moment. "As for
love--I don't think I know what love is! I am an absolutely
calculating woman, and my first, last, and only view of anything
is just how much it affects me and my comfort."

"I don't believe it!" said the doctor.

"It's true. And why shouldn't it be?" Rachael gave him a grave
smile. "No one," said she seriously, "ever--ever--EVER suggested
to me that there was anything amiss in that point of view! Why is
there?"

"I don't understand you," said the doctor simply.

"One doesn't often talk this way, I suppose," she said slowly.
"But there is a funny streak of--what shall I call it?--
conscience, or soul, or whatever you like, in me. Whether I get it
from my mother's Irish father or my father's clergyman
grandfather, I don't know, but I'm eternally defending myself. I
have long sessions with myself, when I'm judge and jury, and
invariably I find 'Not Guilty!'"

"Not guilty of what?" the man asked, stirring his untasted cup.

"Not guilty of anything!" she answered, with a child's puzzled
laugh. "I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about-
-" Her voice dropped; she stared absently at the table.

"But--" the doctor prompted.

"But--that's just it--but I'm so UNHAPPY all the time!" Rachael
confessed. "We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me--like Bander-
log! What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who
gets any fun out of it? What's YOUR answer, Greg--what makes the
wheels go round?"

"'Tis love--'tis love--that makes--etcetera, etcetera," supplied
the doctor, his tone less flippant than his words.

"Oh--love!" Rachael's voice was full of delicate scorn. "I've seen
a great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I
must say that I consider love a very much overrated article!
You're laughing at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence
loved Paula madly, kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all
that, but I don't know how much THEIR seven years together helped
the world go round. He never loved me, never once said he did, but
I've made him a better wife than she did. He loves Bill, now, and
it's the worst thing in the world for her!"

"THERE'S some love for you," said Doctor Gregory, glancing across
the room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt,
who were laughing over a cabinet full of ivories.

"I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money
to-morrow--if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?"
Rachael suggested, smiling.

The doctor answered only with a shrug.

"More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up
to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found
that he really hadn't asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as
free as air. Do you suppose that the minute he'd had his breakfast
he would go straight over to Leila's house and make his dream a
heavenly reality? Or would he decide that there was no hurry about
it, and that he might as well rather keep away from the Buckney
house until he'd made up his mind?"

"I suppose he might convince himself that an hour or two's delay
wouldn't matter!" said the doctor, laughing.

"If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought
to send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know
where I am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is
something else again!"

"I suppose my mother has known great love," said the man, after a
pause. "She spends her days in that quiet old house dreaming about
my father, and my brothers, looking at their pictures, and reading
their letters--"

"But, Greg, she's so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly. "And
love--surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?"

"Well, I think her memories DO make her happy, in a way. Although
my mother is really too conscientious a woman to be happy, she
worries about events that are dead issues these twenty years. She
wonders if my brother George might have been saved if she had
noticed his cough before she did; there was a child who died at
birth, and then there are all the memories of my father's death--
the time he wanted ice water and the doctors forbade it, and he
looked at her reproachfully. Poor Mother!"

"You're a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said, as he paused.

"Charley is," he conceded thoughtfully, "and in a way I know I am!
But not in every way, of course," Warren Gregory smiled a little
ruefully.

"So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized
cheerfully. "There's no such thing!"

"On the contrary, there isn't anything else, REALLY, in the
world," smiled the man. "I've seen it shining here and there; we
get away from it here, somewhat, I'll admit"--his glance and
gesture indicated the other occupants of the room--"and, like you,
I don't quite know where we miss it, and what it's all about, but
there have been cases in our wards, for instance: girls whose
husbands have been brought in all smashed up--"

"Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and
butter!" suggested Rachael in delicate irony.

"No, I don't think so. And mothers--mothers hanging over sick
children--"

The women nodded quickly.

"Yes, I know, Greg. There's something very appealing about a sick
kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a
little thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID--now
that I remember it--it really did bring Clarence and me
tremendously close. We'd sit and wait for news, and slip out for
little meals, and I'd make him coffee late at night. I remember
thinking then that I never wanted a child, to make me suffer as we
suffered then!"

"Mother love, then, we concede," Doctor Gregory said, smiling.

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don't believe a mother
like Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving.
However, there IS mother love!"

"And married love."

"No, there I don't agree. While the novelty lasts, while the
passion lasts--not more than a year or two. Then there's just
civility--opening the city house, opening the country house,
entertaining, going about, liking some things about each other,
loathing others, keeping off the dangerous places until the crash
comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky ones, doesn't come!"

"What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!" Gregory
said with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "You're too dear and sweet
to talk that way! It's too bad--it's too bad to have you feel so!
I wish that I could carry you away from all these people here--
just for a while! I'd like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke
about last night! Wouldn't we love our desert island! Would you
help me build a thatched hut, and a mud oven, and string shells in
your hair, and swim way out in the green breakers with me?"

"And what makes you think that there would be some saving element
in our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice. "What makes
you think that our love would survive the--the dry-rot of life?
People would send us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of
engraving, and barrels of champagne, and newspaper men trying to
cross-examine the maids, and caterers all over the place, but a
few years later, wouldn't it be the same old story? You talk of a
desert island, and swimming, and seaweed, Greg! But my ideas of a
desert island isn't Palm Beach with commercial photographers
snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us, Greg--
who's happy? Who isn't watching the future for just this or just
that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all
want to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be
young; this one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that
one--like Florence--is worrying a little for fear the girls won't
quite make a hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about
Clarence--"

"I worry about you!" said Doctor Gregory as she paused.

"Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed. "So here we
are, the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world,
having a cloudless good time!"

"You know, it's a shame to eat this way--ruin our dinners!" said
Mrs. Moran, suddenly entering the conversation. "Stop flirting
with Greg, Rachael, and give me some more tea. One lump, and only
about half a cup, dear. Tell me a good way to get thin, Greg!
Agnes Chase says her doctor has a diet--you eat all you want, and
you get thin. Agnes says Lou has a friend who has taken off forty-
eight pounds. Do you believe it, Greg? I'm too fat, you know--"

"You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael, still a little shaken by
the abruptly closed conversation, as the doctor, with a conscious
thrill, perceived.

"Thank you, my dear, that's what they all say. But I'd just as
soon somebody else should carry it for awhile!"

"Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and
speaking quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name
of everything sensible is Billy?"

"Clarence!" said Rachael, uncomfortable premonition clutching at
her heart.

"Yes; you come and talk to him, Rachael," Mrs. Whittaker said, in
the same quick undertone. "He's all right, of course, but he's
just a little fussy--"

"Oh, if he wouldn't DO these things!" Rachael said apprehensively
as she rose. "I left him all comfortable--Joe Butler was coming in
to see him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!"

"Of course it does, but we all know Clarence!" Mrs. Whittaker said
soothingly. "He seems to have got it into his head that Billy--You
go talk to him, Rachael, and I'll send her in."

"Billy's doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked
impatiently.

"Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy
was here--he'd asked if she was--he said, 'Then I suppose Mr.
Pickering is here, too!'"

"He's the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet
if he starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said,
as she turned toward the adjoining room. An unexpected ordeal like
this always annoyed her. She was equal to it, of course; she could
smooth Clarence's ruffled feelings, keep a serene front to the
world, and get her family safely home before the storm; she had
done it many times before. But it was so unnecessary! It was so
unnecessary to exhibit the Breckenridge weaknesses before the
observant Emorys, before that unconscionable old gossip Peter
Pomeroy, and to the cool, pitying gaze of all her world!

She found Clarence the centre of a small group in the long
drawing-room. He and Frank Whittaker were drinking cocktails; the
others--Jeanette Vanderwall, Vera Villalonga, a flushed, excitable
woman older than Rachael, and Jimmy and Estelle Hoyt--had refused
the drink, but were adding much noise and laughter to the
newcomer's welcome.

"Hello, Clarence" Rachael said, appraising the situation rapidly
as she came up. "I would have waited for you if I had thought you
would come!"

"I just--just thought I would--look in," Clarence said slowly but
steadily. "Didn't want to miss anything. You all seem to be
having--having a pretty good time!"

"It's been a lovely tea," Rachael assured him enthusiastically.
"But I'm just going. Billy's out here on the porch with a bunch of
youngsters; I was just going after her. Don't let Frank give you
any more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives
him a splitting headache!"

The tone was irreproachably casual and cheerful, but Clarence
scowled at his wife significantly. His dignity, as he answered,
was tremendous.

"I can judge pretty well of what hurts me and what doesn't, thank
you, Rachael," he said coldly, with a look ominous with warning.

"That's just what you can't, dear," Mrs. Whittaker, who had joined
the group, said pleasantly. "Take that stuff away, Frank, and
don't be so silly! If Frank," she added to the group, "hadn't been
at it all afternoon himself he wouldn't be such an idiot."

"Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a
matter-of-fact tone. "It's a shame to carry you off when you've
just got here, but I'm going."

"Where's Billy?" Clarence asked stubbornly.

"Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly. And to her great
relief Billy substantiated the statement by coming up to them, a
little uneasy, as her stepmother was, over her father's
appearance, yet confident that there was no real cause for a
scene. To get him home as fast as possible, and let the trouble,
whatever it might be, break there, was the thought in both their
minds.

"Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly, aware of her
husband's sulphurous gaze, but carefully ignoring it. "Then say
day-day to Aunt Gertrude!"

"If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for
me," Billy suggested.

"So that you can stay a little longer, eh?" said Clarence, in so
ugly a tone and with so leering a look for his daughter that
Rachael's heart for a moment failed her. "That's a very nice
little plan, my dear, but, as it happens, I came over in the
runabout! I'm a fool, you know," said Clarence sullenly. "I can be
hoodwinked and deceived and made a fool of--oh, sure! But there's
a limit! There's a limit," he said in stupid anger to his wife.
"And if I say that I don't like certain friendships for my
daughter, it means that _I_ DON'T LIKE CERTAIN FRIENDSHIPS FOR MY
DAUGHTER, do you get me? That's clear enough, isn't it, Gertrude?"

"It's perfectly clear that you're acting like an idiot, Clancy,"
Mrs. Whittaker said briskly. "Nobody's trying to hoodwink you; it
isn't being done this year! You've got an awful katzenjammer from
the Stokes' dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for
letting yourselves in for such a party. Now if you and Rachael
want to go home in the runabout, I'll send Billy straight after
you with Kenneth or Kent--"

"I'll take Billy home," Clarence said heavily.

By this time Rachael was so exquisitely conscious of watching eyes
and listening ears, so agonized over the realization that the fuss
Clarence Breckenridge made at the Whittakers' over Joe Pickering
would be handed down, a precious tradition, over every tea and
dinner table for weeks to come, so miserably aware that a dozen
persons, at least, among the audience were finding in this scene
welcome confirmation of all the odds and ends of gossip that were
floating about concerning Billy, that she would have consented
blindly to any arrangement that might terminate the episode.

It was not the first time that Clarence had made himself
ridiculous and his family conspicuous when not quite himself. At
almost every tea party and at every dance and dinner at least one
of the guests similarly distinguished himself. Rachael knew that
there would be no blame in her friends' minds, but she hated their
laughter.

"Do that, then," she agreed quickly. "Greg, will bring me!"

"By George," said Clarence darkly to his hostess, "I'd be a long
time doing that to you, Gertrude! If you had a daughter--"

"My dear Clarence, your daughter is old enough to know her own
mind!" Mrs. Whittaker said impatiently.

"And you're only making me conspicuous for something that's
ENTIRELY in your own brain!" blazed Billy. As usual, her influence
over her father was instantaneous.

"Because I love you, you know that," he said meekly. "I--I may be
TOO careful, Billy. But--"

"Nonsense!" said Billy in a nervous undertone close to tears. "If
you loved me you'd have some consideration for me!"

"When I say a thing, don't you say it's nonsense," Clarence said
with heavy fatherly dignity. "I'll tell you why--because I won't
stand for it!"

"Oh, aren't they hopeless!" Mrs. Whittaker asked with an indulgent
laugh and a glance for Rachael.

"Well, I won't be taken home like a bad child!" flamed Billy.

"I'd like to bump both your silly heads together," Rachael
exclaimed, steering them toward the porch. "Yes, you bring the car
around, Kent," she added to one of the onlookers in an urgent
aside. "Come on, Bill? get in. Get in, Clarence! Don't be an utter
fool--"

In another moment it was settled. Billy, looking fretty and sulky,
said: "Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude! I'm sorry for this, but it's not
my fault!" Frank Whittaker almost bodily lifted his somewhat
befuddled guest into the car, the door of the runabout went home
with a bang. Billy snatched the wheel, and Clarence, with an
attempt at a martyred expression, sank back in his seat. The car
rocked out of sight, and was gone.

Rachael, in silent dignity, turned about on the wide brick steps
to reenter the house. Where there had been a dozen interested
faces a moment ago there was no one now except Gertrude Whittaker,
whose expression betrayed her as tactfully divided between
unconcern and sympathy, and Frank Whittaker, who was looking
thoughtfully at the cloudless spring sky as one anticipating a
change of weather.

Rachael caught Mrs. Whittaker's eye and shrugged her shoulders
wearily. She began slowly to mount the steps.

"It was nothing at all!" said the hostess cheerfully, adding
immediately, "You poor thing!"

"All in the day's work!" Rachael said, on a long sigh. And turning
to the man who stood silently in the doorway she asked, with all
the confidence of a weary child, "Will you take me home, Greg?"

Her glance and the doctor's met. In the last soft, brilliant light
of the afternoon long shadows fell from the great trees nearby.
Rachael's green and white gown was dappled with blots of golden
light, her troubled, glowing eyes were of an almost unearthly
beauty, and her slender figure, against the background of colonial
white paint and red brick, had all the tremulous, reedy grace of a
young girl's figure. In the long look the two exchanged there was
some new element born of this wonderful hour of spring, and of the
woman's need, and the man's nearness. Both knew it, although
Rachael did not speak again, and, also in silence, the doctor
nodded, and went past her down the steps for his car.

"Too bad!" Mrs. Whittaker said, coming back from a brief
disappearance beyond the doorway. "But such things will happen!
It's too bad, Rachael, but what can one do? Are you going to be
warm enough? Sure? Don't give it another thought, dear, nobody
noticed it, anyway. And listen--any chance of a game tonight? I
could send over for you. Marian's with me, you know, and we could
get Peter or Greg for a fourth."

"No chance at all," Rachael said bitterly. She had always loved to
play bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a
delicious experience. She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was
matched by partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with
absolutely fanatic fervor. Rachael had a vision of her own white
hand spreading out the cards, of the nod and glance that said
clearly: "Great bidding, Rachael; we're as safe as a church!"

Clarence did not play bridge, he did not care for music, for
books, for pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and
often golf; a selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared
only for his own play and his own score, and paid no attention to
anyone else.

Gregory's great car came round the drive. "Good-bye, Gertrude,"
said Rachael with an unsmiling nod of farewell, and Mrs. Whittaker
thought, as Elinor Vanderwall had thought the night before, that
she had never seen Rachael look so serious before, and that things
in the Breckenridge family must be coming rapidly to a crisis.

Doctor Gregory, as the lovely Mrs. Breckenridge packed her striped
green and white ruffles trimly beside him, turned upon her a quick
and affectionate smile. It asked no confidence, it expressed no
sympathy, it was simply the satisfied glance of a man pleased with
the moment and with the company in which he found himself. To
Rachael, overwrought, nervous, and ashamed, no mood could have
been more delicately tuned. She sank back against the deep
upholstery luxuriously, and drew a long breath, inhaling the
delicious air of early summer twilight. What a sweet, clean, solid
sort of friend Greg was, thought Rachael, noticing the clever,
well-groomed hands on the wheel, the kindly earnestness of the
handsome, sun-browned face, the little wrinkle between the dark
eyes that meant that Doctor Gregory was thinking.

"Straight home?" said he, giving her a smiling glance.

"If you please, Greg," Rachael answered, a sudden vision of the
probable state of affairs at home causing her to end the words
with a quick sigh.

Silence. They were running smoothly along the lovely country roads
that were bowered so generously in fresh green that great feathery
boughs of maple and locust brushed against the car. The birds were
still now, and the sunlight gone, although all the world was still
flooded with a soft golden light. The first dew had fallen,
bringing forth from the dust a sweet and pungent odor.

"Thinking about what I said to you last night?" asked the doctor
suddenly.

"I am afraid I am--a little," Rachael answered, meeting his quick
side glance with another as fleet.

"And what do you think about it?" he asked. For answer Rachael
only sighed wearily, and for a while they went on in silence. But
when they had almost reached the Breckenridge gateway Doctor
Gregory spoke again.

"Do you often have a scene like that one just now to get through?"

The color rushed into Rachael's face at his friendly, not too
sympathetic, tone. She was still shaken from the encounter with
Clarence, and still thrilling to the memory of her talk with
Warren Gregory last night, and it was with some new quality of
hesitation, almost of bewilderment, that she said:

"That--that wasn't anything unusual, Greg."

Doctor Gregory stopped the car at the foot of her own steps, the
noise of the engine suddenly ceased, and they faced each other,
their heads close together.

"But since last night," Rachael added, smiling after a moment's
thought, "I know I have a friend. I believe now, when the crash
comes, and the whole world begins to talk, that one person will
not misjudge me, and one person will not misunderstand."

"Only that?" he asked. She raised her glorious eyes quickly,
trying to smile, and it brought his heart to a quick stop to see
that they were brimming with tears.

"Only that?" she echoed. "My dear Greg, after seven such years as
I have had as Clarence's wife, that is not a small thing!"

Their hands were together now, and he felt hers cling suddenly as
she said:

"Don't--don't let me drag you into this, Greg!"

"This is what I want you to believe," Warren Gregory told her,
"that you are not his wife, you are nothing to him any more. And
some day, some day, you're going to be happy again!"

A wonderful color flooded her face; she gave him a look half-
frightened, half-won. Then with an almost inaudible "Good-night,"
she was gone.

Warren Gregory stood watching the slender figure mount the steps.
She did not turn to nod him a fare-well, but vanished like a
shadow into the soft shadows of the doorway. Yet he was enough a
lover to find consolation in that. Rachael Breckenridge was not
flirting now, forces far greater than any she had ever known were
threatening the shallow waters of her life, and she might well be
troubled and afraid.

"She is not his wife any more," Warren Gregory said, half aloud,
as he turned back to his car. "From now on she belongs to me! She
SHALL be mine!"




CHAPTER V


From that day on a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying
monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid
change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did
realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in
her world. He was flirting, of course, he was only half in
earnest; but it was such delicious flirting, it was a half-
earnestness so wonderfully satisfying and sweet.

She did not see him every day, sometimes she did not see him for
two or three days, but no twenty-four hours went by without a
message from him. A day or two after the troubled Sunday on which
he had driven her home she stood silent a moment, in the lower
hall, one hand resting on the little box of damp, delicious
Freesia lilies, the fingers of the other twisting his card. The
little message scribbled on the card meant nothing to other eyes,
just the two words "Good morning!" but in some subtle way they
signified to her a morning in a wider sense, a dawning of love and
joy and peace in her life. The next day they met--and how
wonderful these casual meetings among a hundred gay, unseeing
folk, had suddenly become!--and on the following day he came to
tea with her, a little hour whose dramatic and emotional beauty
was enhanced rather than spoiled for them both when Clarence and
Billy and some friends came in to end it.

On Thursday the doctor's man delivered into Mrs. Breckenridge's
hand a package which proved to be a little book on Browning of
which he had spoken to her. On the fly leaf was written in the
donor's small, fine handwriting, "R. from G. The way WAS
Caponsacchi." Rachael put the book on her bedside table, and wore
June colors all day for the giver's sake. Greg, she thought with a
fluttering heart, was certainly taking things with rather a high
hand. Could it be possible, could it be POSSIBLE, that he cared
for a woman at last, and was she, Rachael Breckenridge, a
neglected wife, a penniless dependent upon an unloving husband,
that woman?

Half-forgotten emotions of girlhood began to stir within her; she
flushed, smiled, sighed at her own thoughts, she dreamed, and came
bewildered out of her dreams, like a child. What Clarence did,
what Carol did, mattered no longer; she, Rachael, again had the
centre of the stage.

Weeks flew by. The question of summer plans arose: the Villalongas
wanted all the Breckenridges in their Canadian camp for as much as
possible of July and August. Clarence regarded the project with
the embittered eye of utter boredom, Billy was far from
enthusiastic, Rachael made no comment. She stood, like a diver,
ready for the chilling plunge from which she might never rise,
yet, after which, there was one glorious chance: she might find
herself swimming strongly to freedom. The sunny, safe meadows and
the warm, blue sky were there in sight, there was only that dark
and menacing stretch of waters to breast, that black, smothering
descent to endure.

Now was the time. The pretence that was her married life must end,
she must be free. In her thought she went no farther. Rachael
outwardly was no better than the other women of her world;
inwardly there was in her nature an instinctive niceness, a hatred
for what was coarse or base. For years the bond between her and
Clarence Breckenridge had been only an empty word. But it was
there, none the less, and before she could put any new plan into
definite form, even in her own heart, it must be broken.

Many of the women she knew would not have been so fine. For more
than one of them no tie was sacred. and no principle as strong as
their own desire for pleasure. But she was different, as all the
world should see. No carefully chaperoned girl could be more
carefully guarded than Rachael would be guarded by herself until
that time--the thought of it put her senses to utter rout--until
such time as she might put her hand boldly in Gregory's, and take
her place honorably by his side.

The taste of freedom already began to intoxicate her even while
she still went about Clarence's house, bore his moods in silence,
and imparted to Billy that half-scornful, half-humorous advice
that alone seemed to penetrate the younger woman's shell of utter
perversity. Mrs. Breckenridge, as usual followed by admiring and
envious and curious eyes, walked in a world of her own, entirely
oblivious of the persons and events about her, wrapped in a
breathless dream too exquisitely bright to be real.

It was a dream still so simple and vague that she was not
conscious of wishing for Warren Gregory's presence, or of being
much happier when they were together than when she was deliciously
alone with her thoughts of him.

About a month after the Whittaker tea Rachael found herself seated
in the tile-floored tea-room at the country club with Florence.
There had been others in the group, theoretically for tea, but
these were scattered now, and among the various bottles and
glasses on the table there was no sign of a teacup.

"So glad to see you alone a moment, Rachael--one never does," said
Florence. "Tell me, do you go to the Villalongas'?"

"Clarence and Billy will, I suppose," the other woman said with an
enigmatic smile.

"But not you?"

"Perhaps; I don't know, Florence." Rachael's serene eyes roved the
summer landscape contentedly. Mrs. Haviland looked a little
puzzled.

"Things are better, aren't they, dear?" she asked delicately.

"Things?"

"Between you and Clarence, I mean."

"Oh! Yes, perhaps they are. Changed, perhaps."

"How do you mean changed?" Florence was instantly in arms.

"Well, it couldn't go on that way forever, Florence," Rachael said
pleasantly.

Rendered profoundly uneasy by her tone, the other woman was silent
for a moment.

"Perhaps it is just as well to make different plans for the
summer," she said presently. "We all get on each other's nerves
sometimes, and change or separation does us a world of good."

"Doctor Gregory! Doctor Gregory! At the telephone!" chanted a club
attendant, passing through the tea-room.

"On the tennis courts," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without turning
her head. "You had better make it a message: explain that he's
playing!"

"I didn't see him go down," remarked Florence, diverted.

"His car came in about half an hour ago; he and Joe Butler went
down to the courts without coming into the club at all," Rachael
said.

"I wonder what he's doing this summer?" mused the older lady.

"I believe he's going to take his mother abroad with him," said
the well-informed Rachael. "She'll visit some friends in England
and Ireland, and then join him. He's to do the Alps with someone,
and meet her in Rome."

"She tell you?" asked Mrs. Haviland, interested.

"He did," the other said briefly.

"I didn't know she had any friends," was Florence's next comment.
"I don't see her visiting, somehow!"

"Oh, my dear. Old Catholic families with chapels in their houses,
and nuns, and Mother Superiors!" Rachael's tone was light, but as
she spoke a cold premonition seized her heart. She fell silent.

A moment later Charlotte, who had been hovering uncertainly in the
doorway of the room, came out to join her mother with a brightly
spontaneous air.

"Oh, here you are, M'ma!" said Charlotte. "Are you ready to go?"

"Been having a nice time, dear?" her mother asked fondly.

"Very," Charlotte said. "I've been looking over old magazines in
the library--SO interesting!"

This literary enthusiasm struck no answering spark from the
matron.

"In the library!" said Florence quickly. "Why, I thought you were
with Charley!"

"Oh, no, M'ma," answered Charlotte, with her little air that was
not quite prim and not quite mincing, and that yet suggested both.
"Charley left me just after you did; he had an engagement with
Straker." She reached for a macaroon, and ate it with a brightly
disengaged air, her eyes, behind their not unbecoming glasses,
studying the golf links with absorbed interest.

"Anyone else in the library?" Florence asked in a dissatisfied
tone.

"No. I had it all to myself!" the girl answered pleasantly.

"Why didn't you go down to the courts, dear? I think Papa is
playing!"

"I didn't think of it, M'ma," said Charlotte lucidly.

"What a dreadful age it is," mused Rachael. "I wonder which phase
is hardest to deal with: Billy or poor little Carlotta?" Aloud,
from the fulness of her own happiness, she said: "Suppose you walk
down to the courts with me, Infant, and we will see what's going
on?"

"If M'ma doesn't object," said the dutiful daughter.

"No, go along," Florence said with vague discontent. "I've got to
do some telephoning, anyway."

Charlotte, being eighteen, could think of nothing but herself, and
Rachael, wrapped in her own romance, was amused, as they walked
along, to see how different her display of youthful egotism was
from Billy's, and yet how typical of all adolescence.

"Isn't it a wonderful afternoon, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte said, as
one in duty bound to be entertaining. "I do think they've picked
out such a charming site for the club!" And then, as Rachael did
not answer, being indeed content to drink in the last of the long
summer day in silence, Charlotte went on, with an air blended of
comprehension and amusement: "Poor M'ma, she would so like me to
be a little, fluffy, empty-headed butterfly of a girl, and I know
I disappoint her! It isn't that I don't like boys," pursued
Charlotte, the smooth and even stream of her words beginning to
remind Rachael of Florence, "or that they don't like me; they're
always coming to me with their confidences and asking my advice,
but it's just that I can't take them seriously. If a boy wants to
kiss me, why, I say to him in perfect good faith, 'Why shouldn't
you kiss me, John? When I'm fond of a person I always like to kiss
him, and I'm sure I'm fond of you!'" Charlotte stopped for a short
laugh full of relish. "Of course that takes the wind out of their
sails completely," she went on, "and we have a good laugh over it,
and are all the better friends! That is," said Charlotte,
thoroughly enjoying herself, "I treat my men friends exactly as I
do my girl friends. Do you think that's so extraordinary, Aunt
Rachael? Because I can't do anything different, you know--really I
can't!"

"Just be natural--that's the best way," said Rachael from the
depths of an icy boredom.

"Of course, some day I shall marry," the girl added in brisk
decision, "because I love a home, and I love children, and I think
I would be a good mother to children. But meanwhile, my books and
my friends mean a thousand times more to me than all these stupid
boys! Why is it other girls are so crazy about boys, Aunt
Rachael?" asked Charlotte, brightly sensible. "Of course I like
them, and all that, but I can't see the sense of all these notes
and telephones and flirtations. I told Vivvie Sartoris that I was
afraid I knew all these boys too well; of course Jack and Kent and
Charley are just like brothers! It all"--Charlotte smiled, signed,
shook her disillusioned young head--"it all seems so awfully SILLY
to me!" she said, and before Rachael could speak she had caught
breath again and added laughingly: "Of course I know Billy doesn't
agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort, and I
suppose that satisfies her! But, in short," finished Charlotte,
giving Rachael's arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis
courts, "in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear,
and I'm afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be out
of the ordinary!"

Rachael sighed a long deep sigh, but no other answer was demanded,
for the knot of onlookers welcomed them eagerly to the benches
beside the courts, and even the players--Gardner Haviland, Louis
Chase, a fat young man in an irreproachable tennis costume; Warren
Gregory and Joe Butler found time for a shouted "Hello!"

"How do you do, Kent?" said Charlotte to a young man who was
sprawling on the sloping grass between the benches and the court.
The young man blinked, sat up, and snatched off his hat.

"Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? I didn't know you were here," he
said enthusiastically. "Some game--what?"

"It SEEMS to be," said Charlotte with smiling, deep significance.
Both young persons laughed heartily at this spirited exchange. A
silence fell. Then Mr. Parmalee turned back to watch the players,
and Charlotte, who had seated herself, leaned back in her seat and
gave a devoted attention to the game.

Gregory came to Rachael the instant the game was over; she had
known, since the first triumphant instant when his eyes fell upon
her, that he would. She had seen the color rush under his brown
skin, and, alone among all the onlookers, had known why Greg put
three balls into the net, and why he laughed so inexplicably as he
did so. And Rachael thought, for the first time, how sweet it
would be to be his wife, to sit here lovely in lavender stripes
and loose white coat: Warren Gregory's wife.

"You mustn't do that," he said, sitting down on the bench beside
her, and wiping his hot face.

"Mustn't do what?" she asked.

"Mustn't turn up suddenly when I don't expect you. It makes me
dizzy. Look here--what are you doing? I'm going up to the pool.
I've got to get back into town to-night. When can I see you?"

"Why"--Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol--"why,
suppose we walk up together?"

They strolled away from the courts deliberately, openly. Several
persons remembered weeks later that they went slowly, stopped now
and then. No one thought much of it at the time, for only a week
later Doctor Gregory took his mother to England, and during that
week it was ascertained that he and Mrs. Breckenridge saw each
other only once, and then were in the presence of his mother and
of Carol Breckenridge and young Charles Gregory as well. There was
no tiniest peg for gossip to hang scandal upon, for where old Mrs.
James Gregory was, decorum of an absolutely puritanic order
prevailed.

Yet that stroll across the grass of the golf links was a milestone
in Rachael Breckenridge's life, and every word that passed between
Gregory and herself was graven upon her heart for all time. The
aspect of laughter, of flirtation, was utterly absent to-day. His
tone was crisp and serious, he spoke almost before they were out
of the hearing of the group on the courts.

"I've been wanting to talk to you, Rachael; in fact"--he laughed
briefly--"in fact, I am talking to you all day long, these days,"
he said, "arguing and consulting and advising and planning. But
before we can talk, there's Clarence. What about Clarence?"

Something in the gravity of his expression as their eyes met
impressed Rachael as she had rarely been impressed in her life
before. He was in deadly earnest, he had planned his campaign, and
he must take the first step by clearing the way. How sure he was,
how wonderfully, quietly certain of his course.

"We are facing a miserable situation, but it's a commonplace one,
after all," said Warren Gregory, as she did not speak. "I--you can
see the position I'm in. I have to ask you to be free before I can
move. I can't go to Breckenridge's wife---"

The color burned in both their faces as they looked at each other.

"It IS a miserable position, Greg," Rachael said, after a moment's
silence. "And although, as you say, it's commonplace enough,
somehow I never thought before just what this sort of thing
involves! However, the future must take care of itself. For the
present there's only this. I'm going to leave Clarence."

Warren Gregory drew a long breath.

"He won't fight it?"

"I don't think he will." Rachael frowned. "I think he'll be
willing to furnish--the evidence. Especially if he has no reason
to suspect that I have any other plans," she added thoughtfully.

"Then he mustn't suspect," the doctor said instantly.

"Nor anyone," she finished, with a look of alarm.

"Nor anyone, of course," he repeated.

"I don't know that I HAVE any other plans," Rachael said sadly. "I
won't think beyond that one thing. Our marriage has been an utter
and absolute failure, we are both wretched. It must end. I hate
the fuss, of course--"

He was watching her closely, too keenly tuned to her mood to
disquiet her with any hint of the lover's attitude now.

"And just how will you go about it?" he asked.

"I shall slip off to some quiet place, I think. I'll tell him
before he goes away. My attorneys will handle the matter for me--
it's a sickening business!" Rachael's beautiful face expressed
distaste.

"It's done every day," Warren Gregory said.

"Of course divorce is not a new idea to me" Rachael presently
pursued. "But it is only in the last two or three days--for a
week, perhaps--that it has seemed to have that inevitable quality-
-that the-sooner-over-the-better sort of urgency. I wonder why I
didn't do it years ago. I shall"--she laughed sadly--"I shall hate
myself as a divorced woman," she said. "It's a survival of some
old instinct, I suppose, but it doesn't seem RIGHT."

"It's done all the time," was the doctor's simple defence. "And
oh, my dear," he added, "you will know--and I will know--we can't
keep knowing--"

She stopped short, her lovely face serious in the shade of her
parasol, her dark-blue eyes burning with a sort of noble shame.

"Greg!" she said quickly and breathlessly. "Please---Let's not--
let's not say it. Let me feel, all this summer, that it wasn't
said. Let me feel that while I was living under one man's roof,
and spending his money, that I didn't even THINK of another man.
It's done all the time, you say, that's true. But I HATE it.
Whether I leave Clarence, and make my own life under new
conditions, and never remarry, or whether, in a year or two--but I
won't think of that!" And to his surprise and concern, as she
stopped short on the grassy path, the eyes that Rachael turned
toward him were brimming with tears. "You s-see what a baby I am
becoming, Greg," she said unsteadily. "It's all your doing, I'm
afraid! I haven't cried for years--loneliness and injustice and
unhappiness don't make me cry! But just lately I've known what it
was to dream of--of joy, Greg. And if that joy is ever really
coming to us, I want to be worthy of it. I want to start RIGHT
this time. I want to spend the summer quietly somewhere, thinking
and reading. I'm going to give up cards and even cocktails. You
smile, Greg, but I truly am! Just for this time, I mean. And it's
come to me, just lately, that I wouldn't leave Clarence if he
really needed me, or if it would make him unhappy. I'm going to be
different--everything SEEMS different already--"

"Don't you know why?" he said with his grave smile, as she paused.
It was enchanting to him to see the color flood her face, to see
her shy eyes suddenly averted. She did not answer, and they walked
slowly toward the clubhouse steps.

"There's only one thing more to say," Warren Gregory said,
arresting her for one more moment. "It's this: as soon as you're
free, I'm coming for you. You may not have made up your mind by
that time, Rachael. My mind will never change."

Shaken beyond all control by his tone, Rachael did not even raise
her eyes. Her flush died away, leaving her face pale. He saw her
breast rise on a quick breath.

"Will you write me?" he asked, after a moment.

"Oh, yes, Greg!" she answered quickly, in a voice hardly above a
whisper. "When do you go?"

"On Wednesday--a week from to-day, in fact. And that reminds me,
Billy says you are coming into town early next week?"

"Monday, probably." Rachael was coming back to the normal. "She
needs things for camp, and I've got a little shopping to do."

"Then could you lunch with Mother? Little Charley'll be there: no
one else. Bring Billy. Mother'd love it. You're a great favorite
there, you know."

"I may not always be a favorite there," Rachael said with a rueful
smile.

"Don't worry about Mother," Warren Gregory said with a confidence
that in this moment of excitement and exhilaration he almost felt
was justified. "Mother's a dear!"

That was all their conversation. When they entered the clubhouse
Doctor Gregory turned toward the swimming pool and Rachael was
instantly drawn into a game of bridge. She played like a woman in
a dream, was joined by Billy, went home in a dream, and presently
found herself and her husband fellow guests at a dreamlike dinner-
party.

Why not?--why not?--why not? The question drummed in head and
heart day and night. Why not end bondage, and taste freedom? Why
not end unhappiness, and try joy? She had done her best to make
her first marriage a success, and she had failed. Why not, with
all kindness, with all generous good wishes, end the long
experiment? Who, in all her wide range of acquaintances, would
think the less of her for the obviously sensible step? The world
recognized divorce as an indispensable institution: one marriage
in every twelve was dissolved.

And remarriage, a brilliant second marriage, was universally
approved. Even such a stern old judge as Warren's mother counted
among her acquaintances the divorced and remarried. To reappear,
triumphant, beloved, beautiful, before one's old world--

But no--of this Rachael would not permit herself to think. Time
alone could tell what her next step must be. The only
consideration now must be that, even if Warren Gregory had never
existed, even if there were no other man than Clarence
Breckenridge in the world, she must take the step. Better poverty,
and work, and obscurity, if need be, with freedom, than all
Clarence could offer her in this absurd and empty bondage.

Once firmly decided, she began to chafe against the delays that
made an immediate announcement of her intentions unwise. If a
thing was to be done, as well do it quickly, thought Rachael, as
she listened patiently to the vacillating decisions of Carol and
her father in regard to the Villalonga camping plan. At one time
Clarence completely abandoned the idea, throwing the watchful and
silent Rachael into utter consternation. Carol was alternately
bored by the plan and wearily interested in it. Their
characteristic absorption in their own comfort was a great
advantage to Rachael at this particular juncture; she had been
included in Mrs. Villalonga's invitation as a matter of course,
but such was the life of the big, luxurious establishment known as
the "camp" that all three of the Breckenridges, and three more of
them had there been so many, might easily have spent six weeks
therein without crossing each other's paths more than once or
twice a week. It never occurred to either Carol or her father to
question Rachael closely as to her pleasure in the matter. They
took it for granted that she would be there if no pleasanter
invitation interfered exactly as they themselves would.

An enormous income enabled the sprightly Mrs. Villalonga to
conduct her midsummer residence in the Canadian forests upon a
scale that may only be compared to a hotel. She usually asked
about one hundred friends to visit her for an indefinite time, and
of this number perhaps half availed themselves of the privilege,
drifting in upon her at any time, remaining only while the spirit
moved, and departing unceremoniously, perhaps, if the hostess
chanced to be away at the moment, with no farewells at all, when
any pleasanter prospect offered.

Mrs. Villalonga was a large, coarse-voiced woman, with a heart of
gold, and the facial characteristics that in certain unfortunate
persons suggest nothing so much as a horse. She sent a troop of
servants up to the woods every year, following them in a week or
two with her first detachment of guests. She paid her chef six
thousand dollars a year, and would have paid more for a better
chef, if there had been one. She expected three formal meals every
day, including in their scope every delicacy that could be
procured at any city hotel, and also an indefinite number of
lesser meals, to be served in tennis pavilion, or after cards at
night, or whenever a guest arrived.

By the time she reached the camp everything must be complete for
another summer, awnings flapping gently outside the striped canvas
"tents" that were really roomy cabins provided with shower baths
and wide piazzas. The great cement-walled swimming pool must be
cleaned, the courts rolled, the cars all in order, the boats and
bath-houses in readiness. A miniature grocery and drug store must
be established in the building especially designed for this use;
the little laundry concealed far up in the woods must be operating
briskly.

Then, from the middle of June to the first of September, the camp
was in full swing. There were dances and campfires and theatricals
and fancy-dress affairs innumerable. Ice and champagne and
California peaches and avocados from Hawaii poured from the
housekeeping department in an unending stream; there were new
toothbrushes and new pajamas for the unexpected guest, there were
new bathing suits in boxes for the girls who had driven over from
Taramac House and who wanted a swim, there were new packs of cards
and new boxes of cigars, and there were maids--maids--maids to run
for these things when they were wanted, and carry them away when
their brief use was over.

Then it would be September, and everything would end as suddenly
as it began. The Villalongas would go to Europe, or to Newport,
Vera loudly, joyously, insistently urging everyone to visit them
there if it were the latter. In November they would be in their
town house with new paintings and new rugs to show their guests: a
portrait of Vera, a rug stolen from a Sultan's palace.

Everybody said that Vera Villalonga did this sort of thing
extremely well; indeed she had no rival in her own particular
field. The weekly society journals depended upon her to supply
them with spectacular pictures of a Chinese ball every November
and a Micareme dance every spring; they sent photographers all the
way up to her camp that their readers might not miss a yearly
glimpse of the way Mrs. Villalonga entertained.

But Rachael, who had spent a portion of six summers with the
Villalongas, found herself, in her newly analytical mood,
wondering just who got any particular pleasure out of it all. Vera
herself, perhaps. Certainly her husband, who would spend all his
time playing poker and tennis, would have been as happy elsewhere.
Her two sons, tall, dark young men, in connection with whose
characters the world in general contented itself merely with the
word "wild," would be there only for a week or two at most. Billy
would wait for Joe Pickering's letters, Clarence would drink, and
watch Billy. Little Mina Villalonga, who had a minor nervous
ailment, would wander about after Billy. The Parmalees would come
up for a visit, and the Morans would come. Jack Torrence, spoiled
out of all reason, would promise a week and come for two days;
Porter Pinckard would compromise upon a mere hour or two, charging
into the camp in his racing car, introducing hilarious friends,
accepting a sandwich and a bottle of beer, and then tearing off
again. Straker Thomas, silent, mysterious, ill, would drift about
for a week or two; Peter Pomeroy would go up late in July, and be
adored by everyone, and take charge of the theatricals.

"The maids probably get any amount of fun out of it," mused
Rachael. Vera was notably generous to her servants: a certain pool
was reserved for them, and their numbers formed a most congenial
society every summer. "I don't believe I'll go to Vera's this
year," Mrs. Breckenridge said aloud to her husband and
stepdaughter.

"I'm not crazy about it," Billy agreed fretfully.

"Might as well," was the man's enthusiastic contribution.

"Oh, I'm GOING!" Billy said discontentedly. "But I don't see why
you and Rachael have to go."

"Don't you?" her father said significantly.

"Joe Pickering's going to be in Texas this whole summer, if that's
what you mean!" flamed Billy.

"I'm glad to hear it," Clarence commented.

"Anyway, you might depend upon Vera to take absolute good care of
Bill," Rachael said soothingly. "It's time you both got away to
some cooler place, if you are going to fight so about nothing! Why
do you do it? Billy can't marry anyone for eleven months, and if
she wants to marry the man in the moon then you can't stop her. So
there you are!"

"And I'm capable of running my own affairs," finished Billy with a
look far from filial.

"You only waste your breath arguing with Clarence when he's got
one of his headaches," Rachael said to her stepdaughter an hour or
two later when they were spinning smoothly into the city for the
planned shopping. "Of course he'll go to Vera's, and of course
you'll go, too! Just don't tease him when he's all upset."

"Well, what does he drink and smoke so much, and get this way
for?" Billy demanded sullenly.

"What does anybody do it for?" Rachael countered. And a second
later her singing heart was with Gregory again. He did not do it!

She entered into Billy's purchasing perplexities with great
sympathy; a successful hat was found, several deliciously
extravagant and fragile dresses for camping.

"You're awfully decent about all this, Rachael." Billy said once;
"it must be a sweet life we lead you sometimes!"

Something in the girl's young glance touched Rachael strangely.
They were in the car again now, going toward Mrs. Gregory's
handsome, old-fashioned house on Washington Square. Rachael was
inspired to seize the propitious second.

"Listen, Bill," she said, and paused. Billy eyed her curiously.
Obtuse as she was, a certain change in Rachael had not entirely
escaped the younger woman.

"Well?" she asked, on guard.

"Well--" Rachael faltered. Motherly advice was not much in her
line. "It's just this, Bill," she resumed slowly, "when you think
of marriage, don't think of just a few weeks or a few months;
think of all the time. Think of other things than just--that sort
of--love. Children, you know, and--and books, don't you know?
Things that count. Be--I don't say be guided entirely by what your
father and lots of other persons think, but be influenced by it!
Realize that we have no motive but--but affection, in advising you
to be sure."

The stumbling, uncertain words were unlike Mrs. Breckenridge's
usual certain flow of reasoning. But in spite of this, or because
of it, Billy was somewhat impressed.

"I had an aunt in California," Rachael continued, "who cried, and
got whipped and locked up, and all the rest of it, and she carried
her point. But she was unhappy. ..."

"You mean because Joe is divorced?" Billy asked in a somewhat
troubled voice.

The scarlet rushed to Rachael's face.

"N--not entirely," she answered in some confusion.

"That is, you don't think divorced people ought to remarry, even
if the divorce is fair enough?" Billy pursued, determined to be
clear.

"Well, I suppose every case is different, Bill."

"That's what you've always SAID!" Billy accused her vivaciously.
"You said, time and time again, that if people can't live together
in peace they OUGHT to separate, but that it was another thing if
they married again!"

"Did I?" Rachael asked weakly, adding a moment later, with obvious
relief in her tone: "Here we are! It's only this, Bill," she
finished, as they mounted the brownstone steps, "be sure. You can
do anything, I suppose. Only be sure!"

Mrs. Gregory would be down in a few minutes, old Dennison said.
Rachael murmured something amiable, and the two went into the
dark, handsome parlors; the house was full of parlors; on both
sides of the hall stately, crowded rooms could be glimpsed through
open doors.

"Isn't it fierce?" Billy said with a helpless shrug. Rachael
smiled and shook her head slowly in puzzled consent. "Don't you
suppose they ever AIR it?" pursued the younger woman in a low
tone. The air had a peculiarly close, dry smell.

"It wouldn't seem so," Rachael said, looking at the life-size
statues of Moorish and Neopolitan girls, the mantel clock
representing a Dutch windmill, the mantel itself, of black marble,
gilded and columned, with a mirror in a carved walnut frame
stretching ten feet above it, the beaded fire screen, the
voluminous window curtains of tasselled rep, and the ornate walnut
table across whose marble top a strip of lace had been laid.
Everything was ugly and expensive and almost everything was old-
fashioned, all the level surfaces of tables, mantel, and piano top
were filled with small articles, bits of ivory carving from China,
leather boxes, majolica jars, photographs in heavy frames,
enormous illustrated books, candlesticks, and odd teacups and
trays.

Smiling down--how Rachael knew that smile, half-quizzical and
half-tender--from a corner of the room was a beautiful oil
portrait of Warren Gregory, the one really fine thing in the room.
By some chance the painter had caught on his face the very look
with which he might, in the flesh, have studied this dreadful
room. Rachael felt a thrill go to her heels as she looked back at
the canvas, and far down in the deeps of her being the thought
stirred that some day her hand might be the one to change all
this--to make the woodwork colonial white, and the paper rich with
color, to have the black marble changed to creamy tiles, and the
rep curtains torn away. Then how charming the place would be when
visitors came in from the hot street!

"A million apologies--all my fault!" said Doctor Gregory in the
doorway. His mother, in rustling black silk, was on his arm. She
had given up her cane to-day to use the living support, and no
lover could have wished to appear more charming in his lady's eyes
than did Warren Gregory appear to Rachael as he lowered the frail
old figure to a chair and neglected his guests while he made his
mother comfortable.

"He would have you think, now, that I was the cause of the delay,"
said the old lady in a sweet voice that betrayed curiously the
weakness of the flesh and the strength of the spirit. "But I
assure you my beauty is no longer a matter of great importance to
me!"

"So it was Greg who was curling his hair?" Rachael asked, with one
swift and eloquent glance for him before she drew a much-fringed
hassock to his mother's knee and seated herself there with the
confidence of a captivating child. "I always thought he was rather
vain! But let's not talk about him, we only make him worse. Tell
me about yourself?"

Mrs. Gregory was a rather spirited old lady, and liked to fancy,
with the pathetic complacency of the passing generation, that her
sense of humor quite kept up with the times. Rachael knew her
well, and knew all her stories, but this only made her the
pleasanter companion. She quickly carried the conversation into
the past, and was content to be a listener; indeed, with a hostess
far removed in type from herself it was the only safe role to
play. The conversation was full of pitfalls for this charming and
dutiful worldling, and Rachael was too clever to risk a fall.

She was afraid of the crippled little gentlewoman in the big
chair, and Warren Gregory was afraid, too. Some mysterious element
in her regard for them made luncheon an ordeal for them both,
although Billy's healthy young eyes saw only an old woman,
impotent and alone; the maids were respectful and pitying, and
young Charles Gregory, who joined them at luncheon, Was obviously
unimpressed by his grandmother's power, but was smitten red and
inarticulate at the first glimpse of Billy.

This youth, after silently disposing of several courses, finally
asked in a husky voice for Miss Charlotte Haviland, and relapsed
into silence again. Billy flirted youthfully with her host,
Rachael devoted herself to the old lady.

She had always been happy here, a marked favorite with old Mrs.
Gregory to whom her audacious nonsense had always seemed a great
delight before. But to-day she was conscious of a change, she
could not control the conversation with her usual sure touch, she
floundered and contradicted herself like a schoolgirl. One of her
brilliant stories fell rather flat because its humor was largely
supplied by an intoxicated man--"of course it was dreadful, but
then it was funny, too!" Rachael finished lamely. Another flashing
account won from the old hostess the single words "On Sunday?"

"Well, yes. It was on Sunday. I am afraid we are absolute pagans;
we don't always remember to go to church, by any means!" Rachael
began to feel that a cloud of midges were buzzing about her face.
Every topic led her deeper into the quicksand. There was a
definite touch of resentment under the gracious manner in which
she presently said her good-bye, and they were no sooner in the
motor car than she exclaimed to Billy:

"Didn't Mrs. Gregory seem horribly cross to you to-day? She made
me feel as if I'd broken all the Commandments and was dancing on
the pieces!"

"What do you know about Charles asking for Charlotte?" was Billy's
only answer. "Isn't he just the sort of mutt who would ask for
Charlotte!"

"Isn't she quite lovely?" said Mrs. Gregory from over the fleecy
yarn she was knitting, when the guests had gone.

"Carol?" the doctor countered.

"Yes, Carol, too. But I was thinking of Mrs. Breckenridge. Do you
see her very often, James?"

"Quite a bit. Do you mind my smoking?"

"I often wonder," pursued the old lady innocently, "what such a
sweet, gay, lovely girl could see in a fellow like poor Clarence
Breckenridge!"

"Great marvel she doesn't throw him over!" Warren said casually.

"It distresses me to hear you talk so recklessly, my son," Mrs.
Gregory said after a brief pause,

"Lord, Mother," her son presently observed impatiently, "is it
reasonable to expect that because a girl like that makes a mistake
when she is twenty or twenty-one, that she shall pay for it for
the rest of her life?"

"Unfortunately, we are not left in any doubt about it," the old
lady said dryly. And as Warren was silent she went on with
quavering vigor: "It is not for us to judge her husband's
infirmities. She is his wife."

"Oh, well, there's no use arguing it," the man said pleasantly
after a sulphurous interval. "Fortunately for her, most people
don't feel as you do."

"You surely don't think that _I_ originated this theory?" his
mother asked quietly after a silence, during which her long
needles moved a little more swiftly than was natural.

"I don't think anything about it. I KNOW that you're much, much
narrower about such things than your religion or any religion
gives you any right to be," Warren asserted hotly. "It is nothing
to me, but I hate this smug parcelling out of other people's
affairs," he went on. "Mrs. Breckenridge is a very wonderful and a
most unfortunate woman; her husband isn't fit to lace her shoes--"

"All that may be true," his mother interrupted with some
agitation.

"All that may be true, you say! And yet if Rachael left him, and
tried to find happiness somewhere else--"

"The law is not of MY making, James," the old lady intervened
mildly, noting his use of the discussed woman's name with a pang.

"But it IS of your making--you people who sit around and say
what's respectable and what's not respectable! Who are you to
judge?"

"I try not to judge," Mrs. Gregory said so simply that the man's
anger cooled in spite of himself. "And perhaps I am foolish,
James, all mothers are. But you are the last of my four sons, and
I am a widow in my old age, and I tremble for you. When a woman
with beauty as great as that confides in you, my child, when she
turns to you, your soul is in danger, and your mother sees it. I
cannot--I cannot be silent--"

Rachael herself, an hour ago, had not used her youth and beauty
with more definite design than was this other woman using her age
and infirmity now. Warren Gregory was almost as readily affected.

"My dear Mother," he said sensibly and charmingly, "don't think
for one instant that I do not appreciate your devotion to me. What
has suddenly put into your head this concern about Mrs.
Breckenridge, I can't imagine. I know that if she were ever in any
trouble or need you would be the first to defend her. She is in a
peculiarly difficult position, and in a professional way I am
somewhat in her confidence, that's all!"

"I should think she could do something with Clarence," the old
lady said, somewhat mollified. "Interest him in something new;
lead him away from bad influences."

"Clarence is rather a hopeless problem," Warren Gregory said. The
talk drifted away to other persons and affairs, but when they
presently parted, with great amiability on both sides, Warren
Gregory knew that his mother's suspicions had in some mysterious
way been aroused, and old Mrs. Gregory, sitting alone in the heat
of the afternoon, writhed in the grip of a definite apprehension.
Absurd--absurd--to interpret that married woman's brightly
innocent glances into a declaration of love, absurd to find
passion concealed in Warren's cheerfully hospitable manner. But
she could not shake off the terrified conviction that it was so.

"Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the
season the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at
Belvedere Bay," stated the social columns authoritatively. "Mr.
Breckenridge and Miss Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for
the summer camp of Mrs. Booth Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs.
Breckenridge will join them after spending a few weeks with
friends."

Rachael saw the notice on the morning of the last day that she and
Clarence were together. In the afternoon Billy and Clarence were
to leave for the north, and Rachael was to go to Florence for a
day or two. She had been unusually indefinite about her plans for
the summer, but in the general confusion of all plans this had not
been noticed. She had superintended the packing and assorting and
storing of silver and linen, as a matter of course, and it was
easy to see that certain things indisputably her own went into
certain crates. Nobody questioned her authority, and Clarence and
Billy paid no attention whatever to the stupid proceeding of
getting the house in order for tenants.

On this last morning she sat at the breakfast table studying these
two who had been her companions for seven years, and who suspected
so little that this companionship was not to last for another
seven years, for an indefinite time. Billy was in a bad temper
because her father was not taking Alfred and the car with them to
the camp, as he had done for the two previous years. Clarence,
sullen as always under Billy's disapproval, was pretending to read
his paper. He had a severe headache this morning, his face looked
flushed and swollen. He was dreading the twenty-four hours in a
hot train, even though the Bowditches, going up in their own car
to their own camp, had offered the Breckenridges its comparative
comfort and coolness for the entire trip.

"Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in
a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want
to move I'll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at
all!"

"Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said
pacifically. She was quivering from head to foot with nervous
excitement; the next few hours were all-important to her. And,
under the pressure of her own great emotions, Billy seemed only
rather pitiful and young to-day, and even Clarence less a
conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than he had seemed.
She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years; indeed a
great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened her
manner toward them both. Her marriage had been a great
disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but
she was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary
emotion was about to make this parting strangely hard.

"Yes, but it's not the same thing," Billy raged. Rachael began a
low-voiced reassurance to which the younger woman listened
reluctantly, scowling over her omelette, and interposing an
occasional protest.

"Oh, yap--yap--yap! My God, I do get tired of hearing you two go
on and on and on!" Clarence presently burst out angrily. "If you
don't want to go, Billy, say so. I'm sick of the whole thing,
anyway!"

"You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And
because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she
perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much
rather have gone to California, Dad!"

How sure the youngster was of her power, Rachael thought, watching
him instantly soften under his daughter's skilful touch.

"For five cents," he said eagerly, "I'd wire Vera, and you and I'd
beat it to Santa Barbara! What do you say?"

"And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!"
Billy laughed. But the girl's gay patronage was never again to be
extended to Rachael Breckenridge.

"You couldn't disappoint Vera now," she protested.

"Oh, Lord! make some objections!" Clarence growled.

"My dear boy, it's nothing to me, whatever you do," Rachael said
quickly. "But Vera Villalonga is a very important friend for Bill.
There's no sense in antagonizing her--"

"No, I suppose there isn't," Billy said slowly. "But I wish she'd
not ask us every summer. I suppose we shall be doing this for the
rest of our lives!"

She trailed slowly from the room, and Clarence took one or two
fretful glances at his paper.

"Gosh, how you do love to spoil things!" he said bitterly to his
wife in a sudden burst.

Rachael did not answer. She rose after a few moments, and carried
her letters into the adjoining room. When Clarence presently
passed the door she called him in.

"Now or never--now or never!" said Rachael's fast-beating heart.
She was pale and breathing quickly as he came in. But Clarence,
sick and headachy, did not notice these signs of strong emotion.

"Clarence, I need some money," Rachael said simply.

"What for?" he asked unencouragingly.

The color came into his wife's face. She did not ask often for
money, although he was rich, and she had been his wife for seven
years. It was a continual humiliation to Rachael that she must ask
him at all for the little actual money she spent, and tell him
what she did with it when she got it. Clarence might lose more
money at poker in a single night than Rachael touched in a month;
it had come to him without effort, and of the two, she was the one
who made a real effort to hold the home together. Yet she was a
pensioner on his bounty, obliged to wait for the propitious mood
and moment. Under her hand at this moment was Mary Moulton's check
for one thousand dollars, more than she had ever had at one time
in her life. She could not touch it, but Clarence would turn it
into bills, and stuff them carelessly into his pocket, to be
scattered in the next week or two wherever his idle fancy saw fit.

"Why, for living, and travelling expenses," she answered, with
what dignity she could muster.

"Thought you had some money," he grumbled in evident distaste.

"Come in here a moment," Rachael said in a voice that rather to
his surprise he obeyed. "Sit down there," she went on, and
Clarence, staring at her a little stupidly, duly seated himself.
His wife twisted about in her desk chair so that she could rest an
arm upon the back of it, and faced him seriously across that arm.

"Clarence," said she, conscious of a certain dryness in her mouth,
and a sick quivering and weakness through-out her whole body, "I
want to end this."

"What?" asked Clarence, puzzled and dull, as she paused.

"I want to be free," Rachael said, stumbling awkwardly over the
phrase that sounded so artificial and dramatic. They looked at
each other, Clarence's bewildered look slowly changing to one of
comprehension under his wife's significant expression. There was a
silence.

"Well?" Clarence said, ending it with an indifferent shrug.

"Our marriage has been a farce for years--almost from the
beginning," Rachael asserted eagerly. "You know it, and I know it-
-everyone does. You're not happy, and I'm wretched. I'm sick of
excuses, and pretending, and prevaricating. There isn't a thing in
the world we feel alike about; our life has become an absolute
sham. It isn't as if I could have any real influence over you--you
go your way, and do as you please, and I take the consequences. I
realize now that every word I say jars on you. Why, sometimes when
you come into a room and find me there I can tell by the
expression on your face that you're angry just at that! I've too
much self-respect, I've too much pride, to go on this way. You
know how I hate divorce--no woman in the world hates it more--but
tell me, honestly, what do we gain by keeping up a life like this?
I used to be happy and confident and full of energy a few years
ago; now I'm bored all the time. What's the use, what's the use--
that's the way I feel about everything--"

"You're not any more tired of it than I am!" Clarence interrupted
sullenly.

"Then why keep it up?" she asked urgently. "You've Billy, and your
clubs, and your car, to fill your time. There'll be a fuss, of
course, and I hate that, but we'll both be away. We've given it a
fair trial, but we simply aren't meant for each other. Good
heavens! it isn't as if we were the first man and woman who--"

"Don't talk as if I were opposing you," Clarence said with a weary
frown.

Rachael, snubbed, instantly fell silent.

"I've got my side in all this dissatisfied business, too," the man
presently said with unsteady dignity. "You never cared a damn for
me, or what became of me! I've had you ding-donging your troubles
at me day and night; it never occurs to you what I'm up against."
He looked at his watch. "You want some money?" he asked.

"If you please," Rachael answered, scarlet-cheeked.

"Well, I can write a check--" he began.

"Here's this check of Mary Moulton's for July," Rachael said,
nervously adding: "She wants to pay month by month, because I
think she hopes you'll rent after August. I believe she'd keep the
place indefinitely, on account of being near her mother, and for
the boys."

Clarence took the check, and, hardly glancing at it, scrawled his
slovenly "C. L. Breckenridge" across the back with a gold-mounted
fountain pen. Rachael, whose face was burning, received it back
from his hand with a husky "Thank you. You'll have to furnish the
grounds, I presume--there will be a referee--nothing need get out
beyond the fact that I am the complainant. You--won't contest?
You--won't oppose anything?" She hated herself for the question,
but it had to be asked.

"Nope," the man said impatiently.

"And"--Rachael hesitated--"and you won't say anything, Clarence,"
she suggested, "because the papers will get hold of it fast
enough!"

"You can't tell me anything about that," he said sullenly. Then
there came a silence. Rachael, looking at him, wished that she
could hate him a little more, wished that his neglects and faults
had made a little deeper impression. For a minute or two neither
spoke. Then Clarence got up and left the room, and Rachael sat
still, the little slip held lightly between her fingers. The color
ebbed slowly from her face, her heart resumed its normal beat,
moments went by, the little clock on her desk ticked on and on. It
was all over; she was free. She felt strangely shaken and cold,
and desolately lonely.

He loved her as little as she loved him. They had never needed
each other, yet there was in this severance of the bond between
them a strange and unexpected pain. It was as if Rachael's heart
yearned over the wasted years, the love and happiness that might
have been. Not even the thought of Warren Gregory seemed warm or
real to-day; a great void surrounded her spirit; she felt a
chilled weariness with the world, with all men--she was sick of
life.

On the following day she gave Florence a hint of the situation. It
was only fair to warn the important, bustling matron a trifle in
advance of the rest of the world. Rachael had had a long night's
sleep; she already began to feel deliciously young and free. She
was to spend a few nights at the Havilands', and the next week
supposedly go to the Princes' at Bar Harbor; really she planned to
disappear for a time from her world. She must go up to town for a
consultation with her lawyer, and then, when the storm broke, she
would slip away to little Quaker Bridge, the tiny village far down
on Long Island upon which, quite by chance, she had stumbled two
years before. No one would recognize her there, no one of her old
world could find her, and there for a month or two she could walk
and bathe and dream in wonderful solitude. Then--then Greg would
be home again.

"I want to tell you something, Florence," Rachael said to her
sister-in-law when she was stretched upon the wide couch in
Florence's room, watching with the placidity of a good baby that
lady's process of dressing for an afternoon of bridge, or rather
the operations with cold cream, rubber face brush, hair tonic,
eyebrow stick, powder, rouge, and lip paste that preceded the
process of dressing. Mrs. Haviland, even with this assistance,
would never be beautiful; in justice it must be admitted that she
never thought herself beautiful. But she thought rouge and powder
and paste improved her appearance, and if through fatigue or haste
she was ever led to omit any or all of these embellishments, she
presented herself to the eyes of her family and friends with a
genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her
days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing,
manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and
her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her
appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain,
nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was
done. That about one-fifth of her waking time--something more than
two months out of the year--was spent in an unprofitable effort to
make herself, not beautiful nor attractive, but something only a
little nearer than was natural to a vague standard of beauty and
attractiveness, never occurred, and never would occur, to Florence
Haviland.

"What is it?" she asked now sharply, pausing with one eyebrow
beautifully pencilled and the other less definite than ever by
contrast.

"I don't suppose it will surprise you to hear that Clarence and I
have decided to try a change," Rachael said slowly.

"How do you mean a change?" the other woman said, instantly alert
and suspicious.

"The usual thing," Rachael smiled.

"What madness has got hold of that boy now?" his sister exclaimed
aghast.

"It's not entirely Clarence," Rachael explained with a touch of
pride.

"Well, then, YOU'RE mad!" the older woman said shortly.

"Not necessarily, my dear," Rachael answered, resolutely serene.

"Go talk to someone who's been through it," Florence warned her.
"You don't know what it is! It's bad enough for him, but it's
simple suicide for you!"

"Well, I wanted you to hear it from me," Rachael submitted mildly.

"Do you mean to say you've decided, seriously, to do it?"

"Very seriously, I assure you!"

"How do you propose to do it?" Florence asked after a pause,
during which she stared with growing discomfort at her sister-in-
law.

"The way other people do it," Rachael said with assumed lightness.
"Clarence agrees. There will be evidence."

Mrs. Haviland flushed.

"You think that's fair to Clarence?" she asked presently.

"I think that in any question of fairness between Clarence and me
the balance is decidedly in my favor!" Rachael said crisply.
"Personally, I shall have nothing to do with it, and Clarence very
little. Charlie Sturgis will represent me. I suppose Coates and
Crandall will take care of Clarence--I don't know. That's all
there is to it!"

Her placid gaze roved about the ceiling. Mrs. Haviland gazed at
her in silence.

"Rachael," she said desperately, "will you TALK to someone--will
you talk to Gardner?"

"Why should I?" Rachael sat up on the couch, the loosened mass of
her beautiful hair falling about her shoulders. "What has Gardner
or anyone else to do with it? It's Clarence's business, and my
business, and it concerns nobody else!" she said warmly. "You look
on from the outside. I've borne it for seven years! I'm young, I'm
only twenty-eight, and what is my life? Keeping house for a man
who insults me, and ignores me, who puts me second to his
daughter, and has put me second since our wedding day--making
excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I want to do, never
knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never having one
cent of money to call my own! I tell you there are days and days
when I'm too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think!
Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with
the Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis,
and dancing, Clarence wasn't sober ONE MOMENT of the time, not
one! One night, when we were dancing--but I won't go into it!"

"I know," Florence said hastily, rather frightened at this
magnificent fury. "I know, dear, it's too bad--it's dreadful--it's
a great shame. But men are like that! Now Gardner--"

"All men aren't like that! Gardner does that sort of thing now and
then, I know," Rachael rushed on, "but Gardner is always sorry.
Gardner takes his place as a man of dignity in the world. I am
nothing to Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what
Billy is! I have borne it, and borne it, and now I just can't--
bear it--any longer!"

And Rachael, to her own surprise and disgust, burst into bitter
crying, and, stammering some incoherency about an aching head, she
went to her own room and flung herself across the bed. The
suppressed excitement of the last few days found relief in a long
fit of sobbing; Florence did not dare go near her. The older woman
tried to persuade herself that the resentment and bitterness of
this unusual mood would be washed away, and that Rachael, after a
nap and a bath, would feel more like herself, but nevertheless she
went off to her game in a rather worried frame of mind, and gave
but an imperfect attention to the question of hearts or lilies.

Rachael, heartily ashamed of what she would have termed her
schoolgirlish display of emotion, came slowly to herself, dozed
over a magazine, plunged into a cold bath, and at four o'clock
dressed herself exquisitely for Mrs. Whittaker's informal dinner.
Glowing like a rose in her artfully simple gown of pink and white
checks, she went downstairs.

Florence had come in late, bearing a beautiful bit of pottery, the
first prize, and was again in the throes of dressing, but Gardner
was downstairs restlessly wandering about the dimly lighted rooms
and halls. He was fond of Rachael, and as they walked up and down
the lawn together he tried, in a blunt and clumsy way, to show her
his sympathy.

"Floss tells me you're about at the end of your rope--what?" said
Gardner. "Clarence is the limit, of course, but don't be too much
in a hurry, old girl. We'd be--we'd be awfully sorry to have you
come to a smash, don't you know--now!"

Thus Gardner. Rachael gave him a glimmering smile in the early
dusk.

"Not much fun for me, Gardner," she said gravely.

"Sure it's not," Gardner answered, clearing his throat
tremendously. Neither spoke again until Florence came down, but
later, in all honesty, he told his wife that he had pitched into
Rachael no end, and she had agreed to go slow.

Florence, however, was not satisfied with so brief a campaign. She
and Rachael did not speak of the topic again until the last
afternoon of Rachael's stay. Then the visitor, coming innocently
downstairs at tea time, was a little confused to see that besides
Mrs. Bowditch and her oldest daughter, and old Mrs. Torrence, the
Bishop and Mrs. Thomas were calling. Instantly she suspected a
trap.

"Rachael, dear," Florence said sweetly, when the greetings were
over, "will you take the bishop down to look at the sundial? I've
been boasting about it."

"You sound like a play, Florence," her sister-in-law said with a
little nervous laugh. "'Exit Rachael and Bishop, L.' Surely you've
seen the sundial, Bishop?"

"I had such a brief glimpse of it on the day of the tea," Bishop
Thomas said pleasantly, "that I feel as if I must have another
look at that inscription!" Smiling and benign, rather impressive
in his clerical black, the clergyman got to his feet, and turned
an inviting smile to Rachael.

"Shall I take you down, Bishop?" Charlotte asked, her eagerness to
be socially useful fading into sick apprehension at her mother's
look.

"No, I'll go!" Rachael ended the little scene by catching up her
wide hat. "Come on, Bishop," she said courageously, adding, as
soon as they were out of hearing, "and if you're going to be
dreadful, begin this moment!"

"And why, pray, should I be dreadful?" the bishop asked, smiling
reproachfully. "Am I usually so dreadful? I don't believe it would
be possible, among these lovely roses"--he drew in a great breath
of the sweet afternoon air--"and with such a wonderful sunset
telling us to lift up our hearts." And sauntering contentedly
along, the bishop gave her an encouraging smile, but as Rachael
continued to walk beside him without raising her eyes, presently
he added, whimsically: "Would it be dreadful, Mrs. Breckenridge,
if one saw a heedless little child--oh, a sweet and dear, but a
heedless little child--going too near the cliffs--would it be
dreadful to say: 'Look out, little child! There's a terrible fall
there, and the water's cold and dark. Be careful!'" The bishop sat
down on the carved stone bench that had been set in the circle of
shrubs that surrounded the sundial, and Rachael sat down, too.

"Well, what about the child?" he persisted, when there had been a
silence.

Rachael raised sombre eyes, her breast rose on a long sigh.

"I am not a child," she said slowly.

"Aren't we all children?" asked the bishop, mildly triumphant.

Rachael, sitting there in Florence's garden, looking down at the
white roofs of the village and the smooth sheet of blue that was
Belvedere Bay, felt a burning resentment enter her heart. How calm
and smug and sure of themselves they were, these bishops and
Florences and old lady Gregorys! How easy for them to advise and
admonish, to bottle her up with their little laws and platitudes,
these good people married to other good people, and wrapped in the
warmth of mutual approval and admiration! The bishop was talking--

"Children, yes, the best and wisest of us is no more than that,"
he was saying dreamily, "and we must bear and forbear with each
other. Not easy? Of course it's not easy! But no cross no crown,
you know. I have known Clarence a great many years--"

"I am sorry to hurt Florence--God knows I'm sorry for the whole
thing!" Rachael said, "but you must admit that I am the best judge
of this matter. I've borne it long enough. My mind is made up. You
and I have always been good friends, Bishop Thomas"--she laid a
beautiful hand impulsively on his arm--"and you know that what you
say has weight with me. But believe me, I'm not jumping hastily
into this: it's come after long, serious thought. Clarence wants
to be free as well--"

"Clarence does?" the clergyman asked, with a disapproving shake of
his head.

"He has said so," Rachael answered briefly.

"And what will your life be after this, my child?"

To this she responded merely with a shrug. Perhaps the bishop
suspected that such a calm confidence in the future indicated more
or less definite plans, for he gave her a shrewd and searching
look, but there was nothing to be said. The lovely lady continued
to stare at the soft turf with unsmiling eyes, and the clergyman
could only watch her in puzzled silence.

"After all," Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance,
"what are the statistics? One marriage in twelve fails--fails
openly, I mean--for of course there are hundreds that don't get
that far. Sixty thousand last year!"

"If those ARE the statistics," said the bishop warmly, "it is a
disgrace to a Christian country!"

"But you don't call this a Christian country?" Rachael said
perversely.

"It is SUPPOSEDLY so," the clergyman asserted.

"Supposedly Christian," she mused, "and yet one marriage out of
every twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians--well, you don't
CUT us! We may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our
fathers and mothers, we may envy our neighbor's goods, yes, and
his wife, if we like, but still--you don't refuse to come to our
houses!"

"I don't know you in this mood," said Bishop Thomas coldly.

"Call it Neroism, or Commonsensism, or Modernism, or anything you
like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling
what you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an
untruth. You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and
Gardner and Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all
day long and every day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess
neither silver nor gold in our purses, do we love our neighbors?
Why don't you denounce us? Why don't you shun the women in your
parish who won't have children as murderers? Why don't you brand
some of the men who come to your church--men whose business
methods you know, and I know, and all the world knows--as
thieves!"

"And what would my branding them as murderers and thieves avail?"
asked the bishop, actually a little pale now, and rising to face
her as she rose. "Are we to judge our fellowmen?"

"I'm not," Rachael said, suddenly weary, "but I should think you
might. It would be at least refreshing to have you, or someone,
demonstrate what Christianity is. It would be good for our souls.
Instead," she added bitterly, "instead, you select one little
thing here, and one little thing there, and putter, and tinker,
and temporize, and gloss over, and build big churches, with
mortgages and taxes and insurance to pay, in the name of
Christianity! If I were little Annie Smith, down in the village
here, I could get a divorce for twenty-five dollars, and you would
never hear of it. But Clarence Breckenridge is a millionaire, and
the Breckenridges have gone to your church for a hundred years,
and so it's a scandal that must be averted if possible!"

"The church frowns on divorce," said the bishop sternly. "At the
very present moment the House of Bishops, to which I have the
distinguished honor to belong, is considering taking a decided
stand in the matter. Divorce is a sin--a sin against one of God's
institutions. But when I find a lady in this mood," he continued,
with a sort of magnificent forbearance, "I never attempt to combat
her views, no matter how extraordinarily jumbled and--and childish
they are. As a clergyman, and as an old friend, I am grieved when
I see a hasty and an undisciplined nature about to do that which
will wreck its own happiness, but I can only give a friendly
warning, and pass on. I do not propose to defend the institution
to which I have dedicated my life before you or before anyone.
Shall we go back to the house?"

"Perhaps we had better," Rachael agreed. And as they went slowly
along the wide brick walk she added in a softened tone: "I do
appreciate your affectionate interest in--in us, Bishop. But--but
it does exasperate me, when so many strange things are done in the
name of Christianity, to have--well, Florence for instance--calmly
decreeing that just these other certain things shall NOT be done!"

"Then, because we can't all be perfect, it would be better not to
try to be good at all?" the bishop asked, restored to equanimity
by what he chose to consider an unqualified apology, and resuming
his favorite attitude of benignant adviser.

Rachael sighed wearily in the depth of her soul. She knew that
kindly admonitory tone, that complacent misconception of her
meaning. She said to herself that in a moment he would begin to
ask himself questions, and answer them himself.

"We are not perfect ourselves," said the clergyman benevolently,
"yet we expect perfection in others. Before we will even change
our own lives we like to look around and see what other people are
doing. Perfectly natural? Of course it's perfectly natural, but at
the same time it's one of the things we must fight. I shall have
to tell you a little story of our Rose, as I sometimes tell some
of my boys at the College of Divinity," continued the good man.
Rose, an exemplary unmarried woman of thirty, was the bishop's
daughter. "Rose," resumed her father, "wanted to study the violin
when she was about twelve, and her peculiar old pater decided that
first she must learn to cook. Her mother quite agreed with me, and
the young lady was accordingly taken out to the kitchen and
introduced to some pots and pans. I also got her some book, I've
forgotten its name--her mother would remember; 'Complete Manual of
Cookery'--something of that sort. A day or two later I asked her
mother how the cooking went. 'Oh,' she said, 'Rose has been
reading that book, and she knows more than all the rest of us!'"

Rachael laughed generously. They had reached the house again now,
and Florence, glancing eagerly toward them, was charmed to see
both smiling. She felt that the bishop must have influenced
Rachael, and indeed the clergyman himself was sure that her mood
was softer, and found opportunity before he departed to say to his
hostess in a low tone that he fancied that they would hear no more
of the whole miserable business.

"Oh, Bishop, how wonderful of you!" said Florence thankfully.




CHAPTER VI


Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a
bomb in the social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife,
of Clarence, of the town house and the country house began to
flood the evening papers, and even the morning journals found room
for a column or two of the affair on inside pages. Clarence was
tracked to his mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made
of his refusal to be interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to
be found.

The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet
lanes and along the sandy shore of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known
to everyone but her kind old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could
even glance interestedly at the papers now and then. Her identity,
in three long and peaceful months, was not even so much as
suspected. She did not mind the plain country table, the
inconvenient old farmhouse; she loved her new solitude.
Unquestioned, she dreamed through the idle days, reading,
thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on the
seashore watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves
that were never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the
flashing wings of the gulls, the even, steady upward beat of
strong pinions, the downward drifting through blue air that was of
all motion the most perfect.

And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no
more in the great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls,
than one of the grains of sand through which she ran her white,
unringed fingers. Clarence was a dream, Belvedere Bay was a dream;
it was all a hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the cocktails,
the dancing and tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and
about glittering dinner tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush
it all was--for nothing. The only actualities were the white sand
and the cool green water, and the summer sun beating down warmly
upon her bare head.

She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose
three big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady
rushing of surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a
soft fog wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the
bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm,
silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael
took her book to the beach, got into her stiff, dry bathing suit,
in a small, hot bathhouse furnished only by a plank bench and a
few rusty nails, and plunged into the delicious breakers she loved
so well. Busy babies, digging on the beach, befriended her, and
she grew to love their sudden tears and more sudden laughter,
their stammered confidences, and the touch of their warm, sandy
little hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny bagging
undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft
hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally
showed signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture
pleasantly, but managed to wander next day to some other part of
the beach, and so evade the definite beginning of a friendship.

The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very
bones. Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and
clean; nothing was crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes,
and white, bleaching sand, colorless little houses facing the elm-
lined main street, colorless planks outlining the road to the
water; the monotonous austerity, the pure severity of the little
ocean village was full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed
a sandy rise beyond Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north,
she could see the white roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar,
where the ocean fretted year after year to free the waters of the
bay only twelve feet away. Beyond on the slope, was the village
known as Clark's Hills, a smother of great trees with a weather-
whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof or fence in evidence,
to show the habitation of man.

In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was
nothing but the sand, and the coarse straggling bushes that rooted
in the sand, and the clear blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose
life had been too crowded, gloried in the honey-scented emptiness
of the sand hills, the measureless, heaving surface of the ocean,
the dizzying breadth and space in which, an infinitesimal speck,
she moved.

She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her
confidence, and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and
perhaps pleased as well to rent her two best rooms to this
charming stranger, the old lady protected the secret gallantly. It
was all much more simple than Rachael had feared it would be.
Nobody questioned her, nobody indeed paid attention to her; she
wandered about in a blissful isolation as good for her tired soul
as was the primitive life she led for her tired body.

Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit;
gradually a great many things that had seemed worth while in the
old life showed their true and petty and sordid natures now;
gradually the purifying waters of solitude washed her soul clean.
She began to plan for the future--a future so different from the
crowded and hurried past!

Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris,
Rome. They were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they
went far to make these days the happiest in her life. Her heart
would throb like a girl's when she saw, on the little drop-leaf
table in the hallway, the big square envelope addressed in the
doctor's fine hand; sometimes--again like a girl--she carried it
down to the beach before breaking the seal, thrilled with a
thousand hopes, unready to put them to the test. Yesterday's
letter had said: "My dearest,"--had said: "Do you realize that I
will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half as sweet?

She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for
her rose steadily through letter after letter; in August the
glowing letters of July seemed cold by contrast, in September
every envelope brought her a flaming brand to add to the fires
that were beginning to blaze within her. In late September there
was an interval; and Rachael told herself that now he was on the
ocean--now he was on the ocean--

By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost
deserted. Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the
two weeks of rest that break the fifty of work, still arrived on
the late train Saturday, and went away on the last train two weeks
from the following Sunday, but there were no more dances at the
one big hotel, and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The
tall, plain, attractive woman--with the three children and the
baby, who drove over from Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for
all her graying hair and sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of
Rachael's own world--still brought her shrieking and splashing
trio to the beach, but she had confided to Mrs. Dimmick, who had
known her for many summers, that even her long holiday was drawing
to a close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets down from the
attic, and began to talk of seeing her daughter in California.
Rachael, drinking in the glory of the dying summer, found each day
more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old hostess by
expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker
Bridge.

She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the
summer population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike
uninteresting, but for the quiet life that went on year in and
year out in the little side streets: the women who washed clothes
and swept porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies tumbling
around them, who went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church
at ten o'clock. Rachael got into talk with them, trying to realize
what it must be to walk a hot mile for the small transaction of
selling a dozen eggs for thirty cents, to spend a long morning
carefully darning an old, clean Nottingham lace curtain that could
be replaced for three dollars. She read their lives as if they had
been an absorbing book laid open for her eyes. The coming of the
Holladay baby, the decline and death of old Mrs. Bird, the narrow
escape of Sammy Tew from drowning, and the thorough old-fashioned
thrashing that Mary Trimble gave her oldest son for taking a
little boy like Sammy out beyond the "heads,"--all these things
sank deep into the consciousness of the new Rachael. She liked the
whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and climbing
honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in
the dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and
whittling as they watched the babies "while Lou gets her work
caught up".

October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had
ever seen. Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a
wind began to rise among the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a
white wooly coat and deep in a book, had been lying for an hour or
two on the beach, was suddenly roused by a shower of sand, and sat
up to look at the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving rapidly
overhead, and although the tide was only making, and high water
would not be due for another hour, the waves, emerald green,
swift, and capped with white, were already touching the landmost
water-mark.

Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home,
following the broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood,
and cocoanut shells that fringed the tide-mark, and rather
fascinated by the sudden ominous change in sea and sky. In the
little village there was great clapping of shutters and straining
of clotheslines, distracted, bareheaded women ran about their
dooryards, doors banged, everywhere was rush and flutter.

"D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be
shut of completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with
housewifely activity, and evidently, like all the village and like
Rachael herself, a little exhilarated by the oncoming siege.

"What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing
hammock from the porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big
cane rockers indoors.

"Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But--come
an awful mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have
to wait until she goes down, that's all."

"Shell I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much
karosene!" Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the
hired man, who was Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by
the armful, and fling it down by the airtight stove that had been
set up only a few days before.

The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard
rocked and arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the
deafening roar of the ocean seemed an actual menace as the night
came down. Chess and Florrie, after supper, frankly joined the
family group in the sitting-room, a group composed only of Rachael
and Mrs. Dimmick and two rather terrified young stenographers from
the city.

These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at
ten o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging,
and roaring. A confusion and excited voices below stairs brought
her down again rather pale, in her long wrapper, at three. The
Barwicks, mother, father, and three babies, had left their beach
cottage in the night and the storm to seek safer shelter and the
welcome sound of other voices than their own.

After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring
darkness the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's
boy, breathless, dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the
door, and burst in to say with youthful relish that the porches of
the Holcomb house were under water, and the boardwalk washed away,
and folks said that the road was all gone betwixt here and the
lighthouse. Rain was still falling in sheets, and the wind was
still high. Rachael braved it, late in the afternoon, to go out
and see with her own eyes that the surf was foaming and frothing
over the deserted bandstand at the end of the main street, and got
back to the shelter of the house wet and gasping, and with the
first little twist of personal fear at her heart. Suppose that
limitless raging green wall down there rose another ten--another
twenty--feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over little
Quaker Bridge, plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless
moments into its emerald depths, and then washed the little
loosely drifting bodies that had been men and women far out to sea
again?

What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it
was understood that there were washouts all along the line.
Rachael sat in the dark, stuffy little sitting-room with the
placid Barwick baby drowsing in her lap, and at last her face
reflected the nervous uneasiness of the other women. Every time an
especially heavy rush of rain or wind struck the unsubstantial
little house, Mrs. Barwick said, "Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless
terror, and the two young women looked at each other with a quick
hissing breath of fear.

The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs.
Dimmick's house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting
around her little stove listening to the wind and the ocean. The
old lady herself was the most cheerful of the group, although
Rachael and one or two of the others managed an appearance at
least of calm.

"Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's
all thinkin' of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was
under water! They've got sixty-foot elevation there!"

"I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New
York eagerly.

"There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest
Barwick said, and something in the simple words made little Miss
Stokes look sick for a moment.

"What's our elevation?" Rachael asked.

"'Bout--" Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by
that," he contented himself with remarking after a moment's
thought.

"But I never heard--I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a
whole village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged
the words out, and the white lips that spoke them.

"Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while
the old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight
strokes. "LORD, how it rains!" muttered Emily Barwick.

Nine o'clock--ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the
maid and man who would be married some day if they lived, the
husband and wife who had been lovers like them only a few years
ago, and who now had these three little lives to guard, all sat
wrapped in their own thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the stove's
red eye, thinking, thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren
Gregory; his steamer must be in now, he must be with his mother in
the old house, and planning to see her any day. To-morrow--if
there was a to-morrow--might bring his telegram. What would his
life be if he might never see her again? She could not even leave
him a note, or a word; on this eve of their meeting, were they to
be parted forever? Should she never tell him how dearly--how
dearly--she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart was wrung
with exquisite sorrow.

She thought of Billy--poor little Billy--who had never had a
mother, who needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead
now, and of the old blue coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough
blue hat. She thought of her great-grandmother in the little
whitewashed California cottage under the shadow of the blue
mountains, with the lilacs and marigolds in the yard. And colored
by her new great love, and by the solemn fears of this endless
night, Rachael found a tenderness in her heart for all those
shadowy figures that had played a part in her life.

At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the
house.

"Oh, God, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed
to the door and flung it open, and in a second were out in the
wild blackness of the night. Still the roaring and howling and
shrieking of the elements, still the infuriated booming of the
surf, but--thank God--no new sound. There was no break in the
flying darkness above them; the street was a running sheet of
water in the dark.

Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted.
Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen,
she was too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went
upstairs to bed. Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in
their chairs; Emily Barwick went to sleep with her head against
her husband's thin young shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and
there was a general move toward the kitchen.

Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly
the position she had taken when she crept into bed the night
before. For a few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely
room, and at the clock ticking briskly toward nine.

"Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No
need to ask of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding
the room. But after a few moments she got up and went to the
window. The trees, battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as
were left them gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow
water, the roadway was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling,
and everywhere was the drip and splash of water. But the sky was
clear and blue, and the air as soft as milk.

As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was
out in the new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into
her face; the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.

Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a
wreck; and the ocean, when she came to the shore, was still
rolling wild and high. But it was blue now, and the pure sky above
it was blue, and there was utter protection and peace in the sunny
air. Landmarks all along the shore were washed away, and beyond
the first line of dunes were pools left by the great tide, scummy
and sinking fast into the sand, to leave only a fringe of bubbles
behind. Minor wreckages of all sorts lay scattered all along the
beach: poles and ropes, boxes and barrels.

Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by
the fresh glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go
back, and there would be Warren's letter, or his telegram, or
perhaps himself, and then their golden days would begin--their
happy time! But even Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood
of utter gratitude and joy in just living--just being young and
alive in a world that could hold such a sea and such a sky.

A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came
down from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating
children had often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in
a small but eminently satisfactory cave. The storm had washed
several great smooth logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond
them to-day there was such a gurgling and churning going on that
Rachael, eager not to miss any effect of the storm, stepped
cautiously inside.

The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was
further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the
high tide. Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked
its course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost
filled the cave with their bubbling and swirling.

Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a sturdy little shoe,
accomplished such surprising results in freeing and directing the
stream that she fell upon it in sudden serious earnest, grasping a
long pole the better to push obstructing matters aside, and
growing rosy and breathless over her self-imposed and senseless
undertaking.

She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had
straightened herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief,
as the current rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth
of the cave. Looking about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw
Warren Gregory smiling at her.

For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness
in her face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and
for a few minutes they did not speak, eyes and lips together in
the wild rapture of meeting.

"Oh, Greg--Greg--Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the
words together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell
me--tell me all about it!" But before he could begin to answer her
their eager joy carried them both far away from all the
conversational landmarks, and again they had breath only for
monosyllables, instinct only to cling to each other.

"My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed
you--and you're more beautiful than ever--did you know it? More
beautiful even than I remembered you to be, and that was beautiful
enough!"

"Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that
praised her, his arm still holding her tight.

"I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years
we spend together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day
that you are the most beautiful, and the dearest--Oh, Rachael,
Rachael, shall I tell you something? It's October! Do you know
what that means?"

"Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely,
drawing herself back the length of their linked arms.

"Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?"

"Now--you embarrass me! Was--was anything settled?"

"Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?"

"Greg--" Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she
said in a whisper.

They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years
of riding unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world
of blue sky and white sand might have been made for them.
Rachael's hand lay in her lover's, her glorious eyes rarely left
his face. Browned by his summer of travel, she found him better
than ever to look upon; hungry after these waiting months, every
tone of his voice held for her a separate delight.

"Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?"

"Never--never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few
months!"

"What--didn't trust me?"

"No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't
think of the future or the past. It was all present."

"With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the
days. I've not done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you
remember our talk the night after the Berry Stokes' dinner?"

"Do I remember it?"

"Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we
would be sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself
to me! You don't know what my wife is going to mean to me, my
dearest. I can't believe it yet!"

"It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said
seriously. "I mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving
counts--"

"Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it--do you mean that you
love me?"

"Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if
there were real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from
him, and, as he followed her, she turned upon him the
extraordinary beauty of her face transfigured with strong emotion.

"Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've
heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is
ME! It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with
you"--she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand
pointed out across the smiling ocean--"to be with you and KNOW you
were mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it
all, and be glad--glad--glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday,
but what is this to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in
your arms!" Her voice broke on something like a sob, but her eyes
were smiling. "All my life I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm
awake now--I'm awake now! I begin to realize how helpless one is--
to realize what I should have done if you hadn't come--"

"My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else--feeling
as we feel--could I have done?"

Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and
looked wistfully into his eyes.

"It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me?
You--you love me?"

Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm
strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all
her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most
exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her
wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a
girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these
combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years
and loved her for more than one.

"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with
such a delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give
myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly
have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife,
and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down
into harness--one year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you
don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit
being nearly forty. Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate--
and that's what I want. I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling
that you and I don't care so much about going places, don't you
know? We'll like better just being home together, won't we? We're
older than most people now, aren't we?"

He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its
restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this
new phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times
more charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that
this eager girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and
rough white crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared
Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal
had come back to her, or been born in her. She was like no phase
of the many phases in which he had known her; she was a Rachael
who had never known the sordid, the disillusioning side of life.
Even her seriousness had the confident, eager quality of youth,
and her gayety was as pure as a child's. She had cast off the old
sophistication, the old recklessness of speech; she was not even
interested in the old associates. The world for her was all in him
and their love for each other, and she walked back to Quaker
Bridge, at his side, too wholly swept away from all self-
consciousness to know or to care that they were at once the target
for all eyes.

A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's
great touring car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door
when they got back, an incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge,
still gasping from the great storm.

"Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?"

"Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's--George Valentine's, you know,
at Clark's Hills."

"Oh, that's my nice lady--gray haired, and with three children?"
Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?"

"Know her? Valentine is my closest associate. They meet us in town
to-morrow: he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner
once a month for the rest of your life!"

The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved.

"I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!"

They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's
greeting, finding a certain grave significance, a certain
acceptance, in his manner.

"Wife and baby well, Martin?"

"Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge."

"Still in Belvedere Hills?"

"Well, just at present, yes, Madam."

"You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands,"
Doctor Gregory said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on
her delicious confusion. She was aware that feminine eyes from the
house were watching her. Presently she had kissed Mrs. Dimmick
good-bye. Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would take the
wheel himself for the three hours' run into town.

"Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent
vacuity of manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me
know when the weddin's goin' to be!"

"I'll let you know right now," said Doctor Gregory, who, gloved
and coated, was bustling about the car, deep in the mysterious
rites incidental to starting. "It's going to be to-morrow!"

"Good grief!" exclaimed Mrs. Dimmick delightedly. "Well," she
added, "folks down here think you've got an awfully pretty bride!"

"I'm glad she's up to the standard down here," Warren Gregory
observed. "Nobody seems to think much of her looks up in the
city!"

Rachael laughed and leaned from her place beside the driver to
kiss the old lady again and to wave a general good-bye to Florrie
and Chess and the group on the porch. As smoothly as if she were
launched in air the great car sprang into motion; the storm-blown
cottages, the battered dooryards, the great shabby trees over the
little post office all swept by. They passed the turning that led
to Clark's Bar, and a weather-worn sign-post that read "Quaker
Bridge, 1 mile." It was not a dream, it was all wonderfully true:
this was Greg beside her, and they were going to be married!

Rachael settled back against the deep, soft cushions in utter
content. To be flying through the soft Indian summer sunshine,
alone with Greg, to actually touch his big shoulder with her own,
to command his interest, his laughter, his tenderness, at will--
after these lonely months it was a memorable and an enchanting
experience. Their talk drifted about uncontrolled, as talk after
long silence must: now it was a waiter on the ocean liner of whom
Gregory spoke, or perhaps the story of a small child's rescue from
the waves, from Rachael. They spoke of the roads, splendidly hard
and clean after the rain, and of the villages through which they
rushed.

But over their late luncheon, in a roadside inn, the talk fell
into deeper grooves, their letters, their loneliness, and their
new plans, and when the car at last reached the traffic of the big
bridge, and Rachael caught her first glimpse of the city under its
thousand smoking chimneys, there had entered into their
relationship a new sacred element, something infinitely tender and
almost sad, a dependence upon each other, a oneness in which
Rachael could get a foretaste of the exquisite communion so soon
to be.

They were spinning up the avenue, through a city humming with the
first reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and
Rachael was laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen
shop, the milliner, a dinner absurdly happy, and one of the new
plays--a sunshiny morning when she and Elinor breakfasted in their
rooms, and opened box after box of gowns and hats--the hours fled
by like a dream.

"Nervous, Rachael?" asked Miss Vanderwall of the vision that
looked out from Rachael's mirror.

"Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that
her hands, busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees
almost unready to support her.

"It must be wonderful to marry a man like Greg," said the
bridesmaid thoughtfully. "He simply IS everything and HAS
everything--"

"Ah, Elinor, it's wonderful to marry the man you love!" Rachael
turned from the mirror, her blue eyes misted with tears under the
brim of her wedding hat.

"YOU!" Elinor smiled. "That I should live to see it! You--in
love!"

"And unashamed, and proud of it!" Rachael said with a tremulous
laugh. "Are you all ready? Shall we go down?" She turned at the
door and put one arm about her friend. "Kiss me, Elinor, and wish
me joy," said she.

"I don't have to!" asserted Miss Vanderwall, with a hearty kiss
nevertheless, "for it will be your own fault entirely if there's
ever the littlest, teeniest cloud in the sky!"

END OF BOOK I




BOOK II




CHAPTER I


Yet, even then, as Rachael Gregory admitted to herself months
later, there had been a cloud in the sky--a cloud so tiny and so
vague that for many days she had been able to banish it in the
flooding sunshine all about her whenever it crossed her vision.

But it was there, and after a while other tiny clouds came to bear
it company, and to make a formidable shadow that all her
philosophy could not drive away. Philosophy is not the bride's
natural right; the honeymoon is a time of unreason; a crumpled
rose-leaf in those first uncertain weeks may loom larger than all
the far more serious storms of the years to come.

Rachael, loving at last, was overwhelmed, intoxicated, carried
beyond all sanity by the passion that possessed her.

When Warren Gregory came to find her at Quaker Bridge on that
unforgettable morning after the storm, a chance allusion to Mrs.
Valentine, the charming unknown lady with the gray hair, had
distracted Rachael's thoughts from the point at issue. But later
on, during the long drive, she had remembered it again.

"But Greg, dear, did you tell me that you and Doctor Valentine
drove down yesterday in all that frightful storm?"

"No, no, of course not, my child; we came down late the night
before--why, yesterday we couldn't get as far as the gate! Mrs.
Valentine's brother was there, and we played thirty-two rubbers of
bridge! Sweet situation, you two miles away, and me held up after
three months of waiting!"

She said to herself, with a little pain at her heart, that she
didn't understand it. It was all right, of course, whatever Greg
did was all right, but she did not understand it. To be so near,
to have that hideous war of wind and water raging over the world,
and not to come somehow--to swim or row or ride to her, to bring
her delicious companionship and reassurance out of the storm! Why,
had she known that Greg was so near no elements that ever raged
could have held her--

But of course, she was reminding herself presently, Greg had never
been to Quaker Bridge, he had no reason to suppose her in actual
danger; indeed, perhaps the danger had always been more imagined
than real. If his hosts had been merely bored by the weather,
merely driven to cards, how should he be alarmed?

"Did the Valentines know what a tide we were having in Quaker
Bridge?" she asked, after a while.

"Never dreamed it; didn't know we'd been cut off until it was all
over!" That was reassuring, at least. "And, you see, I couldn't
say much about our plans. Alice Valentine's all wool, of course,
but she's anything but a yard wide! She wouldn't have understood--
not that it matters, but it was easier not! She was sweet to you
at the wedding, and she'll ask us to dinner, and you two will get
along splendidly. But she's not as--big as George."

"You mean, she doesn't like the--divorce part of it?"

"Or words to that effect," the doctor answered comfortably. "Of
course, she'd never have said a word. But they are sort of simple
and old-fashioned. George understands--that's all I care about. Do
you see?"

"I see," she answered slowly. But when he spoke again the sunshine
came back to her heart; he had planned this, he had planned that,
he had wired Elinor, the power boat was ready. She was a woman,
after all, and young, and the bright hours of shopping, of being
admired and envied, and, above all, of being so newly loved and
protected, were opening before her. What woman in the world had
more than she, what woman indeed, she asked herself, as he turned
toward her his keen, smiling look of solicitude and devotion, had
one-tenth as much?

Later on, in that same day, there was another tiny shadow.
Rachael, however, had foreseen this moment, and met it bravely.

"How's your mother, Greg?" she asked suddenly.

"Fine," he answered, and with a swift smile for her he added, "and
furious!"

"No--is she really furious?" Rachael asked, paling.

"Now, my dearest heart," Warren Gregory said with an air of
authority that she found strangely thrilling and sweet, "from this
moment on make up your mind that what my good mother does and says
is absolutely unimportant to you and me! She has lived her life,
she is old, and sick, and unreasonable, and whatever we did
wouldn't please her, and whatever anyone does, doesn't satisfy her
anyway! In forty years--in less than that, as far as I'm
concerned--you and I'll be just as bad. My mother acted like a
martyr on the steamer; she was about as gay with her old friends
in London as you or I'd be at a funeral; she had an air of lofty
endurance and forbearance all the way, and, as I said to Margaret
Clay in Paris, the only time I really thought she was enjoying
herself was when she had to be hustled into a hospital, and for a
day or two there we really thought she was going to have
pneumonia!"

Rachael's delightful laugh rang out spontaneously from utter
relief of heart.

"Oh, Greg, you're delicious! Tell me about old Lady Frothingham,
is she difficult, too? And how's pretty Magsie Clay?"

"Now, if we're married to-morrow," the doctor Went on, too much
absorbed in his topic to be lightly distracted. "But do you hear
me, Ma'am? How does it sound?"

"It sounds delicious! Go on!"

"If we're married to-morrow, I say--it could be to-day just as
well, but I suppose you girls have to buy clothes, and have your
hands manicured, and so on--"

"You know we do, to say nothing of lying awake all night talking
about our beaux!"

"Well"--he conceded it somewhat reluctantly--"then, to-morrow,
some time before I go with Valentine to call for you, I'll go down
to see my mother. She'll kiss me, and sigh, and feel martyred. In
a month or two she'll call on me at the office. 'Why don't you and
your wife come to see me, James?' 'Would you like us to, Mother?
We fancied you were angry at us.' 'I am sorry, my son, of course,
but I have never been angry. Will you come to-morrow night?' And
when we go, my dear, you'd never dream that there was anything
amiss, I assure you!"

"I'll make her love me!" said Rachael, smiling tenderly.

"Perhaps some day you'll have a very powerful argument," he said
with a significant glance that brought the quick blood to her
face. "Mother couldn't resist that!"

She did not answer. It was a part of this new freshness and purity
of aspect that she could not answer.

"You asked about Margaret Clay," the doctor remembered presently.
"She was the same old sixpence, only growing up now; she owns to
nineteen--isn't she more than that? She always did romance and
yarn so much about herself that you can't believe anything."

"She's about twenty-one, perhaps no more than twenty," Rachael
said, after some thought. "Did they say anything about Parker and
Leila?"

"No, but the old lady can't do much harm there. She'll not last
another six months. She may leave Margaret a slice, but it won't
be much of a slice, for Parker could fight if it was. Leila's
pretty safe. We'll have to go to that wedding, by the way!"

"Oh, Greg, the fun of going places together!" She was her happiest
self again. His mother and Alice Valentine and everything else but
their great joy was forgotten as they lingered over their luncheon
and planned for their wedding day.

If they could only have been alone together, always, thought the
new-made wife, when two perfect weeks on the powerful motor boat
were over, and all the society editors were busily announcing that
Doctor and Mrs. James Warren Gregory were furnishing their
luxurious apartment in the Rotterdam, where they would spend the
winter. They were so happy together; there was never enough time
to talk and to be silent, never enough of their little luncheons
all by themselves, their theatre trips, their afternoon drives
through the sweet, clear early winter sunshine on the Park.

Always in the later years Rachael could feel the joy of these days
again when she caught the scent of fresh violets. Never a day
passed that Warren did not send her or bring her a fragrant
boxful. They quivered on the breast of her gown, and on her
dressing-table they made her bedroom sweet. Now and then when she
and Warren were to be alone she braided her dark hair and wound it
about her head, tucking a few violets against the rich plaits,
conscious that the classic simplicity of the arrangement enhanced
her beauty, and was pleased in his pleasure.

It suited her whim to carry out the little affectation in her
soaps and toilet waters; he could not pick up her handkerchief or
hold her wrap for her without freeing the delicate faint odor of
her favorite flower. When they met downtown for dinner there was
always the little ceremony of finding the florist, and all the
operas this winter were mingled for Rachael with the most
exquisite fragrance in the world.

These days were perfect. It was only when the outside world
entered their paradise that anything less than perfect happiness
entered, too. Rachael's old friends--Judy Moran, Elinor, and the
Villalongas--said, and said with truth, that she had changed. She
had not tried to change, but it was hard for her to get the old
point of view now, to laugh at the old jokes, to listen to the old
gossip. She had been cold and wretched only a year before, but she
had had the confident self-sufficiency of a gypsy who walks
bareheaded and irresponsible through a world whose treasure will
never come her way. Now Rachael, tremulous and afraid, was the
guardian of the great treasure, she knew now what love meant, and
she could no longer face even the thought of a life without love.

Tirelessly, and with increasing satisfaction, she studied her
husband's character, finding, like all new wives, that almost all
her preconceived ideas of him had been wrong. Like all the world,
she had always fancied Greg something of an autocrat, positive
almost to stubbornness in his views.

Now it was amusing to discover that he was really a rather mild
person, except where his work was concerned, rarely taking the
initiative in either praising or blaming anybody or anything,
deeply influenced by the views of other persons, and content to be
rather a listener and onlooker than an active participant in what
did not immediately concern him. Rachael found this, for some
subtle reasons of her own, highly pleasing. It made her less
afraid of her husband's criticism, and spared her many of those
tremors common to the first months of married life. Also, it gave
her an occasional chance to influence him, even to protect him
from his own indifference to this issue or that.

She laughed at him, accusing him of being an impostor. Why,
everyone thought Dr. Warren Gregory, with his big scowl and his
firm-set jaw, was an absolute Tartar, she exulted, when as a
matter of fact he was only a little boy afraid of his wife! He
hated, she learned, to be uncertain as to just the degree of
dressing expected of him on different occasions, he hated to enter
hotels by the wrong doors, to hear her dispraise an opera
generally approved, or find good in a book branded by the critics
as worthless. With all his pride in her beauty, he could not bear
to have her conspicuous; if her laughter or her unusual voice
attracted any attention in a public place, she could see that it
made him uncomfortable. These things Rachael might have considered
flaws in another man. In Warren they were only deliciously
amusing, and his reliance upon her, where she had expected only
absolute self-possession from him, seemed to make him more her
own.

Rachael, daughter of wandering adventurers, had a thousand times
more assurance than he. In her secret heart she had no regard for
any social law; society was a tool to be used, not a weight under
which one struggled helplessly. She dictated where he followed
precedent; she laughed where he was filled with apprehension.
Seriously, she set her wits and her love to the task of
accustoming him to joy, and day by day he flung off the old, half-
defined reluctances that still bound him, and entered more fully
into the delights of the care-free, radiant hours that lay before
them.

His wife saw the change in him, and rejoiced. But what she did not
see, as the months went on, was the no less marked change in
herself. As Warren's nature expanded, and as he began to reach
quite naturally for the various pleasures all about him, Rachael's
soul experienced an alteration almost directly opposed.

She became thoughtful, almost reserved, she began to show a
certain respect for convention--not for the social conventions at
which she had always laughed, and still laughed, but for the
fundamental laws of truth, simplicity, and cleanness, upon which
the ideal of civilization, at least, is based. She noticed that
she was beginning to like "good" persons, even homely, dowdy, good
persons, like Alice and George Valentine. She lost her old
appetite for scandal, for ugly stories, for reckless speech.

Warren, freed once and for all from his old prejudice, found
nothing troublesome now in the thought that she had been another
man's wife; it was a common situation, it was generally approved.
As in other things, he had had stupidly conventional ideas about
it once--that was all. But Rachael winced at the sound of the word
"divorce," not because of her own divorce, but at the thought that
some other man and woman had promised in their first love what
later they could not fulfil, and hated each other now where they
had loved each other once, at the thought that perhaps--perhaps
one of them loved the other still!

"Divorce is--monstrous," she said soberly to her husband in one of
their hours of perfect confidence.

"How can we say it, of all persons, my darling? Don't be
hidebound!"

"No," she smiled reluctantly, "I suppose we can't. But--but I
never feel like a divorced woman, Warren, I feel like a different
woman, but not as if that term fitted me. It sounds so--coarse.
Don't you think it does?"

"No, I never thought of it quite that way. Everyone makes
mistakes," he answered cheerfully.

"Don't you care--that it's true of me?" she asked.

"Are you trying to make me jealous, you gypsy!" he laughed. But
there was no answering laughter in her face.

"Yes, perhaps I am," she admitted, as if she were a little
surprised that it was so. And in her next slowly worded sentence
she discovered for herself another truth. "I mind it, Warren!" she
said. "I wish, with all my heart, that it wasn't so!"

"That isn't very consistent, sweet. Your life made you what you
were, the one woman in the world I could ever have loved. Why
quarrel with the process?"

"I wish you cared!" she said wistfully.

"Cared?"

"Yes--suffered over it--objected. Then I could keep proving to you
that I never in my life loved anyone, man, woman, or child, until
now!"

"But I believe that, my darling!"

She smiled at his wide, innocent look, a mother's amused yet
hopeless smile, and as they rose from their late luncheon he put
his arm about her and tipped her beautiful face up toward his own.

"Don't you realize, my darling, that just as you are, you are
perfect to me--not nearly perfect, or ninety-nine per cent.
perfect, but pressed down and running over, a thousand per cent.,
a million per cent.?" he asked.

Her dark beauty glowed; she was more lovely than ever in her
exquisite content.

"Oh, Warren, if you'd only say that to me over and over!" she
begged.

"Dear Heaven, hear the woman! What else DO I do?"

"Oh, I don't mean now. I mean always, all through our lives. It's
ALL I want to hear!"

"Do you realize that you are an absolute--little--tyrant?" he
asked, laughing. Radiantly she laughed back.

"I only realize one thing in these days," she answered; "I only
live for one thing!"

It was true. The world for her now was all in her husband, his
smile was her light, and she lived almost perpetually in the
sunshine. When they were parted--and they were never long parted--
the memory of this glance or that tone, this eager phrase or that
sudden laugh, was enough to keep her happy. When they met again,
whether she came to meet him in his own hallway, or rose, lovely
in her furs, and walked toward him in some restaurant or hotel,
joy lent her a new and almost fearful beauty. To dress for him, to
make him laugh, to hold his interest, this was all that interested
her, and for the world outside of their own house she cared not at
all. They had their own vocabulary, their own phrases for moments
of mirth or tenderness; among her gowns he had his favorites.
among the many expressions of his sensitive face there were some
that it was her whimsical pleasure always to commend. Their
conversation, as is the way with lovers, was all of themselves,
and all of praise.

Long before they were ready for the world it began to make its
demands. Rachael loved her own home--they had chosen a large
duplex apartment on Riverside Drive--loved the memorable little
meals they had before the fire, the lazy, enchanting hours of
reading or of music in the big studio that united the two large
floors, the scent of her husband's cigar, the rustle of her own
gown, the snow slipping and lisping against the window, and it was
with great reluctance that she surrendered even one evening. But
there was hospitable Vera Villalonga and her dreadful New Year's
dance, and there were the Bowditch dinner and the Hoyt dinner and
the Parmalee's dance for Katrina. Unwillingly the beautiful Mrs.
Gregory yielded to the swift current, and presently they were
caught in the rush of the season, and could not have withdrawn
themselves except for serious cause.

Rachael smiled a little wryly one morning over Mrs. George
Valentine's cordially worded invitation to an informal dinner, but
she accepted it as a matter of course, and wore her most beautiful
gown. She deliberately set out to capture her hostess' friendship,
and simple, sweet Mrs. Valentine could not long resist her guest's
beauty and charm--such a young, fresh creature as she was, not a
bit one's idea of an adventuress, so genuinely interested in the
children, so obviously devoted to Warren.

Rachael, on her side, contemplated the Valentines with deep
interest. She found them a rather puzzling study, unlike any
married couple that she had ever chanced to know. Alice was one of
those good, homely, unfashionable women who seem utterly devoid of
the instinct for dressing properly. Her masses of dull brown hair
she wore strained from her high forehead and wound round her head
in a fashion hopelessly obsolete. Her evening gown, of handsome
gray silk, was ruined by those little fussy touches of lace and
ruffling that brand a garment instantly as "homemade."

George was one of the plainest of men, shy, awkward, insignificant
looking, with a long-featured, pleasant face, and red hair. Warren
had told his wife at various times that George was "a prince," and
physically, at least, Rachael found him disappointing, especially
beside her own handsome husband. She knew he was clever, with a
large practice besides his work as head surgeon at one of the big
hospitals, but Warren had added to this the information that
George was a poor business man, and ill qualified to protect his
own interests.

Yet, in his own home--a handsome and yet shabby brownstone house
in the West Fifties--he appeared to better advantage. There was a
brightness in his plain face when he looked at his wife, and an
adoring response in her glance that after twelve years of married
life seemed admirable to Rachael. "Alice" was a word continually
on his lips; what Alice said and thought and did was evidently
perfection. Before the Gregorys had been ten minutes in the house
on their first visit he had gone downstairs to inspect the
furnace, wound and set a stopped clock, answered the telephone
twice, and fondly carried upstairs a refractory four-year-old
girl, who came boldly down in her nightgown, with reproaches and
requests. On his return from this trip he brought down the one-
year-old baby, another girl, delicious in the placid hour between
supper and bed, and he and his wife and Warren Gregory exchanged
admiring glances as the beautiful Mrs. Gregory took the child
delightedly in her arms, contrasting her own dark and glowing
loveliness with the tiny Katharine's gold and roses.

It was a quiet evening, but Rachael liked it. She liked their
simple, affectionate talk, their reminiscences, the serenity of
the large, plainly furnished rooms, the glowing of coal fires in
the old-fashioned steel-barred grates. She liked Alice Valentine's
placidity, the sureness of herself that marked this woman as more
highly civilized than so many of the other women Rachael knew.
There was none of Judy's and Gertrude's and Vera's excitability
and restlessness here. Alice was concerned neither with her own
appearance nor her own wants; she was free to comment with
amusement or wonder or admiration upon larger affairs. Rachael
wondered, as beautiful women have wondered since time began, what
held this man so tightly to this mild, plain woman, and by what
special gift of the gods Alice Valentine might know herself secure
beyond all question in a world of beauty and charm and youth.

"Well, what d'you think of her, Alice?" Doctor Gregory had asked
proudly when his wife was on his arm and leave-taking was in
order.

"Think you're lucky, Greg," Mrs. Valentine answered earnestly.
"You've got a dear, good, lovely wife!"

"And you are going to let me come and make friends with the boy
and the girls some afternoon?" Rachael asked.

"If you WILL," their mother said, and she and Rachael kissed each
other. Gregory chuckled, in high feather, all the way home.

"You're a wonder, Ladybird! I have NEVER seen you sweeter nor
prettier than you were to-night!"

Rachael leaned back in the car with a long, contented sigh.

"One can see that she was all ready to hate me, Greg; a woman who
had been married, and who snapped up her favorite bachelor--"

He laughed triumphantly. "She doesn't hate you now!"

"No, and I'll see to it that she never does. She's my sort of
woman, and the children are absolute loves! I like that sort of
old-fashioned prejudice--honestly I do--that honor-thy-father-and-
thy-mother-and-keep holy-the-sabbath-day sort of person. Don't
you, Greg?"

"We--ll, I don't like narrowness, sweet."

"No." Rachael pondered in the dark. "Yet if you're not narrow you
seem to be--really the only word for it is--loose," she submitted.
"Somehow lately, a great many persons--the girls I know--do seem
to be a little bit that way."

"You don't find THEM judging you!" her husband said. Rachael
answered only by a rather faint negative; she would not elucidate
further. This was one of the things she could never tell Warren, a
thing indeed that she would hardly admit to her own soul.

But she said to herself that she knew now the worst evil of
divorce. She knew that it coarsened whomever it touched, that it
irresistibly degraded, that it lowered all the human standard of
goodness and endurance, and self-sacrifice. However justified, it
was an evil; however properly consummated, it soiled the little
group it affected. The disinclination of a good woman like Alice
Valentine to enter into a close friendship with a younger and
richer and more beautiful woman whose history was the history of
Rachael Gregory was no mere prejudice. It was the feeling of a
restrained and disciplined nature for an unchecked and ill-
regulated one; it was the feeling of a woman who, at any cost, had
kept her solemn marriage vow toward a woman who had broken her
word.

Rachael was beginning to find it more comprehensible, even more
acceptable, than the attitude of her own old world. Fresh from the
Eden that was her life with Warren, she had turned back to the
friends whose viewpoint had been hers a few months ago.

Were they changed, or was she? Both were changed, she decided. She
had been a cold queen among them once, flattered by their praise
and laughter, reckless in speech, and almost as reckless in
action. But now her only kingdom was in Warren Gregory's heart.
She had no largesse for these outsiders; she could not answer them
with her old quick wit now; indeed she hardly heard them. And on
their side, where once there had been that certain deference due
to the woman who, however wretched and neglected, was still
Clarence Breckenridge's wife, now she noticed, with quick shame, a
familiarity, a carelessness, that indicated plainly exactly the
fine claim to delicacy that she had forfeited. Her position in
every way was better now than it had been then. But in some subtle
personal sense she had lost caste. A story was ventured when she
chanced to be alone with Frank Whittaker and George Pomeroy that
her presence would have forbidden in the old days, and Allen
Parmalee gave her a sensation of absolute sickness by merrily
introducing her to his sister from Kentucky with the words: "Don't
stare at her so hard, Bess! Of course you remember her: she was
Mrs. Breckenridge last year, but now she's making a much better
record as Mrs. Gregory!"

The women were even more frank; Clarence's name was often
mentioned in her presence; she was quite simply congratulated and
envied.

"My dear," said Mrs. Cowles, at a women's luncheon, "you were
extraordinarily clever, of course, but don't forget that you were
extremely lucky, too. Clarence making no fuss, taking all the
trouble to provide the evidence, and Greg being only too anxious
to step into his shoes, made it easy for you!"

"I'm no prude," Rachael smiled, over a raging heart. "But I
couldn't see this coming, nobody did. All I could do was to break
free before my self-respect was absolutely gone!"

"Go tell that to the White Wings, darling," laughed Mrs.
Villalonga, lazily blowing smoke into rings and spirals.

"Seriously, Vera, I mean it!"

"Seriously, Rachael, do you mean to tell me that you hadn't the
SLIGHTEST idea--" Mrs. Villalonga roused herself, to smilingly
study the other woman's face as she asked the question. "Not a
word--not a HINT?"

"Ah, well--" Rachael's face was flaming. She would have put her
hand in the fire to be able to say "No." The others laughed
cheerfully.

"Nobody misunderstands you, dear: you were in a rotten fix and you
got out of it nicely," said fat Mrs. Moran, and Mrs. Villalonga
added consolingly: "Why, my heavens, Rachael, I'd leave Booth to-
morrow for anyone half as handsome as Warren Gregory!"

In March the Gregorys sent out cards for their first really large
entertainment, a Mardi-Gras ball. Rachael and Warren spent many
happy hours planning it: the studio was to be cleared, two other
big rooms turned into one for the supper, music for dancing,
musical numbers for the entertainment; it would be perfect in
every detail, one of the notable affairs of the winter. Rachael
hailed it as the end of the season. They were to make a flying
trip to the Bermudas in April, and after that Rachael happily
planned a month or two in the almost deserted city before Warren
would be free to get away to the mountains or the boat. It was
with a delightful sense of freedom that she realized that her
first winter in her new role was nearly over. Next winter her
divorce and remarriage would be an old story, there would be other
gossip more fascinating and more new, she would be taken quite for
granted. Again, she might more easily evade the social demand next
winter without exposing herself to the charge of being fickle or
changed. This year her brave and dignified facing of the world had
been a part of the price she paid for her new happiness. Now it
was paid.

And for another reason, half-defined, Rachael was glad to see the
months go by. She had been Warren Gregory's wife for nearly six
months now, and the rapture of being together was still as great
for them both as it had been in the first radiant days of their
marriage. For herself, indeed, she knew that the joy was
constantly deepening, and even the wild hunger and passion of her
heart could find no flaw in his devotion. Her surrender to him was
with a glorious and unashamed completeness, the tones of her
extraordinary voice deepened when she spoke to him, and in her
eyes all who looked might read the story of insatiable and yet
satisfied love.




CHAPTER II


Plans for the big dance presently began to move briskly, and there
was much talk of the affair. As hostess, Rachael would not mask,
nor would Warren, but they were already amusing themselves with
the details of elaborate costumes. Warren's rather stern and
classic beauty was to be enhanced by the blue and buff of an
officer of the Revolution, fine ruffles falling at wrist and
throat, wide silver buckles on square-toed shoes, and satin ribbon
tying his white wig. Rachael, separately tempted by the thought of
Dutch wooden shoes and of the always delightful hoop skirts,
eventually abandoned both because it was not possible historically
to connect either costume with the one upon which Warren had
decided. She eventually determined to be the most picturesque of
Indian maidens, with brown silk stockings disappearing into
moccasins, exquisite beadwork upon her fringed and slashed skirt,
feathers in her loosened hair, and a small but matchless tiger
skin, strapped closely across her back, to lend a touch of
distinction to the costume.

On the Monday evening before the dance she tried on her regalia
and appeared before her husband and three or four waiting dinner
guests, so exquisite a vision of glowing and radiant beauty that
their admiration was almost a little awed. Her cheeks were crimson
between her loosened rich braids of hair; her eyes shone deeply
blue, and the fantastic costume, with its fluttering strips of
leather and richly colored wampum, gave an extraordinary quality
of youth and almost of frailty to her whole aspect.

"The woman just sent this home. I couldn't resist showing you!"
said Rachael, in a shower of compliments. "Isn't my tiger a
darling? Warren went six hundred and seventy-two places to catch
him. Of course there never was a stripey tiger like this in North
America but what care I? I'm only a poor little redskin; a
trifling inconsistency like that doesn't worry ME!"

"Me taky you my wikiup-HUH!" said Frank Whittaker invitingly. "You
my squaw?"

"Come here, Hattie Fishboy," said her husband, catching her by the
arm. His face showed no more than an amused indulgence to her
caprice, but Rachael knew he was pleased. "Well, when you first
planned this outfit I thought it was going to be an awful mess,"
said he, turning her slowly about. "But it isn't so bad!"

"Isn't so bad!" Mrs. Bowditch said scornfully; "it's the loveliest
thing I ever saw. I'll tell you what, Rachael, if you come down to
Easthampton this summer we'll have a play, and you can be an
Indian--"

"I'd love it," Rachael said, and making a deep bow before her
husband she added: "I'll be Squaw-Afraid-of-Her-Man!"

She heard them laughing as she ran upstairs to change to a more
conventional dress.

"Etta," said she, consigning the Indian costume to her maid, "I'm
too happy to live!"

Etta, one of those homely, conscientious women who extract in some
mysterious way an actual pride and pleasure from the beauty of the
women whom they serve, smiled faintly and dully.

"The weather's getting real nice now," she submitted, as one who
will not discourage a worthy emotion.

Rachael laughed out joyously. The next instant she had flung up a
window and leaned out in the spring darkness. Trees on the drive
were rustling over pools of light, a lighted steamboat went slowly
up the river, the brilliant eyes of motor cars curved swiftly
through the blackness. A hurdy-gurdy, guarded by two shadowy
forms, was pouring out a wild jangle of sound from the curb. When
the window was shut, a moment later, the old Italian man and woman
who owned the musical instrument decided that they must mark this
apartment house for many a future visit, and, chattering
hopefully, went upon their way. The belladonna in the spangled
gown, who had looked down upon them for a brief interval,
meanwhile ran down to her guests.

She was in wild spirits, inspired with her most enchanting mood;
for an hour or two there was no resisting her. Mrs. Whittaker and
Mrs. Bowditch fell as certainly under her spell as did the three
men. "She really HAS changed since she married Greg," said Louise
Bowditch to Mrs. Whittaker; "but it's all nonsense--this talk
about her being no more fun! She's more fun than ever!"

"She's prettier than ever," Gertrude Whittaker said with a sigh.

The next afternoon, a dreary, wet afternoon, at about four
o'clock, Warren Gregory stepped out of the elevator, and quietly
admitted himself to his own hallway with a latchkey. It was an
unusual hour for the doctor to come home, and in the butler's
carefully commonplace tone as he answered a few questions Warren
knew that he knew.

The awning had been stretched across the sidewalk, caterers' men
were in possession, the lovely spacious rooms were full of
flowers; the big studio had been emptied of furniture, there were
great palms massed in the musicians' corner; maids were quietly
busy everywhere; no eye met the glance of the man of the house as
he went upstairs.

He found Mrs. Gregory alone in her own luxurious room. No one who
had seen her in the excited beauty of the night before would have
been likely to recognize her now. She was pale, tense, and visibly
nervous, wrapped in a great woolly robe, as if she were cold, and
with her hair bound carelessly and tightly back as a woman binds
it for bathing.

"You've seen it?" she said instantly, as her husband came in.

"George called my attention to it; I came straight home. I knew"--
he was kneeling beside her, one arm about her, all his tenderness
and devotion in his face--"I knew you'd need me."

She laid an arm about his neck, sighed deeply, but continued to
stare distractedly beyond him.

"Warren, what shall we do?" she said with a certain vagueness and
brokenness in her manner that he found very disquieting.

"Do, sweetheart?" he echoed at a loss.

"With all those people coming to-night," she added, mildly
impatient.

"Why, what CAN we do, dear?"

"You don't mean," Rachael said incredulously, "that we shall have
to GO ON with it?"

"Think a minute, dearest. Why shouldn't we?"

"But"--her color, better since his entrance, was waning again--
"with Clarence Breckenridge dying while we dance!" she shuddered.

"Could anything be more preposterous than your letting anything
that concerns Clarence Breckenridge affect what you do now?" he
asked with kindly patience.

"No, it's not that!" she answered feverishly. "But--but for any
old friend one would--would make a difference, and surely--surely
he was more than that!"

"He WAS more than that, of course, but he has been less than
nothing to you for a long time!"

"Yes, legally--technically, of course," Rachael agreed nervously.
She sat silent for a moment, frowning over some sombre thought.
"But, Warren, they'll all know of it, they'll all be THINKING of
it," she said presently. "I--really I don't think I can go through
it!"

"It's too bad, of course," Warren Gregory said with his arm still
about her. "I'd give ten thousand dollars to have had the poor
fellow select some other time. But you've had nothing to do with
it, and you simply must put it out of your mind!"

"It was Billy's marriage, of course!"

"Of course. She was married yesterday, you see, the day she came
of age. Poor kid--it's rather a sad start for her, especially with
no one but Joe Pickering to console her!"

"She was mad about her father," Rachael said in a preoccupied
whisper. "Poor Billy--poor Billy! She never crossed him in
anything but this. What did you see it in?"

"The World. How did you hear it?"

"Etta brought up the paper." She closed her eyes and leaned back
in her chair. "It seemed to jump at me--his picture and the name.
Is he living--where is he?"

"At St. Mark's. He won't live. Poor fellow!" Warren Gregory
scowled thoughtfully as he gave a moment's thought to the other
man's situation, and then smiled sunnily at his wife with a brisk
change of topic. "Well," he said cheerfully, "is anyone in this
place glad to see me, or not, or what?"

"It just seems to me that I CANNOT face all those people to-
night!" Rachael said, giving him a quick, unthinking kiss before
she gently put him away from her, and got to her feet. "It seems
so wrong--so coarse--to be utterly and totally indifferent to the
man who was my husband a year ago. I don't love him, he is nothing
to me, but it's all wrong, this way. If it was Peter Pomeroy or
Joe Butler, of COURSE we'd put off our dance--Warren," she turned
to him with sudden hope in her eyes, "do you suppose anybody'll
come?"

"My dear girl," he said, displeased, "why are you working yourself
into a fever over this? It's most unfortunate, but as far as
you're concerned, it's unavoidable, and you'll simply have to put
a brave face on it, and get through it SOMEHOW! I am absolutely
confident that when you've pulled yourself together you'll come
through with flying colors. Of course everyone'll come; this is
their chance to show you exactly how little they ever think of you
as Breckenridge's wife! And this is your chance, too, to act as if
you'd never heard of him. Dash it! it does spoil our little party,
but it can't be helped!"

"Do you suppose Billy's with him?" Rachael asked, her absent,
glittering eyes fixed upon her own person as she sat before her
mirror.

"Oh, no--she and Pickering sailed yesterday for England--that's
the dreadful thing for her. Clarence evidently spent the whole
night at the club, sitting in the library, thinking. Berry Stokes
went in for his mail after the theatre, and they had a little
talk. He promised to dine there to-night. At about ten this
morning Billings, the steward there, saw old Maynard going out--
Maynard's one of the directors--and asked him if he wouldn't
please go and speak to Mr. Breckenridge. Mayn went over to him,
and Clarence said, 'Anything you say--'"

Rachael gave a gasp that was like a shriek, and put her two elbows
on the dressing-table, and her face in her hands. It was
Clarence's familiar phrase.

"Oh, don't--don't--don't--Greg!"

"Well, that was all there was to it," her husband said, watching
her anxiously. "He had the thing in his pocket. He stood up--
everybody heard it. Fellows came rushing in from everywhere. They
got him to a hospital."

"Florence is with him, of course?"

"Florence is at Palm Beach."

"Then who IS with him, Greg?"

"My dear girl, how do I know? It's none of my affair!"

Rachael sat still for perhaps two minutes, while her husband,
ostentatiously cheerful, moved about the room selecting a change
of clothes.

"To-morrow you can take it as hard as you like, sweet," said he.
"But to-night you'll have to face the music! Now get into
something warm--it's a little cool out--and I'll take you for a
spin, and we'll have dinner somewhere. Then we'll get back here
about eight o'clock, and take our time dressing."

"Yes, I'll do that," Rachael agreed automatically. A moment later
she said urgently: "Warren, isn't there a chance that I'm right
about this? Mightn't it be better simply to telephone everyone
that the dance is postponed? Make it next week, or Mi-Careme--
anything. If they talk--let them! I don't care what they say.
They'll talk anyway. But every fibre of my being, every delicate
or decent instinct I ever had, rebels against this. Say I'm not
well, and let them buzz! I know what you are going to say--I know
that it would SEEM less sensitive, less fine, to mourn for one man
while I'm another man's wife, than to absolutely ignore what
happens to him, but you know what's the truth! I never loved him,
and I love every hair of your head--you know that. Only--"

She stopped short, baffled by the difficulty of expressing herself
accurately.

"If you really love me, do what I ask you to-night," Warren
Gregory said firmly.

His wife sat as if turned to stone for only a few seconds. When
she spoke it was naturally and cheerfully.

"I'll be ready in no time, dear. Where are we to dine?" She
glanced at her little crystal clock as she spoke, as if she were
computing casually the length of the drive before dinner. But what
she said in her heart was, "At this time to-morrow it will all
have been over for many hours!"

A few days later the Gregorys sailed for Bermuda, Rachael with a
sense of whipped and smarting shame that was all the more acute
because she could not share it with this dearest comrade and
confidant. Warren thought indeed that the miserable episode of the
past week had been dismissed from her mind, and delighting like a
boy in the little holiday, and proud of his beautiful wife, he
found their hours at sea cloudless. With two men, whose
acquaintance was made on the steamer, they played bridge, and
Rachael's game drew other players from all sides to watch her
leads and grin over her bidding. They walked up and down the deck
for hours together, they lay side by side in deck chairs lazily
watching the blue water creep up and down the painted white ropes
of the rail; but they never spoke of Clarence Breckenridge.

The Mardi-Gras dance had been like a hideous dream to Rachael. She
had known that it would be hard from the first sick moment in
which the significance of Clarence's suicide had rushed upon her.
She had known that her arriving guests would be gay and
conversational, that the dance and the supper would go with a dash
and swing which no other circumstance could more certainly have
assured for them; and she knew that in every heart would be the
knowledge that Clarence Breckenridge was dying by his own hand,
and his daughter on the ocean, and that this woman in the Indian
dress, with painted lips and a tiger skin outlining her beautiful
figure, had been his wife.

This she had expected, and this was as she had expected. But there
were other circumstances that made her feel even more acutely the
turn of the screw. Joe Butler, always Clarence's closest friend,
did not come to the dance, and at about twelve o'clock an innocent
maid delivered to Warren a message that several persons besides
Warren heard: "Mr. Butler to speak to you on the telephone, Doctor
Gregory."

Everyone could surmise where Joe Butler was, but no one voiced the
supposition. Warren, handsome in his skirted coat, knee breeches,
and ruffles, disappeared from the room, and the dancing went on.
The scene was unbelievably brilliant, the hot, bright air sweet
with flowers and perfume, and the more subtle odors of silk and
fine linen and powder on delicate skin. Warren was presently among
them again, and there was a supper, the hostess' lovely face
showing no more strain or concern than was natural to a woman
eager to make comfortable nearly a hundred guests.

After supper there was more dancing, and an augmented gayety.
There were no more telephone messages, nor was there any definite
foundation for the rumor that was presently stealthily
circulating. Women, powdering their noses as they waited for their
wraps, murmured it in the dressing-rooms; a clown, smoking in the
hall, confided it to a Mephistopheles; a pastry cook, after his
effusive good-nights, confirmed it as he climbed into the motorcar
that held the Pierrette who was his wife: "Dead, poor fellow!"

"Dead, poor Clarence!" said Mrs. Prince, magnificent as Queen
Elizabeth, as she and Elinor Vanderwall went downstairs. She had
once danced a fancy dance with him more than twenty years ago.
"Awful!" said Elinor, shuddering.

After the last guest was gone Warren telephoned to the hospital,
Rachael, a little tired and pale in the Indian costume, watching
and listening tensely. She was sick at heart. Even into the
library, where they stood, the Mardi-Gras disorder had penetrated:
a blue silk mask was lying across Warren's blotter, a spatter of
confetti lay on the polished floor, and on the reading table was a
tray on which were two glasses through whose amber contents a lazy
bubble still occasionally rose. The logs that had snapped in the
fireplace were gone, only gray ashes remained, and to Rachael, at
least, the room's desolation and disorder seemed to typify her own
state of mind.

She could tell from Warren's look that he found the whole matter
painful and distasteful to an almost unbearable degree; on his
handsome serious face was an expression of grim endurance, of hurt
yet dignified protest against events. He did not blame her, how
could he blame her? But he was suffering in every fibre of his
sensitive soul at this sordid notoriety, at this blatant voicing
of a hundred ugly whispers in a matter so closely touching the
woman he loved.

"Dead?" Rachael said quietly, when his brief conversation was
over.

Warren Gregory, setting the telephone back upon the desk, nodded
gravely.

Rachael made no comment. For a moment her eyes widened nervously,
and a little shudder rippled through her. Then silently she
gathered up the leather belt and chains of beads that she had been
loosening as she listened, and slowly went toward the door.

They did not speak again of Clarence that night, although they
chatted easily for the next hour on other topics, even laughing a
little as the various episodes of the evening were passed in
review.

But Rachael did not sleep, nor did she sleep during the long hours
of the following night. On the third night she wakened her husband
suddenly from his sleep.

"Greg--Greg! Won't you talk to me a little? I'm going mad, I
think!"

"Rachael! What is it?" stammered the doctor, blinking in the dim
light of Rachael's bedside lamp. His wife, haggard, with her rich
hair falling in two long braids over her shoulders, was sitting on
the side of his bed. "What is it, darling--hear something?" he
asked, more naturally, putting his arm about her.

"I've been lying awake--and lying awake!" said Rachael, panting.
"I haven't shut my eyes--it's nearly three. Greg, I keep seeing
it--Clarence's face, you know, with that horrible scar! What shall
I do?"

Shivering, gasping, wild-eyed, she clung to him, and for a long
hour he soothed her as if she had been an hysterical child. He put
her into a comfortable chair, mixed her a sedative, and knelt
beside her, slowly winning her back to calm and sanity again. It
was terrible, of course, but no one but Clarence himself was to
blame, unless it was poor Billy--

"Yes, I must see Billy when she comes back!" Rachael said quickly,
when the tranquillizing voice reached this point. If Warren
Gregory's quiet mouth registered any opposition, she did not see
it, and he did not express it. She was presently sound asleep,
still catching a long childish breath as she slept. But she woke
smiling, with all the horrid visions of the past few days
apparently blotted out, and she and Warren went gayly downtown to
get steamer tickets, and buy appropriate frocks and hats for the
spring heat of Bermuda.

In midsummer came the inevitable invitation to visit old friends
at Belvedere Bay. Rachael was pleased to accept Mrs. Moran's
hospitality for a glorious July week. Warren, to her delight, took
an eightdays' holiday, and while he looked to his racquet and golf
irons she packed her prettiest gowns. Belvedere Bay welcomed them
rapturously, and beautiful Mrs. Gregory was the idol of the hour.
Mrs. Moulton, giving a tennis tea during this week, duly sent Mrs.
Gregory a card. But when society wondering whether Rachael would
really be a guest in her own old home, had duly gathered at the
Breckenridge house, young Dicky Moran was so considerate as to be
flung from his riding-horse. Neither the Gregorys nor the Morans
consequently appeared at the tea, but Rachael, meeting all
inquirers on the Moran terrace, late in the afternoon, with the
news that Dicky was quite all right, no harm done, asked prettily
for details of the affair they had missed.

She told herself that the past really made no difference in the
radiant present, but she knew it was not so. In a thousand little
ways she had lost caste, and she saw it, if Warren did not. A
certain bloom was gone. Girls were not quite as deferentially
adoring, women were a little less impressed. The old prestige was
somehow lessened. She knew that newcomers at the club, struck by
her beauty, were a little chilled by her history. She felt the
difference in the very air.

In her musings she went over the old arguments hotly. Why was she
merely the "divorced Mrs. Gregory?" Why were these casual
inquirers not told of Clarence, of her long endurance of neglect
and shame? More than once the thought came to her, that if other,
events had been as they were, and only the facts of her divorce
and remarriage lacking, she would have been Clarence's widow now.

"What's the difference? It all comes out the same!" commented
Warren, to whom she confided this thought.

"Then you and I would have been only engaged now," said Rachael,
smiling. "And I would like that!"

"You mean you regret your marriage?" he laughed, his arms about
her.

"I'd like to live the first days over and over and over again,
Greg!" she answered passionately.

"You are an insatiable creature!" he said. But her earnestness was
beginning to puzzle him a little. She was too deeply wrapped in
her love for her own happiness or his. There was something almost
startling in her intensity. She was jealous of every minute that
they were apart; she made no secret of her blind adoration.

Warren had at first found this touching; it had humbled him.
Later, in the first months of their marriage, he had shared it,
and their mutual passion had seemed to them both a source of
inexhaustible delight. But now, even while he smiled at her, his
keen sensitiveness where her dignity was concerned had shown him
that there was in her attitude something a little pitiful,
something even a little absurd.

Judy and Gertrude and little Mrs. Sartoris listened interestedly
when Rachael talked of Greg, of his likes, his dislikes, his
favorite words, his old-maidish way of arranging his ties, his
marvellous latest operation. But Warren, watching his wife's
flushed, lovely face, wondered if they were laughing at her. He
smiled uncomfortably when she interrupted her bridge game to come
across the club porch to him, to ask him if the tennis had been
good, to warn him that he would catch cold if he did not instantly
get out of those wet flannels, to ask Frank Whittaker what he
meant by beating her big boy three sets in succession?

"Rachael, I'm dealing for you--come back here!" Gertrude might
call.

"Deal away!" Rachael, one hand on Warren's arm, would look saucily
at the others over his shoulder. "I like my beau," she would
assert brazenly, "and if you say a word more, I'll kiss him here
and now!"

They all shrieked derisively when the kiss was duly delivered and
Gregory Warren with a self-conscious laugh had escaped to his
shower. But Rachael saw nothing absurd; she told Warren that she
loved him, and let them laugh if they liked!

"Listen, dearest!" he said on the last night of their stay. "Will
you be a darling, and not trail round the links if we play to-
morrow?"

"Why not?" asked Rachael absently, fluffing his hair from her
point of vantage on the arm of his chair.

"Well, wouldn't you rather stay up on the porch with the girls?"

"If you men want to swear at your strokes, I decline to be a party
to it!" Rachael said maternally.

"I know. But, darling, it does rather affect our game," Warren
said uncertainly; "that is, you don't play, you see! And it only
gets you hot and mussy, and I love my wife to be waiting when we
come up. It isn't that I don't think you're a darling to want to
do it," he added in hasty concern.

No use. She was deeply hurt. She went to her dressing-table and
began her preparations for the night with a downcast face.
Certainly she wouldn't bother Warren. She only did it because she
loved him so. A tear splashed down on her white hand.

Next day she triumphantly accompanied the golfers. Warren had
petted and coaxed her out of her sulks, and she was radiant again.
When they had said their good-byes to Judy, and were spinning into
town in the car that afternoon, she made him confess that she had
not spoiled the game at all; he couldn't make her believe that
Frank and Tom and Peter had been pretending their pleasure at
having her go along!

But later in the summer she realized that Belvedere Bay was
smiling quietly at her bride-like infatuation, and she resented it
deeply. The discovery came about on a lazy summer afternoon when
several women, Rachael among them, were enjoying gossip and iced
drinks on the Parmalees' porch. Rachael had been talking of the
emeralds that Warren was having reset for her, and chanced to
observe that Tiffany's man had said that Warren's taste in jewelry
was astonishing.

"Rachael," yawned little Vivian Sartoris, "for heaven's sake talk
about something else than Warren?"

"I talk about him because I like him!" Rachael said. "Better than
anybody else in the world."

"And he likes you better than anybody else in the world, I
suppose?" Vivian said idly.

"He says so," Rachael answered with a demure smile. "Then that
settles it!" Vivian laughed. But she and several of her intimates
fell into low conversation, and the older women were presently
interrupted by Vivian's voice again. "Rachael!" she challenged,
"Katrina says that SHE knows somebody Warren likes as well as he
does you!"

"I did not!" protested Katrina, scarlet-cheeked and giggling,
giving Vivian, who sat next her on the wide tiled steps, a violent
push.

"Oh, you did, too!" one of the group exclaimed.

Katrina murmured something unintelligible.

"Well, that's the same thing!" Vivian assured her promptly. "She
says now that Warren DID like her as well, Rachael!"

"Well, don't tell me who it is, and break my heart!" Rachael
warned them. But her old sense of humor so far failed her that she
could not help adding curiously, "If Warren ever cared for anybody
else, he'll tell me!"

There was a general burst of laughter, and Rachael colored.

"No, it's nobody," Katrina said hastily. "It's only idiocy!" She
and the other girls laughed in a suppressed fashion for some time.
Finally, to Rachael's secret relief, Gertrude Whittaker
energetically demanded the secret. More giggling ensued. Then
Katrina agreed that she would whisper it in Mrs. Whittaker's ear,
which she did. Rachael saw Gertrude color and look puzzled for a
second, then she laughed scornfully.

"What geese girls are! I never heard anything so silly!" Gertrude
said. Several hours later she told Rachael.

She did not tell her without some hesitation. It was so silly--it
was just like that scatter-brained Katrina, she said. Rachael,
proudly asserting that nothing Katrina said would make any
difference to her, nevertheless urged the confidence.

"Well, it's nothing," Gertrude said at last. "This is what Katrina
said: she said that Warren Gregory had liked Rachael Breckenridge
as well as he liked Rachael Gregory! That was all."

Rachael looked puzzled in turn for a minute. Then she smiled
proudly, and colored.

"But that's not true," she said presently. "For I have never seen
a man change as much since marriage as Warren! It's still a
perfect miracle to him. He says himself that he gets happier and
happier--"

"Oh, Rachael, you're hopeless!" Gertrude laughed, and Rachael
colored again. She flushed whenever she thought of this particular
visit.

Far happier were the days they spent with the Valentines at
Clark's Bar. Rachael loved them all dearly, from little Katharine
to the big quiet doctor; she was not misunderstood nor laughed at
here.

They swam, tramped, played cards, and talked tirelessly. Rachael
slept like a child on the wide, windbathed porch. To the great
satisfaction of both doctors she and Alice grew to be devoted
friends, and when Warren's holiday was over, Rachael stayed on,
for a longer visit, and the men came down in the car on Fridays.

On her birthday this year her husband gave Rachael Gregory, and
her heirs and assigns forever, a roomy, plain old colonial
farmhouse that stood near Alice's house, in a ring of great elms,
looking down on the green level surface of the sea. Rachael
accepted it with wild delight. She loved the big, homelike halls,
the simple fireplaces, the green blinds that shut a sweet twilight
into the empty rooms. Her own barns, her own strip of beach, her
own side yard where she and Alice could sit and talk, she took
eager possession of them all.

She went into town for chintzes, papers, wicker tables and chairs.
She brought old Mrs. Gregory down for the housewarming, and had
all the Valentines to dinner on the August evening when the
Gregorys moved in. And late that same evening, when Warren's arms
were about her, she told him her great news. There were to be
little feet running about Home Dunes, and a little voice echoing
through the new home. "Shall you be glad, Greg?" she asked, with
tears in her eyes; "shall you be just a little jealous?"

"Rachael!" he said in a quick, tense whisper, afraid to believe
her. And Rachael, caught in his dear arms, and with his cheek
against her wet lashes, felt a triumph and a confidence rise
within her, and a glorious content that it was so.

When the happy suspicion was a happy certainty she told his
mother, and entered at once into the world of advice and
reassurance, planning and speculation that belongs to women alone.
Mrs. Valentine was also full of eager interest and counsel, and
Rachael enjoyed their solicitude and affection as she had enjoyed
few things in life. This was a perfectly natural symptom, that was
a perfectly natural phase, she must do this thing, get that, and
avoid a third.

The fact that she was not quite herself in soul or body, that she
must be careful, must be guarded and saved, was a source of
strange and mysterious satisfaction to her as the quick months
slipped by. Her increasing helplessness shut her quite naturally
away into a world that contained only her husband and herself and
a few intimate friends, and Rachael found this absolutely
satisfying, and did not miss the social world that hummed on as
busily and gayly as ever without her.

Her baby was born in March, a beautiful boy, like his father even
in the first few moments of his life. Rachael, whose experience
had been, to her astonishment, described complacently by physician
and nurses as "perfectly normal," was slow to recover from the
experience in body; perhaps never quite recovered in soul. It
changed all her values of life--this knowledge of what the coming
of a child costs; she told Alice that she was glad of the change.

"What a fool I've been about the shadows," she said. "This is the
reality! This counts, as it seems to me that nothing else I ever
did in my life counts."

She felt nearer than ever to Warren now, and more dependent upon
him. But a new dignity came into her relationship with him:
husband and wife, father and mother, they wore the great titles of
the world, now!

He found her more beautiful than ever, and as the baby was the
centre of her universe, and all her hopes and fears and thoughts
for the child, the old bridal attitude toward him vanished
forever, and she was the more fascinating for that. His love for
her rose like a great flame, and the passionate devotion for which
she had been wistfully waiting for months enveloped her now, when,
shaken in body and soul, she wished only to devote herself to the
miracle that was her child.

When he was but six weeks old James Warren Gregory Third terrified
the little circle of his family and friends with a severe touch of
summer sickness. The weather, in late April, was untimely--hot and
humid--and the baby seemed to suffer from it, even in his airy
nursery. There were two hideous days in which he would take no
food, and when Rachael heard nothing but the little wailing voice
through the long hours. All night she sat beside him, hearing
Warren's affectionate protests as little as she heard the
dignified remonstrance of the nurse. When day came she was haggard
and exhausted, but still she would not leave her baby. She knelt
at the crib, impressing the tiny countenance upon mind and heart--
her first-born baby, upon whose little features the wisdom of
another world still lingered like a light!

Only a few weeks old, and thousands of them older than he died
every year! Fear in another form had come to Rachael now--life
seemed all fear.

"Oh, Warren, is he very ill?"

"Pretty sick, dear little chap!"

"But, Warren, you don't think--"

"My darling, I don't know!"

She turned desperately to George Valentine when that good friend
came in his professional capacity at five o'clock.

"George, there's been a change--I'm sure of it. Look at him!"

"You ought to take better care of your wife, Greg," was Doctor
Valentine's quiet almost smiling answer to this. "You'll have her
sick next!"

"How is he?" Rachael whispered, as the newcomer bent over the
baby. There was a silence.

"Well, my dear," said Doctor Valentine, as he straightened
himself, "I believe this little chap has decided to remain with us
a little while. Very--much--better!"

Rachael tried to smile, but burst out crying instead, and clung to
her husband's shoulder.

"Let him have his sleep out, Miss Snow," said the doctor, "and
then sponge him off and try him with food!"

"Oh--yes--yes--yes!" the baby's mother said eagerly, drying her
eyes. "And you'll be back later, George?"

"Not unless you telephone me, and I don't think you'll have to,"
George Valentine said. Rachael's face grew radiant with joy.

"Oh, George, then he is better!" She was breathing like a runner.

"Better! I think he'll be himself to-morrow. Console yourself, my
dear Rachael, with the thought that you'll go through this a
hundred times with every one of your children!"

"Oh, what a world!" Rachael said, half laughing and half sighing.
But later she said to Warren, "Yet isn't it deliciously worth
while!"

He had persuaded her to have some supper, and then they had come
back to the nursery, to see if the baby really would eat. He had
awakened, and had had his bath, and was crying again, but, as
Rachael eagerly said, it was a healthy cry. Trembling and smiling,
she took the little creature in her arms, and when the busy little
lips found her breast, Rachael felt as if she could hardly bear
the exquisite incoming rush of joy again.

Warren, watching her, smiled in deep satisfaction, and Miss Snow
smiled, too. But before she gave herself up to the luxury of
possession the mother's tears fell hot on the baby's delicate gown
and tiny face, and from that hour Rachael loved her son with the
passionate and intense devotion she felt for his father.

Years later, looking at the pictures they took of him that summer,
or perhaps stopped by the sight of some white-coated baby in the
street, she would say to herself,--with that little heartache all
mothers know, "Ah, but Jim was the darling baby!" After the first
scare he bloomed like a rose, a splendid, square, royal boy who
laughed joyously when admitted to the company of his family and
friends, and lay contentedly dozing and smiling when it seemed
good to them to ignore him. Rachael found him the most
delightfully amusing and absorbing element her life had ever
known; she would break into ecstatic laughter at his simplest
feat--when he yawned, or pressed his little downy head against the
bars of his crib and stared unsmilingly at her. She would run to
the nursery the instant she arrived home, her eager, "How's my
boy?" making the baby crow, and struggle to reach her, and it was
an event to her to meet his coach in the park, and give him her
purse or parasol handle with which to play. Often old Mary, the
nurse, would see Mrs. Gregory pick up a pair of tiny white shoes
that still bore the imprint of the fat little feet, and touch them
to her lips, or catch a crumpled little linen coat from the
drawer, and bury her face in it for a moment.

Even in his tiny babyhood he was companionable to his mother,
Rachael even consenting to the plan of taking him to Home Dunes in
June, although by this arrangement she saw Warren only at week-end
intervals until the doctor's vacation came in August. When he came
down, and the big car honked at the gate, she invariably had the
baby in her arms when she came to meet him.

"Hello, Daddy. Here we are! How are you, dearest?" Rachael would
say, adding, before he could answer her: "We want you to notice
our chic Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how's that for five
months? Take him, Greg! Go to Daddy, Little Mister!"

"All very well, but how's my wife?" Warren Gregory might ask,
kissing her over the baby's bobbing head.

"Lovely! Do you know that your son weighs fifteen pounds--isn't
that amazing?" Rachael would hang on his free arm, in happy wifely
fashion, as they went back to the house.

"Want to go with me to London?" he asked her one day in the late
fall when they were back in town.

"Why not Mars?" she asked placidly, putting a fresh, stiff dress
over Jimmy's head.

"No, but I'm serious, my dear girl," Warren Gregory said
surprised. "But--I don't understand you. What about Jim?"

"Why, leave him here with Mary. We won't be gone four weeks."

Rachael smiled, but it was an uneasy, almost an affronted, smile.

"Oh, Warren, we couldn't! I couldn't! I would simply worry myself
sick!"

"I don't see why. The child would be perfectly safe. George is
right here if anything happened!"

"George--but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting
her lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it--the
convention?" she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?"

"It isn't absolutely necessary," Warren said dryly. But this was
enough for Rachael, who opened the subject that evening when
George and Alice Valentine were there.

"George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or
whatever it is?"

"Not necessarily," smiled Doctor Valentine. "Why, doesn't he want
to go?"

"I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted.

"It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean,"
Alice contributed, and no more was said of the possibility then or
at any other time, to Rachael's great content.

But when the winter season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in
his diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious
talk, late on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that
her husband had been carrying a slight sense of grievance over
this matter for many weeks.

He had come in at six o'clock, and was changing his clothes for
dinner, half an hour later, when Rachael came into his dressing-
room. Her hair had been dressed, and under her white silk wrapper
her gold slippers and stockings were visible, but she seemed
disinclined to finish her toilette.

"Awful bore!" she said, smiling, as she sat down to watch him.

"What--the Hoyts? Oh, I don't think so!" he answered in surprise.

"They all bore me to death," Rachael said idly. "I'd rather have a
chop here with you, and then trot off somewhere all by ourselves!
Why don't they leave us alone?"

"My dear girl, that isn't life," Warren Gregory said firmly. His
tone chilled her a little, and she looked up in quick penitence.
But before she could speak he antagonized her by adding
disapprovingly: "I must say I don't like your attitude of
criticism and ungraciousness, my dear girl! These people are all
our good friends; I personally can find no fault with them. You
may feel that you would rather spend all of your time hanging over
Jim's crib--I suppose all young mothers do, and to a certain
extent all mothers ought to--but don't, for heaven's sake, let
everything else slip out of your life!"

"I know, I know!" Rachael said breathlessly and quickly, finding
his disapproval almost unendurable. Warren did not often complain;
he had never spoken to her in this way before. Her face was
scarlet, and she knew that she wanted to cry. "I know, dear," she
added more composedly; "I am afraid I do think too much about Jim;
I am afraid"--and Rachael smiled a little pitifully--"that I would
never want anyone but you and the boy if I had my own way!
Sometimes I wish that we could just slip away from everybody and
everything, and never see these people again!"

If she had expected him to endorse this radical hope she was
disappointed, for Warren responded briskly: "Yes, and we would
bore each other to death in two months!"

Rachael was silent, but over the sinking discouragement of her
heart she was gallantly forming new resolutions. She would think
more of her clothes, she would make a special study of dinners and
theatre parties, she would be seen at the opera at least every
other week.

"I gave up the London trip just because you weren't enthusiastic,"
Warren was saying, with the unmistakable readiness of one whose
grievances have long been classified in his mind. "It's baby--
baby--baby! I don't say much--"

"Indeed you don't!" Rachael conceded gratefully.

"But I think you overdo it, my dear!" finished her husband kindly.
Clarence Breckenridge's wife would have assumed a different
attitude during this little talk, but Rachael Gregory felt every
word like a blow upon her quivering heart. She could not protest,
she could not ignore. Her love for him made this moment one of
absolute agony, and it was with the humility of great love that
she met him more than halfway.

"You're right, of course, Greg, and it must have been stupid for
you!" Stupid! It seemed even in this moment treason, it seemed
desecration, to use this word of their quiet, wonderful summer
together!

"Well," he said, mollified, "don't take what I say too much to
heart. It's only that I love my wife, and am proud of her, and I
don't want to cut out everything else but Jim's shoes and Mary's
day off!" He came over and kissed her, and Rachael clung to him.

"Greg, as if I could be angry with you for being jealous of your
son!"

"Trust a woman to put that construction on it," he said, laughing.
"You like to think I'm jealous, don't you?"

"I like anything that makes you seem my devoted adorer," Rachael
answered wistfully, and smiling whimsically she added, "and I am
going to get some new frocks, and give a series of dinners, and
win you all over again!"

"Bully!" approved Doctor Gregory, cheerfully going on with his
dressing. Rachael watched him thoughtfully for a moment before she
went on to her own dressing-room.

Long afterward she remembered that this conversation marked a
certain change in her life; it was never quite glad, confident
morning again, although for many months no definite element seemed
altered. Alice and old Mrs. Gregory had told her, and all the
world agreed, that the coming of her child would draw her husband
and herself more closely together, but, as Rachael expressed it to
herself, it was if she alone moved--moved infinitely nearer to her
husband truly, came to depend upon him, to need him as she had
never needed him in her life before. But there was always the
feeling that Warren had not moved. He stood where he had always
been, an eager sympathizer in these new and intense experiences,
but untouched and unaltered himself. For her pain, for her
responsibility, for her physical limitations, he had the most
intense tenderness and pity, but the fact remained that he might
sleep through the nights, enjoy his meals, and play with his baby,
when the mood decreed, untroubled by personal handicap.

Rachael, like all women, thought of these things seriously during
the first year of her child's life, and in February, when Jimmy
was beginning to utter his first delicious, stammering
monosyllables, it was with great gravity that she realized that
motherhood was approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she
would have a second child. She was wretchedly languid and ill
during the entire spring, and found her mother-in-law's and Alice
Valentine's calm acceptance of the situation bewildering and
discouraging.

"My dear, I don't eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!" Alice
said cheerfully. "I mind that more than any other phase!"

"But I am such a broken reed!" Rachael smiled ruefully. "I have no
energy!"

The older woman laughed.

"I know, my dear--haven't I been through it all? Just don't worry,
and spare Greg what you can--"

Rachael could do neither. She wanted Warren every minute, and she
wanted nobody else. Her favorite hours were when she lay on the
couch, near the fire, playing with his free hand, while he read to
her or talked to her. She wanted to hear, over and over again,
that he loved no one else; and sometimes she declined invitations
without even consulting him, "because we're happier by our own
fire than anywhere else, aren't we, dearest?" "Don't tell me about
your stupid operations!" she would smile at him, "talk about--US!"

She went over and over the details of her old life with a certain
morbid satisfaction in his constant reassurance. Her marriage had
not been the cause of Clarence's suicide, nor of Billy's
elopement; she had done her share for them both, more than her
share!

Summer came, and she and the baby were comfortably established at
Home Dunes. Warren came when he could, perhaps twice a month, and
usually without warning. If he promised her the week-ends, she
felt aggrieved to have him miss one, so he wired her every day,
and sent her books and fruit, letters and magazines every week,
and came at irregular intervals. Alice and George Valentine and
their children, her garden, her baby, and the ocean she loved so
well must fill this summer for Rachael.




CHAPTER III


The beautiful Mrs. Gregory made her first appearance in society,
after the birth of her second son, on the occasion of Miss Leila
Buckney's marriage to Mr. Parker Hoyt. The continual postponement
of this event had been a standing joke among their friends for two
or three years; it took place in early December, at the most
fashionable of all the churches, with a reception and supper to
follow at the most fashionable of all the hotels. Leila naturally
looked tired and excited; she had made a gallant fight for her
lover, for long years, and she had won, but as yet the returning
tide of comfort and satisfaction had not begun in her life. Parker
had been a trying fiance; he was a cool-blooded, fishlike little
man; there had been other complications: her father's heavy
financial losses, her mother's discontent in the lingering
engagement, her sister's persisting state of unmarriedness.

However, the old aunt was at last dead. Parker had dutifully gone
to her side toward the end, and had returned again, duly, bringing
the casket, and escorting Miss Clay. And now Mamma was dressed,
and Edith was in a hideously unbecoming green and silver gown, and
the five bridesmaids were duly hatted and frocked in green and
silver, and she was dressed, too, realizing that her new corsets
were a trifle small, and her lace veil too heavy.

And the disgusting caterer had come to some last-moment agreement
with Papa whereby they were to have the supper without protest,
and the florist's insolent man had consented to send the bouquets
at last. The fifteen hundred dreadful envelopes were all
addressed, the back-breaking trying-on of gowns was over, the
three hundred and seventy-one gifts were arranged in two big rooms
at the hotel, duly ticketed, and the three hundred and seventy-one
dreadful personal notes of thanks had been somehow scribbled off
and dispatched. Leila was absolutely exhausted, and felt as pale
and pasty as she looked. People were all so stupid and tiresome
and inconsiderate, she said wearily to herself, and the awful
breakfast would be so long and dull, with everybody saying the
same thing to her, and Parker trying to be funny and simply making
himself ridiculous! The barbarity of the modern wedding impressed
itself vaguely upon the bride as she laughed and talked in a
strained and mechanical manner, and whatever they said to her and
to her parents, the guests were afterward unanimous in deciding
that poor Leila had been an absolute fright.

But Mrs. Gregory, in her dark blue suit and her new sables, won
everybody's eyes as she came down the church aisle with her
husband beside her. Her son was not quite a month old, and if she
had not recovered her usual wholesome bloom, there was a refined,
almost a spiritual, element in her beauty now that more than made
up for the loss. She wore a fragrant great bunch of violets at her
breast, and under the sweeping brim of her hat her beautiful eyes
were as deeply blue as the flowers. She seemed full of a new
wifely and matronly charm to-day, and it was quite in key with the
pose that old Mrs. Gregory and young Charles should be constantly
in her neighborhood. Her relatives with her, her babies safe at
home, young Mrs. Gregory was the personification of domestic
dignity and decorum.

At the hotel, after the wedding, she was the centre of an admiring
group, and conscious of her husband's approving eyes, full of her
old brilliant charm. All the old friends rallied about her--they
had not seen much of her since her marriage--and found her more
magnetic than ever. The circumstances of her marriage were blotted
out by more recent events now: there was the Chase divorce to
discuss; the Villalonga motor-car accident; Elinor Vanderwall had
astonished everybody a few weeks before by her sudden marriage to
millions in the person of old Peter Pomeroy; now people were
beginning to say that Jeanette Vanderwall might soon be expected
to follow suit with Peter's nephew George. The big, beautifully
decorated reception-room hummed with gay gossip, with the tinkling
laughter of women and the deeper tones of men.

Caterers' men began to work their way through the crush, bearing
indiscriminately trays of bouillon, sandwiches, salads, and ices.
The bride, with her surrounding bridesmaids, was still standing at
the far end of the room mechanically shaking hands, and smilingly
saying something dazed and inappropriate to her friends as they
filed by; but now various groups, scattered about the room, began
to interest themselves in the food. Elderly persons, after looking
vaguely about for seats, disposed of their coffee and salad while
standing, and soon there was a general breaking-up; the Buckney-
Hoyt wedding was almost a thing of the past.

Rachael, thinking of the impending dinner-hour of little Gerald
Fairfax Gregory, began to watch the swirling groups for Warren.
They could slip away now, surely; several persons had already
gone. Her heart was in her nursery, where Jim was toddling back
and forth tirelessly in the firelight, and where, between the
white bars of the new crib, was the tiny roll of snowy blankets
that enclosed the new baby.

"That's a pretty girl," she found herself saying involuntarily as
her absent eyes were suddenly arrested by the face and figure of
one of the guests. "I wonder who that is?"

The brown eyes she was watching met hers at the same second, and
smiling a little question, their owner came toward her.

"Hello, Rachael," the girl said. "How are you after all these
years?"

"Magsie Clay!" Rachael exclaimed, the look of uncertainty on her
face changing to one of pleasure and welcome. "Well, you dear
child, you! How are you? I knew you were here, and yet I couldn't
place you. You've changed--you're thinner."

"Oh, much thinner, but then I was an absolute butterball!" Miss
Clay said. "Tell me about yourself. I hear that you're having a
baby every ten minutes!"

"Not quite!" Rachael said, laughing, but a little discomposed by
the girl's coolness. "But I have two mighty nice boys, as I'll
prove to you if you'll come see me!"

"Don't expect me to rave over babies, because I don't know
anything about them," said Magsie Clay, with a slow, drawling
manner that was, Rachael decided, effective. "Do they like toys?"

"Jimmy does, the baby is rather young for tastes of any
description," Rachael answered with an odd, new sense of being
somehow sedate and old-fashioned beside this composed young woman.
Miss Clay was not listening. Her brown eyes were moving idly over
the room, and now she suddenly bowed and smiled.

"There's Greg!" she said. "What a comfort it is to see a man dress
as that man dresses!"

"I've been looking for you," Warren Gregory said, coming up to his
wife, and, noticing the other woman, he added enthusiastically:
"Well, Margaret! I didn't know you! Bless my life and heart, how
you children grow up!"

"Children! I'm twenty-two!" Miss Clay said, pouting, with her
round brown eyes fixed in childish reproach upon his face. They
had been great friends when Warren was with his mother in Paris,
nearly four years ago, and now they fell into an animated
recollection of some of their experiences there with the two old
ladies. While they talked Rachael watched Magsie Clay with
admiration and surprise.

She knew all the girl's history, as indeed everybody m the room
knew it, but to-day it was a little hard to identify the poised
and beautiful young woman who was looking so demurely up from
under her dark lashes at Warren with the "little Clay girl" of a
few years ago.

Parker Hoyt's aunt, the magnificent old Lady Frothingham, had been
just enough of an invalid for the twenty years preceding her death
to need a nurse or a companion, or a social secretary, or someone
who was a little of all three. The great problem was to find the
right person, and for a period that actually extended itself over
years the right person was not to be found, and the old lady was
consequently miserable and unmanageable.

Then came the advent of Mrs. Clay, a dark, silent, dignified
widow, who more than met all requirements, and who became a
companion figure to the little, fussing, over-dressed old lady.
From the day she first arrived at the Frothingham mansion Mrs.
Clay never failed her old employer for so much as a single hour.
For fifteen years she managed the house, the maids, and, if the
truth were known, the old lady herself, with a quiet, irresistible
efficiency. But it was early remarked that she did not manage her
small daughter with her usual success. Magsie was a fascinating
baby, and a beautiful child, quicker of speech than thought, with
a lovely little heart-shaped face framed in flying locks of tawny
hair. But she was unmanageable and strong-willed, and possessed of
a winning and insolent charm hard to refuse.

Her mother in her silent, repressed way realized that Magsie was
not having the proper upbringing, but her own youth had been hard
and dark, and it was perhaps the closest approach to joy that she
ever knew when Magsie glowing under her wide summer hats, or
radiant in new furs, rushed up to demand something preposterous
and extravagant of her mother, and was not denied.

She was a stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died,
so spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been
heard more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down
from her high horse and make herself useful, or she could march.
But that was six years ago. And now--this! Magsie had evidently
decided to make herself useful, but she had managed to make
herself beautiful and fascinating as well. She was in mourning now
for the good-hearted old benefactress who had left her a nest-egg
of some fifteen thousand dollars, and Rachael noticed with
approval that it was correct mourning: simple, severe, Parisian.
Nothing could have been more becoming to the exquisite bloom of
the young face than the soft, clear folds of filmy veiling; under
the small, close-set hat there showed a ripple of rich golden
hair. The watching woman thought that she had never seen such
self-possession; at twenty-two it was almost uncanny. The
modulated, bored young voice, the lazily lifted, indifferent young
eyes, the general air of requesting an appreciative world to be
amusing and interesting, or to expect nothing of Miss Magsie Clay,
these things caused Rachael a deep, hidden chuckle of amusement.
Little Magsie had turned out to be something of a personality!
Why, she was even employing a distinct and youthfully insolent air
of keeping Warren by her side merely on sufferance--Warren, the
cleverest and finest man in the room, who was more than twice her
age!

"To think that she is younger than Charlotte!" Rachael ejaculated
to herself, catching a glimpse of Charlotte, towed by her mother,
uncomfortable, ignored, blinking through her glasses. And when she
and Warren were in the car homeward bound, she spoke admiringly of
Magsie. "Did you ever see any one so improved, Warren? Really,
she's quite extraordinary!"

Warren smiled absently.

"She's a terribly spoiled little thing," he remarked. "She's out
for a rich man, and she'll get him!"

"I suppose so," Rachael agreed, casting about among the men she
knew for an appropriate partner for Miss Clay.

"Suppose so!" he echoed in good-humored scorn. "Don't you fool
yourself, she'll get what she's after! There isn't a man alive
that wouldn't fall for that particular type!"

"Warren, do you suppose so?" his wife asked in surprise.

"Well, watch and see!"

"Perhaps--" Rachael's interest wandered. "What time have you?" she
asked.

He glanced at his watch. "Six-ten."

"Six-TEN! Oh, my poor abused baby--and I should have been here at
quarter before six!" She was all mother as she ran upstairs. Had
he been crying? Oh, he had been crying! Poor little old duck of a
hungry boy, did he have a bad, wicked mother that never remembered
him! He was in her arms in an instant, and the laughing maid
carried away her hat and wrap without disturbing his meal. Rachael
leaned back in the big chair, panting comfortably, as much
relieved over his relief as he was. The wedding was forgotten. She
was at home again; she could presently put this baby down and have
a little interval of hugging and 'tories with Jimmy.

"You'll get your lovely dress all mussed," said old Mary in high
approval.

"Never mind, Mary!" her mistress said in luxurious ease before the
fire, "there are plenty of dresses!"

A week later Warren came in, in the late afternoon, to say that he
had met Miss Clay downtown, and they had had tea together. She
suggested tea, and he couldn't well get out of it. He would have
telephoned Rachael had he fancied she would care to come. She had
been out? That was what he thought. But how about a little dinner
for Magsie? Did she think it would be awfully stupid?

"No, she's not stupid," Rachael said cordially. "Let's do it!"

"Oh, I don't mean stupid for us," Warren hastened to explain. "I
mean stupid for her!"

"Why should it be stupid for her?" Rachael looked at him in
surprise.

"Well, she's awfully young, and she's getting a lot of attention,
and perhaps she'd think it a bore!"

"I don't imagine Magsie Clay would find a dinner here in her honor
a bore," Rachael said in delicate scorn. "Why, think who she is,
Warren--a nurse's daughter! Her father was--I don't know what--an
enlisted man, who rose to be a sergeant!"

"I don't believe it!" he said flatly.

"It's true, Warren. I've known that for years--everybody knows
it!"

"Well," Warren Gregory said stubbornly, "she's making a great hit
just the same. She's going up to the Royces' next week for the
Bowditch theatricals, and she's asked to the Pinckard dinner
dance. She may not go on account of her mourning."

"Her mourning is rather absurd under the circumstances," Rachael
said vaguely, antagonized against anyone he chose to defend. "And
if people choose to treat her as if she were Mrs. Frothingham's
daughter instead of what she really is, it's nice for Magsie! But
I don't see why we should."

"We might because she is such a nice, simple girl," Warren
suggested, "and because we like her! I'm not trying to keep in the
current; I've no social axe to grind; I merely suggested it, and
if you don't want to--"

"Oh, of course, if you put it that way!" Rachael said with a faint
shrug.. "I'll get hold of some eligibles--we'll have Charlie, and
have rather a youthful dinner!"

Warren, who was shaving, was silent for a few minutes, then he
said thoughtfully:

"I don't imagine that Charlie is the sort of person who will
interest her. She may be only twenty-two, but she is older than
most girls in things like that. She's had more offers now than you
could shake a stick at--"

"She told you about them?"

"Well, in a general way, yes--that is, she doesn't want to marry,
and she hates the usual attitude, that a lot of college kids have
to be trotted out for her benefit!"

This having been her own exact attitude a few seconds before,
Rachael flushed a little resentfully.

"What DOES she want to do?"

Warren shaved on for a moment in silence, then with a rather
important air he said impulsively:

"Well, I'll tell you, although she told me in confidence, and of
course nothing may come of it. You won't say anything about it, of
course? She wants to go on the stage."

"Really!" said Rachael, who, for some reason she could not at this
moment define, was finding the conversation extraordinarily
distasteful.

"Yes, she's had it in mind for years," Warren pursued with
simplicity. "And she's had some good offers, too. You can see that
she's the kind of girl that would make an immediate hit, that
would get across the footlights, as it were. Of course, it all
depends upon how hard she's willing to work, but I believe she's
got a big future before her!"

There was a short silence while he finished the operation of
shaving, and Rachael, who was busy with the defective clasp of a
string of pearls, bent absorbedly over the microscopic ring and
swivel.

"Let's think about the dinner," she said presently. She found that
he had already planned almost all the details.

When it took place, about ten days later, she resolutely steeled
herself for an experience that promised to hold no special
enjoyment for her. Her love for her husband made her find in his
enthusiasm for Magsie something a little pitiful and absurd.
Magsie was only a girl, a rather shallow and stupid girl at that,
yet Warren was as excited over the arrangements for the dinner as
if she had been the most important of personages. If it had been
some other dinner--the affair for the English ambassador, or the
great London novelist, or the fascinating Frenchman who had
painted Jimmy--she told herself, it would have been
comprehensible! But Warren, like all great men, had his simple,
almost childish, phases, and this was one of them!

She watched her guest of honor, when the evening came, with a
puzzled intensity. Magsie was in her glory, sparkling, chattering,
almost noisy. Her exquisite little white silk gown was so low in
the waist, and so short in the skirt, that it was almost no gown
at all, yet it was amazingly smart. She had touched her lips with
red, and her eyelids were cunningly given just a hint of
elongation with a black pencil. Her bright hair was pushed
severely from her face, and so trimly massed and netted as not to
show its beautiful quantity, and yet, somehow, one knew the
quantity was there in all its gold glory.

Rachael, magnificent in black-and-white, was ashamed of herself
for the instinctive antagonism that she began to feel toward this
young creature. It was not the fact of Magsie's undeniable youth
and beauty that she resented, but it was her affectations, her
full, pouting lips, her dimples, her reproachful upward glances.
Even these, perhaps, in themselves, she did not resent, she mused;
it was their instant effect upon Warren and, to a greater or
lesser degree, upon all the other men present, that filled her
with a sort of patient scorn. Rachael wondered what Warren's
feeling would have been had his wife suddenly picked out some
callow youth still in college for her admiring laughter and
earnest consideration.

It was sacrilege to think it. It was always absurd, an older man's
kindly interest in, and affection for, a pretty young girl, but
what harm? He thought her beautiful, and charming, and talented-
well, she was those things. It was January now, in March they were
going to California, then would come dear Home Dunes, and before
the summer was over Magsie would be safely launched, or married,
and the whole thing but an episode! Warren was her husband and the
father of her two splendid boys; there was tremendous reassurance
in the thought.

But that evening, and throughout the weeks that followed, Rachael
mused somewhat sadly upon the extraordinary susceptibility of the
human male. Magsie's methods were those of a high-school belle.
She pouted, she dimpled, she dispensed babyish slaps, she lapsed
into rather poorly imitated baby talk. She was sometimes
mysterious and tragic, according to her own lights, her voice
deep, her eyes sombre; at other times she was all girl, wild for
dancing and gossip and matinees. She would widen her eyes demurely
at some older woman, plaintively demanding a chaperon, all these
bad men were worrying her to death; she had nicknames for all the
men, and liked to ask their wives if there was any harm in that?
Like Billy, and like Charlotte, she never spoke of anyone but
herself, but Billy was a mere beginner beside Magsie, and poor
Charlotte like a denizen of another world.

Magsie always scored. There was an air of refinement and propriety
about the little gypsy that saved her most daring venture, and in
a society bored to death with its own sameness she became an
instant favorite. Everyone said that "there was no harm in
Magsie," she was the eagerly heralded and loudly welcomed cap-and-
bells wherever she went.

Early in March there was an entertainment given in one of the big
hotels for some charity, and Miss Clay, who appeared in a dainty
little French comedy, the last number on the program, captured all
the honors. Her companion player, Dr. Warren Gregory, who in the
play had taken the part of her guardian, and, with his temples
touched with gray, his peruke, and his satin coat and breeches,
had been a handsome foil for her beauty, was declared excellent,
but the captivating, piquant, enchanting Magsie was the favorite
of the hour. Before the hot, exciting, memorable evening was over
the rumor flew about that she had signed a contract to appear with
Bowman, the great manager, in the fall.

The whole experience was difficult for Rachael, but no one
suspected it, and she would have given her life cheerfully to keep
her world from suspecting. Long before the rehearsals for the
little play were over she knew the name of that new passion that
was tearing and gnawing at her heart. No use to tell herself that
if Magsie WAS deeply admired by Warren, if Magsie WAS beautiful,
if Magsie WAS constantly in his thoughts, way, she, Rachael, was
still his wife; his home, his sons, his name were hers! She was
jealous--jealous--jealous of Magsie Clay.

She could not bear even the smothering thought of a divided
kingdom. Professionally, socially, the world might claim him; but
no one but herself should ever claim even one one-hundredth of
that innermost heart of his that had been all her own! The thought
pierced her vitally, and she felt in sick discouragement that she
could not fight, she could not meet his cruelty with new cruelty.
Her very beauty grew dimmed, and the old flashing wit and radiant
self-confidence were clouded for a time. When she was alone with
her husband she felt constrained and serious, her heart a
smouldering furnace of resentment and pain.

"What do you think of this, dearie?" he asked eagerly one
afternoon. "We got talking about California at the Princes' last
night, and it seems that Peter and Elinor plan to go; only not
before the first week in April. Now, that would suit me as well as
next week, if it wouldn't put you out. Could you manage it? The
Pomeroys take their car, and an awfully nice crowd; just you and
I--if we'll go--Peter and Elinor, and perhaps the Oliphants, and a
beau for Magsie!"

Rachael had been waiting for Magsie's name. But there seemed to be
nothing to say. She rose to the situation gallantly. She put the
boys in the care of their grandmother and the faithful Mary, with
Doctor Valentine's telephone number pasted prominently on the
nursery wall. She bought herself charming gowns and hats, she made
herself the most delightful travelling companion that ever seven
hot and spoiled men and women were fortunate enough to find. When
everyone, even Magsie, was bored and cross, upset by close air, by
late hours, by unlimited candy and cocktails, Mrs. Gregory would
appear from her stateroom, dainty, interested, ready for bridge or
gossip, full of enthusiasm for the scenery and for the company in
which she found herself. When she and Warren were alone she often
tried to fancy herself merely an acquaintance again, with an
acquaintance's anxiety to meet his mood and interest him. She made
no claims, she resented nothing, and she schooled herself to
praise Magsie, to quote her, and to discuss her.

The result was all that she could have hoped. After the five
weeks' trip Warren was heard to make the astonishing comment that
Magsie was a shallow little thing, and Rachael, hungrily kissing
her boys' sweet, bewildered faces, and laughing and crying
together as Mary gave her an account of every hour of her absence,
felt more than rewarded for the somewhat sordid scheme and the
humiliating effort. Little Gerald was in short clothes now, a rose
of a baby, and Jimmy at the irresistible age when every stammered
word and every changing expression had new charm.




CHAPTER IV


Ten days later, in the midst of her preparations to leave the city
for Clark's Hills, Rachael was summoned to the telephone by the
news of a serious change in young Charlie Gregory's condition.
Charlie had been ill for perhaps a week; kept at home and babied
by his grandmother and Miss Cannon, the nurse, visited daily by
his adored Aunt Rachael, and nearly as often by the uproarious
young Gregorys, and duly spoiled by every maid in the house.
Warren went in to see him often in the evenings, for trivial as
his illness was, all the members of his immediate family agreed
later that there had been in it, from the beginning, something
vaguely alarming and menacing.

He was a quiet, peculiar, rather friendless youth at twenty-six;
he had never had "girls," like the other boys, and, while he read
books incessantly, Rachael knew it to be rather from loneliness
than any other motive, as his silence was from shyness rather than
reserve. His dying was as quiet as his living, between a silent
luncheon in the gloomy old dining-room when nobody seemed able
either to eat or speak, and a dreadful dinner hour when Miss
Cannon sobbed unobtrusively, Warren and Rachael talked in low
tones, and the chairs at the head and foot of the table were
untenanted.

Only a day or two later his grandmother followed him, and Rachael
and her husband went through the sombre days like two persons in
an oppressive dream. Great grief they did not naturally feel, for
Warren's curious self-absorption extended even to his relationship
with his mother, and Charlie had always been one of the
unnecessary, unimportant figures of which there are a few in every
family. But the events left a lasting mark upon Rachael's life.
She had grown really to love the old woman, and had felt a certain
pitying affection for Charlie, too. He had been a good, gentle,
considerate boy always, and it was hard to think of him as going
before life had really begun for him.

On the morning of the day he died an incident had occurred, or
rather two had occurred, that even then filled her with vague
discomfort, and that she was to remember for many days to come.

She had been crossing the great, dark entrance hall, late in the
morning, on some errand to the telephone, or to the service
department of the house, her heart burdened by the sombre shadow
of death that already lay upon them all, when the muffled street-
door bell had rung, and the butler, red eyed, had admitted two
women. Rachael, caught and reluctantly glancing toward them, had
been surprised to recognize Charlotte Haviland and old Fanny.

"Charlotte!" she said, coming toward the girl. And at her low,
tense tone, Charlotte had begun to cry.

"Aunt Rachael"--the old name came naturally after seven years--
"you'll think I'm quite crazy coming here this way"--Charlotte, as
always, was justifying her shy little efforts at living--"but M'ma
was busy, and"--the old, nervous gasp--"and it seemed only
friendly to come and--and inquire--"

"Don't cry, dear!" said Rachael's rich, kind voice. She put a hand
upon Charlotte's shoulder. "Did you want to ask for Charlie?"

"I know how odd, how very odd it must look," said Charlotte,
managing a wet smile, "and my crying--perfectly absurd--I can't
think why I'm so silly!"

"We've all been pretty near crying, ourselves, this morning,"
Rachael said, not looking at her, but rather seeming to explain to
the sympathetic yet pleasurably thrilled Fanny. "Dear boy, he is
very ill. Doctor Hamilton has just been here; and he tells us
frankly that it is only a question of a few hours now--"

At this poor Charlotte tried to compose her face to the merely
sorrowful and shocked expression of a person justified in her
friendly concern, but succeeded only in giving Mrs. Gregory a
quivering look of mortal hurt.

"I was afraid so," she stammered huskily. "Elfrida Hamilton told
me. I was so--sorry--"

Rachael began to perceive that this was a great adventure, a
tragic and heroic initiative for Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, red-
eyed behind her strong glasses, the bloom of youth gone from her
face, was perhaps touching this morning, the pinnacle of the few
strong emotions her life was to know.

"How well did you know Charlie, dear?" asked Rachael when Fanny
was for the moment out of hearing and they were in the dark, rep-
draped reception-room. She had asked Charlotte to sit down, but
Charlotte nervously had said that she could stay but another
minute.

"Oh, n-n-not very well, Aunt Rachael--that is, we didn't see each
other often, since"--Rachael knew since when, and liked Charlotte
for the clumsy substitute--"since Billy was married. I know
Charlie called, but M'ma didn't tell me until weeks later, and
then we were on the ocean. We met now and then, and once he
telephoned, and I think he would have liked to see me, but M'ma
felt so strongly--there was no way. And then last summer--we h-h-
happened to meet, he and I, at Jane Cook's wedding, and we had
quite a talk. I knew M'ma would be angry, but it just seemed as if
I couldn't think of it then. And we talked of the things we liked,
you know, the sort of house we both liked--not like other people's
houses!" Charlotte's plain young face had grown bright with the
recollection, but now her voice sank lifelessly again. "But M'ma
made me promise never to speak to him again, and of course I
promised," she said dully.

"I see." Rachael was silent. There seemed to be nothing to say.

"I suppose I couldn't--speak to him a moment, Aunt Rachael?"
Charlotte was scarlet, but she got the words out bravely.

"Oh, my dear, he wouldn't know you. He doesn't know any of us now.
He just lies there, sometimes sighing a little--"

Charlotte was as pale now as she had been rosy before, her lip
trembled, and her whole face seemed to be suffused with tears.

"I see," she said in turn. "Thank you, Aunt Rachael, thanks ever
so much. I--I wish you'd tell his grandmother how sorry I am. I--
suppose Fanny and I had better go now."

But before she went Rachael opened her arms, and Charlotte came
into them, and cried bitterly for a few minutes.

"Poor little girl!" said the older woman tenderly. "Poor little
girl!"

"I always loved you," gulped Charlotte, "and I would have come to
see you, if M'ma--And of course it was nothing but the merest
friendship b-between Charlie and me, only we--we always seemed to
like each other."

And Charlotte, her romance ended, wiped her eyes and blew her
nose, and went away. Rachael went slowly upstairs.

Late that same afternoon, as she and the trained nurse were
dreamily keeping one of the long sick-watches, she looked at the
patient, and was surprised to see his rather insignificant eyes
fixed earnestly upon her. Instantly she went to the bedside and
knelt down.

"What is it, Charlie-boy?" she asked, in the merest rich, tender
essence of a tone. The sick eyes broke over her distressedly. She
could see the fine dew of perspiration at his waxen temples, and
the lean hand over which she laid her own was cool after all these
feverish days, unwholesomely cool.

"Aunt Rachael--" The customs of earth were still strong when he
could waste so much precious breath upon the unnecessary address.
The nurse hovered nervously near, but did not attempt to silence
him. "Going fast," he whispered.

"It will be rest, Charlie-boy," she answered, tears in her eyes.

He smiled, and drifted into that other world so near our own for a
few moments. Then she started at Charlotte's name.

"Charlotte," he said in a ghostly whisper, "said she would like a
house all green-and pink-with roses--"

Rachael was instantly tense. Ah, to get hold of poor starved
little Charlotte, to give her these last precious seconds, to let
her know he had thought of her!

"What about Charlotte, dear, dear boy?" she asked eagerly.

"I thought--it would be so pleasant--there--" he said, smiling. He
closed his eyes. She heard the little prayer that he had learned
in his babyhood for this hour. Then there was silence. Silence.

Silence. Rachael looked fearfully at the nurse. A few minutes
later she went to tell his grandmother, who, with two grave
sisters sitting beside her, had been lying down since the
religious rites of an hour or two ago. Rachael and the smaller,
rosy-faced nun helped the stiff, stricken old lady to her feet,
and it was with Rachael's arm about her that she went to her
grandson's side.

That night old Mrs. Gregory turned to her daughter-in-law and
said: "You're good, Rachael. Someone prayed for you long ago;
someone gave you goodness. Don't forget--if you ever need--to turn
to prayer. I don't ask you to do any more. It was for James to
make his sons Christians, and James did not do so. But promise me
something, Rachael: if James--hurts you, if he fails you--promise
me that you will forgive him!"

"I promise," Rachael said huskily, her heart beating quick with
vague fright. Mrs. Gregory was in her deep armchair, she looked
old and broken to-night, far older than she would look a few days
later when she lay in her coffin. Rachael had brought her a cup of
hot bouillon, and had knelt, daughter fashion, to see that she
drank it, and now the thin old hand clutched her shoulder, and the
eager old eyes were close to her face.

"I have made mistakes, I have had every sorrow a woman can know,"
said old Mrs. Gregory, "but prayer has never failed me, and when I
go, I believe I will not be afraid!" "I have made mistakes, too,"
Rachael said, strangely stirred, "and for the boys' sake, for
Warren's sake, I want to be--wise!"

The thin old hand patted hers. Old Mrs. Gregory lay with closed
eyes, no flicker of life in her parchment-colored face. "Pray
about it!" she said in a whisper. She patted Rachael's hands for
another moment, but she did not speak again.

At the funeral, kneeling by Warren's side in the great cathedral,
her pale face more lovely than ever in a setting of fresh black,
Rachael tried for the first time in her life to pray.

They were rich beyond any dream or need now. Rachael could hardly
have believed that so great a change in her fortune could make so
little change in her feeling. A sudden wave of untimely heat smote
the city, and it was hastily decided that the boys and their
mother must get to the shore, leaving all the details of settling
his mother's estate to Warren. In the autumn Rachael would make
those changes in the old house of which she had dreamed so many
years ago. Warren was not to work too hard, and was to come to
them for every week-end.

He took them down himself in the car, Rachael beside him on the
front seat, her baby in her arms, Martin and Mary, with Jim, in
the tonneau. Home Dunes had been opened and aired; luncheon was
waiting when they got there. Rachael felt triumphant, powerful.
Between their mourning and Warren's unexpected business
responsibilities she would have a summer to her liking.

He went away the next day, and Rachael began a series of cheerful
letters. She tried not to reproach him when a Saturday night came
without bringing him, she schooled herself to read, to take walks,
to fight depression and loneliness. She and Alice practised piano
duets, studied Italian, made sick calls in the village, and sewed
for the babies of dark's Hills and Quaker Bridge. About twice a
month, usually together, the two went up to the city for a day's
shopping. Then George and Warren met them, and they dined and
perhaps went to the theatre together. It was on one of these
occasions that Rachael learned that Magsie Clay was in town.

"Working hard--too hard," said Warren in response to her
questions. "She's rehearsing already for October."

"Warren! In all this heat?"

"Yes, and she looks pulled down, poor kid!"

"You've seen her, then?"

"Oh, I see her now and then. Betty Bowditch had her to dinner, and
now and then she and I go to tea, and she tells me about her
troubles, her young men, and the other women in the play!"

"I wonder if she wouldn't come down to us for a week?" Rachael
said pleasantly. Warren brightened enthusiastically. A little
ocean air would do Magsie worlds of good.

Magsie, lunching with Rachael at Rachael's club the following
week, was prettily appreciative.

"I would just love to come!" she said gratefully. "I'll bring my
bathing suit, and live in the water! But, Rachael, it can only be
from Friday night until Monday morning. Perhaps Greg will run me
down in the car, and bring me up again?"

"What else would I do?" Warren said, smiling.

Rachael fixed the date. On the following Friday night she met
Warren and Magsie at the gate, at the end of the long run. Warren
was quite his old, delightful self; the boys, perfection. Alice
gave a dinner party, and Alice's brother did not miss the
opportunity of a flirtation with Magsie. The visit, for everyone
but Rachael, was a great success.

The little actress and Rachael's husband were on friendly, even
intimate, terms; Magsie showed Warren a letter, Warren murmured
advice; Magsie reached a confident little brown hand to him from
the raft; Warren said, "Be careful, dear!" when she sprang up to
leap from the car. Well, said Rachael bravely, no harm in that!
Warren was just the big, sweet, simple person to be flattered by
Magsie's affection. How could she help liking him?

She went to the gate again, on Monday morning this time, to say
good-bye. Magsie was tucked in trimly in Rachael's place beside
Rachael's husband; her gold hair glinted under a smart little hat;
gloves, silk stockings, and gown were all of the becoming creamy
tan she wore so much.

"Saturday night?" Rachael said to Warren.

"Possibly not, dear. I can tell better later in the week."

"You don't know how we slaves envy you, Rachael!" Magsie said.
"When Greg and I are gasping away in some roof-garden, having our
mild little iced teas, we'll think of you down here on the
glorious ocean!"

"We're a mutual consolation league!" Warren said with an
appreciative laugh.

"He laughs," Magsie said, "but, honestly, I don't know where I'd
be without Greg. You don't know how kind he is to me, Rachael!"

"He's kind to everyone," Rachael smiled.

"I don't have to TELL you how much I've enjoyed this!" Magsie
added gratefully.

"Do it any other time you can!" Rachael waved them out of sight.
She stood at the gate, in the fragrant, warm summer morning, for a
long time after they were gone.

In the late summer, placidly wasting her days on the sands with
the two boys, a new experience befell Rachael. She had hoped, at
about the time of Jimmy's third birthday, to present him and his
little brother with a sister. Now the hope vanished, and Rachael,
awed and sad, set aside a tiny chamber in her heart for the dream,
and went on about her life sobered and made thoughtful over the
great possibilities that are wrapped in every human birth. Warren
had warned her that she must be careful now, and, charmed at his
concern for her grief and shock, she rested and saved herself
wherever she could.

But autumn came, and winter came, and she did not grow strong. It
became generally understood that Mrs. Gregory was not going about
this season, and her friends, when they came to call in Washington
Square, were apt to find her comfortably established on the wide
couch in one of the great rooms that were still unchanged, with a
nurse hovering in the background, and the boys playing before the
fire. Rachael would send the children away with Mary, ring for
tea, and chatter vivaciously with her guests, later retailing all
the gossip to Warren when he came to sit beside her. Often she got
up and took her place at the table, and once or twice a month,
after a quiet day, was tucked into the motor car by the watchful
Miss Snow, and went to the theatre or opera, to be brought
carefully home again at eleven o'clock, and given into Miss Snow's
care again.

She was not at all unhappy, the lessening of social responsibility
was a real relief, and Warren's solicitude and sympathy were a
tonic of which she drank deep, night and morning. His big warm
hands, his smile, the confidence of his voice, these thrilled and
rejuvenated her continually.

The boys were a delight to her. In their small rumpled pajamas
they came into her room every morning, dewy from sleep, full of
delicious plans for the day. Jim was a masterful baby whose
continually jerking head was sure to bump his mother if she
attempted too much hugging, but dark-eyed, grave little Derry was
"cuddly"; he would rest his shining head contentedly for minutes
together on his mother's breast, and when she lifted him from his
crib late at night for a last kiss, his warm baby arms would
circle her neck, and his rich little voice murmur luxuriously,
"Hug Derry."

Muffled rosily in gaiters and furs, or running about her room in
their white, rosetted slippers, with sturdy arms and knees bare,
or angelic in their blue wrappers after the evening bath, they
were equally enchanting to their mother.

"It's a marvel to see how you can be so patient!" Warren said one
evening when he was dressing for an especially notable dinner, and
Rachael, in her big Chinese coat, was watching the process
contentedly from the couch in his upstairs sitting-room.

"Well, that's the odd thing about ill health, Greg--you haven't
any chance to answer back," she answered thoughtfully. "If money
could make me well, or if effort could, I'd get well, of course!
But there seem to be times when you simply are SICK. It's an
extraordinary experience to me; it's extraordinary to lie here,
and think of all the hundreds of thousands of other women who are
sick, just simply and quietly laid low with no by-your-leave! Of
course, my being ill doesn't make much trouble; the boys are cared
for, the house goes on, and I don't suffer! But suppose we were
poor, and the children needed me, and you couldn't afford a nurse-
-then what? For I'd have to collapse and lie here just the same!"

"It's no snap for me," Warren grumbled after a silence. "Gosh! I
will be glad when you're well--and when the damn nurse is out of
the house!"

"Warren, I thought you liked Miss Snow!"

"Well, I do, I suppose--in a way. But I don't like her for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner--so everlastingly sweet and fresh!'
I declare I believe my watch is losing time--this is the third
time this week I've been late!'"

This was said in exactly Miss Snow's tone, and Rachael laughed.

But when he was gone a deep depression fell upon her. Dear old
boy, it was not much of a life for him, going about alone, sitting
down to his meals with only a trained nurse for company! Shut away
so deliciously from the world with her husband and sons, enjoying
the very helplessness that forced her to lean so heavily upon him,
she had forgotten how hard it was for Greg!

Yet how could she get well when the stubborn weakness and languor
persisted, when her nights were so long and sleepless, her
appetite so slight, her strength so quickly exhausted?

"When do you think I will get well, Miss Snow?" she would ask.

"Come, now, we're not going to bother our heads about THAT," Miss
Snow would say cheerfully. "Why, you're not sick! You've just got
to rest and take care of yourself, that's all! Dear ME, if you
were suffering every minute of the time, you might have something
to grumble about!"

Doctor Valentine was equally unsatisfactory, although Rachael
loved the simple, homely man so much that she could not be vexed
by his kindly vagueness:

"These things are slow to fight, Rachael," said George Valentine.
"Alice had just such a fight years ago. When the human machinery
runs down, there's nothing for it but patience! You did too much
last winter, nursing the baby until you left for California, and
then only the hot summer between that and September! Just go
slow!"

Perhaps once a month Magsie came in to see Rachael, ready to pour
tea, to flirt with any casual caller, or to tickle the roaring
baby with the little fox head on her muff. She had been playing in
a minor part in a successful production. Among all the callers who
came and went perhaps Magsie was the most at home in the Gregory
house--a harmless little affectionate creature, unimportant, but
always welcome.

Slowly health and strength came back, and one by one Rachael took
up the dropped threads of her life. The early spring found her
apparently herself again, but there was a touch of gray here and
there in her dark hair, and Elinor and Judy told each other that
her spirits were not the same.

They did not know what Rachael knew, that there was a change in
Warren, so puzzling, so disquieting, that his wife's convalescence
was delayed by many a wakeful hour and many a burst of secret
tears on his account. She could not even analyze it, much less was
she fit to battle with it with her old splendid strength and
sanity.

His general attitude toward her, in these days, was one of
paternal and brisk kindliness. He liked her new gown, he didn't
care much for that hat, she didn't look awfully well, better
telephone old George, it wouldn't do to have her sick again! Yes,
he was going out, unless she wanted him for something? She was
reminded hideously of her old days with Clarence.

Shaken and weak still, she fought gallantly against the pain and
bewilderment of the new problem. She invited the persons he liked
to the house, she effaced her own claim, she tried to get him to
talk of his cases. Sometimes, as the spring ripened, she planned
whole days with him in the car. They would go up to Ossining and
see the Perrys, or they would go to Jersey and spend the day with
Doctor Cheseborough.

Perhaps Warren accepted these suggestions, and they had a
cloudless day. Or when Sunday morning came, and the boys, coated
and capped, were eager to start, he might evade them.

"I wonder if you'll feel badly, Petty, if I don't go?"

"Oh, WARREN!"

"Well, my dear, I've got some work to do. I ought to look up that
meningitis case--the Italian child. Louise'll give me a bite of
lunch--"

"But, dearest, that spoils our day!" Rachael would fling her wraps
down, and face him ruefully. "How can I go alone!_ I don't want
to. And it's SUCH a day, and the babies are so sweet--"

"There's no reason why you and the children shouldn't go." She had
come to know that mild, almost reproachful, tone.

"Oh, but Warren, that spoils it all!"

"I'm sorry!"

Rachael would shut her lips firmly over protest. At best she might
wring from him a reluctant change of mind and an annoyed offer of
company which she must from sheer pride decline. At worst she
would be treated with a dignified silence--the peevish and
exacting woman who could not understand.

So she would go slowly down to the car, to Mary beaming beside
Martin in the front seat, to the delicious boys tumbling about in
the back, eager for Mother. With one on each side of her, a
retaining hand on the little gaiters, she would wave the attentive
husband and father an amiable farewell. The motor car would wheel
about in the bare May sunshine, the river would be a ripple of
dancing blue waves, morning riders would canter on the bridle-
path, and white-frocked babies toddle along the paths. Such a
morning for a ride, if only Warren were there! But Rachael would
try to enjoy her run, and would eat Mrs. Perry's or Mrs.
Cheseborough's fried chicken and home-made ices with gracious
enthusiasm; everyone was quite ready to excuse Warren; his
beautiful wife was the more popular of the two.

He was always noticeably affectionate when they got home. Rachael,
her color bright from sun and wind, would entertain him with a
spirited account of the day while she dressed.

"I wish I'd gone with you; I will next time!" he invariably said.

On the next Sunday she might try another experience. No plans to-
day. The initiative should be left to him. Breakfast would drag
along until after ten o'clock, and Mary would appear with a low
question. Were the boys to go out to the Park? Rachael would
pause, undecided. Well, yes, Mary might take them, but bring them
in early, in case Doctor Gregory wished to take them somewhere.

And ten minutes later he might jump up briskly. Well! how about a
little run up to Pelham Manor, wonderful morning--could she go as
she was? Rachael would beg for ten minutes; she might come
downstairs in seven to find him wavering.

"Would you mind if we made it a pretty short run, dear, and then
if I dropped you here and went on down to the hospital for a
little while?"

"Why, Warren, it was your suggestion, dear! Why take a drive at
all if you don't feel like it!"

"Oh, it's not that--I'm quite willing to. Where are the kids?"

"Mary took them out. They've got to be back for naps at half-past
eleven, you see."

"I see." He would look at his watch. "Well, I'll tell you what I
think I'll do. I'll change and shave now--" A pause. His voice
would drop vaguely. "What would YOU like to do?" he might suggest
amiably.

Such a conversation, so lacking in his old definite briskness
where their holidays were concerned, would daunt Rachael with a
sense of utter forlornness. Sometimes she offered a plan, but it
was invariably rejected. There were friends who would have been
delighted at an unexpected lunch call from the Gregorys, but
Warren yawned and shuddered negatives when she mentioned their
names. In the end, he would go off to the hospital for an hour or
two, and later would telephone to his wife to explain a longer
absence: he had met some of the boys at the club and they were
rather urging him to stay to lunch; he couldn't very well decline.

"Would you like to have me come down and join you anywhere later?"
his wife might ask in the latter case.

"No, thank you, no. I may come straight home after lunch, and in
that case I'd cross you. Boys all right?"

"Lovely." Rachael would sit at the telephone desk, after she had
hung up the receiver, wrapped in bitter thought, a bewildered pain
at her heart. She never doubted him; to-morrow good, old, homely,
trustworthy George Valentine, whose wife and children were
visiting Alice's mother in Boston, would speak of the bridge game
at the club. But with his wife waiting for him at home, his wife
who lived all the six days of the week waiting for this seventh
day, why did he need the society of his men friends?

A commonplace retaliation might have suggested itself to her, but
there was no fighting instinct in Rachael now. She did not want to
pique him, to goad him, to flirt with him. He should be hers
honorably and openly, without devices, without intrigue. Stirred
to the deeps of her being by wifehood and motherhood, by her
passionate love for her husband and children, it was a humiliating
thought that she must coquette with and flatter other men. As a
matter of fact, she found it difficult to talk with any interest
of anything except Warren, his work and his plans, of Jimmy and
Derry, and perhaps of Home Dunes. If it were a matter of necessity
she might always turn to the new plays and books, the opera of the
season, or the bill for tenement requirements or juvenile
delinquents, but mere personalities and intrigue she knew no more.
These matters were all of secondary interest to her now; it seemed
to Rachael that the time had come when mere personalities, when
bridge and cocktails and dancing and half-true scandals were not
satisfying.

"Warren," she said one evening when the move to Home Dunes was
near, "should you be sorry if I began to go regularly to church
again?"

"No," he said indifferently, giving her rather a surprised glance
over his book. "Churchgoing coming in again?"

"It's not that," Rachael said, smiling over a little sense of
pain, "but I--I like it. I want the boys to think that their
mother goes to church and prays--and I really want to do it
myself!"

He smiled, as always a little intolerant of what sounded like
sentiment.

"Oh, come, my dear! Long before the boys are old enough to
remember it you'll have given it up again!"

"I hope not," Rachael said, sighing. "I wish I had never stopped.
I wish I were one of these mild, nice, village women who put out
clean stockings for the children every Saturday night, and clean
shirts and ginghams, and lead them all into a pew Sunday morning,
and teach them the Golden Rule, and to honor their father and
their mother, and all the rest of it!"

"And what do you think you would gain by that?" Warren asked.

"Oh, I would gain--security," Rachael said vaguely, but with a
suspicion of tears in her eyes. "I would have something to--to
stand upon, to be guided by. There is a purity, an austerity,
about that old church-going, loving-God-and-your-neighbor ideal.
Truth and simplicity and integrity and uprightness--my old great-
grandmother used to use those words, but one doesn't ever hear
them any more! Everything's half black and half white nowadays;
we're all as good or as bad as we happen to be born. There's no
more discipline, no more self-denial, no more development of
character! I want to--to hold on to something, now that forces I
can't control are coming into my life."

"What do you mean by forces you can't control?" he asked with a
sort of annoyed interest.

"Love, Warren," she answered quickly. "Love for you and the boys,
and fear for you and the boys. Love always brings fear. And
illness--I never thought of it before I was ill. And jealousy--"

"What have you got to be jealous of?" he asked, somewhat gruffly,
as she paused.

"Your work," Rachael said simply; "everything that keeps you away
from me!"

"And you think going to Saint Luke's every Sunday morning at
eleven o'clock, and listening to Billy Graves, will fix it all
up?" he smiled not unkindly. But as she did not answer his smile,
and as the tears he disliked came into her eyes, his tone changed.
"Now I'll tell you what's the matter with you, my dear," he said
with a brisk kindliness that cut her far more just then than
severity would have done, "you're all wound up in self-analysis
and psychologic self-consciousness, and you're spinning round and
round in your own entity like a kitten chasing her tail. It's a
perfectly recognizable phase of a sort of minor hysteria that
often gets hold of women, and curiously enough, it usually comes
about five or six years after marriage. We doctors meet it over
and over again. 'But, Doctor, I'm so nervous and excited all the
time, and I don't sleep! I worry so--and much as I love my
husband, I just can't help worrying!'"

Looking up and toward his wife as she sat opposite him in the
lamp-light, Warren Gregory found no smile on the beautiful face.
Rachael's hurt was deeper than her pride; she looked stricken.

"Don't put yourself in their class, my dear!" her husband said
leniently. "You need some country air. You'll get down to Clark's
Hills in a week or two and blow some of these notions away.
Meanwhile, why don't you run down to the club every morning, and
play a good smashing game of squash, and take a plunge. Put
yourself through a little training!" He reopened his book.

Rachael did not answer. Presently glancing at her he saw that she
was reading, too.




CHAPTER V


That his overtired nerves and her exhausted soul and body would
have recovered balance in time, did not occur to Rachael. She
suffered with all the intensity of a strongly passionate nature.
Warren had changed to her; that was the terrible fact. She went
about stunned and sick, neglecting her meals, forgetting her
tonic, refusing the distractions that would have been the best
thing possible for her. Little things troubled her; she said to
herself bitterly that everything, anything, caused irritation
between herself and Warren now. Sometimes the atmosphere
brightened for a few days, then the old hopeless tugging at cross
purposes began again.

"You're sick, Rachael, and you don't know it!" said Magsie Clay
breezily. June was coming in, and Magsie was leaving town for the
Villalonga camp. She told Rachael that she was "crazy" about Kent
Parmalee, and Rachael's feeling of amazement that Magsie Clay
could aspire to a Parmalee was softened by an odd sensation of
relief at hearing Magsie's plans--a relief she did not analyze.

"I believe I am sick!" Rachael agreed. "I shall be glad to get
down to the shore next week." She told Warren of Magsie's
admission that night.

"Kent! She wouldn't look at him!" Warren said comfortably.

"It would be a brilliant match for her," Rachael countered
quietly.

She saw that she had antagonized him, but he did not speak again.
One of their unhappy silences fell.

Home Dunes, as always, restored health and color magically.
Rachael felt more like herself after the first night's sleep on
the breezy porch, the first invigorating dip in the ocean. She
began to enjoy her meals again, she began to look carefully to her
appearance. Presently she was laughing, singing, bubbling with
life and energy. Alice, watching her, rejoiced and marvelled at
her recovery. Rachael's beauty, her old definite self-reliance,
came back in a flood. She fairly radiated charm, glowing as she
held George and Alice under the spell of her voice, the spell of
her happy planning. Her letters to Warren were in the old, tender,
vivacious strain. She was interested in everything, delighted with
everything in Clark's Hills. She begged him for news; Vivian had a
baby? And Kent Parmalee was engaged to Eliza Bowditch--what did
Magsie's say? And did he miss her? The minute she got home she was
going to talk to him about having a big porch built on, outside
the nursery, and at the back of the house; what about it? Then the
children could sleep out all the year through. George and Alice
positively stated that they were going around the world in two
years, and if they did, why couldn't the Gregorys go, too?

"You're wonderful!" said Alice one day. "You're not the same woman
you were last winter!"

"I was ill last winter, woman! And never so ill as when they all
thought I was entirely cured! Besides--" Rachael looked down at
her tanned arm and slender brown fingers marking grooves in the
sand. "Besides, it's partly--bluff, Alice," she confessed. "I'm
fighting myself these days. I don't want to think that we--Greg
and I--can't go back, can't be to each other--what we were!"

What an April creature she was, thought Alice, seeing that tears
were close to the averted eyes, and hearing the tremble in
Rachael's voice.

"Goose!" she said tenderly. "You were a nervous wreck last year,
and Warren was working far too hard! Make haste slowly, Rachael."

"But it's three weeks since he was here," Rachael said in a low
voice. "I don't understand it, that's all!"

"Nor I--nor he!" Alice said, smiling.

"Next week!" Rachael predicted bravely. And a second later she had
sprung up from the sand and was swimming through the surf as if
she swam from her own intolerable thoughts.

The next week-end would bring him she always told herself, and
usually after two or three empty Sundays there would come a happy
one, with the new car which was built like a projectile, purring
in the road, George and Alice shouting greetings as they came in
the gate, Louise excitedly attempting to outdo herself on the
dinner, and the sunburned noisy babies shrieking themselves hoarse
as they romped with their father.

To be held tight in his arms, to get his first big kiss, to come
into the house still clinging to him, was bliss to Rachael now.
But as the summer wore away she noticed that in a few hours the
joy of homecoming would fade for him, he would become fitfully
talkative, moodily silent, he would wonder why the Valentines were
always late, and ask his wife patiently if she would please not
hum, his head ached--

"Dearest! Why didn't you say so!"

"I don't know. It's been aching all day!"

"And you let those great boys climb all over you!"

"Oh, that's all right."

"Would you like a nap, Warren, or would you like to go over to the
beach, just you and me, and have a swim?"

"No, thank you. I may run the car into Katchogue"--Katchogue,
seven miles away, was the site of the nearest garage--"and have
that fellow look at my magneto. She didn't act awfully well coming
down!"

"Would you like me to go with you, Warren?"

"Love it, my dear, but I have to take Pierre. He's got twice the
sense I have about it!"

And again a sense of heaviness, of helplessness, would fall upon
Rachael, so that on Sunday afternoon it was almost a relief to
have him go away.

"Well," she would say in the nursery again, after the good-byes,
kissing the fat little shoulder of Gerald Fairfax Gregory where
the old baby white ran into the new boyish tan, "we will not be
introspective and imaginative, and cry for the moon. We will take
off our boys' little old, hot rumply shirts, and put them into
their nice cool nighties, and be glad that we have everything in
the world--almost! Get me your Peter Rabbit Book, Jimmy, and get
up here on my other arm. Everybody hasn't the same way of showing
love, and the main thing is to be grateful that the love is there.
Daddy loves his boys, and his home, and his boys' mother, only it
doesn't always occur to him that--"

"Are you talking for me, or for you, Mother?" Jimmy would
sometimes ask, after puzzled and attentive listening.

"For me, this time, but now I'll talk for you!" Rachael satisfied
her hungry heart with their kisses, and was never so happy as when
both fat little bodies were in her arms. She grudged every month
that carried them away from babyhood, and one day Alice Valentine
found her looking at a book of old photographs with an expression
of actual sadness on her face.

"Look at Jim, Alice, that second summer--before Derry was born!
Wasn't he the dearest little fatty, tumbling all over the place!"

"Rachael, don't speak as if the child was dead!" Alice laughed.

"Well, one loses them almost as completely," Rachael said,
smiling. "Jim is such a great big, brown, mischievous creature
now, and to think that my Derry is nearly two!"

"Think of me, with Mary fifteen!" Mrs. Valentine countered, "and
just as baby-hungry as ever! But I shall have to do nothing but
chaperon now, for a few years, and wait for the grandchildren."

"I shouldn't mind getting old, Alice," Rachael said, "if I were
like you; you're so temperate and unselfish and sweet that no one
could help loving you! Besides, you don't sit around worrying
about what people think, you just go on cutting out cookies, and
putting buttons on gingham dresses, and let other people do the
worrying!"

And suddenly, to the other woman's concern, she burst into bitter
crying, and covered her face with her hands.

"I'm so frightened, Alice!" sobbed Rachael. "I don't know what's
the matter with me, but I FEEL--I feel that something is all
wrong! I don't seem to have any HOLD on Warren any more--you can't
explain such things--but I'm--"

She got to her feet, a splendid figure of tragedy, and walked
blindly to the end of the long porch, where she stood staring down
at the heaving, sun-flooded expanse of the blue sea, and at the
roofs of little Quaker Bridge beyond the bar. Lazy waves were
creaming, in great interlocked circles, on the white beach, the
air was as clear as crystal on the cloudless September morning.
Not a breath of wind stirred the tufted grass on the dunes; down
by the weather-blown bath-houses a dozen children, her own among
them, were shouting and splashing in the spreading shallows.

Alice Valentine, her plain, sweet face a picture of sympathy, sat
dumb and unmoving. In her own heart she felt that Rachael's was a
terrible situation. What WAS the matter with Warren Gregory,
anyway, wondered Alice; he had a beautiful wife, and beautiful
children, and if George, with all his summer substituting and
hospital work, could come to his family, as he did come every
Friday night, it was upon no claim of hard work that Warren could
remain away. As a matter of fact, Alice knew it was not for work
that he stayed, for George, the least critical of friends, had
once or twice told her of yachting parties in which Warren had
participated--men's parties, of which Rachael perhaps might not
have disapproved, but of which Rachael certainly did not know.
George had told her vaguely that Greg liked to play golf on
Saturday afternoons, and sleep late on Sunday, and seemed to feel
it more of a rest than coming down to the shore.

"I am a fool to break down this way," said Rachael, interrupting
her guest's musings to come back to her chair, and showing a
composed face despite her red eyes, "but my--my heart is heavy to-
day!" Something in the simple dignity of the words brought the
tears to Alice's eyes. She held out her hand and Rachael took it
and clung to it, as she went on: "I had a birthday yesterday--and
Warren forgot it!"

"They all do that!" Alice said cheerfully. "George never remembers
mine!"

"But Warren always has before," Rachael said, smiling sadly, "and-
-and it came to me last night--I didn't sleep very well--that I am
thirty-four, and--and I have given him all I have!"

Again tears threatened her self-control, but she fought them
resolutely, and in a moment was herself again.

"You love too hard, my dear woman," Alice Valentine remonstrated
affectionately; "nothing is worse than extremes in anything. Say
to yourself, like a sensible girl, that you have a good husband,
and let it go at that! Be as cool and cheerful with Warren as if
he were--George, for instance, and try to interest yourself in
something entirely outside your own home. I wonder if perhaps this
place isn't a little lonely for you? Why don't you try Bar Harbor
or one of the mountain places next year, and go about among
people, and entertain a little more?"

"But, Alice, people BORE me so--I've had so much of it, and it's
always the same thing!"

"I know; I hate it, too. But there are funny phases in marriage,
Rachael, and one has to take them as they come. Warren might like
it."

Rachael pondered. Elinor Pomeroy and the Villalongas, the
Whittakers and Stokes and Parmalees again! Noise and hurry, and
dancing and smoking and drinking again! She sighed.

"I believe I'll suggest it to Warren, Alice. Then if he's keen for
it, we'll do it next year."

"I would." Mrs. Valentine rose, and looked toward the beach with
an idea of locating Martha and Katrina before sending for them.
"Isn't it almost lunch time?" she asked, adding in a matter-of-
fact tone: "Don't worry any more, Rachael; it's largely a bad
habit. Just look the whole thing in the face, and map it out like
a campaign. 'The way to begin living the ideal life is to begin,'
my father used to say!"

This talk, and others like it, had the effect of bracing Rachael
to fresh endurance and of spurring her to fresh courage for the
few days that its effect lasted. But sooner or later her bravery
would die away, and an increasing discouragement possess her.
Lying in her bare, airy bedroom at night, with sombre eyes staring
at the arch of stars above the moving sea, an almost unbearable
loneliness would fall upon soul and body; she needed Warren, she
said to herself, often with bitter tears. Warren, splashing in his
bath, scattering wet towels and discarded garments so royally
about the place; Warren, in a discursive mood, regarding some
operation as he stropped his razor; Warren's old, half-unthinking
"you look sweet, dear," when, fresh and dainty, his wife was ready
to go downstairs--for these and a thousand other memories of him
she yearned with an aching desire that racked her like a bodily
pain.

"Oh, it isn't right for him to torture me so!" she would whisper
to herself. "It isn't right!"

October found them all back in the city, an apparently united and
devoted family again. Rachael entered with great zest into the
delayed matter of redecorating and refurnishing the old home on
Washington Square, finding the dignified house--Warren's
birthplace--more and more to her liking as modern enamel fixtures
went into the bathrooms, simple modern hangings let sunshine and
air in at the long-darkened windows, and rich tapestry papers and
Oriental rugs subdued the effect of severe cream woodwork and
colonial mantels.

She found Warren singularly unenthusiastic about it, almost
ungracious when he answered her questions or decided for her any
detail. But Rachael was firmly resolved to ignore his moods, and
went blithely about her business, displaying an indifference--or
an assumed indifference--that was evidently somewhat puzzling to
Warren and to all her household. She equipped the boys in dark-
blue coats and squirrel-skin caps for the winter, marvelling a
little sadly that their father did not seem to see the charms so
evident to all the world. A rosier, gayer, more sturdy pair of
devoted little brothers never stamped through snowy parks, or came
chattering in for chops and baked potatoes. Every woman in the
neighborhood, every policeman, knew Jim and Derry Gregory; their
morning walks were so many separate little adventures in
popularity. But Warren, beyond paternal greetings at breakfast,
and an occasional perfunctory query as to their health, made no
attempt to enter into their lives. They were still too small to
interest their father except as good and satisfactory babies.

One bitter December day the thunderbolt fell. Rachael felt that
she had always known it, that she had been sitting in this hideous
hotel dining-room for years watching Warren--and Margaret Clay.

There was a bitter taste of salt water in her mouth, there was a
hideous drumming at her heart. She felt sick and cold from her
bewildered brain down to her very feet. When one felt like this--
one fainted.

But Rachael did not faint, although it was by sheer power of will
that she held her reeling senses. No scene--no, there mustn't be a
scene--for Jimmy's sake, for Derry's sake, no scene. She was here,
in the Waldorf Grill, of course. She had been--what had she been
doing? She had been--she came downtown after breakfast--of course,
shopping. Shopping for the children's Christmas. They were to have
coasters--they were old enough for coasters--she must go on this
quiet way, thinking of the children--five was old enough for
coasters--and Jim always looked out for Derry.

She couldn't go out. They hadn't seen her; they wouldn't see her,
here in this corner. But she dared not stand up and pass them
again. Warren--and Magsie. Warren--and Magsie. Oh, God--God--God--
what should she do--she was going to faint again.

Here was her shopping list, a little wet and crumpled because she
had put her glove on the snowy handle of the motor-car door. Mary
had said that it would be a white Christmas--how could Mary tell?-
-this was only the eighteenth, only the eighteenth--ridiculous to
be panting this way, like a runner. Nothing was going to hurt her-
-

"Anything--anything!" she said to the waiter, with dry, bloodless
lips, and a ghastly attempt at a smile. "Yes, that will do. Thank
you, yes, I suppose so. Yes, if you will. Thank you. That will do
nicely."

And now she must be quiet. That was the main thing now. They must
not see her. She had been shopping, and now she was having her
lunch in the Grill. If she could only breathe a little less
violently--but she seemed to have no control over her heaving
breast, she could not even close her mouth. Nobody suspected
anything, and if she could but control herself, nobody would, she
told herself desperately.

She never knew that the silent, gray-haired waiter recognized her,
and recognized both the man and woman who sat only thirty feet
away. She had not ordered coffee, but he brought her a smoking
pot. It was not the first time he had encountered the situation.
Rachael drank the vivifying fluid, and her nerves responded at
once.

She sat up, set her lips firmly, forced herself to dispose of
gloves and napkin in the usual way. Her breath was coming more
evenly--so much was gained. As for this deadly cold and quivering
sensation of nausea, that was no more than fatigue and the
frightfully cold wind.

So it was Magsie. Rachael had not been seven years a wife to
misread Warren's eyes as he looked at the girl. No woman could
misread their attitude together, an attitude of wonderful, sweet
familiarity with each other's likes and dislikes under all its
thrilling newness. Rachael had seen him turn that very glance,
that smiling-eyed yet serious look--

Oh, God! it could not be that he had come to care for Magsie! Her
hard-won calm was shattered in a second, she was panting and
quivering again. Her husband, her own big, tender, clever Warren--
but he was hers, and the boys--he was HERS! Her husband--and this
other woman was looking at him with all her soul in her eyes, this
other woman cared--all the world might see how she cared for him--
and was loved in return!

What had she been hearing, lately, of Magsie? Rachael began
dizzily to recall what she could. Magsie had been "on the road,"
she had had a small part in an unsuccessful play early in the
winter. Rachael had been for some reason unable to see it, but she
had sent Magsie flowers, and--she remembered now--Warren had
represented himself as having looked in on the play with some
friends, one evening, and as having found it pretty poor stuff. So
little had Magsie and Magsie's affairs seemed to matter, then,
that Rachael could not even remember the name of the play, nor of
hearing it discussed. The world in general had not seemed inclined
to make much of the professional advent of Miss Margaret Clay, and
presently the play closed, and Warren, in answer to a careless
question from Rachael, had said that they would probably take it
on the road until spring.

And then, some weeks ago, she had asked about Magsie again, and
Warren had said: "I believe she's in town. Somebody told me the
other day that she was to have a part in one of Bowman's things
this winter."

"It's amazing to me that Magsie doesn't get ahead faster," Rachael
had mused. No more was said.

And how pretty she was, how young she was, Rachael thought now,
with a stabbing pain at her heart. How earnestly they were
talking--no ordinary conversation. Presently tears were in the
little actress's eyes; she had no handkerchief, but Warren had. He
gave it to her, and she surreptitiously wiped her eyes, and smiled
at him, like a pretty child, in her furs.

Rachael felt actually sick with shock. She felt as if some vital
cord in her anatomy had been snapped, and as if she could never
control these heavy languid limbs of hers again. Her head ached. A
lassitude seemed to possess her. She felt cold, and old, and
helpless in the face of so much youth and beauty.

Magsie--and Warren. She must accustom herself to the thought. They
cared for each other. They cared--Rachael's heart seemed to shut
with an icy spasm, she felt herself choking and shut her eyes.

Well, what could they do--at worst? Could Magsie go out now, and
get into the Gregory motor car, and say, "Home, Martin!" to the
man? Could Magsie run up the steps of the Washington Square house,
gather the cream of the day's news from the butler in a breath,
and, flinging off furs and wraps, catch the two glorious boys to
her heart?

No! However the situation developed, Rachael was still the wife.
Rachael held the advantage, and whatever poor Magsie's influence
was, it could be but temporary, it must be unrecognized and
unapproved by the world.

Slowly self-control came back, the dizziness subsided, the room
sank and settled into its usual aspect. It was hideous, but it was
a fact, she must face it--she must face it. There was an honorable
way, and a dignified way, and that must be her way. No one must
know.

Presently the table near her was empty, and she began to breathe
more naturally. She pondered so deeply that for a long time the
room was forgotten, and the moving crowd shifted about her unseen.
Then abstractedly she rose, and went slowly out to the waiting
car. She carried a heart of lead.

"I've kept you waiting, Martin?"

Martin merely touched his hat. It was four o'clock.

And so Rachael found herself facing an unbelievable situation. To
love, and to know herself unloved, was a cold, dull misery that
clung like a weight to her heart. Her thoughts stumbled in a
close, hot fog; from sheer weariness she abandoned them again and
again.

She had never been a reasonable woman, but she forced herself to
be reasonable now. Logic and philosophy had never been her natural
defences, but she brought logic and philosophy to bear upon this
hideous circumstance. She did not waste time and tears upon a
futile "Why?" It was too late now to question; the fact spoke for
itself. Warren's senses were wrapped in the charms of another
woman. His own devoted and still young and beautiful wife was not
the first devoted and young and beautiful woman to have her claim
displaced.

For days after the episode in the Waldorf lunch-room she moved
like a conspirator, watching, thinking. Warren had never seemed
more considerate of her happiness, more satisfied with life. He
was full of agreeable chatter at breakfast, interested in her
plans, amused at the boys. He did not come home for luncheon, but
usually ran up the steps at five o'clock, and was reading or
dressing when Rachael wandered into his room to greet him after
the day. He never kissed her now, or touched her hand even by
chance; she was reminded, in his general aspect, of those
occasions when the delicious Derry wandered out from the nursery,
evading the nap which was his duty, but full of the airy
conversation and small endearments that only a child on sufferance
knows.

Rachael tried in vain to understand the affair; what evil genius
possessed Warren; what possessed Magsie? She tried to think kindly
of Magsie; poor child, she had had no ugly intention, she was
simply spoiled, simply an egotist undeveloped in brain and soul!

But--Warren! Well, Warren's soft, simple heart had been touched by
all that endearing kittenish confidence, by Magsie's belief that
he was the richest and cleverest and most powerful of men.

So they were meeting for lunch, for tea--where else? What did they
talk about, what did they plan or hope or expect? Through all her
hot impatience Rachael believed that she could trust them both, in
the graver sense. Warren was as unlikely to take advantage of
Magsie's youthful innocence as Magsie was to definitely commit
herself to a reckless course.

But what then? Absurd, preposterous as it was, it was not all a
joke. It had already shut the sun from all Rachael's sky. What was
it doing to Warren--to Magsie? With Rachael in a cold and
dangerous mood, Warren evasive, unresponsive, troubled, what was
Magsie feeling and thinking?

Proudly, and with a bitter pain at her heart, Rachael went through
her empty days. Her household affairs ran as if by magic; never
was there a more successful conspiracy for one man's comfort than
that organized by Rachael and her maids. For the first time since
their marriage she and Warren were occupying separate rooms now,
but Rachael made it a special charge to go in and out of his room
constantly when he was there. She would come in with his mail and
his newspaper at nine o'clock, full of cheerful solicitude, or
follow him in for the half-hour just before dinner, chatting with
apparent ease of heart while he dressed.

Only apparent ease of heart, however, for Warren's invariable
courtesy and sweetness filled his wife with sick apprehension. Ah,
for the old good hours when he scolded and argued, protested and
laughed over the developments of the day. Sometimes, nowadays, he
hardly heard her, despite his bright, interested smile. Once he
had commented upon her gown the instant she came into the room;
now he never seemed to see her at all; as a matter of fact, their
eyes never met.

In February he told her suddenly that Margaret Clay was to open in
another fortnight at the Lyric, in a new play by Gideon Barrett,
called "The Bad Little Lady."

"At the Lyric!" Rachael said in a rush of something almost like
joy that they could speak of Magsie at last, "and one of
Barrett's! Well, Magsie is coming on! What part does she take?"

"The lead--the title part--Patricia Something-or-other, I
believe."

"The LEAD! At the Lyric--why, isn't that an astonishing compliment
to Magsie!"

Warren looked for his paper-cutter, cut a page, and shrugged his
shoulders without glancing up from his book.

"Well, yes, I suppose it is. But of course she's gone steadily
ahead."

"But I thought she wasn't so successful last winter, Warren?"

"I don't know," he said politely, wearily, uninterestedly.

"How did you hear this, Warren?" his wife asked, with a deceitful
air of innocence.

"Met her," he answered briefly.

"Well, we must see the play," Rachael said briskly. For some
reason her heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. This was
something definite and in the open at last after all these days of
blundering in the dark. "We could take a box, couldn't we, and ask
George and Alice?" she added. Warren's expression was that of a
boy whose way with his first sweetheart is too suddenly favored by
parents and guardians, and Rachael could have laughed at his face.

"Well," he said without enthusiasm. A week later he told her that
he had secured the box, but suggested that someone else than the
Valentines be asked, Elinor and Peter, for instance.

"You and George aren't quite as good friends as you were, are
you?" Rachael said, gravely.

"Quite," Warren said with his bright, deceptive smile and his
usual averted glance. "Ask anyone you please--it was merely a
suggestion!"

Rachael asked Peter and Elinor, and gave them a delicious dinner
before the play. She looked her loveliest, a little fuller in
figure than she had been seven years before, and with gray here
and there in her rich hair, but still a beautiful and winning
presence, and still with something of youth in her spontaneous,
quick speech and ready laughter. Warren was, as always, the
attentive host, but Rachael noticed that he was abstracted and
nervous to-night, and wondered, with a chill at her heart, if
Magsie's new venture meant so much to him as his manner implied.

It was an early dinner, and they reached the theatre before the
curtain rose.

"It looks like a good house," said Rachael, settling herself
comfortably.

"You can't tell anything by this," Warren said, quickly; "it's a
first night and papered."

"Aren't you smart with your professional terms?" Elinor Pomeroy
laughed, dropping the lorgnette through which she had been idly
studying the house. "What _I_'D like to know," she added
interestedly, "what _I_'D like to know is, who's doing this for
Magsie Clay? Vera Villalonga says she knows, but I don't believe
it. Magsie's a little nobody, she has no special talent, and here
she is leading in a Barrett play--"

Peter Pomeroy's foot here pressed lightly against Rachael's; a
hint, Rachael instantly suspected, that was intended for his wife.

"Now I think Magsie's as straight as a string," the unconscious
Mrs. Pomeroy went on, "but she must have a rich beau up her
sleeve, and the question is, who is he? I don't--"

But here, it was evident, Peter's second appeal to his wife's
discretion was felt, and it suddenly arrested her flow of
eloquence.

"--I don't doubt," floundered Elinor, "that--that is--and of
course Magsie IS a talented creature, so that naturally--
naturally--some girl makes a hit every year, and why shouldn't it
be Magsie? Which is right, Peter, 'why shouldn't it be she' or
'why shouldn't it be her?' I never know," she finished somewhat
incoherently.

"I should think any investment in Magsie would be perfectly safe,"
said Rachael's delightful voice. And boldly she added: "Do you
know who is backing this, Warren?"

"To a certain extent--I am," Warren said, after an imperceptible
pause. To Peter he added, in a lower voice, the voice in which men
discuss business matters: "It was a question of the whole deal
falling through--I think she'll make good--this fellow Barrett--"

Rachael began to chat with Elinor, but there was bitterness in her
soul. She had leaped into the breach, she had saved the situation,
at least before Elinor and Peter. But it was not fair--not fair
for Warren to have been deep in this affair with Magsie, with
never a word to his wife! She--Rachael--would have been all
interest, all sympathy. There was no reason between civilized
human beings why this eternal question of sex should debar men and
women from common ambitions and common interests! Let Warren
admire Magsie if he wanted to do so, let him buy her her play, and
stand between her and financial responsibility, jet him admire
her--yes, even love her, in his generous, big-brotherly way! But
why shut out of this new interest the kindly cooperation of his
devoted wife, who had never failed him, who had borne him sons,
who had given him the whole of her passionate heart in the full
glory of youth, and in health, and in sickness, when it came, had
turned to him for all the happiness of her life!

The play began, and presently the house was applauding the
entrance of Miss Margaret Clay. She came down a wide, light-
flooded stairway, and in her childish white gown and flower-
wreathed shepherdess hat looked about sixteen. "How young she is!"
Rachael thought with a pang. Her voice was young, too, the fact
being that Magsie was frightened, and that Nature was helping her
play her first big ingenue part.

Rachael glanced in the darkness at Warren. He had not joined in
the applause, nor did his handsome face express any pleasure. He
was leaning forward, his hands locked and hanging between his
knees, his eyes riveted on the little white figure that was moving
and talking down there in the bright bath of light beyond the
footlights.

Despite all reason, despite her desperate effort at self-control,
Rachael felt an agony of pure jealousy seize her. In an absolute
passion of envy she looked down at Magsie Clay. The young, flower-
crowned head, the slender, slippered feet, the youthful and
appealing voice--what weapons had she against these? And beyond
these was the additional lure--as old as the theatre itself--of
the fascinating profession: the work that is like play, the rouge
and curls, the loves and rages so openly assumed yet so strangely
and stirringly effective! Rachael had gowns a thousand times
handsomer than these youthful muslins and embroideries; Rachael's
own home was a setting far more beautiful than any that could be
simulated within the limits of a stage; if Magsie was a successful
ingenue, Rachael might have been called a natural queen of tragedy
and of comedy! And yet--

And yet, it was because she, too, saw the charm and came under the
spell, that Rachael suffered to-night. If she could have laughed
it to scorn, could have admired the surface prettiness, and
congratulated Magsie upon the almost perfect illusion, then she
would have had the most effective of all medicines with which to
cure Warren's midsummer madness.

But it seemed to Rachael, stunned with the terrible force of
jealousy, that Magsie was the great star of the stage, that there
never had been such a play and such a leading lady. It seemed to
her that not only to-night's triumph, but a thousand other
triumphs were before her, not only the admiration of these twelve
or fifteen hundred persons, but that of thousands more! Magsie
would be a rage! Magsie's young favors would be sought far and
wide. Magsie's summer home, Magsie's winter apartments, Magsie's
clothes and fads, these would belong to the adoring public of the
most warmhearted and impressionable city in the world! Rachael saw
it all coming with perhaps more certainty than did even the little
actress behind the footlights.

"Cute play, but I don't think much of Magsie!" Elinor Pomeroy said
frankly. Elinor Vanderwall would not have been so impolitic. But
Rachael felt that she would have liked to kiss her guest.

"I think Magsie is rather good," she said deliberately.

"Nothing like praising the girl with faint damns!" Peter Pomeroy
chuckled.

"Well, what do you think, Peter?" his hostess asked.

"I--oh, Lord! I don't see a play once a year," he said, with the
manner, if not the actual presence, of a yawn. "I think it's
rather good. I'll tell you what, Greg, I don't see you losing any
money on it," he added, with interest; "it'll run; the matinee
girls will come!"

"Magsie'd kill you for that," Elinor said.

"I don't suppose we could see Magsie, Warren, after this is over?"
Rachael asked to make him speak.

"What did you say, dear?" He brought his gaze from a general study
of the house to a point only a few inches out of range of her own.
"No, I hardly think so," he answered when she had repeated her
question. "She's probably excited and tired."

"You wouldn't mind my sending a line down by the boy?" Rachael
persisted.

"Well, I don't think I'd do that--" He hesitated.

"Oh, I'm strong for it!" Elinor said vivaciously. "It'll cheer
Magsie up. She's probably scared blue, and even I can see that
this isn't making much of a hit!"

The note was accordingly scribbled and dispatched; Rachael's heart
was singing because Warren had not denied Elinor's comment upon
the success of the play. The leading man, a popular and prominent
actor, was disturbingly good, and there was the part of an Irish
maid, a comedy part, so well filled by some hitherto unknown young
actress that it might really influence the run of the play; but
still, there was a consoling indication already in the air that
Margaret Clay's talent was somewhat too slight to sustain a
leading woman.

At eleven it was over, and if Rachael had had to endure the
comment that the second act was "the best yet," there was the
panacea, immediately to follow, that the end of the play was
"pretty flat."

Presently they all filed back to the dark, windy stage, and joined
Magsie in her dressing-room. She was glowing, excited, eager for
praise. Never was a young and lovely woman more confident of her
charm than Magsie to-night. A flushed self-satisfaction was
present on her face during every second of the ten minutes she
gave them; her laughter was self-conscious, her smile full of
artless gratification; she could not speak to any member of the
little group unless the attention of everyone present was riveted
upon her.

A callow youth, evidently her adorer, was awaiting her. She spoke
slightingly of Bryan Masters, the leading man.

"He's charming, Rachael," said Magsie, smiling her bored young
smile, with deliciously red lips, as she was buttoned into a long
fur coat, "but--he wants to impose on the fact that--well, that I
have arrived, if you know what I mean? As everyone knows, his day
is pretty well over. Now you think I'm conceited, don't you, Greg.
Oh, I like him, and he does do it rather well, don't you think?
But Richie"--Richie was the escorting young man--"Richie and I
tease him by breaking into French now and then, don't we?" laughed
Magsie.

Sauntering out from the stage entrance with her friends, Miss Clay
was the cynosure of all eyes, and knew it; part of the audience
still waited for the tedious line of limousines to disperse. She
could not move her bright glance to Warren's without encountering
the admiring looks of men and women all about her; she could not
but hear their whispers: "There, there she is--that's Miss Clay
now!" Richie, introduced as Mr. Gardiner, muttered that his car
was somewhere; it proved to be a handsome car with a chauffeur.
Magsie raised her bright face pleadingly to Warren's as she took
his hands for goodbye.

"Say you were proud of me, Warren?"

He laughed, his indulgent glance flashing to Elinor and to
Rachael, as one who invited their admiration of an attractive
child, before he looked down at her again.

"Proud of you! Why, I'm as happy as you are about it!"

"You know," Magsie said to Elinor naively, still holding Warren's
hands, "he's helped me--tremendously. He's been just--an absolute
angel to me!" And real and becoming tears came suddenly to her
eyes; she dropped Warren's hands to find a filmy little
handkerchief. A second later her smile flashed out again. "You
don't mind his being kind to me, do you, Rachael?" she asked
childishly.

Rachael's mouth was dry, she felt that her smile was hideous.

"Why should I, Magsie?" she asked a little huskily, "He's kind to
everyone!"

A moment later the Gregorys and their guests were in the car
whirling toward the Pomeroy home and supper. It was more than an
hour later that Rachael and her husband were alone, and then she
only said mildly:

"I wish you had let me know you were helping Magsie, so--so
conspicuously, Warren. One hates to be taken unawares that way."

"She asked me to keep the thing confidential," he answered with
his baffling simplicity. "She had this good chance, but she
couldn't quite swing it. I had no idea that you would care, one
way or the other."

"Well, she ought to be launched now," Rachael said. She hated to
talk of Magsie, especially in his company, where she could do
nothing but praise, but she could somehow find it difficult to
speak of anything else tonight.

"Cunning little thing, there she was, holding on to my hands, as
innocently as a child!" Warren said with a musing smile. "She's a
funny girl--all fire and ice, as she says herself!"

Rachael smothered a scornful interjection. Let Magsie employ the
arts of a schoolgirl if she would, but at least let the great
Doctor Gregory perceive their absurdity!

"Young Mr. Richie Gardiner seemed louche" she observed after a
silence which Warren seemed willing indefinitely to prolong.

"H'm!" Warren gave a short, contented laugh.

"He's crazy about her, but of course to her he's only a kid," he
volunteered. "She's funny about that, too. She's emotional, of
course, full of genius, and full of temperament. She says she
needs a safety-valve, and Gardner is her safety-valve. She says
she can sputter and rage and laugh, and he just listens and quiets
her down. To-night she called him her 'bread-and-butter'--did you
hear her?"

"I wonder what she considers you--her champagne?" Rachael asked
with a poor assumption of amusement.

But Warren was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice it.

"It's curious how I do inspire and encourage her," he admitted.
"She needs that sort of thing. She's always up in the clouds or
down in the dumps."

"Do you see her often, Warren?" Rachael asked with deadly calm.

"I've seen her pretty regularly since this thing began," he
answered absently, still too much wrapped in the memories of the
evening to suspect his wife's emotion. Rachael did not speak
again.




CHAPTER VI


Only Miss Margaret Clay perused the papers on the following
morning with an avidity to equal that of Mrs. Warren Gregory.
Magsie read hungrily for praise, Rachael was as eager to discover
blame. The actress, lying in her soft bed, wrapped in embroidered
silk, and sleepily conscious that she was wakening to fame and
fortune, gave, it is probable, only an occasional fleeting thought
to her benefactor's wife, but Rachael, crisp and trim over her
breakfast, thought of nothing but Magsie while she read.

Praise--and praise--and praise. But there was blame, too; there
was even sharply contemptuous criticism. On the whole, Rachael had
almost as much satisfaction from her morning's reading as Magsie
did. The three most influential papers did not comment upon Miss
Clay's acting at all. In two more, little Miss Elsie Eaton and
Bryan Masters shared the honors. The Sun remarked frankly that
Miss Clay's amateurish acting, her baby lisp, her utter
unacquaintance with whatever made for dramatic art, would
undoubtedly insure the play a long run. Rachael knew that Warren
would see all these papers, but she cut out all the pleasanter
reviews and put them on his dresser.

"Did you see these?" she asked him at six o'clock.

"I glanced at some of them. You've not got The Sun here?"

"No--that was a mean one," Rachael said sweetly. "I thought it
might distress you, as it probably did Magsie."

"I saw it," he said, evidently with no thought of her feeling in
the matter. "Lord, no one minds what The Sun thinks!"

"She's really scored a success," said Rachael reluctantly. Warren
did not answer.

For the next three evenings he did not come home to dinner, nor
until late at night. Rachael bore it with dignity, but her heart
was sick within her. She must simply play the waiting game, as
many a better woman had before her, but she would punish Warren
Gregory for this some day!

She dressed herself charmingly every evening, and dined alone,
with a book. Sometimes the old butler saw her look off from the
page, and saw her breast rise on a quick, rebellious breath; and
old Mary could have told of the hours her mistress spent in the
nursery, sitting silent in the darkness by the sleeping boys, but
both these old servants were loyalty's self, and even Rachael
never suspected their realization of the situation and their
resentment. To Vera, to Elinor, even to Alice Valentine, she said
never a word. She had discussed Clarence Breckenridge easily
enough seven years before, but she could not criticise Warren
Gregory to anyone.

On the fourth evening, when they were to dine with friends, Warren
reached home in time to dress, and duly accompanied his wife to
the affair. He complained of a headache after dinner, and they
went home at about half-past ten. Rachael felt his constraint in
the car, and for very shame could not make it hard for him when he
suggested that he should go downtown again, to look in at the
club.

"But is this right, is it fair?" she asked herself sombrely while
she was slowly disrobing. "Could I treat him so? Of course I could
not! Why, I have never even looked at a man since our very wedding
day--never wanted to. And I will be reasonable now. I will be
reasonable, but he tries me hard--he makes it hard!"

She put her face in her hands and began to cry. Warren was deluded
and under a temporary spell, but still her dear and good and
handsome husband, her dearest companion and confidant. And she
missed him.

Oh, to have him back again, in the old way, so infinitely dear and
interested, so quick with laughter, so vigorous with comment, so
unsparing where he blamed! To have him come and kiss the white
parting of her hair once more as she sat waiting for him at the
breakfast table, turn to her in the car with his quick "Happy?"
once more, hold her tight once more against his warm heart!

How unlike him it was, how contemptible it was, this playing with
the glorious thing that had been their love! For the first time in
her life Rachael could have played the virago, could have raged
and stamped, could have made him absolutely afraid to misuse her
so. He did not deserve such consideration, he should not be
treated so gently.

While she sat alone, in the long evenings, she tried to follow him
in her thoughts. He was somewhere in the big, warm, dark theatre,
watching the little pool of brightness in which Magsie moved,
listening to the crisp, raw freshness of Magsie's voice. Night
after night he must sit there, drinking in her beauty and charm,
torturing himself with the thought of her inaccessibility.

It seemed strange to Rachael that this world-old tragedy should
come into her life with all the stinging novelty of a calamity.
People and press talked about a murder, about an earthquake, about
a fire. Yet what was death or ruin or flames beside the horror of
knowing love to be outgrown, of living beside this empty mask and
shell of a man whose mind and soul were in bondage elsewhere?
Rachael came to know love as a power, and herself a victim of that
power abused.

Slowly resentment began to find room in her heart. It was all so
childish, so futile, so unnecessary! A prominent surgeon, the
husband of a devoted wife, the father of two splendid sons, thus
flinging pride and sanity to the wind, thus being caught in the
lightly flung net of an ordinary, pretty little actress, the
daughter of a domestic servant and a soldier in the ranks! And
what was to be the outcome? Rachael mused sombrely. Was Warren to
tire simply of his folly, Magsie to carelessly fill his place in
the ranks of her admirers, Rachael to gracefully forgive and
forget?

It was an unpalatable role, yet she saw no other open to her. What
was to be gained by coldness, by anger, by controversy? Was a man
capable of Warren's curious infatuation to be merely scolded and
punished like a boy? She was helpless and she knew it. Until he
actually transgressed against their love, she could make no move.
Even when he did, or if he did, her only recourse was the hated
one of a public scandal: accusations, recriminations.

She began to understand his nature as she had not understood it in
all these years. Bits of his mother's brief comment upon him came
back to her; uncomprehensible when she first heard them, they were
curiously illuminating now. He had been a naturally good boy,
awkward, silent, conscientious; turning toward integrity as
normally as many of his companions turned toward vice. Despite his
natural shyness, his diffidence of manner, he had been strong
himself and had scorned weakness in anyone; upright, he needed
little guiding. The praise of servants and of his mother's friends
had been quite frankly his; even his severe mother and father had
been able to find little fault in the boy. But they had early
learned that when a minor correction was demanded by their first-
born's character, it was almost impossible to effect it. His
standard of behavior was high, fortunately, for it was also
unalterable. There was no hope of their grafting upon his
conscience any new roots. James knew right from wrong with
infallible instinct; he was not often wrong, but when he was, no
outside criticism affected him. As a baby, he would defend his
rare misdeeds, as a boy, he was never thrashed, because there was
always some good reason for what he did. He had been misinformed,
he certainly understood the other fellows to say this; he
certainly never heard the teacher forbid that; handsome,
reasonable, self-respecting, he won approval on all sides, and
because of this mysterious predisposition toward what was right
and just, came safely to the years when he was his own master and
could live unchallenged by the high moral standard he set himself.

Some of this Rachael began to perceive. It was a key to his
conduct now. He respected Magsie, he admired her; there was no
reason why he should not indulge his admiration. No unspoken
criticism from his wife could affect him, because he had seen the
whole situation clearly and had decided what was seemly and safe
in the matter. Criticism only brought a resentful, dull red color
to Warren Gregory's face, and confirmed him more stubbornly in the
course he was pursuing. He could even enjoy a certain martyr-like
satisfaction under undeserved censure, all censure being equally
incomprehensible and undeserved. Rachael had once seen in this
quality a certain godlike supremacy, a bigness, and splendidness
of vision that rose above the ordinary standards of ordinary men;
now it filled her with uneasiness.

"Well," she thought, with a certain desperate philosophy, "in a
certain number of months or years this will all be over, and I
must simply endure it until that time comes. Life is full of
trouble, anyway!"

Life was full of trouble; she saw it on all sides. But what
trivial matters they were, after all, that troubled Elinor and
Vera and Judy Moran! Vera was eternally rushing into fresh,
furious hospitalities, welcoming hordes of men and women she
scarcely knew into her house; chattering, laughing, drinking;
flattering the debutantes, screaming at the telephone, standing
patient hours under the dressmaker's hands; never rested, never
satisfied, never stopping to think. Judy Moran's trouble was that
she was too fat; nothing else really penetrated the shell of her
indolent good nature. Kenneth might be politely dropped from the
family firm, her husband might die and be laid away, her brother-
in-law commence an ugly suit for the reclamation of certain jewels
and silver tableware, but all these things meant far less to Mrs.
Moran than the unflattering truths her bedroom scales told her
every morning. She had reached the age of fifty without ever
acquiring sufficient self-control to rid herself of the surplus
forty pounds, yet she never buttered a muffin at breakfast time,
or crushed a French pastry with her fork at noon, without an
inward protest. She spent large sums of money for corsets and
gowns that would disguise her immense weight rather than deny
herself one cup of creamed-and-sugared tea or one box of
chocolates. And she suffered whenever a casual photograph, or an
unexpected glimpse of herself in a mirror, brought to her notice
afresh the dreadful two hundred and twenty pounds.

And Elinor had her absurd and unnecessary troubles, rich man's
wife as she was now, and firmly established in the social group
upon whose outskirts she had lingered so long. The single state of
her four sisters was a constant annoyance to her, especially as
Peter was not fond of the girls, and liked to allude to them as
"spinsters" and "old maids," and to ask more entertaining and
younger women to the house. Elinor had never wanted a child, but
in the third or fourth year of her marriage she had begun to
perceive that it might be wise to give her worldly old husband an
heir, much better that, at any cost, than to encourage his
fondness for Barbara Oliphant's boy, his namesake nephew, who was
an officious, self-satisfied little lad of twelve. But Nature
refused to cooperate in Elinor's maternal plans and Peter Junior
did not make his appearance at the big house on the Avenue. Elinor
grew yearly noisier, more reckless, more shallow; she rushed about
excitedly from place to place, sometimes with Peter, sometimes
with one of her sisters; not happy in either case, but much given
to quarrelsome questioning of life. It was not that she could not
get what she wanted so much as that she did not know her own mind
and heart. Whatever was momentarily tiresome or distasteful must
be pushed out of her path, and as almost every friend and every
human experience came sooner or later into this category, Elinor
found herself stranded in the very centre of life.

Alice had her troubles, too, but when her thoughts came to Alice,
Rachael found a certain envy in her heart. Ah, those were the
troubles she could have welcomed; she could have cried with sheer
joy at the thought that her life might some day slip into the same
groove as Alice's life. Rachael loved the atmosphere of the big,
shabby house now; it was the only place to which she really cared
to go. There was in Alice Valentine's character something simple,
direct, and high-principled that communicated itself to everybody
and everything in her household. A small girl in her nursery might
show symptoms of diphtheria, a broken tile on the roof might
deluge the bedroom ceilings, an old cook leave suddenly, or a
heavy rain fall upon a Sunday predestined for picknicking, but
Alice Valentine, plain, slow of speech, and slow of thought, went
her serene way, nursing, consoling, repairing, readjusting.

She had her cares about George, but they were not like Rachael's
cares for Warren. Alice knew him to be none too strong, easily
tired, often discouraged. His professional successes were many,
but there were times when the collapse of a tiny child in a free
hospital could blot from George's simple, big, tender heart the
memory of a dozen achievements. The wife, deep in the claims of
her four growing children, sometimes longed to put her arms about
him, to run away with him to some quiet land of sunshine and
palms, some lazy curve of white beach where he could rest and
sleep, and drift back to his old splendid energy and strength. She
longed to cook for him the old dishes he had loved in the early
days of their marriage, to read to him, to let the world forget
them while they forgot the world.

Instead, a hundred claims kept them here in the current of
affairs. Mary was a tall, sweet, gracious girl of sixteen now,
like her father, a pretty edition of his red hair and long-
featured clever face. Mary must go on with her music, must be put
through the lessoning and grooming of a gentlewoman, and take her
place in the dancing class that would be the Junior Cotillion in a
year or two. Alice Valentine was not a worldly woman, but she knew
it would be sheer cruelty to let her daughter grow up a stranger
in her own world, different in speech and dress and manner from
all the other girls and boys. So Mary went to little dances at the
Royces' and the Bowditches', and walked home from her riding
lesson with little Billy Parmalee or Frank Whittaker, or with
Florence Haviland and Bobby Oliphant. And Alice watched her gowns,
and her hair, and her pretty young teeth only a little less
carefully than she listened to her confidences, questioned her
about persons and things, and looked for inaccuracies in her
speech.

George Junior was a care, too, in these days at the non-committal,
unenthusiastic age of fourteen, when all the vices in the world,
finger on lip, form a bright escort for waking or sleeping hours,
and the tenderest and most tactful of maternal questions slips
from the shell of boyish silence and gruffness unanswered. Full of
apprehension and eagerness, Alice watched her only son; she could
not give him every hour of her busy days; she would have given him
every instant if she could. He was a good boy, but he was human.
Dressed for dinner and the theatre, his mother would look into the
children's sitting-room to find Mary reading, George reading,
Martha, very conscious of being there on sufferance, also reading
virtuously and attentively.

"Good-night, my darlings! You're going to bed promptly at nine,
aren't you, Mary--and Gogo, too? You know we were all late last
night," Alice would say, coming in.

"I am!" Mary would give her mother her sunny smile. "Leslie Perry
is going to be here to-morrow night, anyway, and we're going to
Thomas Prince's skating party in the afternoon, aren't we,
Mother?"

"Thomas Prince, the big boob!" Gogo might comment without
bitterness.

"He's not a big boob, either, is he, Mother?" Mary was swift in
defence. "He's not nearly such a boob as Tubby Butler or Sam
Moulton!"

"Gosh, that's right--knock Tubby!" Gogo would mumble.

"Oh, my darling boy, and my darling girl!" Alice, full of
affection and distress, would look from one to the other. Gogo,
standing near his mother, usually had a request.

"They're all over at Sam's to-night. Gosh! they're going to have
fun!"

"Father said 'NOT again this week,'" Mary might chant.

"Mary!" Alice's reproachful look would silence her daughter; she
would put an arm about her son.

"What is it to-night, dear?"

"Oh, nothing much!" Gogo would fling up his dark head impatiently.

"Just Tubby and Sam?"

"I guess so," gruffly.

"But Daddy feels--" Alice would stop short in perplexity. Why
shouldn't he go? She had known Mrs. Moulton from the days when
they both were brides, the Moultons' house was near, and it was
dull for Gogo here, under the sitting-room lamp. If he had only
been as contented as Mary, who, with a good time to remember from
yesterday, and another to look forward to to-morrow, was perfectly
happy to-night. But boys were different. Sam was a trustworthy
little fellow, but Alice did not so much like Tubby Butler. And
George did not like to have Gogo away from the house at night. She
would smile into the boy's gloomy eyes.

"Couldn't you just read to-night, my son, or perhaps Mary would
play rum with you? Wouldn't that be better, and a long night's
sleep, than going over to Sam's EVERY night?"

But she would leave a disappointed and sullen boy behind her; his
disgusted face would haunt her throughout the entire evening.

Martha was not so much a problem, and little Katharine was still
baby enough to be a joy to the whole house. But between the
children's meals, their shoes and hats and lessons, Alice was a
busy woman, and she realized that her responsibilities must
increase rather than lessen in the next few years. When Mary was
married, and Gogo finishing college, and Martha ready to be
entertained and chaperoned by her big sister, then she and George
might take Kittiwake and run away; but not now.

Rachael formed the habit of calling at the Valentine house through
the wet winds of March and April, coming in upon Alice at all
hours, sometimes with the boys, sometimes alone. Alice, in her
quiet way, was ready to open her heart completely to her brilliant
friend. Rachael spoke of all topics except one to Alice. They
discussed houses and maids, the children, books and plays and
plans for the summer, birth and death, the approaching
responsibility of the vote, philosophies and religions, saints and
sages. And the day came when Rachael spoke of Warren and of
Margaret Clay.

It was a quiet, wet spring afternoon, a day when the coming of
green leaves could be actually felt in the softened air. The two
women were upstairs in Alice's white and blue sitting-room
enjoying a wood fire. Jim and Derry were in the playroom with
Kittiwake; the house was silent, so silent that they could hear
the drumming of rain on the leads, and the lazy purr of the fire.

Alice was first incredulous, and then stunned at the story.

Rachael told all she knew, the change in her husband, the opening
night of "The Bad Little Lady," her lonely dinners and evenings,
and Magsie's complacent attitude of possession.

"Well," said Alice, who had been an absorbed and astounded
listener, when she finished, "I confess I don't understand it! If
Warren Gregory is making a fool of himself over Margaret Clay, no
one is going to be as much ashamed as he is when he is over it. I
think with you," Alice added, much in earnest, "that as far as any
actual infidelity goes, neither one would be CAPABLE of it!
Magsie's a selfish little featherhead, but she has her own
advantage too close at heart, and Warren, no matter what
preposterous theory he has to explain his interest in Magsie,
isn't going to actually do anything that would put him in the
wrong!" She paused, but Rachael did not speak, and something in
her aspect, as she sat steadily watching the fire, smote Alice to
the heart. "I have never been so shocked and so disappointed in my
life!" Alice went on, "I can't YET believe it! The only thing you
can do is keep quiet and dignified, and wait for the whole thing
to wear itself out. This explains the change between George and
Warren. I knew George suspected something from the way he tried to
shut me up when I saw Warren the other night at the theatre."

"Now that I've talked about it," Rachael smiled, "I believe I feel
better!" And presently she dried her eyes, and even laughed at
herself a little as she and Alice fell to talking of other things.
When Rachael, a boy in each hand, said good-bye, and went out into
the pale, late afternoon sunshine that followed the rain, Alice
accompanied her to the door, and stood for a moment with her at
the top of the street steps.

"You're so lovely, Rachael," said her friend affectionately. "It
doesn't seem right to have anything ever trouble anyone so
pretty!"

Rachael only smiled doubtfully in answer, but Derry and Jim talked
all the way home, their mother listening in silence. She found
their conversation infinitely more amusing when uninfluenced by
her. Both were naturally observant, Jim logical and reasonable,
Derry always misled by his fancy and his dreams. When Tim was a
lion, he was a lion who lived in the Gregory nursery, sat in the
chairs that belonged to the Gregory children, and preyed upon
their toys, as toys. But Derry was a beast of another calibre. The
polished nursery floor was the still water of jungle pools, and
the cribs were trees which a hideous and ferocious beast,
radically differing in every way from little Gerald Gregory,
climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by
grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but
Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself,
and almost always impress his brother, with his roarings and
ravaging.

To-day their conversation ran along pleasantly; they were
companionable little brothers, and only unmanageable when
separated.

"All the men walking home will get their feet horrid an' wet,"
said Jim, "and then the ladies will scold 'em!"

"This would be a great, big ocean for a fairy," Derry commented,
flicking a wide puddle with a well-protected little foot. "Jim,"
he added in an anxious undertone, "could a fairy drown?"

"Not if he had his swimming belt on," Jim said hardily.

"All the fairies have to take little white rose leaves, and make
themselves swimming belts," Derry said dreamily, "'r else their
mothers won't let them go swimming, will they, Mother?"

They did not wait for her answer, and Rachael was free to return
to her own thoughts. But the interruption roused her, and she
watched the little pair with pleasure as they trotted before her
on the drying sidewalks. Derry was blond and Jim dark, yet they
looked alike, both with Rachael's dark, expressive eyes, and with
their father's handsome mouth and sudden, appealing smile. But
Rachael fancied that her oldest son was most like his father in
type, and found it hard to be as stern with Jim as she was with
the impulsive reckless, eager Derry, whose faults were more apt to
be her own.

To-night she went with them to the nursery, where their little
table was already set for supper and their small white beds
already neatly turned down.

"Mother's going to give us our baths!" shouted Jim. Both boys
looked at her eagerly; Rachael smiled doubtfully.

"Mother's afraid that she will have to dress, to meet Daddy
downtown," she began regretfully, when old Mary interposed
respectfully:

"Excuse me, Mrs. Gregory. But Dennison took a message from Doctor
this afternoon. I happen to know it because Louise asked me if I
didn't think she had better order dinner for you. Doctor has been
called to Albany on a case, and was to let you know when to expect
him."

"Goody--goody--good-good!" shouted Jim, and Derry joined in with a
triumphant shriek, and clasped his arms tightly about his mother's
knees. Rachael had turned a little pale, but she kissed both boys,
and only left them long enough to change her gown to something
loose and comfortable.

Then she came back to the nursery, and there were baths, and
games, and suppers, and then stories and prayers before the fire,
Mary and Rachael laughing over the fluffy heads, revelling in the
beauty of the little bodies.

When they were in bed she went down to a solitary dinner, and, as
she ate it, her thoughts went back to other solitary dinners years
ago. Utter discouragement and something like a great, all-
enveloping fear possessed her. She was afraid of life. She had
dented her armor, broken her steel, she had been flung back and
worsted in the fight.

What was the secret, then, Rachael asked the fire, if youth and
beauty and high hopes and great love failed like so many straws?
Why was Alice contented, and she, Rachael, torn by a thousand
conflicting hopes and fears? Why was it, that with all her
cleverness, and all her beauty, the woman who had been Rachael
Fairfax, and Rachael Breckenridge, and Rachael Gregory, had never
yet felt sure of joy, had never dared lay hands upon it boldly,
and know it to be her own, had trembled, and apprehended, and
distrusted where women of infinitely lesser gifts had been able to
enter into the kingdom with such utter certainty and serenity?

Sitting through the long evening by the fire, in the drowsy
silence of the big drawing-room, Rachael felt her eyes grow heavy.
Who was unhappy, who was happy--what was all life about anyway--

Dennison and old Mary came in at eleven, and looked at her for a
long five minutes. Their eyes said a great many things, although
neither spoke aloud. The fire had burned low, the light of a
shaded lamp fell softly on the sleeping woman's face. There was a
little frown between the beautiful brows, and once she sighed
lightly, like a child.

The man stepped softly back into the hall, and Mary touched her
mistress.

"Mrs. Gregory, you've dropped off to sleep!"

Rachael roused, looked up, smiling bewilderedly. Her look seemed
to search the shadows beyond the old woman's form. Slowly the new
look of strain and sorrow came back into her eyes.

"Why, so I did!" she said, getting to her feet. "I think I'll go
upstairs. Any message from Doctor Gregory?"

"No message, Mrs. Gregory."

"Thank you, Mary, good-night!" Rachael went slowly out through the
dimly lighted arch of the hall doorway, and slowly upstairs. She
deliberately passed the nursery door. Her heart was too full to
risk a visit to the boys to-night. She lighted her room and sank
dazedly into a chair.

"I dreamed that we were just married, and in the old studio," she
said, half aloud. "I dreamed I had the old-feeling again, of being
so sure, and so beloved! I thought Warren had come home early and
had brought me violets!"




CHAPTER VII


A day later Dennison brought up the card of Miss Margaret Clay.
Rachael turned it slowly in her hands, pondering, with a quickened
heartbeat and a fluctuating color. Magsie had been often a guest
in Rachael's house a year ago, but she had not been to see Rachael
for a long time now. They were to meet, they were to talk alone
together--what about? There was nothing about which Rachael
Gregory cared to talk to Margaret Clay.

A certain chilliness and trembling smote Rachael, and she sat
down. She wished she had been out. It would be simple enough to
send down a message to that effect, of course, but that was not
the same thing. That would be evading the issue, whereas, had she
been out, she could not have held herself responsible for missing
Magsie.

Well, the girl was in the neighborhood, of course, and had simply
come in to say now do you do? But it would mean evasions, and
affectations, and insincerities to talk with Magsie; it would mean
lying, unless there must be an open breach. Rachael found herself
in a state of actual dread of the encounter, and to end it,
impatient at anything so absurd, she asked Dennison to bring the
young lady at once to her own sitting-room.

This was the transformed apartment that had been old Mrs.
Gregory's, running straight across the bedroom floor, and
commanding from four wide windows a glimpse of the old square, now
brave in new feathery green. Rachael had replaced its dull red rep
with modern tapestries, had had it papered in peacock and gray,
had covered the old, dark woodwork with cream-colored enamel and
replaced the black marble mantel with a simply carved one of white
stone. The chairs here were all comfortable now; Rachael's book
lay on a magazine-littered table, a dozen tiny, leather-cased
animals, cows, horses, and sheep, were stabled on the hearth, and
the spring sunlight poured in through fragile curtains of crisp
net. Over the fireplace the great oil portrait of Warren Gregory
smiled down, a younger Warren, but hardly more handsome than he
was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads hung opposite it,
between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry and their
father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand piano,
under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in asking
Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in which
she would feel most at ease.

Upstairs came the light, tripping feet. "In here?" said the fresh,
confident voice. Magsie came in.

Rachael met her at the door, and the two women shook hands. Magsie
hardly glanced at her hostess, her dancing scrutiny swept the room
and settled on Warren's portrait.

She looked her prettiest, Rachael decided miserably. She was all
in white: white shoes, white stockings, the smartest of little
white suits, a white hat half hiding her heavy masses of trimly
banded golden hair. If her hard winter had tired Magsie--"The Bad
Little Lady" was approaching the end of its run--she did not show
it. But there was some new quality in her face, some quality
almost wistful, almost anxious, that made its appeal even to
Warren Gregory's wife.

"This is nice of you, Magsie," Rachael said, watching her closely,
and conscious still of that absurd flutter at her heart. Both
women had seated themselves, now Rachael reached for the silk-
lined basket where she kept a little pretence of needlework, and
began to sew. There were several squares of dark rich silks in the
basket, and their touch seemed to give her confidence.

"What are you making?" said Magsie with a rather touching pretence
at interest. Rachael began to perceive that Magsie was ill at
ease, too. She knew the girl well enough to know that nothing but
her own affairs interested her; it was not like Magsie to ask
seriously about another woman's sewing.

"Warren likes silk handkerchiefs," explained Rachael, all the
capable wife, "and those I make are much prettier than those he
can find in the shops. So I pick up pieces of silk, from time to
time, and keep him supplied."

"He always has beautiful handkerchiefs," said Magsie rather
faintly. "I remember, years ago, when I was with Mrs. Torrence,
thinking that Greg always looked so--so carefully groomed."

"A doctor has to be," Rachael answered sensibly. There were no
girlish vapors or uncertainties about her manner; she had been the
man's wife for nearly seven years; she was in his house; she need
not fear Magsie Clay.

"I suppose so," Magsie said vaguely.

"What are your plans, Magsie?" Rachael asked kindly, as she
threaded a needle.

"We close on the eighteenth," Magsie announced.

"Yes, so I noticed." Rachael had looked for this news every week
since the run of the play began. "Well, that was a successful
engagement, wasn't it?" she asked. It began to be rather a
satisfaction to Rachael to find herself at such close quarters at
last. What a harmless little thing this dreaded opponent was,
after all!

"Yes, they were delighted," Magsie responded still in such a
lackadaisical, toneless, and dreary manner that Rachael glanced at
her in surprise. Magsie's eyes were full of tears.

"Why, what's the matter, my dear child?" she asked, feeling more
sure of herself every instant.

Her guest took a little handkerchief from her pretty white leather
purse, and touched her bright brown eyes with it lightly.

"I'll tell you, Rachael," said she, with an evident effort at
brightness and naturalness, "I came here to see you about
something to-day, but I--I don't quite know how to begin. Only,
whatever you think about it, I want you to remember that your
opinion is what counts; you're the one person who--who can really
advise me, and--and perhaps help me and other people out of a
difficulty."

Rachael looked at her with a twinge of inward distaste. This
rather dramatic start did not promise well; she was to be treated
to some youthful heroics. Instantly the hope came to her that
Magsie had some new admirer, someone she would really consider as
a husband, and wanted to make of Rachael an advocate with Warren,
who, in his present absurd state of infatuation, might not find
such a situation to his taste.

"I want to put to you the case of a friend of mine," Magsie said
presently, "a girl who, like myself, is on the stage." Rachael
wondered if the girl really hoped to say anything convincing under
so thin a disguise, but said nothing herself, and Magsie went on:
"She's pretty, and young--" Her tone wavered. "We've had a nice
company all winter," she remarked lamely.

This was beginning to be rather absurd. Rachael, quite at ease,
raised mildly interrogatory eyes to Magsie.

"You'll go on with your work, now that you've begun so well, won't
you?" she asked casually.

"W--w--well, I suppose so," Magsie answered dubiously, flushing a
sudden red. "I--don't know what I shall do!"

"But surely you've had an unusually encouraging beginning?"
pursued Rachael comfortably.

"Oh, yes, there's no doubt about that, at least!" Magsie said.
About what was there doubt, then? Rachael wondered.

She deliberately allowed a little silence to follow this remark,
smiling, as if at her own thoughts, as she sewed. The younger
woman's gaze roved restlessly about the room, she leaned from her
chair to take a framed photograph of the boys from a low bookcase,
and studied it with evidently forced attention.

"They're stunning!" she said in an undertone as she laid it aside.

"They're good little boys," their mother said contentedly. "I know
that the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking,
are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know
whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in
milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ago, and--"

"Oh, nothing, nothing, thank you, Rachael!" Magsie said eagerly
and nervously. "I couldn't--"

"The boys may be in soon," Rachael remarked, choosing to ignore
her guest's rather unexpected emotion.

This seemed to spur Magsie suddenly into speech. She glanced at
the tall old moonfaced clock that was slowly ticking near the
door, as if to estimate the time left her, and sat suddenly erect
on the edge of her chair.

"I mustn't stay,"' she said breathlessly. "I--I have to be back at
the theatre at seven, and I ought to go home first for a few
minutes. My girl--she's just a Swedish woman that I picked up by
chance--worries about me as if she were my mother, unless I come
in and rest, and take an eggnog, or something." She rallied her
forces with a quite visible effort. "It was just this, Rachael,"
said Magsie, looking at the fire, and twisting her white gloves in
desperate embarrassment, "I know you've always liked me, you've
always been so kind to me, and I can only hope that you'll forgive
me if what I say sounds strange to you. I thought I could come
here and say it, but--I've always been a little bit afraid of you,
Rachael--and I"--Magsie laughed nervously--"and I'm scared to
death now!" she said simply.

Something natural, unaffected, and direct in her usually self-
conscious and artificial manner struck Rachael with a vague sense
of uneasiness. Magsie certainly did not seem to be acting now;
there were real tears in her pretty eyes, and a genuine break in
her young voice.

"I'm going straight ahead," she said rapidly, "because I've been
getting up my courage this whole week to come and see you, and
now, while Greg is in Albany, I can't put it off any longer. He
doesn't know it, of course, and, although I know I'm putting
myself entirely at your mercy, Rachael, I believe you'll never
tell him if I ask you not to!"

"I don't understand," Rachael said slowly.

"I've been thinking it all out," Magsie went on, "and this is the
conclusion--at least, this is what I've thought! You have always
had everything, Rachael. You've always been so beautiful, and so
much admired. You loved Clarence, and married him--oh, don't think
I'm rude, Rachael," the girl pleaded eagerly, as Rachael voiced an
inarticulate protest, "because I'm so desperately in earnest, and
s-s-so desperately unhappy!" Her voice broke on a rush of tears,
but she commanded it, and hurried on. "You've always been
fortunate, not like other women, who had to be second best, but
ALWAYS the cleverest, and ALWAYS the handsomest! I remember, when
I heard you were to marry Greg, I was just sick with misery for
two or three days! I had seen him a few weeks before in Paris, but
he said nothing of it, didn't even mention you. Don't think I was
jealous, Rachael--it wasn't that. But it seemed to me that you had
everything! First the position of marrying a Breckenridge, then to
step straight into Greg's life. You'll never know how I--how I
singled you out to watch--"

"Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael
said to herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart. Magsie
watched her hopefully, but Rachael did not speak, and the girl
went on:

"When I came to America I thought of you, and I listened to what
everyone said of you. You had a splendid boy, named for Greg, and
then another boy; you were richer and happier and more admired
than ever! And Rachael--I know you'll forgive me--you were so much
FINER than ever--when I met you I saw that. I couldn't dislike
you, I couldn't do anything but admire, with all the others. I
remember at Leila's wedding, when you wore dark blue and furs, and
you looked so lovely! And then I met Greg again. And truly, truly,
Rachael, I never dreamed of this then!"

"Dreamed of what?" Rachael said with dry lips. The girl's voice,
the darkening room, the dull, fluttering flames of the dying fire,
seemed all like some oppressive dream.

"Dreamed--" Magsie's voice sank. Her eyes closed, she put one hand
over her heart, and pressed it there. "Then came my plan to go on
the stage," she said, taking up her story, "and one day, when I
was especially blue, I met Greg. We had tea together. I've never
forgotten one instant of that day! He tried to telephone you, but
couldn't get you; we just talked like any friends. But he promised
to help me, he was so interested, and I was homesick for Paris,
and ready to die in this awful city! After that you gave me a
dinner, and then we had theatricals, and then Bowman placed me,
and I had to go on the road. But I saw Greg two or three times,
and one day--one day last winter"--again her voice faltered, as if
she found the memories too poignant for speech--"we drove in the
Park," she said dreamily; "and then Greg saw how it was."

Rachael sat silent, stunned.

"Oh, Rachael," the girl said passionately. "Don't think I didn't
fight it! I thought of you, I tried to think for us all. I said we
would never see each other again, and I went away--you know that!
For months after that day in the Park we hardly saw each other.
And then, last summer, we met again. And he talked to me so
wonderfully, Rachael, about making the best of it, about being
good friends anyway--and I've lived on that! But I can't live on
that forever, Rachael."

"You've been seeing each other?" Rachael asked stupidly.

"Oh, every day! At tea, you know, or sometimes especially before
you came back, at dinner. And, Rachael, nobody will ever know what
it's done for me! Greg's managed all my business, and whenever I
was utterly discouraged and tired he had the kindest way of
saying: 'Never mind, Magsie, I'm tired and discouraged, too!'"
Magsie's face glowed happily at the memory of it. "I know I'm not
worthy of Greg's friendship," she said eagerly. "And all the time
I've thought of you, Rachael, as having the first right, as being
far, far above me in everything! But--I'm telling you everything,
you see--" Magsie interrupted herself to explain.

"Go on!" Rachael urged, clearing her throat.

"Well, it's not much. But a week or two ago Greg was talking to me
about your being eager to get the boys into the country early this
year. He looked awfully tired that afternoon, and he said that