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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 49632
   :PG.Title: The Love Chase
   :PG.Released: 2015-08-06
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Felix Grendon
   :DC.Title: The Love Chase
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1922
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE LOVE CHASE
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      THE LOVE CHASE

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      BY

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      FELIX GRENDON

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      Author of
      "Will He Come Back?", "Nixola of Wall Street," etc.

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      BOSTON
      SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
      PUBLISHERS

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      COPYRIGHT, 1922

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      BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
      (INCORPORATED)

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      Printed in the United States of America

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      THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY
      CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

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   CONTENTS

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PART \I.  `Rebellion!`_

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PART \II.  `Love Among the Outlaws`_

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PART \III.  `Janet on her Own`_

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PART \IV.  `Nemesis!`_

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PART \V.  `Hearts and Treasures`_

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   THE LOVE CHASE

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   |  "But who, alas! can love and still be wise?"
   |                                    LORD BYRON

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..

   |  "The right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule
   |      and not to wander in mere lawlessness."
   |                                    GEORGE ELIOT

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.. _`REBELLION!`:

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   PART I

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   REBELLION

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   CHAPTER ONE

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   \I

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A young man of twenty-seven, a dashing Count d'Orsay
type, was sitting astride a chair in flat number fifteen, one
of the three-room flats in the Lorillard model tenement
houses.  He was alone in the room but evidently not in
the flat, for he was directing animated remarks at one of
two closed doors that flanked a projecting china cupboard.

"It's to be a masked ball, Cornelia," he was saying, "and
I'm going as the head of John the Baptist."

Two feminine voices, one from behind the door, laughed
merrily.  Much pleased, the young man continued:

"Or I might go as a Spanish cavalier.  The costume in
Whistler's painting of 'Henry Irving as Philip II' would
suit me to a T."

"Claude, I know what you're thinking of," returned a
well-pitched voice behind the right door.  "You're not
thinking of the part of Philip II, but of the part of Don
Juan, in which you expect to be irresistible."

"Gee," added kittenish tones behind the door.  "It'd
be a good sight better if he went as a penitent friar."

"Leading you attired as Salome, I dare say."

"Oh, no, I mean to go as St. Cecilia."

Claude burst into mocking laughter.

"You'd need seven and seventy veils for that part,
Mazie," he said.

When he subsided, the same languid, purring tones
replied from the left.

"Say, Claude, you *have* got a head.  But so has a pin."

"Naughty kitten, showing its claws in company!"

"Lothario!" cried Cornelia, from the right.  "No
quarreling before supper."

"Oh, I need a little excitement to give me an appetite,"
said Claude.

He got up, walked around the room several times and
then stopped in front of the left door.

"I wish you'd hurry up, Mazie."

"Mary, I'm on my fourth step," purred her voice in
reply.

"I can fairly see you dressing."

Through Mazie's door came a coloratura shriek.

"In my mind's eye, that is," added Claude, after a pause.

Resuming his seat he addressed the right door again.

"Cornelia, shall we go to the Turk's or to the Spaniard's?"

"I'm sorry, Lothario, but I've got a date with 'Big
Burley' for tonight."

"Hutchins Burley?  Then have a good time!"

As his skeptical inflection belied his words, Cornelia
asked for an explanation.

"Hutch is in a devil of a temper," declared Claude grimly,
"because Rob covered him with ridicule at the Outlaw
Club."

"Leave it to Robert Lloyd!"

This exclamation from the right door was followed by a
peremptory command from the left.

"Say, wait a moment—I can't hear you, Claude—and I
can't find my garter."

Ignoring Mazie's cries of distress, Claude proceeded to
explain to the right door that Burley's temper had been
ruffled that afternoon at a meeting of the Outlaws, a club
for young radical and artistic people which they all
belonged to, and which, since the recent signing of the
armistice, had more than trebled its membership.  Friction had
arisen from the contact of two facts: the need of money
to provide the club with larger quarters, and the proposal
to hold a public masked ball as an easy means of raising
the money.

Hutchins Burley, who had organized the Outlaws,
sponsored this proposal, but some of the members opposed it
on the ground that, in the existing state of public opinion,
a radical club might get a black eye from the improprieties
or the hooliganism that outsiders could practice under cover
of the masks.  "Big Burley" had flattened out most of
the opposition with his usual steam-rollering bluster, the
Outlaws, like more timid gentry, being victims of a popular
superstition that a noisy debater is always in the right.

Leading the minority, Claude had moved the substitution
of a restricted costume ball for the free and easy
masquerade.  He was ably seconded by his friend Robert Lloyd,
whose short satiric speech won over many supporters, so
many that "Big Burley" fairly swelled with the venom
of frustration.  Claude assured Cornelia that, if a narrow
majority had not finally declared itself in favor of the
masked ball, Burley would certainly have exploded.  As it
was—

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   \II

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Further explanations were cut short by the opening of the
door on the left.

"Mary, I'm on my last step," announced the occupant,
standing on the threshold.

Mazie Ross was taller and slenderer than her purring
tones foreshadowed.  Her intimates knew that, in addition
to being extremely pretty, she was extremely bad.  Young
as she was, her looks were already enameled with cruelty.
A long procession of lovers had left her wholly incapable
of tenderness or shame.

With the cadenced poses of a Ziegfield "Follies" girl,
she walked to Claude's chair and stood beside him
invitingly.  He opened his arms and drew her on his lap.  She
struggled just enough to put zest into the embraces he
immediately engaged her in.

"You haven't invited me yet," she said, pouting.  "Do
you think I don't eat or drink?"

"Goddesses and sylphs live on nectar and ambrosia, you
know."

"Now you're talking, old dear.  But let me give you a
tip.  Those dishes don't figure on the menu of a cheap
Turkish restaurant in the gas house district.  I do believe
you can get them at the Plaza or the Ritz, though."

Claude's reply to this hint was to launch into caresses
so daring that Mazie took alarm.  She was in the habit
of giving much less than she received, and she had not as
yet received very much from Claude.  Therefore she wriggled,
with some difficulty, out of his grasp.  Perhaps she
also desired to anticipate the entrance of her chum.  At
any rate, Cornelia just then opened the door on the right.



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   \III

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"Time I came in," she remarked; glancing significantly
from one to the other.

"Yes," replied Mazie, looking the picture of wounded
innocence.  "Since Claude came back from the firing line
in France—or was it gay Paree?—liberty and license look
alike to him.  All the same, my beamish boy, there's a
boundary between the two."

"Boundaries exist only to be extended," chanted Claude,
delighted with his own audacity.

"I don't know which of you is the more incorrigible flirt,"
said Cornelia, half in reproach.

"Listen to the pot calling the kettle black," cried the
"Follies" girl.  "Somebody pass me a whiff of brandy to
uplift me."

"Don't be vulgar, Mazie."

Mazie's answer was to tango to Cornelia's cupboard,
singing provocatively:

   |  "I learnt more from Billy,
   |  On the day I stayed from school,
   |  Than teacher could have taught me in a week."
   |

She would have said and done much more than this to
annoy Cornelia.  But she remembered in time that her
sayings or doings might offend Claude Fontaine who, in
the words of a fellow Outlaw, was "rich, but refined."  She
never knowingly gave offence to any form of wealth whilst
there was hope of exploiting its owner even on the smallest
scale.  Besides, she was more than a little afraid of
Cornelia.

After helping herself to an undiluted drink, she pranced
back to the studio couch and flung herself upon it, face
downwards, with the abandon of a Russian ballet dancer.

"Thank the Lord it's to be a masked affair," she called
out to the others.  "What'd be the good of a regular
look-and-see ball?  Nowadays men are that timid, you can't
have a lark with them unless they don't see what they're
doing, nor who they're doing it with."

"Are you throwing stones at me?" asked Claude.

"No, at Robert Lloyd.  What's he doing in these diggings,
anyhow?  Why, he's a regular pale-face.  If he's the new
man—you know the kind—the kind that won't kiss a girl
in the dark without first asking her permission—then give
me the old Nick."

"Don't blame it all on poor Cato," Cornelia intervened.

Cornelia Covert was about thirty, blonde, loose-framed
and of medium height.  Her rich golden hair sounded a
dominant note of which her pupils and her eyebrows were
overtones.  A firm, square chin heightened an illusion of
strength with which her form invested her, but which her
pale coloring and listless eye did not support.

"Claude sided with the strait-laced party, too," she
reminded Mazie.

"Oh, well," said Claude, flushing slightly, "I'm really
quite glad that the minority lost.  To tell the truth, what
I chiefly objected to was Hutchins Hurley's cockiness.
Personally I prefer a masked ball.  I haven't got Robert's
interest in backing the radicals or keeping their reputation
spotless.  Let's risk it, I say.  It's a case of nothing venture,
nothing have, isn't it?"

"So Robert was the real leader of the rumpus all the
time," said Cornelia, sweetly.  "I thought so.  Still, I'm
free to say that I admire his courage in defying 'Big
Burley.'  Especially when I think how afraid of Hutch all
the Outlaws are."

Claude rose to his full stature and walked to the head of
the couch where he stood, handsome and commanding.

"Am I afraid of him?" he asked, amused.

"Well, you generally agree with him, Lothario."

He received this jab with a smile.  He supposed Cornelia
to be speaking only of bodily fear, and as his physical
courage and strength were unusual, the shaft glanced off.

"I mean," said Cornelia, "that, like Big Burley, you are
an anarchist at heart, only not such a wicked one.  You
work within the law, he works without."

Claude was preparing a vigorous assault on any theory
that placed Burley and himself in the same class, when a
ring at the outer door took the opportunity away.





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   CHAPTER TWO


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   \I

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That part of the city of New York which the older charts
describe as Kips Bay, now encompasses the East Thirties,
Forties, and Fifties.  It is a section of Manhattan famous
in song and story.  Here in 1635 came Jacobus Kip, the
learned Dutch patroon and, with bricks brought from
Holland, built a farmhouse on land where St. Gabriel's Park
and an astonishingly well-stocked library now flourish.
Here Washington had another site for his movable headquarters
while, on the heights of Murray Hill hard by, he
rallied his troops against the redcoats.  Here in Artillery
Park (at First Avenue and Forty-fifth Street), Nathan
Hale was executed.  And here at Turtle Bay (where the
East Forties now end) the "Quality" had a fashionable
bathing beach in the early eighteen-hundreds.

Of these historic memories the average Kipsian is ignorant,
quite contemptuously ignorant.  Far livelier realities
occupy his thoughts.  In the heart of modern Kips Bay
there are slums, stables, hospitals, asylums, and model
tenement houses, five features ranged in an ascending order
of precedence from the neighborhood's point of view.  Kips
Bay is keen on this order of precedence.  No lady of the
White House giving her first State Ball could well be
keener.

Slums rank lowest in the neighborhood's appraisal because
they are the natural or routine habitat of the human
species there.  Stables go a peg higher, not because they are
dirtier, or because artists frequently turn them into studios
but because they serve as club houses for professional
gangsters, and because a crack gunman is at once the pride
and the terror of his district.  Hospitals outclass the stables
by the same law of human nature that makes an extra
holiday outclass a Sunday.  For the hospital is a sort of
haven in which the true-born Kipsian expects, now and
then, to spend a furlough from the ravages of alcohol, from
undernourishment, or merely from the wear and tear of the
industrial machine.

In their turn, the hospitals yield the palm to the several
asylums which, adjoining the hovels of the destitute,
provide the infirm, the defective, or the insane with all the
comforts and luxuries of the rich.  Easily the handsomest
buildings in the neighborhood, the asylums stand unrivalled
in aristocratic prestige.  And this is not due to a Kipsian
gratitude for charity, nor to the growing artistic cultivation
of the masses.  It is due to an inborn respect for
plutocracy, a respect that persists in the heart of every
Kipsian, no matter how loudly he may applaud the labor
agitator who assures him that an asylum is at once a
monument to the uneasy consciences of donors and a
sepulchre for those soldiers of industry who do not perish
in active service.

It would be as difficult for the Kipsian to explain to
the outside world why his model tenements outrank
asylums as for the outside world to explain to the Kipsian
why a civilian Secretary of the Navy can give orders to
the uniformed Admiral of the Fleet.  In either case, the
simplest course the perplexed brain can pursue is to accept
the facts on faith.

This is precisely what the Kipsian has done—he has
accepted both the civilian Secretary and the model
tenements on faith.  Nevertheless, the facts quite pass his
understanding.  The model tenement, he has heard, was
built in his midst for the likes of himself, for toilers at
the border line of pauperism.  It was built, moreover, to
accustom him to habits of cleanliness and thrift.
Unfortunately, the rooms are too small to hold his furniture, or
the furniture is too bulky to leave room for cleanliness.
In any case, the rents are so high that only the "aristocrats
of labor" can afford to pay them, and the "aristocrats of
labor" are not so low as to merge their fortunes with the
denizens of Kips Bay.

Because their habits, their pocketbooks, and their pride
are thus offended, native-born Kipsians have unanimously
fought shy of the model tenements.  And these evidences
of concern for the welfare of the masses might have proven
a poor investment for public benefactors, had not the
situation been saved by sundry artists, writers, actors,
singers, promoters, efficiency engineers, socialists,
anarchists and dynamitards who promptly rented every
available apartment besides filling up a long waiting list of
impatient applicants.

To the simple-minded natives of Kips Bay, the model
tenementers stand clean beyond the bounds of everyday
belief.  Here are people who plainly hail from comfortable
homes, and yet voluntarily set up housekeeping in the
slums; who neither work by day nor sleep by night; who
flirt with riches and coquet with poverty; and who go to
and from their abodes, one day in rags, the next in motor
cars.  By such contradictions respectable Kipsians are
completely mystified.  But having grown accustomed to
their mystery, they have ceased to hate it.  They have
even begun to pay it the compliment which idolatrous
man usually pays the unfathomable: they worship it above
all the things that they can fathom.

And thus it has come to pass that, within the confines
of Kips Bay, the model tenement lords it over the asylum
for the insane.

The model tenementers affect a lofty indifference to this
high rank; also to the slum-dwellers who confer it.  They
affect an even loftier indifference to the existence of the
newer model tenements in the East End Avenue and John
Jay Park neighborhoods.  When comparisons are instituted
between these more modern, more luxurious structures and
their own, the Lorillarders smile superiorly and say: "Let
Kips Bay renegades with a sneaking preference for uptown
respectability migrate to John Jay Park, or better still, to
Hell Gate!  We want no truck with them.  The one and
only Lorillard speaks for itself."

If you probe further they will ask you to lift up your
eyes at night to their electrically lighted pagoda roof and
then tell them why they should not be content to be "a
twinkling model set in a sea of slums."  No.  Impossible
to get them excited by sly disparagements or open
comparisons.

Impossible, that is, unless your comparison brings in
Greenwich Village.  Dare to assert that the model tenement
district reminds you of Greenwich Village or the Latin
Quarter of Paris, and you will encounter an explosion.  You
will learn to your sorrow that the cold model tenementer
is not cold at all, that he is a volcano covered with a very
little snow.

He will bombard you with: "Greenwich Village me eye!
Liken us to a fake Bohemia, to a near-beer substitute for
the Parisian Latin Quarter!  Say, where did you get that
stuff?  We don't imitate the Latin Quarter or any other
foreign quarter.  We are an American quarter.  We are
the Kips Bay model tenement quarter—and that is all
there is to it."

He will swear that the differences between Greenwich
Village and Kips Bay are too numerous to record.  He
will challenge you to scour the Village for a parallel to
the Kips Bay Outlaw Club with its professional news-faker
for president, its one-legged gunman for sergeant-at-arms,
and its purser-of-a-pirate-ship for treasurer.

True, he may admit a superficial resemblance in the
matter of devotion to art.  But he will point out that the
artistic set in Greenwich Village is almost the whole village,
whereas the artistic set in the model tenements is but a
small part of Kips Bay.  He will assure you that: "The
Village takes up *Love for Love's Sake* and *Art for Art's
Sake*.  We have no use for that kind of bunk.  We take
up Art and Love for the sake of anything and everything
but Love and Art; for the sake of politics or money, or
just for the sake of excitement."

The way the purser-of-the-pirate-ship expresses the
difference is: "We go in more for powder than for paint."

By powder he means gunpowder.



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   \II

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It was in these Lorillard tenements (named after Westing
Lorillard, the well-known brewer and philanthrophist who
endowed them) that Cornelia Covert and Mazie Ross
occupied apartment number fifteen, (two bedrooms, kitchen
and bath).  And it was by a ring of number fifteen's bell
that Claude Fontaine was cut short.

While Cornelia went to the door, Mazie transformed the
kitchen as if by magic.  She wafted a heap of soiled dishes
into a basin in the cupboard, deftly concealed the stove
behind a Japanese screen, and then converted the
washtubs into a table by covering them with a pretty denim
cloth.  Tubs, in a sitting-room, offended her sense of
propriety, even when they were porcelain tubs, as these were,
with fine zinc tops.  But the denim cover blotted out
iniquity, on the principle that what the eye can't see, the
heart don't grieve!  Fortunately.  For the limitations of
a three-room apartment left no choice but to employ the
one fair-sized room in the triple capacity of kitchen,
dining-room and sitting-room.

Tapping her dainty hands against each other to brush
away the dust, Mazie faced the newcomer, a young man
about Claude's age.

"Why, it's only Rob!" she exclaimed.

"By which Mazie means to say, Cato, that we trembled
for fear you were Hutchins Burley."

"Do you expect him?" asked Robert, turning to Cornelia.

"Burley's going to take me to supper."

"That man foils me at every turn," said Robert with
mock gravity.  "I wanted to take you to supper myself.
Cornelia, you have no intuition whatever."

"Well, how do you do!"

Cornelia had a whimsical way of using this salutation
as a mild rebuke.

Mazie, who was perched on the quondam tubs so that
Claude could get the full benefit of a very shapely pair
of legs, made a grimace at Robert Lloyd.

"If that isn't the third invite this evening!  Cornelia,
you're a perfect pig.  Rob, pale face never won fair lady."

"Mazie, your ignorance of human nature is appalling,"
said Robert.  "What you really ought to say is that pale
faces never count their chickens till they're hatched."

"Is that so, Mr. Cleverdick?  Well, listen to me.  Cornelia
likes her men in three dimensions, not in two.  That's
why she's going out with Hutch."

"Well, if Rob is two dimensions," said Claude, "Hutch
is eight or ten."

Robert joined in the general laughter; Mazie's manner
was really very friendly to him, although the banter
sounded spiteful.  Cornelia now insisted that they were
all to join her and Burley at supper; and Robert, under
pressure, consented to make a fifth.

Robert was by no means as unprepossessing as Mazie's
brusque remarks might have led one to infer.  True, he
was not handsome, dashing, and meteoric like Claude
Fontaine.  He was of medium height and slender, with a figure
touched by poetry and grace.  Women described him as
"so nice" until, scorched by his flaming spirit, they learnt
that ideas, and ideas alone, could make him incandescent.

"Lucky you left after Hutchins bowled us over," he
said to Claude.  "The rest of the meeting was dry as
dust."

"I thought as much," said Claude.  "What happened?"

"It was voted to supplement the main affair of the ball
with a few side features."

"Like what?"

"Like a raffle, a fish pond, and—several other things that
I fear I paid no attention to.  All I remember is that I
was deputed to get some one to act as a fortune-teller."

"Cornelia's the girl for that," cried Mazie.  "She's a
regular clip at reading palms, men's palms especially.  Oh,
she can do it slick.  Why, she can give you a worse
character than Chiro."

"What luck.  The fact is, Cornelia, the committee had
you in mind.  May I count on you?  You shall be mistress
of a gypsy tent."

"No, *Robert le Diable*, a thousand times, no!  Don't
you know my habits better than to invite me to a ball?"

It had pleased Cornelia to "live in seclusion" as she
called it, for some time past.

"I know you don't go to dances, Cornelia.  Neither do
I.  But think of the opportunity we'll have of talking
undisturbed and finding out what other dislikes we have
in common.  While the rest go on with the dance, our
joy will be unconfined."

"Indeed!  And in return for your improving conversation,
I'm to make up characters for silly people who never
had any?  No, thank you.  I don't propose to spend half
an evening letting tiresome people bore me, and the other
half watching the fine art of dancing degraded into an
orgy of fox-trots and jazz steps."

Mazie stuck her tongue out when Cornelia wasn't looking,
and Claude responded with a sympathetic wink.

"Don't be a spoil-sport, Cornelia!" said Mazie, hitting
the nail on the head.  "What is Rob to do?"

"Yes, what is poor Robin to do, poor thing?" echoed
Claude.

Cornelia plainly enjoyed the sensation her blank refusal
created.  But her elation subsided when she caught a
glimpse of Mazie and Claude in a stealthy interchange of
grimaces.

"Do nothing," she replied tartly.  "Or ask Mazie.  She'd
make a capital gypsy with her dark hair and velvet paws.
And she could eke out her fortune-telling with her
monkeyshines."

"Thanks, old girl.  But I'll take Claude's tip and go
as Salome, and I'll dance my feet off just to tantalize you.
If the boys want me to, I'll do the dance of the seven veils
for them."

"*All* seven?" asked Claude, affecting an air of seasoned
rakishness.

"All *but* the seventh will be one too many if Big Burley
is present," said Cornelia.

"Just so, Cornelia," said Claude.  "A good reason for
you to come and see that Mazie behaves herself.  And
that Big Burley does likewise.  As the Gypsy Queen you
may be able to keep him in order by predicting dire
disasters for him.  For he's a regular old screen villain: he
fears nothing but the fictitious."

"Lothario, in the present state of my own fortunes, I'm
not keen to tell other people their fortunes."

"Oh, but come anyhow.  If not as a gypsy, then as a
ballet dancer or a columbine.  Or anything else that takes
your fancy.  We won't let you stay at home, so get that
out of your head."

"Silly boy," said Cornelia, with a prolonged, musical
laugh.  "A ballet dancer's dress calls for the most cast iron
of corsets.  Do you see me putting on those abominations?
No.  Not even for love of you, dear."

She was fond of drawing to the attention of her men
friends the fact that a corset was an article she rigorously
abjured.

"Oh, the boys know you never wear the iron maiden,"
said Mazie tartly.  "All the Outlaws know it by heart.
But they won't treat you any the worse for it, Corny.  Men
like a girl to be squashy—"

"Provided there's not too much to squash," Claude thrust
in.

"Your remarks are all highly illuminating," said Robert
Lloyd addressing the company.  "But they don't help me
out of my box.  Remember, I promised the committee to
get Cornelia for the gypsy act."

"What, my frisky youth," exclaimed Mazie.  "Expect
Cornelia to hide her golden coiffure under a shopworn wig!
Guess again."

"Mazie's shot is a good one," said Robert.  "Cornelia,
you can't refuse on no better ground than that helping
us would put you out of countenance."

"Out of hair," corrected Claude.

"Out of spite," added Mazie.

"Well," replied Cornelia, reluctantly yielding to this
concentrated fire, "I won't go myself.  But I'll get you some
one else.  I have a dear little girl in mind who is as
charming as she is original."

"Who is this paragon?" interrupted Claude.

"She's a Brooklyn girl.  Her name is Janet Barr."

"Janet Barr!" exclaimed Robert.  "Why, you can't get
*her* to come to an affair like this."

"Indeed!"

"Yes.  I know her family well.  She lives in an atmosphere
of Puritan blue laws perfumed with brimstone and
sulphur.  Her mother—"

"She'll come," interrupted Cornelia, with supreme
confidence.  "But Claude is bored, Mazie is making sheep's
eyes, and I'm hungry—let's go to supper."

"What about Big Burley," protested Mazie.  "Aren't
you going to wait for him?"

"No.  But *you* may if you like.  I'm too hungry."

When Cornelia saw a chance of tormenting some one, she
could move with celerity.  Her coat and hat were on in
a twinkling, and she was ready to go while Robert and
Claude were still fumbling for their hats and coats, and
Mazie sat irresolute on the washtubs.

"But really, Cornelia, if somebody doesn't wait for
Burley—"

"Bother Burley!  He should have been here a quarter
of an hour ago.  If it'll quiet you, however, I'll tack a
note outside the door, telling him to follow us to the Asia
Minor Cafeteria."

Secretly gloating over the prospect of Burley's chagrin,
she suited the action to the word.  While she was writing
the note, Claude said to Robert:

"I fear Big Burley will chalk up another black mark
against you.  He's your boss on the *Evening Chronicle*,
isn't he?"

"Yes.  His word is law there since he wrote up the
Montana dynamite trial."

"Nonsense," said Cornelia.  "He won't take it out on
Robert.  I'll see to that.  He has vicious bursts of temper,
but he's not bad to the core."

"Cornelia, every tiger-tamer thinks his pets are full of
the milk of human kindness.  You must excuse a layman
for taking a more cautious view.  Rob's bread and butter
depend on the *Evening Chronicle*."

Robert cut him short.

"Don't worry, Claude," he said.  "I've nothing to lose
but my chains, and I've you and the girls and a merry
evening to gain."

"Good, Cato, good!" cried Cornelia.  "I like your spirit.
You shall go with me.  You, Claude, for being saucy, may
stay behind and tarry till your bonnie Mazie's ready.  Or
you may wait for Hutchins Burley and, if possible, avert
the wrath to come.  Meet us at the restaurant, Mazie."

With these words, Cornelia took Robert by the sleeve
and marched out, leaving Claude staring blankly after her.

"Upon my word!" said the young man, as much amused
as he was vexed.  "Look sharp, Mazie, will you?" he
added, after a moment's pause.  "We may yet catch up to
them, if you don't put too fine a point—on your complexion."



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   \III

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But despatch was not Mazie's forte.  And so, while she
was still prinking in the bedroom, and Claude was cooling
his heels in the kitchen, Hutchins Burley arrived.  When
Claude opened the door, the hulking Falstaffian form
entered, puffing and panting, overheated with liquor as well
as with climbing the stairs.

"Haven't kept the old girl waiting, have I?" he gasped,
between breaths.

"Oh, no," said Claude, evasively.  "She has gone ahead."

Burley, who had evidently not seen the note Cornelia
had tacked on the door, acted as if he had not heard
Claude's remarks either.  He tramped to the door of the
first bedroom, opened it unceremoniously and, when he
found it empty, stalked noisily to the second.

"Where the devil is Cornelia?" he demanded, turning to
Mazie.

"She was hungry and went on to the Asia Minor."

"Alone?"

"Well, Robert Lloyd happened to be here.  He went too."

A sulphurous explosion of oaths testified to "Big
Burley's" feelings.

Hutchins Burley was a sinister personage both in newspaper
and in radical circles.  Among artists who eked out
their scanty talents with alcoholic inspiration and took a
serious view of the Bohemianism of the Lorillard tenements,
he cut a considerable figure.  Others dreaded or
avoided him.

Curious conclusions might have been drawn from the
fact that, though he hung out with parlor anarchists of
the Outlaw type and was reputed to be a close friend of
real anarchists like Emma Goldman, he was an all-important
member of the staff of the sham-liberal *Evening
Chronicle*.

But no one bothered to draw these conclusions.

In truth, few people cared to think long or deeply about
Hutchins Burley.  A great hulk of a man, with a pitted
face and shifty eyes, he was a dreadful and repellant figure,
yet one that chained the attention.  Some said offhand that
he knew more about Charles Edward Strong, the editor and
owner of the *Evening Chronicle*, than was good for either
of them.  Others believed that his influence had been won
by the sensational hits he had made in "covering" the
Lawrence strike and other big labor outbreaks.

One thing was certain.  Newspaper Row hated and yet
feared him; the Kips Bay model tenementers eyed him
askance and yet elected him to high office in the Outlaw
Club.  A few shrewd observers troubled the placid waters
in both camps by enquiring from time to time: "Can
Hutchins Burley serve both Park Row and the Radicals?"

Wine was not one of Burley's weak points: he could
stand any quantity of it.  But women touched his Achilles'
heel.  On this point he was like Falstaff, "corrupt, corrupt,
and tainted in desire."

Hence his explosion at Claude's news.  The picture of
Cornelia gallivanting off with Robert made his great frame
shake with rage.

"What does she mean by going off with that puppy?"
he snarled, ejecting the words from the left side of his
mouth.  "Don't she know better than to break an
engagement without so much as a by-your-leave?"

Mazie tried to coax him into a good humor.  But the
sweeter her advances, the blacker grew his passion.

"Oh, get over it, Hutch," said Claude at last.  "After
all, if you make an appointment for seven, you can't expect
Cornelia to wait until eight."

"She'd have waited but for that thundering young cad,"
shouted Burley.

"Don't go on like that, Hutch," begged Mazie in a
panic.  "You know he's Claude's friend."

"Oh, that's nothing," said Claude urbanely.  "Names
won't hurt Rob.  If it relieves your feelings, Hutch, swear
at me, too, from the bottom of your heart."

Claude had a temper of his own.  But the chief instinct
of his social existence was to stave off the
disagreeable—except where his own desires were thwarted.

"Ready, Mazie?" he continued.  "Well, then, we might
as well go.  Calm down, Hutch, and come along with us."

"I'll be damned if I do.  I won't eat with a girl that
breaks an engagement, or prefers a snorting, bouncing,
snapping little cur to me.  Just wait till he comes snivelling
along for the next assignment.  I'll show him what's what!"

"Oh, cool off!" exclaimed Claude, whose patience was
thoroughly exhausted.

For a second it looked as if Burley would hurl himself
upon the younger man.  But as Claude's athletic frame
seemed fully prepared for the contingency, he picked up
his hat, glared himself past Mazie, and fumed his way
to the door.  He stopped at the threshold.

"Just let the beggar sneak in tomorrow!" he shouted,
his left jaw moving with a grotesque, machine-like rhythm.
"I'll kick him into kingdom come!"

Claude smiled disdainfully, turned his back on Burley,
and went to comfort Mazie, who was making the most
of the pose of Dulcinea in distress.





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   CHAPTER THREE


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   \I

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One morning a letter addressed to Miss Janet Barr was
delivered at a house in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
The writing was legible enough, but a new and somewhat
flustered servant placed the letter next to Miss Emily
Barr's plate.  This young lady, Janet's older sister, was
the first member of the family to reach the breakfast table.
She was one of those well-filled-out single women who
abound in the better districts of Brooklyn, and who look
more matronly than a great many married women, perhaps
because their figures have not been pared down by wedlock
in middle-class circumstances.

Casually she picked up the envelope and opened it.
She laid the enclosure down before she had read very far,
took it up again, laid it down a second time, and then
surveyed it with painful indecision.  Finally she rang for
the maid.

"Laura, have you called Miss Janet?"

"Not yet, Miss Emily.  She told me not to call her before
half past eight this morning.  She said—"

"Never mind.  Don't call her until I tell you to."

"Very well, ma'am."

After the girl had gone, Emily took the letter and went
upstairs to the back sitting room.  She did not allow the
turmoil within her to disturb her dignity or quicken her
pace.  She found her mother seated in a rocking chair
and musing over a passage from the Bible that lay open
on her lap.

"Good morning, my child," said Mrs. Barr, as her
daughter entered.  "You must have made short work of
breakfast.  Are you late?"

"No, mother, I've brought you a letter I opened by
mistake.  It is directed to Janet."

"Oh, well, just lick it together again," she said, with
arid humor, "and lay it beside Janet's plate.  She'll never
know the difference.  You know Janet."

Mrs. Barr's levity appeared to distress Emily.

"That's not what's troubling me, mother.  I—"

She hesitated and held out the envelope with a good
imitation of helplessness.  Her mother stopped rocking and
looked in some astonishment from Emily to the letter.

Mrs. Barr was a tall, well-set woman, whose rigid bearing
was but little softened by her refined surroundings.  She
was neither thin nor fleshy; there was something solid and
conservative about her that suggested the Chinese wall.
Solidity was her pronounced characteristic, solidity of soul
no less than solidity of body.  Her face was hard; it was
full of lines that looked like razor edges drawn in gall.

Mrs. Barr had been beautiful in her youth and might
still have been so had she not sacrificed everything—everything
but her love of comfort—to a greed for power.  Experience
had taught her that a fit of sickness was a right
royal prop to domestic tyranny.  Thus she had cultivated
ill-health until nothing saved her from being a professional
invalid but her naturally strong constitution and an
inherited playfulness which still occasionally emerged between
long fits of bad temper.

She was the president of the King's Daughters' Society
in a local Presbyterian church, and, as she was preparing
for a meeting that day, she cut Emily short.

"Well, Emily, what do you want me to do?" she said,
less amiably than before.  "I'll explain it to Janet if you
like."

"You don't understand, mother.  I not only opened the
letter, I read part of it before I realized my mistake."

"That's not a crime, dear."

"No—But what I read amazed me.  It seemed all of a
piece with Janet's strange behavior of late."

"Indeed?  Who is the letter from?"

Emily flushed slightly.

"Mother, I told you I didn't read as far as that.  I
couldn't help seeing the first line, however.  And that
confirmed the suspicion we have both had, that Janet has
been falling under bad influences."

"Emily, is some man corrupting her?"

"It looks like a woman's hand to me.  What do you
think?"

Emily gave the letter to her mother, who scrutinized
the handwriting for a moment.

"Well," she said at length, "there can be no harm in
your repeating to me what you inadvertently saw."

"I don't like to say anything that may turn out to Janet's
disadvantage," said Emily, with an effect of reluctance
that deceived even herself.  "It will seem almost like
betraying a confidence."

"Nonsense, Emily.  If evil threatens Janet, it is your
duty as a sister to warn me, and my duty as a mother to
protect her.  Our consciences would reproach us if we failed
in this."

"But Janet and I were such good friends—would be still,
if she had never met those Lorillard tenement people."

Emily said this with the bitterness of outraged feelings.

It was in a studio in one of the model tenements in Kips
Bay, three weeks before, that Janet had met Cornelia and
other people of radical tendencies.  Emily had once enjoyed
a monopoly of Janet's heroine worship.  The friendship
between the sisters had cooled some time ago, but Emily
had chosen, rather arbitrarily, to look upon the Lorillard
incident as the turning point.

"I can understand your feelings, my dear," said Mrs. Barr.
"Their delicacy does you credit.  But if these people
you mention—anarchists and Bohemians, I think you called
them—are trying to lure my Janet into wicked ways, it
is time for a mother to interfere."

In spite of these words, she hesitated to read Janet's
letter, open though the envelope was.  Her domestic
tyranny had its humanly illogical side, and there were
certain rules of good breeding which she observed as
scrupulously as she imposed them.  Not once since her two girls
entered High School had she opened their letters or so
much as read them by stealth.

"You are sure that it comes from one of those tenement
persons?" she asked, picking up the letter again.

"Oh, yes.  I'm sure I recognize the handwriting.  But,
mother, do you think we ought to read it?"

This was the very point Mrs. Barr had been mentally
debating.  Emily's feeble protest had the effect of
stimulating her to a quick decision.

"Nothing could be further from my mind than any wish
to pry into Janet's legitimate private affairs," she said
magisterially.  "But here is a letter opened by mistake.
From what you read by accident we may infer that it
throws a light on those recent actions of your sister's that
have caused us all great pain.  I shall never let considerations
of delicacy or etiquette deter me from an action
that my conscience tells me is right."

A look of sanctified resignation passed over Emily's face
as her mother took out the enclosure and read the following:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

Friday morning.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

Dear Araminta:

.. vspace:: 1

Have you heard me speak of the Outlaws?  They are
artists and writers who live beyond the pale of convention,
and in an atmosphere painful to the wealthy, purse-proud
darlings of our nation.  In order to enjoy their outlawry
unmolested, they wish to produce club quarters from
which artistic elegance is by no means to be banished.
Such quarters cost money.  To raise the necessary funds
a masked ball will take place two weeks from today, and
those who come to dance to the tunes must help to pay
the piper.

This means that it has been proposed to add one or two
tributary features to the main function.  Remembering your
wizardry at palm reading, I concluded that your raven locks
and appealing eyes would be a perfect match for a gypsy
costume, and that a dear little gypsy who could tell wise
people their virtues and foolish people their fortunes would
be a priceless asset.  I know you don't believe in palmistry
any more than I do, but isn't it your very scepticism that
enables you to practice the art with a dash of diablerie that
carries conviction?

If you won't accept, I may be obliged to play the
gypsy myself.  Can you picture my straw-colored plaits
in such an Oriental role?  But I know your artistic
sense will not permit me to do with amateurish bungling
what you can do with professional skill.  Besides, two
peerless young gentlemen, whom I could name if I chose,
will pine away with melancholy if you refuse.

Before you answer "yes" or "no," come and spend
Wednesday afternoon with

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Yours devotedly,
         Cornelia.

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Barr turned the letter over to Emily, who read it
while her mother grimly closed the Bible and waited.

"I thought as much!" cried the young lady, as she
reached the signature.  "It's from Cornelia Covert."

"Who is she, pray?"

"Don't you remember the girl who created a scandal by
running away with Percival Houghton, the English artist?"

"Who already had a wife and children in England?"

"Yes, that was Cornelia Covert.  You may recall that she
was one of my school friends, when we lived in McDonough
Street."

"Don't remind me of her past," said Mrs. Barr curtly.
"Her present is bad enough.  Ring for Laura, please.  How
did Janet come to know her?  Through Robert Lloyd,
perhaps.  Has she been meeting him again, too?"

"No.  It came about in this way.  Cornelia left Mr. Houghton
not long after their elopement.  Or, more likely,
he left her.  At all events she returned to New York.
She was brazen enough to celebrate the occasion.  She
invited Janet—Janet, though I was her classmate—to a
big party in the Lorillard tenements."

"If I remember aright, Janet asked you to go with her?"

"Yes.  But I declined as soon as I heard that tenement
artists, movie actors and other queer people like Robert
Lloyd were to be present at the affair."

"The party was given, so Janet assured me at the time,
by some society woman."

"It was held in Miss Lucy Chandler Duke's studio.  I
did not know then that the Chandler Dukes were radicals
as well as millionaires.  And, as Janet begged me very hard
not to tell you the particulars, I kept the matter a secret."

Mrs. Barr tingled with irritation at what she chose to
view as Janet's deceit.

"She said a great deal about the Chandler Dukes!" she
exclaimed bitterly, "and nothing at all about Cornelia
Covert or Robert Lloyd."

"I did not think Janet would misuse the occasion to form
a fast and furious friendship with a person like Cornelia
Covert," said Emily, insidiously fanning the flame.

"If she gave less thought to the pomps and vanities of
the world, Emily, she could have declined, as you did.
But you should not have promoted her deceit.  See what
comes from walking in the ways of ungodly people.  Janet
hobnobs with unbelievers, you are deprived of a sister's
companionship, and I must give up an important meeting
at the church.  That is how the flesh and the devil waste
the Lord's time.  I pray God to help me bear with the
weaknesses of your father and the sinfulness of his
daughters."

Laura, the maid, came in just then and was despatched
with an urgent summons for Miss Janet.

Mrs. Barr's resources of anger were so considerable that
when one member of the family displeased her, everyone
else received a share of the overflow of her wrath.  The
weaker the member the more generous the share.  Mr. Barr,
by all odds the weakest member of the family of
which he was the Biblical head, usually bore the brunt of
every domestic storm.

But he was in the fairly safe haven of his own room
on the top floor.  In his absence Emily almost regretted
the part she had just played.  Being the only available
victim for the moment, she had to act as lightning
conductor, much against her will.

The maid had not gone very far in her quest of Janet
before that young lady herself burst somewhat incontinently
into the sitting room.  Her slender mobile body with the
lustrous black hair and the gray eyes full of life and
intelligence, made her a striking contrast to her two inflexible
relations.

"Good morning, children," she cried, without paying the
atmosphere any special attention.  "How's this for the
role of the early bird?  Spare your praises, Emily.  It's
papa's doing.  He's getting up now.  And I suppose he's
anxious to advertise the unearthly hour."

The two petrified figures quite chilled her prattling.

"Is anything the matter?  You haven't swallowed
a sour plum, Emily, have you?" she asked, facing them
both.

"Janet," said Mrs. Barr, in a tone that would have frozen
quicksilver, "I wish to speak to you for a minute."

"What have I done now?" asked Janet, sitting down and
looking speculatively from her mother to her sister.

"By mistake Emily opened a letter addressed to you.
Laura had put it beside her plate."

"Is that why you're so glum, Emily?  How silly.  Don't
give, the matter another thought, please."

Emily looked very uncomfortable.

"It's from Cornelia Covert," she said, averting her eyes
from Janet's, and the mother added with asperity:

"It invites you to mingle with certain persons who call
themselves Outlaws."

"Really?  You and Emily have the advantage of me.
I haven't read the letter yet.  May I?"

Emily silently relinquished the missive and Janet calmly
read it, while the others looked on, keeping their vexation
warm.  Mrs. Barr spoke as soon as Janet had finished.

"Yes, I *have* read the letter," she declared with emphasis.

"Really, mother, you may read all my letters if you wish
to.  But I think I might be allowed to see them first.  I
am twenty-four, old enough, therefore, to get my
correspondence uncensored."

"You are my daughter, Janet, and if you were forty-four
instead of twenty-four, it would still be my duty to guard
you against evil influences, and to look after your spiritual
welfare."

"I don't see how your spiritual guardianship affects my
legal right to my own letters."  She added scornfully:
"Am I to consider Emily as one of my moral guardians, too?"

Janet was not easily aroused.  When she was, she spoke
in low cold tones that irritated her listeners more than
the sharpest abuse.

"I read the first sentence accidentally—" began Emily
indignantly.  Mrs. Barr interrupted her.

"You know quite well that I have made it a rule not to
interfere with your correspondence," she said, acridly.  "But
I consider that what Emily saw by chance justified me in
making this case an exception, especially as you have been
so diligent lately in wasting the Lord's time."

This was a pet phrase of Mrs. Barr's.

"I don't understand the charge," said Janet, like a
prisoner in the dock.

"I refer to your recent godless behavior."

"Godless!"

"You know quite well what I mean: your flagrant
absence from services, your irreverent remarks when a
religious topic is discussed, your readiness to put frivolous
pleasures before church duties, and your studied avoidance
of all the friends of the family."

"Except Robert Lloyd," interjected Emily, pointedly.

"Why drag in Robert?" said Janet, flashing a look at
her sister.  "You got mamma to forbid him the house a
whole month ago."

"I had every reason to believe Mr. Lloyd to be an
atheist," said Mrs. Barr, who thus concisely classified all
disbelievers in revealed creeds.  "That is why I requested
you not to invite him here again."

"Leaving me to the edifying companionship of Emily's
stuffy pedagogue friends," said Janet, in a white heat.

"We needn't pursue that matter now, Janet.  What I
wish to say at present is merely that a masked ball is out
of the question.  A masked ball!  What are you thinking
of, my child?  Not to say that the invitation comes from
people who are perfectly impossible."

"Impossible!" cried Janet, bursting out under terrible
pressure.  "They're quite possible for me.  Do you expect
me to chum up with Emily's high school cats, or the old
maids from the King's daughters, or the decrepit old ladies
from your missionary club?"

Her mother fairly reeled at the impudence of the attack.

This from Janet, of all people!  The girl had always
been a mild-tempered and tractable child.  That is, she
had been entirely tractable except for half a dozen fits
of rebellion so scattered in point of time and so completely
suppressed in point of fact that they could conveniently be
overlooked.  But a face-to-face defiance of a maternal
decree was a new and startling departure.  It was an
unheard of act, such as Mrs. Barr could ascribe only to
the promptings of the Evil One, inducted into Janet's
acquaintance by her Kips Bay friends.

Mrs. Barr came of an old New England family with
Puritan traditions reaching back beyond Cotton Mather
and the witch huntings.  It was inconceivable to her that
a daughter should be allowed to address a mother as Janet
had just addressed her.  It was inconceivable to her even
in the spring of 1919, when the civil war between parents
and children (or rather, the uncivil war between the young
and the old), though raging furiously in the dynamic
centers of New York, London, Paris and Berlin, had not
produced so much as a ripple amongst the Barrs of Brooklyn
or the Barrs anywhere in the wide world.

"That will do, Janet," she said, rising to her full stature
and assuming an expression that gave every line of her
face its crudest edge.  "Your language confirms my worst
fears.  I shall say no more."

Janet wished that this were true, but she knew it was
a mere euphemism.  And, indeed, her mother continued
with icy piety:

"I shall pray that understanding may be given you to
realize that happiness comes from the spirit, not from the
flesh, from an exaltation of the heart, not from the pleasures
of dances and parties.  As for this Cornelia Covert, her
reputation is such that you should shrink from linking your
name with hers.  A woman who has lived in an unholy
alliance with a man is no friend for an innocent girl."

"Innocent!  Am I more innocent than she is, or simply
more ignorant?"

"Janet!" remonstrated Emily, "how can you speak in
this way—when our sole object is to help you—"

"Help me!  Please don't make me laugh, Emily," Janet
cut in, bitterly.  "A little more of this help of yours and
mother will have no difficulty whatever in arguing me down
to the ground."

"I don't propose to argue with you, my dear," said
Mrs. Barr, motioning to Emily, who flounced angrily upstairs.
"I simply say that I don't approve of this masked ball.
One thing more.  I wish you to promise not to go."

Janet was really terrified at her mother's icy tone, but
as her convictions were deeply involved, she replied with
obstinate defiance:

"I'm sorry, but I see no reason for giving such a promise."

"Very well," said her mother, adding, with a veiled
menace in the harmless words: "Remember, you don't go
with my approval."

"Then I'll go without," muttered Janet under her breath,
as her mother majestically left the room.



.. vspace:: 3

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   \III

.. vspace:: 2

Janet stood alone, her hands clenched in nervous tension.
How passionately she resented her mother's domestic
tyranny!  In the narrow, intolerant religious atmosphere of
Brooklyn, she had endured it long enough, endured it since
childhood as one of the mysterious dispensations of
Providence.

Her mind was flooded with hatred of the Barrs and all
that they stood for.

The Barrs were a characteristic product of the American
environment.  Mrs. Barr belonged to a decadent branch
of an old Mayflower stock connected with the Bradleys,
the Saltonstalls, and other well-known New England names.
She had married the American born son of a Scotch
immigrant; but, as she ruled him with a rod of iron, few traces
of his gentler European parentage had slipped into the
household or stayed there long if they had.  For Mrs. Barr
charged the family atmosphere to its full capacity with
all the narrowness, harshness, and spitefulness of her own
Puritan inheritance.

Robert Lloyd had assured Janet that her family was as
typical an American family as could be found east of the
Alleghanies.  Its Puritan (or rather, Impuritan) tradition
was depressed still further (if that were possible) by
contact with the low standard of living introduced during a
century of reckless and promiscuous immigration.  Its
leading tradition was the enforcement of an absolute veto upon
all social experiments, a veto springing not from love of
life or regard for the community but from hatred of life
and contempt for the individual.

It was Robert, too, (in their brief acquaintance) who
had pointed out that families like the Barrs were to be
found everywhere in the wide world.  But it was in
backwater places like Brooklyn that they congregated densely
enough to work mischief.  It was from such points of
concentration, all too numerous in America, that their
outstanding traits spread like an infectious miasma upon all
surrounding efforts at progress.

Janet did not need to be told that one of these outstanding
traits was a devotion to the cult of doing nothing.  Doing
nothing with a restless intermittency and an extravagant
expenditure of undirected force.

Doing nothing!  Janet had learned that this was not the
same as having nothing to do.  It was a religion of serried
"thou shalt nots" applied with passionate rigor to all
adventurous departures from the routine of everyday life.
Doing nothing meant the avoidance of actions contrary
to custom, law, or the supposed requirements of comfort.
As regards herself, it meant a studied observance of
restrictions, which your own interpretation of law, or custom,
or abstinent *appetite* (with a light accent on the *appetite*)
prescribed for you.  As regards your fellow man, it meant
his rigid observance of restrictions which not his, but your,
interpretation of law, or custom, or *abstinent* appetite (with
a heavy accent on the *abstinent*) prescribed for *him*.

It meant an aggressive policy of wholesale and
indiscriminate prohibition.

Janet had often listened, at first unwillingly, later
receptively, to Robert's elaboration of the idea.  His views had
shaped themselves in some such way as this.

The tradition in which Janet's childhood was moulded
was that baser, narrower, lower class American tradition
which has always been at grips with the heroic patrician
spirit of the Declaration of Independence.  It was a tradition
of negation, restriction, deprivation; of deprivation for
yourself within reasonable limits, and of deprivation for
your neighbor within no reasonable limits at all.  It was a
tradition that rallied opposition to Sunday newspapers,
Sunday novels, Sunday theatres, and Sunday sports, besides
minutely networking itself through a thousand insidious
channels into all sorts of social behavior every day of
the week.  It was a tradition, not of the magnificent *no*
of self-control but of the demoralizing *no* of compulsory
rectitude.

In short, it was the tradition from which the successive
prohibition movements—beer, sex, manners, and what
not—have drawn their ethical backing.

Families like the Barrs were the moral backbone of a
strong section of American public opinion.  Their prejudices,
jealousies and pruderies pitched the tone of national
manners, fixed the standard of public taste, curbed the
flight of the country's artistic genius, and gave an American
the same cultural standing as against a European that a
citizen of Boonville held as against a full-fledged New
Yorker.

The same causes erected an Anthony Comstock into a
national figure better known than the President's cabinet,
gave rise to episodes like that of Maxim Gorky, and made
a raid on the women bathers at Atlantic City a topic
of serious discussion throughout the country.

In Robert's view, the Barrs of America prided themselves
on the cast-iron taboos they had laid on all decent
and civilized manifestations of sex.  They had eliminated
every natural, healthy and spontaneous expression of the
sex instinct from American books, music, pictures and
daily intercourse.  This was their first contribution to
Western culture.

Their second contribution—and they frankly gloried in
it, too—was that they had morally sandbagged all dissenters
and almost completely crushed the spirit of dissent.

For they believed—these Barrs of America did—that
force is the only effective form of moral propaganda in
the world.  They believed this with all the fanaticism of
intolerance and stupidity.  Force and repression were the
only two things they did sincerely believe in, though they
would have died sooner than acknowledge this.  Not theirs
the aim of replacing lower forms of enjoyment by higher
ones, baser religions by nobler ones.  Theirs was the modest
if unavowed mission of improving on the example of Jesus
Christ.  In a moment of divine (and regrettable) weakness,
Christ had suffered torture for his enemies.  The Barrs
undertook the pious duty of counteracting this weakness
by making *their* enemies suffer torture for Christ.

In this atmosphere of moral taboos and sex repression,
Janet had grown up like an alien spirit in a foreign land.
From the very first stirrings of intelligence, some independent
strain in her had set her in antagonism to her environment.
She had not been fully conscious of this antagonism,
much less of the issues involved, and she had seldom given
battle directly to her mother's despotism.  But even when
she had bowed her head to the force of argument or to the
argument of force, her heart had remained untouched.  She
had knuckled under time and again, but her service had
been lip service and her homage the homage only of the
knee.

It was a situation she had but dimly realized when she
first met Robert Lloyd.  His sensible views and galvanic
realism had startled her out of her half-hearted acceptance
of a decrepit tradition and carried her at one bound from
the shadowy Brooklyn existence of the age of
Praise-God-Barebones to the vivid actuality of the age of the
airplane.  The first novelty of contemporary life had been
overwhelming.  She felt as though she had lost consciousness
in the seventeenth century and, like the fabled princess,
had lain in a twilight sleep until Robert Lloyd had
awakened her to the throb and stir of the twentieth century.

Her friendship with Robert had begun shortly after the
end of the war, the great World War from which the Barrs
had learnt as much as a blind man learns from a mirror.

Chance had next thrown her into the arms of Emily's
classmate, Cornelia Covert.  Cornelia had taken her in hand
and brought her into the free and easy atmosphere of the
Lorillard model tenements in Kips Bay.  Her furtive visits
to Cornelia's flat had led her by gradual stages into the
stress and clash of the metropolis until, what with one new
experience and another, she began to distinguish the
trumpet-tongued voices of her own generation and to feel in her
soul the resurgent willfulness of the modern age.



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And now, here she stood, the fire of life stirring her
blood, the long arm of her mother's power fettering her
movements.  If only she were in Emily's shoes!  Emily
had been sent to college and had later achieved economic
independence in the profession of high school teacher.
But Emily had always had an instinct for taking care of
herself.  Janet wished she had half her sister's practical
sense, and bitterly reproached herself for having been fool
enough to yield to her mother's hankering after gentility.
It was Mrs. Barr's belief that the family prestige would fall
irrecoverably below the rarified heights where the Cabots
or the Saltonstalls were presumed to move, unless one
daughter, at least, was kept free from the lower class stigma
of earning her own living.

Thus, under pressure, Janet had stayed home to become
a fine lady, although the limited circumstances of the Barrs
obliged her, in effect, to become a domestic servant.  For
a year past, however, she had been laying desperate plans
for going out on her own.

"Hello, little girl, good morning!" interrupted a cheery
voice at her side.

"Good morning, father," replied Janet, to a tall,
well-preserved, stately man who kissed her very affectionately.

"Your mother sent for me, Janet," said Mr. Barr
anxiously.  "What's the matter?"

"I'm the matter.  She has been pitching into me for
receiving an invitation to a masked ball.  *I've been wasting
the Lord's time*!"

"Did she blow you up?"

"Down, father, down.  I feel very small, I can tell you."

Janet was of too cheerful a temperament to be sad very
long.  She and her father habitually exchanged death-cell
jests, and even her present gloom was not too thick to be
dispelled with a quip.  Her father burst into a loud and
hearty laugh which he moderated considerably on remembering
that he still had his wife to face.  His camel-like
virtues, which had carried him tolerably far in business—he
was manager of a small branch of the Wheat Exchange
Bank—had not saved him from being a thorough
nincompoop at home.

Mr. Barr had the form of a patrician but the spirit of
an obedient slave.  Janet despised him for his complete
submission to his wife, yet she had one bond of sympathy
with him.  Though he dared not raise hand or voice against
the system of vetoes and taboos under which the Barr
family lived, he disliked the system and understood her
hatred of it.  Janet often wondered whether he was not the
passive carrier of some rebellious British strain which, in
herself, took the shape of active insurgency against
Mrs. Barr's American passion for denying the body and
mortifying the soul.

"Mother is waiting for you upstairs," she said, trying to
feel sorry for him.  "She means to give you a scathing
address on the moral failings of your youngest daughter."

"I suppose *I'll* get a piece of her mind, too."

"Depend upon it.  The same old *piece* that passeth
understanding."

"Well, it's all in the day's work—it's family life," said
the old gentleman, trying to keep up a brave front.

He shuffled off with a rueful smile.

Janet almost felt ashamed of her malice as she watched
his reluctant steps and pictured his terror of her mother.
His kindliness and good nature had once endeared him to
her.  But she could not check a growing contempt for his
weakness of character.  It was clearer to her every day
that her mother's cruel bigotry had not been half so fraught
with tragic consequences as her father's spinelessness and
moral cowardice.

"Family life—all in the day's work!" she repeated to
herself with a trembling lip.  "Well, I don't mean to have
a lifetime of days like this."

Then she went upstairs to her own room and wrote
Cornelia Covert a note of acceptance.





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   CHAPTER FOUR


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"There, isn't she sweet?" said Cornelia to Robert, as she
put the last touch to a pomegranate sash.

She was referring to Janet, whom she had costumed with
all her artistic cunning as a sort of gypsy Carmen.  The
night of the Outlaws' ball was at hand; and Cornelia's flat,
number fifteen of the Lorillard model tenements, was the
rendezvous for several of the maskers.

"Isn't she *beautiful*?" insisted Cornelia, pitching her
languid voice high.  She pointed proudly to her handiwork
(rather than to its wearer), for she was determined to
have it admired by all who stood near.

"She is charming, and her voice is beautiful," said
Robert, in cool dispassionate appraisal.

"No one ever called my voice beautiful before!" said
Janet, with unfeigned delight, in spite of the scientific
detachment of Robert's tone.

"I shall make you conscious of *all* your attractions, if
you'll give me time," added Robert, with much more fervor
than before.

"Ought we to be conscious of our attractions?" asked
Janet dubiously, for in the Barr environment it was bad
form to call attention to anything but detractions.

The immemorial Barr practice bound members of the
same family to make the worst of one another's good
qualities.

"Decidedly," answered Robert.  "A wise man should take
care to know his good points no less than his bad points,
precisely as he takes care to know his assets as well as his
liabilities."

"Yes, leave it to Cato," cried Cornelia mockingly.  She
had a nickname for each of her friends.  "He'll tell you
all about yourself, until your soul will cease to seem your
own.  He'll beautify you—"

"Oh, if he only will!" cut in Janet, with one of her fluent
graceful gestures which it was a rare delight merely to see.
"I can stand no end of that."

"He'll beautify you—morally, my dear," concluded Cornelia.
"His conversation is so improving.  He re-creates
people in his own image.  It's his specialty."

Janet's fine gray eyes narrowed to a hostile glance.

"It's my mother's specialty, too," she said, coldly.

"Now, look here—" cried Robert, springing up from his
chair in impetuous protest.

He had good reason to know how unflattering the comparison
was.  Before he had a chance to say more, Cornelia
hurriedly interposed.

"There's one important difference, Araminta," she said.
"Your mother believes that beauty is simply goodness;
Cato believes that goodness is simply wisdom.  He'll turn
you into a likeness of Minerva, with your wonderful raven
locks metamorphosed into hissing feminist serpents."

The outer door opened and Mazie Ross burst in attired
as Salome and looking as wicked and tempting as if she
were a bacchante straight from the Venusberg.

"Hello, hasn't Carmen got her war paint on yet?" she
called out, frowning on the group.

It was a pretty tableau she beheld.  Robert, with folded
arms, stood before the two young women, posed for a
tremendous vindication.  Cornelia, kneeling at her charge's
feet, was absorbed in a final adjustment of the skirt; Janet,
with outstretched arms, had just wheeled a full circle in
response to her friend's touch.  The two women were a
picturesque pair, Cornelia's golden hair and alabaster skin,
vitalized by the excitement, forming a vivid contrast to
Janet's darker coloring.

"Please page the olive complexion and the Castilian
nose," continued Mazie, in a merciless illumination of the
favorite's two weak points.

Janet certainly lacked the challenging physical beauty
that makes men forget the mental limitations of an Emma
Hamilton or a Mme. de Recamier.  Not that she was poor
in physical charm.  Far from it.  She was straight and
slender, with waving black hair, an exquisite complexion,
and expressive gray eyes.  Hers was a face that sobered
naturally into thoughtful sympathy and softened readily
into merriment or gentleness.  True, her features lacked a
chiseled perfection, (if that is perfection).  But it was not
for her body but for her spirit that she both craved and
inspired love.

"Well, what's the big delay?" asked Mazie, flouncing
somewhat impatiently to the covered washtubs on which
she perched herself in such a way as to advertise extensively
her new and pretty underthings.

"Cato is about to exalt us to rare moral heights," said
Cornelia, resuming her scrutiny of the costume of Carmen.

"She thinks I'm a hard-shelled Puritan," said Robert,
appealing to Mazie for support.  "Do you agree with her?"

"Oh, give us a cigarette and stop your spoofing," said
Mazie, who had a dread of high-flown talk.  "I'm surprised
that Rob's parson poses take you in, Cornelia.  Believe me,
he's just like other men when you get him alone on a starry
night."

Robert blushed, Janet's two rows of long lashes parted
wider, and Cornelia gave a queer coloratura laugh.  But
Mazie's satisfaction at securing the spotlight was short
lived; somehow or other, Janet speedily became the center
of attention again.



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   \II

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Other Lorillarders bound for the Outlaws' ball now began
to pass in and out of Cornelia's flat.  They were mostly
young men and women who represented the various social
strata found in the Kips Bay tenements.  They brought
with them gayety, laughter and high spirits, and spent
their time circulating boisterously through the apartment,
gossiping on the coming event, and comparing notes on the
glamor and glitter of costumes modeled upon every
conceivable suggestion of history, legend or myth.

Janet was thrilled with the excitement, the infectious
spirits and the easy camaraderie.  She noticed that there
was no chaperonage or standing on ceremony whatever, and
she was struck with the entire absence of self-consciousness
between the sexes.  Young men and women went in and
out as they pleased, helped themselves to Cornelia's ice
box and piano as fancy dictated, and bantered, flirted,
kissed, or exchanged partners without stint or scruple.  On
the face of it, all concerned seemed in full accord with the
scheme of "what's mine is yours, and what's yours is
everybody's."

Nor could she help contrasting these cheerful faces, this
genial abandon, this entire lifting of social constraint, with
the gloomy looks, circumscribed permissions, and moral
strait-jacketings of her Brooklyn home.  With all their
faults, Cornelia Covert and Mazie Ross appeared to
suggest happiness and freedom as much as Mrs. Barr and
Emily suggested gloom and repression.  And the model
tenements lost nothing in the comparison by having all
the attraction of novelty.  If at that minute, Janet had had
to choose between a Paradise of Barrs on the one hand,
and the flesh, the devil and the model tenements on the
other, it is not to the Paradise of Barrs that she would
have given the palm.

While Janet met Cornelia's friends in turn, and gave the
men amongst them a new sensation on account of her
artless candor, Mazie coquetted freely with the successive
males that fluttered around her and displayed unlimited
skill in extricating herself from sundry intemperate
advances.  Growing tired of this sport, she pushed her last
admirer brutally off the tubs and said:

"Cornelia, what's the matter with Claude?  He should
have shown up ages ago."

"Oh, Lothario rang me up about half past eight," said
Cornelia sweetly.  "He isn't coming."

"Isn't coming!  Why, he promised to be my escort,"
Mazie cried out in a harsh strident voice.

Mazie's voice was not her strong point.  Whenever she
opened her pretty mouth, she shattered many illusions.

"Oh, he's going to the ball.  But he has changed his
mind about coming here first.  I suppose he doesn't want
any of you to know him by his costume."

Mazie's irritation was unbounded.

"None of our crowd are keeping each other in the dark,"
she said.  "What's struck him?  There'll be plenty of
strangers to play the devil with.  If Claude has backed
out, who's to take us, old girl?"

"Well, Robert's here."

"Robert!  *He* can't keep Hutchins Burley from persecuting me."

"Or you from persecuting Hutchins Burley."

"Don't be nasty, Cornelia," said Mazie, jumping angrily
down.  "You take the cinnamon bun, anyway.  Why didn't
you pipe up sooner with the news that Claude had rung up?"

"I quite forgot to," said her friend, calmly.

"Forgot to!" said Mazie, not concealing either her
incredulity or her vexation.  "A fat lot you did.  It's your
spite.  Your refusing to come to the ball is spite, too.  Just
spite.  I suppose you think that since you can't have
Claude, nobody else shall have him, either."

"I don't think about Lothario at all," said Cornelia,
demurely placid, as she could afford to be in view of the
infuriated state in which Mazie burst from the room.

The silence which had fallen on the scene during this
conflict was soon broken, and gayety was gradually
restored.

"Who is Lothario?" asked Janet, recovering her spirits
more slowly than the others.

"That's Claude Fontaine, the son of Fontaine the jeweler.
You know Fontaine's, the big jewelry and art establishment
on Fifth Avenue?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, he's *that* Fontaine.  Very good looking as well
as very rich.  All the Lorillard girls are dippy about him.
So am I.  And so will you be."

"Do you think so?" asked Janet, hopefully, for she was
thirsting for any new experience.

"I'm sure of it.  But I hope you won't dream of marrying
Lothario.  Chiefly for the reason that it would be useless.
He comes here too well armed and well seasoned against
matrimonial schemes."

She added that, in spite of this obvious fact, nearly all
the Lorillard girls of the Outlaw brand had their caps set
at the young millionaire.

"On principle, they're all opposed to marriage," she
proceeded.  "But they're all ready to sacrifice this principle
in such a very profitable cause."

This bitter remark was the first hint Janet received of
a cleavage between Cornelia's theories and the theories
or practices of the other model tenementers.

"And Mazie wants to marry him, too?" she asked.

"Marry him?—Well, *get* him," answered Cornelia
languidly.  "Mazie has the mating instincts of a pussy cat
and the brains of a pigeon.  Hello, where's Robert?" she
added, missing him.  "He slips away the moment one's
eyes are taken off him."

As if in answer to her call, Robert came back, bringing
Mazie in tow.  Shortly after her wrathful exit, he had
unobtrusively gone out to smooth down her ruffled feelings.
An explosion of Mazie's temper was like the backfire of a
motor car; there was a loud report and much smoke, but
no damage done or permanent hard feeling caused—at
least, not to herself.  Thus, a good dose of flattery, which
Robert skillfully administered, had set her going equably
again; for, besides being dependent on Cornelia, Mazie
was too much occupied with the satisfaction of her desires
to prolong a quarrel in support of her rights.

A symphony of cooings re-established peace and good
will amongst the three young ladies; and these dulcet
sounds blended easily with the mirth of the other
masqueraders in the flat.  In an access of joy, Mazie took
Janet romping through the rooms.  Robert used this
occasion to whisper in Cornelia's ear:

"I satisfied Mazie that you weren't staying home to
meet Claude, by convincing her that you had an
engagement with me," he said.

"Have I?"  She tried to hide her pleasure, immense as
it was.

"I hope so," he replied, using far less tact with her than
he had with Mazie.  "These entertainments don't interest
me at all.  And, as I'm pledged to bring the girls home,
it will be much more fun to spend the interval chatting
with you than being bored at the ball."

Cornelia's face fell.  With admirable self-control she
said she meant to stay up for the girls, and would be glad
of his company, though he might feel free to change his
mind if he chose.

Janet now detached herself from Mazie, put her arm
through Robert's, and begged him to hasten and join the
merry-makers who were already filing out.  This was her
first ball, anticipation had cast a glamor over everything
that was or was to be, and excitement had set all her
nerves a tingle.

There was a last concerted effort to dissuade Cornelia
from remaining alone.  It was unsuccessful.

Then Janet drew Robert through the doorway and, as
she joined the procession of celebrants, her heightened
senses quite transfigured her.  This fact was not lost on
Cornelia or Mazie.

"What a pretty pair!" said the latter mockingly.  "Just
watch them doing that snappy stuff with the eyes."

Mazie had stayed behind for a moment to give Cornelia
a parting shot.

"You'd better change your mind, Corny.  A swell chance
there is of Robert coming back here now that Janet's got
him hooked.  Come along, dearie, do.  See here, I'll give
you a tip.  You can rile a good many more people by
going to the ball than you can by staying here."

Cornelia shook her head disdainfully at this satire on
her motives.  Yet disdain was not her strongest emotion,
Mazie's shaft having struck too deep for an answer.



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Towards midnight, the Outlaws' Ball in the old Murray
Hill Lyceum on 34th Street had almost hit its stride.  Two
bands, an Hawaiian Jazz and the Kips Bay Roughnecks,
furnished the music, and what with the crash and blare
of instruments, the dazzle of costumes, the clouds of
confetti, and the swirl of dancers, masked and unmasked, the
dense motley crowd appeared to be squeezing the last ounce
of pleasure out of its mad adventure in search of "a good
time."

Janet's appearance in her Spanish robes with the genuine
Castilian mantilla, the high tortoise shell comb, and
the silk Andalusian shawl flaming brilliantly against her
dark hair, was one of the sensations of the evening.  Robert's
somber monk's cowl at her side subtracted nothing from
this sensation.  He conducted her through the mazes of the
upper dancing floor and then brought her back to the
gorgeous gypsy tent that had been set up on the floor below.

There she began to play the gypsy fortune teller with
as much subtlety as the professional exertions of the
musical Roughnecks permitted.

Robert stood near the tent as a sort of self-constituted
watchman and bodyguard extraordinary.  As John Barleycorn
was being liberally dispensed in the refreshment room,
a number of tipsy masqueraders soon turned up, and some
of these roistered into Janet's tent despite Robert's efforts
to fend them off.

Hutchins Burley was among those who presently appeared
on the scene.  It was after Mazie Ross had repeatedly
toyed with his erotic instincts and incited his hot pursuit
only to defeat him at a point just short of possession.  In
a fury of frustration, he had descended to the first floor
to inflame his passions further at the public bar.  Thus
inspirited, he propelled his Falstaffian proportions into the
gypsy tent and requested Janet to read his palm.

His breath alone would have decided Janet to refuse.
But when he interrupted her first sentence by tearing off
her mask and importuning a closer acquaintance with the
face behind it, she pushed abruptly past him and, running
outside the tent, waited for him to leave it.

With surprising alacrity Hutchins Burley bundled after her.

"You're a lively little kipper," he shouted, filled with
liquor and desire.  And he wildly reached out one arm to
clasp her around the waist.  But Janet, uttering a low cry,
dodged and slipped past him, while Burley's flopping arms
were caught firmly by two men who had sprung forward
for this purpose.

One of these was Robert.  The other was a tall, unobtrusive
man who had quietly but deftly detached himself
from the throng.

The attention of several people had been arrested by
Janet's cry and flight, and these now pressed forward to
learn what the trouble was.  A confusion of queries,
blusterings and exclamations followed, during which the
Roughnecks struck up the "Nobody Home" rag.

Hutchins Burley had recovered some of his wits under
the compulsion of several menacing faces around him.
Seeing him become tractable, Robert contemptuously flung off
the arm he held and walked away towards Janet.  Burley
followed his receding steps with a malevolent glare, and
then turned savagely on the tall quiet stranger who was
still holding his other arm in a grip of steel.

"Leggo my arm," he bellowed.

"A word in your ear, Mr. Burley," said the quiet one,
relaxing his grip.  "Plain clothes men are in the crowd.
If you kick up a shindy, you'll be giving them what they're
looking for."

"And who the devil are you?" sputtered Burley, with
the air of a man who is not to be easily frightened.

"Oh, nobody in particular," said the quiet man in a low
voice.  And, before he could be questioned further, he had
melted unobtrusively into the crowd.



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A little later, Robert led three jovial young maskers into
the gypsy tent.  The foremost was dressed as *Charles
Surface* and had quite enough gay confidence to do justice to
the part.

"So here's the Outlaws' piece of resistance," he called
out merrily.  "We'll see whether she can do half as much
justice to my palm as to her lovely gypsy shawl."

He sat down at Janet's little table and held out his hand.
She took it, examined it gravely for some seconds, and then,
in her fine clarinet tones she reported swiftly, without a
pause, and getting almost breathless towards the end:

"You are handsome, graceful, false and cruel.  You've
been a good soldier, but you'll become a poor poet.  I see
you divided into three parts: part one—Charles Surface;
part two—Joseph Surface; part three—Sir Peter Teazle.
What a pity your name isn't Henry!  For you are as
dashing as Henry the Fifth, as amorous as Henry of Navarre,
and as kind to women as Henry the Eighth.  You will be
married twice, but how many hearts you will break I dare
not reveal.  Your own heart is a safe deposit vault,
fireproof and loveproof both.  Hapless and witless damsels
without number will try to blow it up or melt it—without
success.  One girl alone will refrain from the attempt,
realizing the utter uselessness of piercing this too, too solid
flesh—"

"Here," cried the young man, drawing away his hand,
the laughter and jibing endorsements with which his
comrades greeted the several revelations, proving too much
for him.  "I don't call this a fortune: I call it a raw
deal."

"No use abusing the cards," said Janet, still affecting the
utmost gravity.  "The cards never lie."

"Oh, don't they, Miss Gypsy?  That's where your
professional prejudice blinds you.  Take your discovery that
I'm a poor poet, for instance.  Well, the fact is, I'm no
poet at all.  I never so much as wrote a couplet to a girl
in all my life."

"I said: you *will become* a poet," remarked Janet, gently
correcting him.

"And when will that be, pray?"

Janet hastily cut the cards anew, dealt out five cards,
and held out the Queen of Spades to the onlookers.

"When a dark lady enters your life," she said.

"A dark lady *has* entered my life," he said, his voice
vibrating seductively.  "Entered it with a very poor opinion
of me, it seems.  But I shouldn't call her the Queen of
Spades.  I should call her Janet, the Queen of Clubs."

"Clubs, because I scored so many good hits?"

"No, because a Queen of Spades must have lustrous
black eyes, and yours are heavenly gray.  Come, let's
unmask, and see who's the better fortune teller of the two."

Claude pulled off his mask and stood, handsome and
challenging, waiting for her to follow suit.

He was very good to look upon.  Handsome, graceful
and proud, there was just enough disdain in his perfect
manner to make every woman adore him and long to
enslave his flawless form.  He had wonderful blue eyes,
a delicate mouth, a fine nose and a penetrating sympathetic
voice.  Great ease, great daring and great energy of animal
passion gave him a hundred opportunities to show his fine
points to excellent advantage.  To qualities that almost
made riches superfluous, riches were added.  No wonder
he seemed to be a darling of the gods.

Janet's pulse was distinctly quickened by the telling
exterior of this dazzling young man.  And when she
unfastened her domino and met his glance with her fearless
gray eyes, his thrilling moment came.  He was not greatly
impressed with her looks, his social training having biased
him towards more fashionable types of beauty.  Yet a
magnetic ecstacy set him on fire and sent rapturous
messages throbbing along his nerves.

It was an enthralling moment, one that seemed mysteriously
to link up his being with other blissful moments in
previous existences.  Strange!  Each time that he experienced
this emotion anew, he was sure it was unique, sure
it was not in this life that he had experienced it before.
Stranger still, though it was as deep as the full flooded
river of life itself, it was as transitory as an electric spark
or a flash of lightning.  The moment was poignant, intoxicating,
miraculous; yet by no fraction of an instant could
it be prolonged.

Indeed, within a second or two, Claude and Janet were
chatting about a good many matters which did not bear
in the remotest way upon this magnetizing spark.  Still,
they chatted with an excited recklessness, and as if their
essences were held together by a subtle force, a force whose
irresistible urgency they would neither have dared to
acknowledge nor wished to dispute.



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Steeped in the enjoyment of the moment, Janet hardly
noticed that Robert had tacitly resigned his watchful care
of her to Claude Fontaine.  She began to neglect her
fortune telling duties as one result of this displacement, for
Claude's appropriation of her time grew as his visits became
more frequent.  Nor did he share her compunction on this
score.  Far from doing so, he cajoled her into dancing with
him again and again.  In the intervals, he escorted her
from one end of the reception floor to the other, introducing
her to the groups he considered worth while.  Thus she
shared (much more fully than she desired to) the curiosity
which his brilliant presence excited and the gossip which
it was everywhere a signal for.

"Here's an interesting stunt," said Claude to his partner.

He indicated a group of young people amongst whom
she instantly recognized Robert and Mazie.  Two others
claimed her attention.  In the center of the group was a
young woman with a high color and a very energetic
manner, who had adopted an unusual plan for swelling the box
office receipts.  She was making impromptu busts in putty
of all who could afford a contribution, no reasonable sum
being refused.

When Claude and Janet came up, the sculptress had just
finished modelling a head of Robert; and a remarkably
spirited likeness it was.  Robert was greatly taken with
it, but his satisfaction was mild beside that of the artist,
who handled the fragile image as though it were the apple
of her eye.

Two thoughts struck Janet.  One was that Charlotte
Beecher's fuss over the statuette of Robert Lloyd was
excessive.  The other was that she now, for the first time,
missed the living model.  But this discovery, as well as
her criticism of the sculptress, was promptly swallowed up
in the kaleidoscopic whirl of meeting still other characters
belonging to the strange new society into which she had
been flung.

Nevertheless, she contrived to recall Robert to her side.

"What a wonderful head Robert has!" Miss Beecher was
rhapsodizing, while she glanced sentimentally from the
statue to the living model.  "I declare, it's all brain."

"It sure is!" echoed Mazie, mockingly.  "But it's not a
patch on his wonderful heart."

She laid her hand on the spot where she supposed this
organ to be, and added, without crediting the epigram to
Cornelia who had originated it:

"That's all brain, too!"

Everybody laughed, Robert no less heartily than his
neighbors.  Everybody, that is, save Charlotte Beecher,
whose sharp glance at Mazie softened to tenderness as it
swept on towards Robert.

The second person to fascinate Janet was a youngish
woman in a Syrian dress of many boldly brilliant color
clashes.  Contrasts as startling were achieved by her coal
black hair, her pale olive skin, and the gorgeous green
pendants attached to her ears.  She had the barbaric
picturesqueness of a White African Queen straight out of Rider
Haggard, and about as much credibility.  But she posed
with unlimited self-confidence.

So speculated Janet.  The next moment she reminded
herself of the necessity of keeping an eye (and perhaps a
string) on Robert Lloyd.

But he was nowhere to be seen.  In his usual insidious
fashion, he had taken French leave while the circle of
spectators was absorbed in the ritual of weaving gossip
amongst themselves or blessing Miss Beecher's next putty
statuette with lavish adjectives and exclamations.

His disappearance piqued Janet.  But the exhilaration
caused by all the enchantments of the ball and all the
thrills of Claude's gallantry and charm, did not permit her
to allow any one emotion more than a fleeting hospitality.

Claude watched his chance of enticing her to another
novelty.  On the way, she begged him to enlighten her
about the people she had just met.

"Tell me all about the sculptress and about the Rider
Haggard lady with the earrings," she said.

Claude explained that these ladies were both considered
freaks even among the Outlaws: Charlotte Beecher,
because she was an heiress who wore a working girl's clothes
and toiled harder with the sculptor's chisel than a day
laborer with a pickaxe; Lydia Morrow, not so much because
she had a flair for spectacular dresses, Leon Bakst colors and
startling jewelry, as because her authorship of half a dozen
best sellers had given her almost unlimited means to gratify
these vagaries.

"Lydia Morrow?  I don't seem to know the name," said
Janet.

"Lydia Dyson, her maiden name, is the name she writes
under."

This name Janet knew well enough.  It was a familiar
name wherever American magazines flourished; even among
the Barrs of Brooklyn it was a household fixture.  The
stupendous fact was that Lydia Dyson's novels of approximated
naughtiness, sensual slush and disembowelled passion,
appeared serially and simultaneously in magazines
with as different a clientele as the *Saturday Morning Post*,
the *Purple Book*, *Anybody's* and the *Women's Bazaar*.

Claude added that he had his own reasons for calling the
two young women freaks.

"All these people are loony on the subject of love," he
said, with a wave of the hand that appeared to include the
whole membership of the ball.  "Some because they've had
too much of it, but more because they've had too little.
Mazie is one of a small group that is suffering from surfeit.
But Charlotte and Lydia belong to the other class.
Charlotte wants a husband without a whole lot of love, and
Lydia wants a whole lot of love without a husband.  As
for Mazie, there's nothing left for her to want but a rich
protector, with as little love in the bargain as possible."

This offhand analysis set Janet to wondering what
Claude's own conception of love might be.  He went
blithely on:

"The difficulty with Charlotte is that she's too particular;
with Lydia, that she's not particular enough.  Not
one-tenth particular enough for Gordon Morrow, her husband,
who lives on her money but won't be kept in his place.
He actually presumes to be furiously jealous.  But,
however comic a figure he may cut, who can blame him for
drawing the line at a blackguard like Hutchins Burley?
Here's Hutch staggering this way, now.  After you, the
impudent beggar!"

Naturally, in this quarter, Burley had little luck.  Janet
shrank away from him, and Claude froze him off as he
had already done two or three times that night.
Envenomed, but nothing daunted, Hutchins Burley careered,
none too steadily, over to the circle around the sculptress.
Claude watched him disgustedly.

"If Morrow catches him pawing all over his wife, there'll
be trouble.  And Lydia Dyson's not the woman to lift her
little finger to avert it.  She has a theory that 'Big Burley'
is a sort of twentieth century edition of the Cave Man, a
theory she is not above putting to the proof.  Husband or
no husband, a big scene is nectar and ambrosia to her."

He looked anxiously back at Charlotte Beecher's group.
"Let's go away from here," he said, taking her arm with
protective tenderness.

"Shall we go back to the tent?"

"I'd like to take you much further than that.  You are
too wonderful and genuine to fit into this hothouse crowd."

Janet liked his pretty speeches, but she had not yet had
her fill of the carnival of pleasure.

Claude's fears were only too speedily realized.  Hardly
had he returned Janet to her gypsy tent, than shouts and
screams ascended from the sculptress' quarter.  Claude
hastened to the spot and found two knots of men pulling
Burley away from Lydia's husband and heightening the
disorder in the act.

The commotion now took a new turn.  Burley had not
forgotten the man who had cold-shouldered him out of
Janet's way several times.  As soon as he laid eyes on
Claude and observed him assisting Charlotte Beecher in
a feverish effort to save her putty models, his rage reached
its climax.  Every ounce of his bulky weight was put into
a titanic pull that jerked him loose from those who
restrained him.  Using his momentary freedom to snatch up
the little bust of Robert, he flung it at Claude's head.

"No diamond shark can come butting in here," he shouted,
in a purple fury.

The bust went far wide of its mark.  But not the taunt.
It stung Claude into sudden violence, so that he sprang
towards Burley with the object of thrashing him.  Thirty
or forty people having now been drawn into the melee,
however, he was saved the ignominy of a public brawl.

At the height of the turmoil Claude's arm was clasped
by an iron hand.  It was the hand of a tall immaculate man
who spoke to him in a low calm voice.

"A word of warning, Mr. Fontaine," he said, urging him
away from the fracas.  "Get your friends out of here at
once!  Detectives are about to raid the place."

"Detectives!  Are you one?" asked Claude, more or less
bewildered.

"No, not particularly," was the whimsical reply of the
stranger, who then moved decisively away and evaporated
as suddenly as he had turned up.

As soon as Claude rallied his wits, he acted swiftly.  He
persuaded Charlotte Beecher, who happened to be near, to
follow him; and then took the shortest cut to the gypsy
tent, where Janet greeted his return with a happy cry of
relief.  Excitedly he warned her of the raid, and urged
her to lose no time in preparing to leave with him.

She obeyed, not without a pang of regret.

Regret?  It was not parting with the musical Roughnecks,
though they were better than their names; it was
not turning her back on the dancing, though this had
intoxicated her; and it was not saying farewell to the riot of
color, costume and confetti, though these had put her in
an ecstacy of delight.  At least, it was not an extravagant
hunger for these pleasures.  And she certainly had nothing
but measureless disgust for a crowd of brawling, shouting,
turbulent men.

Why regret then?

It was merely because of the obvious difference between
her joyless home and this night's experience.  Beside the
deathlike stagnation of the Barrs of Brooklyn, the movement,
intensity and go of the Outlaws had what she cheerfully
accepted as the quality and flavor of reality.  "This
is life," a still, small voice cried within her, meaning that
this was at least a fairly good imitation of life on its gayer
side.  And she revelled unblushingly in the enchantment
that her ignorance of pleasure and her natural high spirits
had cast around Kips Bay, the model tenements, Cornelia,
Robert and Claude.

Ah yes, and Claude!  With Claude at her side she
doubted whether she should mind even a raid.  Indeed,
wouldn't it be rather fun to be caught in one?  And so,
while Claude was preoccupied with piloting his charges
to safety, Janet half hoped that she might not be cheated
of a practical answer to her question.



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   \VI

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Meanwhile the quiet stranger had contrived to get into
one of the twisting, struggling whirlpools of men in the
fracas, and to insinuate his immaculate person next to
Hutchins Burley.

"Have a care," he said, in Burley's ear.  "In another
minute this rough-house will be cleaned up by plain-clothes
men.

"Who in hell *are* you?" yelled Burley, none too pleased
with the features of the man who had warned him before.

"Why, nobody in particular," answered the stranger
coolly, and beginning to edge rapidly away.  Burley
tramped after him, his befuddled wits somewhat cleared
by the recent pummelling.

"Then how the devil did *you* spot the cops?" he said,
ploughing his way ruthlessly through human obstructions.
"Do they whisper the secrets in your beautiful ears?"

"Oh, secrets are always coming my way," was the
nonchalant answer.

The mysterious one halted as soon as he had put several
yards between himself and the mob.  Cool and self-contained,
he was a striking contrast to Hutchins Burley as
the latter, dishevelled, muttering and out of breath, bore
down upon him.

"Mr. Burley, you'd better go, while the going's good!
Here's an emergency exit.  Good night.  I'll look you up
in the morning."

While the stranger's unobtrusive figure merged into the
environment, Burley took the hint with loud Falstaffian
clatter.  He had barely passed through the door, when the
lights went out and the raid actually began.





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   CHAPTER FIVE


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   \I

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During the Outlaws' Ball, Cornelia sat alone in the
Lorillard apartment.  Had she dressed for the masquerade
she had declined to attend?  One might have been pardoned
for thinking so.  To a piece of black satin, draped around
her in sensuous lines, a girdle of tangerine velvet added
the sole touch of color.  It also served to draw her dress
in high above the waist and to bring out the burnished
gold of her hair.  The fabric was ingeniously held together
by pins, Cornelia being an advocate of a mode of dressing
or draping that dispensed with sewing as much as possible.

One handsome shoulder was bare; and this arrangement
detracted nothing from the garment's look of insecurity.
Cornelia's men friends were apt to be on tenterhooks lest
her pinned dresses should suddenly come to pieces.  It
was an emotion she was not altogether unconscious of, or
wholly displeased with.

To the very last she had persisted in her refusal to
take part in the festivity, and had held out firmly against
the friendly blandishments with which Janet, Robert,
Mazie, and Hutchins Burley had successively tried to shake
her determination.  She defended her position by declaring
that dancing bored her to distraction, not to mention that
the current dance forms, the fox trot, the jazz steps and
the glide, seemed to her to be unspeakable profanations
of a fine art.

With this explanation her friends had to be content, while
they guessed at the true reason for her refusal.  Claude
hazarded the view that her real motive was a dread of
emerging in public while her affair with Percival Houghton,
the artist, was still fresh in everybody's memory.  Mazie
repeated her laconic opinion that Cornelia could spite more
people and attract more attention by being missed than by
being present.

About eleven o'clock some one rang.  When Cornelia
opened the door, she was confronted by an athletic young
man whom she recognized as the occupant of apartment
number thirteen, the one next to her own.  Mistaking her
dress for negligee, he apologized profusely and then
explained that the gas in his room having suddenly given out
he needed a twenty-five-cent piece to set the meter in action
again.  Cornelia observed that whereas his form was the
form of the roaring lion, his voice was the voice of the
cooing dove.

"I always keep an extra quarter on the mantelpiece,"
he said, coloring with embarrassment, "but the light went
down all of a sudden, and in the dark I couldn't locate
the pesky coin."

Cornelia hastened to get the necessary money.  Returning,
she sympathized with him upon the fickleness of
quarter meters.

"Horrid, mercenary things!  I'd give them 'no quarter,'
if I dared, wouldn't you?"

"Yes—the light always goes out in the dark," he said,
quaintly.

He was obviously anxious to make a good impression,
and ill at ease because of this anxiety.

"Just wait a second, will you, Miss," he said, as she
handed him the money.  "I'll give it back right away."

As his door was only a few feet away from hers, she
waited in the hall and looked curiously into his room after
he had lighted up.  She noticed that the place was filled
with gymnastic paraphernalia—clubs, dumb-bells, weights,
and a boxing bag apparatus.  Meanwhile, he rummaged
through the articles on the mantelpiece until he discovered
the missing money tucked snugly away in an empty match-box.

"I don't know how it got there," he said, ruefully.  "I
guess I meant to put it underneath, but slipped it into the
box absent-mindedly."

She smiled.  "You have a complete pocket gymnasium,"
she commented.

"Yes, I'm pretty well rigged out," he replied, delighted
at her show of interest.

He was very much impressed with her appearance, which
mirrored a world socially more elevated and more beautiful
than his own.  He racked his wits for an excuse to detain
her.

"Is this how you keep in trim?" asked Cornelia, indicating
the apparatus.

"I—I'm a professional wrestler and a physical culture
expert," he went on, fumbling in his pocket for a visiting
card.

"Ah, I see.  It's business, not pleasure."  She did not
look at the card, but flashed eloquent glances at his figure.

"That's it," he replied, emboldened by her mute flattery.
"Will you come in and let me show you around?  Young
ladies aren't always interested in these things."

"Another time.  It's too late now."

Her phrases emerged so curtly and her relapse into
frigid conventionality was so abrupt that the young man
stammered a hurt good night, and rather hastily closed his
door.

Cornelia gained her sexual gratification in diluted but
frequent doses.  Without being a deliberate flirt like Mazie,
she instinctively tried out the subtler weapons of sex on
every man she liked and, since her appearance was both
striking and agreeable and her likings fairly far flung,
men often responded to her charm with a crudeness that
gave her great offence.  She seemed unconscious of the
incitement in her manner; when, on one occasion, Robert
pointed it out, she denied the charge with mingled passion
and surprise.

And it was quite true that she took no pleasure in
arousing a man's desire.  All her pleasure was derived from
baffling it.  Curiously enough, an enamored man was an
object which aroused in her only a feeling of distaste.  And
the presence of this feeling satisfied her that she was the
innocent victim of his condition rather than the responsible
author.

Perhaps it was this attitude of Cornelia's that Robert
had in mind when he said that there was an indefinable
suggestion of latent wickedness about her, of wickedness
she had neither the vitality nor the courage to live up to.
How much her luckless amour had to do with her inverted
sex emotions, it would be hard to say.  Robert's private
view was that it had thrown her into the society of people
like the Kips Bay tenementers who, by all current moral
standards, were not "respectable."  He also held that it
had inspired her with a passion for respectability, as secret
and as strong as the drunkard's longing to be considered
a sober man.

After her neighbor's retirement, Cornelia looked at his
card.  In the middle was inscribed the name "Harry Kelly"
and underneath appeared: "The Harlem Gorilla, Champion
of the Mat."



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   \II

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It was an hour or more before the doorbell of suite
number fifteen rang again.  This time the visitor was
Robert Lloyd.  His entrance drove Cornelia's languor away.
But she concealed her immense delight and received him
neutrally enough.

"I couldn't endure the monotony of the ball another
minute," he declared.  "You've no idea what a relief it
is to be able to come here."

"What was so monotonous, Cato?"

"What wasn't!" said Robert, taking off his overcoat and
revealing the black friar's hood and gown that had served
him during the evening.  "The music, the dancing, the
ogling, the drinking, the sickening coquetry, the silly
speeches to and from brainless companions—in short,
everything!"

"My dear!" exclaimed Cornelia.  "At a ball, what can
you expect?"

"Oh, I know I'm a fool for my pains," said Robert,
laughing off the vexation he felt at having frittered away
a whole evening.

He began to undo the girdle of his gown.

"Stop!" she cried.  "I haven't had a really good look at
your costume."

"Nor I at yours," he said, noticing how her dress lapped
and caressed her form.  He praised the effect freely.

Pleased, she went to his side, pulled his hood over his
head, set his girdle and gown aright, and then stepped back
to inspect the result, clapping her hands in approval as
she did so.

"When the devil is sick of the world, the devil a monk
would be!"

"The devil a monk am I!" said Robert, "unless an
unholy rage at the world is a first-class qualification for
monastic honors."

"Robert, the part fits you to perfection.  It's astonishing
how neatly you manage to blend the temper of a devil with
the austerity of a monk."

"Not astonishing at all," said Robert, divesting himself
of the costume.  "Like most young men I have a craving
for pleasure, excitement and female society.  That's what
you call the devil in me.  But my observation is keen
enough to show me that, under present social conditions,
I can't give this craving either a temperate or an honorable
satisfaction.  So I repress it as much as common sense
allows, and you call that repression austerity."

"Cato, you ought to be writing tracts for the Ethical
Culture Society instead of newspaper articles for Hutchins'
wicked *Evening Chronicle*.  What are you doing among the
Outlaws instead of in a goody-goody Sunday School?"

He took her raillery in good part.

"Every journalist is a patcher-up of unconsidered trifles,"
he said.  "He makes a crazy quilt of them as orderly and
coherent as he can.  Well, where can I get the raw material
I need in greater supply than in this little community of
criminality and sentimentality, of Radicalism and bad
debts?  Kips Bay is an inexhaustible mine of police news
and town talk."

"Well, I can't say that your kind stay among us has
broadened you out much, Rob!"

"No?" he replied, amused at the shot.  "I suppose I do
grow more squeamish every day.  Nothing like a steady
diet of police episodes for purifying purposes.  It acts the
way some nauseous drugs do."

"You're perfectly detestable," she cried.  She didn't like
anybody but herself to disparage Kips Bay.  "You've put
your mind in a prison, Rob.  Your symptoms require a
drastic remedy.  If I were a physician of the soul, I should
prescribe marriage."

"Don't be a Job's comforter, Cornelia.  I said I wanted
female society, not female satiety.  And, by the way, since
when did you begin to advocate marriage as the door to
freedom?  You have always denounced it as the trapdoor
to slavery."

"I don't advocate it for women, and even for men I
recommend it only in the most desperate cases."

"Well, mine isn't desperate.  But Hutchins Burley's is,
judging from his conduct at the ball tonight.  You might
prescribe for him."

"Oh, he's past all treatment.  What do you think he
told me in strict confidence yesterday?  That he's weighed
down by a great sorrow; too many women find him
irresistible, and persecute him to death with their lovesick
attentions."

"I call that a new form of persecutional mania."

"He was in dead earnest, Rob.  He called himself a
martyr to love, fancy that!"

"Well, he seemed to be a remarkably willing martyr
tonight.  He buzzed like a huge wasp from one pair of lips
to another.  When he got to Mazie, who unfolds her petals
so alluringly, he became quite intoxicated."

"Which means that Mazie acted in a perfectly shameless
way, as usual."

"Whose mind is a prison now?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Cornelia acridly.
"Please don't assume that, because I no longer believe in
marriage, I've turned my back on decency and good manners."

"This is breaking a butterfly on a wheel, Cornelia.  The
fact is, Mazie doesn't have to *act* to produce the peculiar
behavior in men which I described.  You know that quite
well.  She is what Joseph Conrad calls 'one of the women
of all time.'  I'd call her a throw-back with the emotions
and appetites of a cave woman and the thoughts and looks
of a Ziegfield chorus girl.  It's not by acting shamelessly,
or by acting at all, but by just passively being herself that
she sets a man's blood boiling."

"A man's blood boils so easily—like a kettle on a
mountain!"

"Be fair, Cornelia.  Some men's blood does, yes.  Men
on Mazie's own level.  Burley's one of them."

"Well," said Cornelia, waiving the point, "what did
Hutchins do, or rather undo?"

"I'd better not go into details.  He played several
questionable pranks.  Once, it looked as though he were on
the point of seizing Mazie by her locks and dragging her,
stone-man fashion, to his lair.  Even Mazie had to act
then, really to *act*, for she was after bigger game."

"You mean, Claude?"

"Yes.  But Claude had no eyes for the woman of all time.
His gaze was absolutely absorbed by a new star of the first
magnitude, a star not charted in the heavens before."

"And this starry wonder?"

"Was Janet Barr."

He tried to say the name casually, but Cornelia's jealous
ear detected a caressing tone.

"Hard on Mazie, wasn't it?" he pursued.

"On Mazie least of all," she said pointedly.

The shaft missed.

"Yes, Burley got the worst end of it," he went on
innocently.  "I dare say Mazie consoled herself easily enough.
But Burley's aspirations have met more than one jolt
to-night.  When he made a dead set at Janet—that was
another rebuff."

Robert described the riotous scene outside the gypsy tent.

"Then, as I've already told you, Mazie gave him the
slip; with the result that I've never seen Burley more
completely divested of his first-prize bumptiousness.
However, he soon pulled himself together."

"Goodness knows there must have been plenty of Outlaw
girls ready to lay balm on the big scamp's wounds."

"Yes.  And I needn't remind you that many of these
young ladies believe in free speech, free men and free love.
Well, Hutchins made the rounds of those he knew and
publicly challenged them to live up to their pretensions.
His proposals were brutally frank."

"The girls received them with amusement, I suppose?"

"They received them with scornful resentment—just like
ordinary conventional creatures.  That was what was so
surprising.  For Hutchins was simply a man who took
their professed opinions at face value.  'Darling,' he would
say bluntly, to one of his pets, 'Darling, I like you and
your ruby lips.  If you like me and are not otherwise
engaged, suppose we go off to Paradise.'  It was raw, of
course.  But you can't say it wasn't what is called 'free
love'."

"Really, Rob!"

"Exactly.  They were every bit as scandalized as you
are.  After gasping for breath, they called for their escorts.
Whereupon I concluded that instinct is mightier than opinion
and that the beliefs we inherit are vastly stronger than
the beliefs we acquire."

Cornelia ignored this piece of satire.  And Robert then
told how Burley had resumed his pursuit of Janet.

"Luckily, Claude held him off," he said.

"Another champion!  Little Janet must be quite the
belle of the ball."

"She's been much in demand.  There was the gypsy
tent, remember.  When it comes to innocent credulity, a
radical's capacity is just as great as any honest man's.  So
what with examining scores of palms and eluding Hutchins
Burley, Janet might have died from exhaustion but for
Claude's gallant interference."

"Just like Claude's knight-errantry," she said.  "He has
always had a passion for novelties."

"And the novelties have usually returned the passion!"

Cornelia felt a twinge of jealousy.  But as Janet had
evidently not been very attentive to Robert, and had even
hurt his feelings, she was hardly conscious of the emotion.

"Janet is young, impressionable and fresh from a Puritan
home," she said, with a languid air of detachment.  "Small
wonder if Lothario's dash and distinction have captivated
her."

They fell to talking of Janet's history, and Robert spoke
of the surprising change in her sphere of interests.

"A month ago she was demure enough to have stood
model for the heroine of *Miles Standish*.  She could hardly
be induced to drink at a soda-water fountain on a Sunday.
Now she is full of 'equal pay for equal work.'  And she
appears to have a voice as well as a vote.  I'm told that
she reads the *Liberator* and that she broke the last Sabbath
by attending a meeting of the new Labor Party in Madison
Square Garden."

"She's been under my wing for several weeks," said
Cornelia, proudly.



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   \III

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Cornelia's assumption that she was entirely responsible
for the change in Janet's outlook on life was without
warrant.  Yet she was so self-satisfied as scarcely to suspect
that Robert had anything to do with the matter; and it
was interest in the man rather than curiosity about the
girl that caused her to question him about his previous
acquaintance with Janet.

She learnt that Robert's mother was not a very distant
cousin of Mrs. Barr, and that both ladies had spent their
girlhood in the same Connecticut town, where they had
been friends until Mrs. Lloyd married and went out West.
When Robert left Los Angeles, he bore this relationship
in mind and, on the strength of it, paid his respects to the
Barrs soon after settling in New York.

Cornelia inferred that the young man's acquaintance with
the Barrs had continued on a very superficial footing.
Robert knew better than to undeceive her.  As a matter
of fact, he had repeated his visits to the Barr household
for the simple reason that there had sprung up between
himself and Janet a mental fellowship which the hostility
of her mother, the timid aloofness of her father and the
envy of her sister had been able to obstruct but not to
destroy.

Janet had more than repaid him for the inhospitality of
her relatives.  She in turn amused, puzzled, inspired and
electrified him.  So much unsophistication in the midst of
a guileful city, so much candor surrounded by pious
make-believe, above all, so much eagerness for experience held
in leash by a vegetating family routine, had filled Robert
with the hope that he might play Pygmalion to her Galatea.

Galatea, however, did not exactly go into raptures over
Pygmalion.  Though her insurgent nature was full of silent
sympathy with Robert, her instincts were so much under
the bondage of the Barr atmosphere as to prevent her from
fully estimating his worth.  Still, she conscientiously
followed up the leads he gave her.  She made her first
bewildered acquaintance with the new paintings, the new
music and the new social sciences.  She began to look
forward to copies of the *Republic*, the *Nation*, the *London
Statesman*; and she joined him in reading the great
contemporary writers: Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Anatole
France, Romain Rolland.  In short, she ranged with silent
delight through the new world of modernity that he opened
up to her, though it had to be explored in an obstinate
little way of her own.

As her unofficial pilot Robert was very happy and might
long have held the post but for a fatal blunder.  Mrs. Barr
learned one day that he had tempted Janet to attend a
performance of Shaw's "Blanco Posnet," given on a Sunday
by the Stage Reform Players.  According to Emily, her
informant, this play was immoral, not to say blasphemous,
as was proved by the refusal of the British censor to license
its performance.

Such a flagrant breach of holy writ, family propriety
and the Sabbath, raised a domestic tempest to which Janet
deemed it wise to bend.  Robert was forced to discontinue
his visits.  What he did not tell Cornelia was that, during
the last two months, he had regularly met Janet at Brentano's,
where she had formed the habit of browsing through
the new books and magazines every Friday afternoon.





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   CHAPTER SIX


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   \I

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These facts Robert had his own reasons for hiding from
Cornelia.  To cut the cross-examination short, he walked
up to a miniature portrait that hung on the wall over
Cornelia's desk.

"Why do you keep this picture of Percival Houghton
enshrined here?"

"Why not?" asked Cornelia, taken by surprise.

"It is the only picture in the room," replied Robert,
evasively.  "The face is that of an esthete under the
influence of paranoia.  It positively stares one out of
countenance.  Whenever I enter the room, I feel as if I mustn't
take a seat until I've bowed before it thrice."

"I'm not responsible for other people's erratic
feelings."  Cornelia would have spoken with less acerbity if jealousy
had prompted Robert's remark.  But his cool sardonic tone
eliminated the theory of a jealous motive.

"Pardon the explosion, Cornelia.  But why must this
man of all men be the presiding genius of your room?"

"You know the reason very well, Robert."

"Unfortunately, yes.  You won't let your friends forget
it.  By keeping this portrait in evidence, you actually force
the reason on people's attention.  Do take him down,
Cornelia, swathe him in incense, and lay him away amongst
your most cherished souvenirs.  Replace him, if you must
replace him, with a picture of Saint Francis or Savonarola."

She bristled up under his ironic words.  Her craving for
admiration vanished in her resentment of disapproval.

"I am proud to have known Percival Houghton, and to
have been his friend.  Thanks for your recommendation,
though I'm not aware of having asked for it."

"Don't be angry.  You must own that you constantly
remind your visitors of this Houghton affair, though what
advantage it is to your position and influence, Heaven only
knows.  Let sleeping dogs lie.  Believe me, Cornelia, half
the tragedies in life result from forgetting what we ought
to remember; the other half from remembering what we
ought to forget."

"I'm not ashamed of the Houghton affair, as you call
it," said Cornelia coldly.  "Why should I be?  It was one
of those rare friendships that are quite beyond the
perception of vulgar-minded, low-thoughted souls.  What other
people think of it concerns me very little."

She really believed this, although it was very wide of
the mark.

"I know," she went on melodramatically, "of the spiteful
gossip behind my back.  I know of the scarlet colors in
which my relations with Percival Houghton are painted
by my enemies.  Let them declaim against me!  To a few
real friends I have told the truth.  They believe me, and
that is all I ask."

She had in fact taken more than one friend into her
confidence.  It was a common saying in the Lorillard tenements
that the token of admission to Cornelia's inner circle
was the almost sacramental rite of receiving her account
of the Houghton episode.

The corner stone of this account—the supreme article
of faith!—was the point that she and Percival Houghton
had rigorously abstained from sexual intimacy throughout
their voyage together in the same stateroom.  Not from
moral scruples, be it noted, but from a desire to prove to
the world that free love and the severest tax on self-restraint
were perfectly compatible.

Cornelia held passionately to the delusion that her
account was accepted in every jot and tittle.  Robert knew
that behind her back, most of her friends greeted it with a
cynical smile and pronounced it a pardonable but much
too elaborate invention.  When some one referred to
Cornelia's assertion that the voyage to England had involved
no infraction of the seventh commandment, the women
would say contemptuously: "If you're going to be killed
for a lamb, you might as well be killed for a sheep."  The
men, more vulgarly, would exclaim: "What a shame if
they wasted a chance like that!"

Hutchins Burley, in one of his most egregious moments,
wagered any amount that Cornelia wasn't half as big a
fool as her story made her out to be.

It was owing to these and other coarse pleasantries
circulating at her expense that Robert wished he could make
Cornelia look the facts in the face.

What he regretted most of all, however, was that she
seemed entirely to misconstrue the visits of the many men
who sauntered in and out of her rooms.  They came with
the expectation voiced by Oscar Wilde, that "she who had
sinned once and with loathing, would sin again many times,
and with joy."  Clearly, they hoped to profit by the
repetition.  But this was a truth to which Cornelia was
obstinately blind.

"You, Robert," she said, aggrieved at his silence, "used
to be counted among those who believed."

"And I am still.  Good Heavens, Cornelia, why should I,
of all people, doubt your words?  Think of my situation.
Here am I, alone after midnight in an apartment with a
young and interesting martyr in the cause of free marriage.
And what do we do?  We discuss the subject of sex affinities,
with a complete suspension of conventional reserve.
Yet I couldn't so much as kiss you."

"Oh, couldn't you?" said Cornelia, in a half mocking,
half challenging voice.

This tremendous talk, all about herself, had completely
revitalized her spirits.  She sat forward intent on Robert's
every word, the movement causing her dress to fall low
in front and show all her languid beauty at its best.

"No!" he said, gazing at her and striving hard to steady
himself.

"How do you know?" she murmured, in scarcely audible
tones.

"I know," asserted Robert firmly, returning to an almost
inhuman perfection.  "If I began to make love to you, I'd
be turned out in a twinkling.  But who would believe this?
Not a soul.  If you were to tell the facts to our fellow
tenementers, they would laugh you to scorn, and if *I* were
to tell them, they would send me to the Bloomingdale
Asylum.  Yet my virtue is quite safe with you, Cornelia."

"You hardly do yourself justice, Cato," she said, biting
her lips, and adjusting the neck of her dress.

"Oh, men are more or less passive agents in these matters.
I'm safe with you because your radicalism, with all its
offshoots into free love, free thought and free religion is
only skin deep.  You are a fascinating instance in the flesh
of the great modern feminist dilemma: the demand for
independence and respectability coupled with the fatal
longing to be a Cleopatra, 'one of the women of all time.'"

Piqued at his innuendoes, Cornelia was getting ready to
launch an acrid retort, when the door bell rang.  It was
one of those vicious jangles with which only a policeman
or a pedlar ventures to announce himself.

But the man who roistered into the apartment was
Hutchins Burley.



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   \II

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It was difficult to think of this corpulent, bullying
brawler as one of the leading newspaper men of the
metropolis; he looked so very much more like a shoddy loafer
from the underworld.  His legs were still fairly steady,
although his head was quite the reverse.  His alcoholic
exertions had been so ardent, however, that he sank on
the couch with a loud snort of satisfaction.

"Where's Janet Barr?" he demanded, after getting his
breath.  "I followed her to Charlotte's flat, but she wasn't
there.  That's where Lydia Dyson said she was going to,
the little liar."

Cornelia shook her finger at him in mock remonstrance.

"You have seen quite enough of Janet for one night,
Hutch, judging from reports that have reached me.  I'd be
doing no more than was good for you if I put Mrs. Burley
on your trail."

"What d'ye think Lizzie'd do?" he roared.  "She'd
scratch your eyes out for your pains!"

He gave himself up to a burst of horrible guffaws.  As
Robert looked at the man's gross, overheated, pitted face
and at the Falstaffian neck and trunk, he was overcome
with intense disgust.

This disgust was only in part shared by Cornelia.  True,
she did not relish Burley in his present drunken condition,
but ordinarily she confessed to a curious weakness for him.
"There's something about the brute that I like," she once
frankly said.

She found his grossness and animal passion a relief from
the refinement and fastidiousness of men like Robert.
There was a certain quantitative satisfaction in the
spectacle of his enormous bulk at her feet.  Anyhow, all male
slaves looked alike to her, the fact being that her appetite
for attention or devotion was at once undiscriminating and
insatiable.

Meanwhile Burley had turned to Robert.

"Listen, my boy," he said, clamorously, "when you
marry, get a good stupid dray horse like my dame.  One
that'll believe in you even if God Almighty's against you.
A good plodding dray horse.  That's the best recipe I know
for marital felicity."

In an explosion of repellent laughter he roared out his
self-applause.

"You know as much about women as about this tunic
I'm cutting out," said Cornelia, rebuking him mildly with
her voice, but not at all with her eye.

"Well, Corny," said Hutchins, in high excitement, "I'll
tell you what I *do* know about them."  He rose from the
lounge and dumped himself amorously on one of the arms
of her easy chair.  "There are only three things a man
need do to make a hit with women: give 'em food, give 'em
clothes, give 'em hugs.  It's a sure-fire rule for managing
them, too."

He roared louder than ever.  Robert wished Cornelia
wouldn't encourage him under a pretense of doing the
reverse.

"Now, Hutch, go home, please," she said, prompted by
his silent disapproval.  "You'll wake up all the neighbors
with your loud laughter.  Remember, the walls here are
as thin as cardboard."

By way of answer, the irrepressible roisterer put his arm
familiarly around her waist and tried to draw her back into
the chair.

"Be human, Corny, old girl," he said.  "Don't be a
psychic adventuress.  I've got to stay somewhere tonight,
and I might as well stay here."

Cornelia wrenched herself from his grasp and, opening
the outer door with a tempestuous gesture, told him to leave
at once.

"You'd better go, Hutchins," said Robert, quietly.
"Cornelia will be more than a match for you."

Burley began to abuse him at the top of his lungs.

"For a penny, I'd break every bone in your body," he
shouted.

"I'll give you twice that sum to refrain," said Robert
coolly.

Burley's latent bestiality was now thoroughly aroused.
Breathing threatenings and slaughter, he advanced towards
Robert, working himself into a greater passion and shaking
his fist more savagely every step of the way.  Cornelia
screamed and threw herself in the huge man's path.  After
a tussle of a few seconds, during which her cries rang
through the open door, he shoved her forcibly aside.
Robert's slim stature was already poised for the uneven
combat, when a tall, agile, coatless figure dashed in from
the adjoining apartment and deftly arrested the fist that
Burley was sending with considerable momentum towards
Robert's pale face.

"This way out!" exclaimed the newcomer in a voice
almost ludicrously gentle.

But there was nothing gentle about his strength.  The
thwarted man sputtered abusive, incoherent indecencies.
In vain.  His expletives were cut short by two hands of
steel that whirled his lumbering hulk forward, steered him
past Cornelia with professional adroitness, and escorted him
irresistibly into the corridor.  A moment later an inchoate
mass of humanity was torpedoed, with projectile swiftness,
down the first flight of stairs.  To make doubly sure, the
direct actionist followed his missile.

Rumblings, sputterings and groans ascended discordantly
up the stairway.  Presently the noise grew fitful and then
more and more subdued, as if some one had damped Vesuvius
or banked its fires for the night.  At length came
silence.

Cornelia had sunk into a chair over which Robert was
solicitously bending when Burley's subjugator returned.
In reply to Cornelia's thanks he blushed like a boy and hid
his embarrassment by edging towards the door.

In the hall outside he deprecated Robert's warm words.

"Just practice work," he said, in the same mild voice and
Manhattan accent.  "A little trick of concentration.  A man
brings all his muscular power to bear on a few weak points.
*And* joints.  The Japs can teach you.  So can I."

He drew a card from his waistcoat pocket.  Meanwhile,
Cornelia, who had followed Robert to the door, chanted:

"You are wonderful, Mr. Gorilla, wonderful!  How *do*
you accomplish it?"

"Ah, Miss, a child could do it.  The main thing is to
be a powerful breather; you can't do much if you're only
a powerful eater or drinker.  You've got to fill your lungs
and your bel—your abdomen, with good fresh wind; then
you travel on velvet."

He gave Robert his card.

"Come in and I'll show you," he said cordially.

His eyes meeting Cornelia's again, the vanquished victor
withdrew in evident confusion to his retreat in number
thirteen.

Robert looked at the card and turned it over to Cornelia.
She recognized with a smile the legend about Harry Kelly,
the Harlem Gorilla and Champion of the Mat.





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.. _`LOVE AMONG THE OUTLAWS`:

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   PART II

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   LOVE AMONG THE OUTLAWS

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   CHAPTER SEVEN

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When Janet awoke at eleven, it took her several moments
to recollect that she was in Cornelia's apartment in Kips
Bay, where Claude had left her before dawn.  She could
hear Cornelia bustling about in the living room, but she
stayed in bed a little longer to luxuriate in memories of the
preceding night.

She got lightly out of bed and stood before the mirror
over the chiffonier.  But she was less preoccupied with the
image in the looking glass than with mental pictures of the
night before.

In the bright light of day, the glamour of some of
these pictures took on the effect of tinsel.  But Janet could
still thrill to the excitement of the raid on the Lyceum,
the pell-mell escape, the violent dispersal of the mobs in
Murray Hill and the hurried collection of a troop of
Outlaw refugees and their nocturnal march through Kips Bay
streets under the leadership of Claude Fontaine.  It had
been a very festive troop, swelled by stragglers all the way
to the Lorillard tenements, where the party camped in
Charlotte Beecher's double flat.

Of the long merrymaking that followed, Janet cared to
remember only the occasions when Claude Fontaine was
at her side and at her service.  How vividly she could
picture him in the dashing part of Charles Surface, his
handsome face tinted with rich, young blood, and his eyes
of such brightness and depth that surely no infamy could
ever dull them!

A knock cut this day dreaming short.

"How do you do, Araminta?" said Cornelia, entering
melodramatically.  "And what does the Sleeping Beauty
want for breakfast?"

"I'm hungry enough to eat sticks and stones and puppy-dog's
bones," replied Janet.  "But I won't murmur if you
have gentler fare."

As Cornelia insisted that dressing should be deferred until
after the meal, Janet tripped to the breakfast table in her
nightgown, her curly hair hanging down to her shoulders.
Cornelia, her figure lapped precariously in a simple dress,
which she had made and pinned together at a cost of fifty
cents all told, sat down opposite her young guest.

"This is a picnic!" exclaimed Janet.  She was filled with
glee at the wrapping paper neatly spread out in place of a
table cloth, at the cups, saucers and dishes all made of
agateware, and at the compressed paper plates for the
slices of bread.

"Well, it isn't a Barmecide's feast, by any means," said
Cornelia, who was amused at Janet's artless joy.  "The
plates may be made of paper, but they are fresh and so
are the eggs and bacon."

She set these articles on the table.

"All the principal dishes are of agateware," she said,
in answer to a question of Janet's.  "I've got four of
everything necessary—four cups, four saucers, four glasses,
four knives, four spoons, and so on.  But don't imagine
that we have wrapping paper for a table cloth every day.
Dear, no!  That's only for guests of honor and on Sundays.
On week days we use newspapers."

"That's a novel way of taking one's newspaper with one's
meal."

"Oh, it's old news.  I always use the newspaper of a
week ago.  And it's curious how often I run across some
interesting bit of politics or scandal that escaped me a week
before.  Sometimes, while devouring a roll, I catch myself
in the midst of a slobbery article by Hutchins Burley in
the *Evening Chronicle*.  The wretch is running a series of
articles called: 'The Soul of Woman under Freedom.'"

She gave Janet a circumstantial report of the encounter
with Burley during the night.  Janet followed this
narrative with sympathetic interest, and wished that she and
Claude had arrived in time to prevent the occurrence.

"But then your knight-errant would have missed his
opportunity," she said.

"Think of the loss!  By the way, I met him this morning,
Araminta."

"In ambush at the door?"

"No, in the hallway downstairs.  I had gone out for some
cream.  On my way back I ran right into his arms."

"With what result?"

"Very little.  He exhausted his eloquence in stammers
and deaf mute lingo.  And when I thanked him again for
last night's service, he promptly took to his heels.  It was
cruel."

"The course of true love always is, Cornelia."

Cornelia, pleased at the implied assumption that she had
inspired a romance, dwelt with gusto on the hero's exploit.
For the fiftieth time she described the skill and celerity
with which "the physical culture expert" had propelled
Burley from the apartment.

"At the Outlaws' Ball, Mr. Burley called Claude a
diamond smuggler," said Janet, by way of changing the
subject.  "What did he mean?  Do people accuse the Fontaines
of smuggling?"

"I never heard of such a thing," replied Cornelia.
"Merchant princes like the Fontaines would hardly stoop to
that.  Besides, it wouldn't pay them.  Did Claude notice?"

"Yes, and he seemed to mind it very much.  His whole
appearance changed as if he had been stung into sudden
fury.  But he controlled himself bravely."

"What else could he do with the belle of the ball at his
side?  He's always a man of the world—when in the world."

"But not in private?" asked Janet, anxious to get to
the bottom of this veiled aspersion.  Cornelia's reply was
evasive.

"A fine summer's day will often end in a burst of terrifying
thunder and lightning," she said.  "Lothario has plenty
of good looks and plenty of temper.  A man who is
accustomed to find people submitting to his will, easily gets
indignant when he meets with opposition."

She sighed as if she could tell much more about Claude
Fontaine if she chose.

"Well, I don't blame him for getting enraged at the
abuse of that horrible man," said Janet, sturdily defending
him.

"Nor do I.  Once in a while a thunderbolt will strike the
wicked as well as the good, won't it?  Claude was quite
justified this time, no doubt."

"How does he happen to come among the Outlaws,
Cornelia?  He doesn't seem to belong to them exactly."

"He doesn't pretend to.  He walks among us humble
tenementers like a god among his creatures.  Distinctly Like
a god, Araminta.  That's the footing on which he associates
with mere human beings."

"Yet he's hail fellow well met with Robert and Mazie and
the others," protested Janet.

"Ah, yes, but don't let that deceive you.  Jupiter was
hail fellow well met with many a mortal, especially with
many a mortal maiden.  You remember that he visited one
earthly princess in a shower of gold.  That is what Claude
does.  He visits the model tenements in—or perhaps I
should say with—a shower of gold.  I mean," she added,
"he doesn't think of marriage with a girl on Mazie's level.
Nor with a girl on yours or mine."

This shaft did not miss its mark.  But it perplexed Janet
more than it wounded her.

"I thought that made no difference to you," she said,
for she had already been favored with some of Cornelia's
destructive criticism of the institution of marriage.

"It makes no difference to *me*," said Cornelia.  "But in
this stifling room I can't explain myself as I'd like to.  The
spacious blue skies and the free pure air of the Hudson
will be a more fitting background for the story I'd like to
tell you.  Put on your things, Araminta, and we'll go for
a charming ride."

Janet dressed with promptness and pleasure.  She appeared
to have forgotten that Robert Lloyd had particularly
said that he was coming about noon in order to take her
home.  Her friend did not remind her.  The knowledge
that Robert would go away in bitter disappointment robbed
the outing of none of its zest, so far as Cornelia was
concerned.

Claude, too, had promised to drop in at Number Fifteen.
This promise Janet bore well in mind.  But as his visit
was not to take place until late in the afternoon and there
was thus no danger of missing him, she joined Cornelia
with enthusiasm.



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At the corner of Thirty-fourth Street and Second Avenue,
where Kips Bay edges its dingy little proletarian stores into
bourgeois respectability, the two young women entered a
car bound for the West Twenty-third Street ferry.  It
proceeded at a jog trot along Second Avenue to Twenty-third
Street where it struck the cross-town line west.

Janet felt no annoyance at the snail's pace from which
the car never departed.  Manhattan was still a novelty to
her, and this section of the East Side was wholly new.

But Cornelia made unflattering comparison between the
surface conveyances in Manhattan and the bus transportation
which Londoners and Parisians enjoyed.  She was
annoyed by the complacency that New Yorkers displayed
toward their street-car service and the petty provincialism
that actually led them to believe this service to be the
fastest in the world, when in fact it was the slowest.  At
the climax of her irritation she gave Janet the benefit of
one of Robert Lloyd's epigrams.  Robert had once said
that New York "rapid transit," as it was optimistically
called, was the organized effort of the local traction
magnates to annihilate the specific advantages of modern
electrical machinery.  Cornelia did not doubt that in this effort
they had triumphed.

The jolts with which the car came to a standstill at each
successive street crossing, and the jerks with which it
resumed its languid pace again, would ordinarily have frazzled
her nerves for the day.  This time, however, she bore the
ordeal much more composedly.  For one thing, Janet's calm
spirit had a soothing influence upon her.  For another, it
amused her mightily to have so unsophisticated a
companion to point out the sights to.  She caused Janet to
observe the Italian district with its macaroni dens along
the cross streets, the Armenian district with the Eastern
restaurants parading strange Greek-lettered names, and
Kips Bay's fashionable western fringe with its Madison
Avenue hotels, stores and residential palaces.

Janet drank it all in thirstily.  Not for a moment did
she regret the defiance she had flung at her mother's wishes
by going to the Outlaws' Ball.  On the contrary, this act
of insurgency appeared to have heightened her perception
as much as it had strengthened her self-esteem.  She saw
things with different eyes, or believed she did.  The people
and the shops fairly brandished a life and reality totally
new to her experience.  She longed to be more than a mere
spectator in the tumultuous scene unfolded before her.  She
would have given anything to be even a cog—an active
cog—in this giant metropolis whose roar and grime possessed
an immense attraction.

At the North River they left the car.  Three big ferry
houses confronted them and Cornelia was undecided which
to take.  It was a grave question in her mind, for she staged
the big scenes of her life with as much care as a play
producer.  The artist in her at once eliminated the Erie
ferry.

"The Erie boats are too dinky," she said.  "Shall we take
the Jersey Central or the Lackawanna?"

"Let's take the one that gives the longest ride," said
Janet, for whom the smell of the river quickly cut such
minor esthetic knots.

Cornelia's first and invariable impulse towards any
proposal made by another person was to turn it down.  The
reasons she gave for doing so were usually quite plausible,
though sometimes cast in a rather theatrical style.

"The Jersey's trip is a little longer," she said, "but the
difference is slight.  The Lackawanna appeals to me more.
Lackawanna!  Don't you love the music in that name?
Besides, Araminta, the Jersey boats are painted a sickly
gray, while the Lackawanna boats are maroon.  A wonderful
maroon!  And they have a glorious seat on the upper
deck, directly facing the bow."

"Very well, let's take the Lackawanna," said Janet, to
whom it was all one.

They were soon ensconced in the very seat on the top
deck which Cornelia coveted.

But if Janet had any hopes of hearing a great deal more
about Claude Fontaine, she was soon disillusioned.  She
did not yet understand her friend, to whom the world was
an audience at a stage play in which Cornelia Covert had
the star part.  She speedily learned that Cornelia had not
gone to all this trouble to analyze the love affairs of other
people.  No.  The moment had been chosen and the stage
had been set to make Janet the recipient of the sacred
narrative of Cornelia's experience with Percival Houghton.

The tale did not begin until the boat was well under
way, so that Janet had an opportunity to revel in the swell
of the mighty Hudson and to contrast the differing aspects
of the two banks.  The Palisaded Jersey side was almost
hidden by huge ocean steamers, except at the spot where
the Castle Point Terrace of Stevens Institute rose serenely
above a forest of quivering masts.

Janet thought the heights of Hoboken quite dwarfed by
the towering office structures of lower Manhattan.  Cornelia
interrupted her ineffable story long enough to repeat
another opinion of Robert's without acknowledgment.  It
was to the effect that the commercial skyscrapers on the
Hudson were as grimly symbolic of ownership as the castles
that overlooked the Rhine.  Did Janet realize that the lords
of these skyscraping fortresses were the masters of the
river and thus of the country on which the river's port had
a strangle hold?  In each of the big business edifices,
thousands of mercantile retainers served their liege lords
with pen or typewriter as industriously as ever men-at-arms
flourished crossbow or arquebus in the brave days of old.
Only, the economic factor in the comparison was all in
favor of the industrial barons of today.  Their armies,
opulence and power were of a magnitude that would have
caused the robber barons of the Rhine to expire with envy.



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   \III

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With these brief interruptions, Cornelia pursued the
even tenor of the story whose narration was the seal and
token of her friendship.  What moved her to tell it to
Janet was not the idea of self-defence, or the hope of
softening the shock a friend might receive on learning the
details from a hostile critic.  Quite the contrary.  She was
inordinately proud of her intimate connection with a man
as famous as Percival Houghton; and she was altogether
anxious that her friends should know of this connection in
the form in which she wished it to be known and hoped to
make it remembered.

Two years had passed, she told Janet, since Percival
Houghton came to the United States.  He was a young
Englishman, well connected, who had gained an immense
vogue as an illustrator.  He was said to have "isolated"
several rare types of French and English female beauty,
and fabulous sums had been paid for his portrait studies
in pastel.  His press agent having in advance widely
advertised the artist's announced purpose of adding the
American girl to his pictorial conquests, his arrival was
extremely good copy for the newspapers.

Hutchins Burley, with an eye to the *Evening Chronicle's*
large feminine clientele, did not let the opportunity slip by.
He assigned Cornelia, then attached to his paper, to
interview the ambitious Englishman.  In her own words, "she
went, she saw, she conquered."

After the flattering notice in the *Chronicle*, Percival
Houghton sought her out and attended her devotedly.
Cornelia dwelt on the warm friendship that sprang up
between them and on her own quick subjection to his great
personal charm.

"He was a wonderful man, Araminta.  He had a great
leonine head with wild flowing locks; there was fire in his
eye and music in his voice; and he had that imperious way
with him that opens a path straight to a woman's heart."

The week before his departure, he made an avowal of
his passion.  And she was in a paradise of ecstasy until
the next day, when he sent her by mail a piece of information
he had not had the courage to give her in person.  He
confessed to a wife and two children living in England.
In a moment of impetuous boyish idealism—like Shelley's,
he said—he had married a girl who was intellectually
(though not financially) his inferior.  Worst of all, she
shared none of his tastes or aspirations.  He assured
Cornelia that every day of his married existence had been a
lifetime of exquisite torture.

This confession, Janet heard, was the prelude to many
hours of bitter torment.  Cornelia said that the one good
outcome of this evil period was that she began to think of
the realities of life for the first time.  She was led to
question the moral conventions which she had always taken
for granted and which, she now saw, encrusted the conduct
of most of the people around her.  Under the tutelage of
Percival Houghton, who proclaimed himself a free thinker,
as well as a free lover, she became alive to the absurdity
of regarding the conventions of an age as immutable laws
for all time.

Naturally, at this time, her logic was concentrated on
the convention of marriage.

Percival read out many passages from the great writers
of today—continued Cornelia—from Galsworthy, H. G. Wells,
Havelock Ellis and Gilbert Cannan; and these passages
exposed the unalterable belief of the writers that
marriage, in its existing form, was wrong, conclusively and
crushingly wrong.

Wrong, she hastened to explain, in so far as it was a
contract that was held to be binding even after the death
of the love on which the contract was based.

She developed the logic of the situation at some length
in arguments with which Janet was greatly impressed.

"You own mother and father hate each other, Janet," she
pointed out.  "The result is the cat-and-dog,
bite-one-another's-head-off relationship that passes for family life
in your home.  Do you see?";

Janet saw, or thought she saw.  Anything that could
plausibly be shown to be responsible for family life among
the Barrs was sure to receive her cordial detestation.
Cornelia, certain of her auditor's sympathy, continued her story.
Percival Houghton's solution of the difficulty caused by
his rash attachment was a highly quixotic one.  He
proposed that Cornelia accompany him to England, so that
they might together lay the facts before his wife and beg
her to sue for a divorce after he had furnished her with
funds and with technical grounds for the suit.  They were
to be open and aboveboard in urging the right of true
lovers to be free from all the shackles of law and tradition.
His wife was not ungenerous, he declared.  Moreover, she
had never really loved him; and he persuaded himself and
Cornelia that, face to face with an overwhelming passion,
she would readily consent to an act that was to liberate
three lives.

This, he insisted was the only honorable course to
pursue.  It had the precedent of such great names as Ruskin
and Millais.  Besides it was the only course that would
not seriously affect his career or completely cut him off
from his children.

What could Cornelia do but yield?  He engaged passage
to England for two, and—she emphasized this detail again
and again—though they occupied the same stateroom,
their union was a union of two souls and nothing more.

Without giving Janet time to grasp the logic of this
behavior or of its explanation, she continued:

"Percival said it behooved us to show that free love
could rise above the lustful impulses of the flesh.  We
were to come to each other clean, so as not to do the cause
of free love an injury."

England had been the Paradise of her hopes, but it
proved their sepulchre.  Scarcely had they docked in the
Mersey when reporters representing news associations
accosted them for information about their "elopement."  The
news had been cabled from New York, where they were
featured as "elective affinities."  In London, too, they
found themselves headliners in the yellow journals.  Needless
to say, the most extreme construction was put on their
journey together.  And the escapade of "affinity Houghton"
became an international sensation.

"How did it leak out, Cornelia?" exclaimed Janet.  "Had
you told anyone you were going together?

"Not a soul.  But my connection with a newspaper was
fatal.  A woman journalist is subject to more gossip than
an actress.  Every time she's seen with a new man, she's
reported to have ensnared a new lover."

As a result of this glaring notoriety, Cornelia went on,
Houghton's manner toward her underwent a radical change.
He remained kind and courteous, but his manner grew cool.
He urged one pretext after another for postponing what was
to have been a historic interview with his wife.  In London
he took her to a hotel and left her there alone.

Two days later she received a letter from him, in which
he said that his wife was unalterably resolved to contest a
divorce on any ground, and that the newspaper gossip had
almost irretrievably injured his prospects.  He added
that he was as devoted to her as ever.  He was, in fact,
broken-hearted, but his clear duty to his family, his
children and his career demanded that they should never
meet again.

In spite of this note she made several attempts to see
him once more.  She confessed to Janet that she had been
ready to accept any terms he might make, if only he agreed
not to part from her forever.  It was for love and not for
marriage that she had sacrificed herself.  It was not
marriage but love that she demanded.  But he sustained his
pitilessly inflexible attitude.  Almost prostrated by the
notoriety which the experience had thrust upon her, she
made a heart-broken return to the United States.

"I landed in New York without hope, without health, and
without a home," said Cornelia, dramatically.  "But I had
vindicated my belief that love should be free."

To forestall a social boycott, she had proudly decided to
shun all her former friends.  To this end she rented a flat
in the Lorillard tenements.  And here she had remained
in eclipse, and in receipt of a small allowance from a brother
who was a leading politician in a Western State.

Latterly, old friends of hers, members of the fellowship
of Outlaws, had drifted into her rooms in Kips Bay; and
so she had been dragged—unwillingly, she alleged—from
her retirement.

She asserted that she had no ill-will for Percival Houghton,
who would always be the one man in the world for her.
After all, he had sold his birthright for a marriage of
convenience, and he might well feel that he ought to stick to
his bargain, cost what it might.  She was persuaded that
his coldness to her in London was merely an iron vizor
clamped upon his real feelings by the ruthless institution
of matrimony.  She also appeared to derive some comfort
from the thought that though he was "a soul pirate,"
though he had "stolen her soul," his own had been damned
in the process.

"Yet I shall always love him," she said, with tragic
resignation.  "I shall never love anyone else.  And I shall
never marry.  I've suffered enough from marriage as it is."

The ferryboat docked at the Lackawanna Station.
Janet, who had been lost in a reverie, mechanically followed
her companion's suggestion that they take the same boat
back.  Cornelia's story—the vivid story of one of the
principals—had a very different coloring from the account
of the "affinity Houghton" scandal which had filled the
front pages of the evening newspapers two years ago.
Janet could still recollect the headlines, the pictures, and
the expansive gossip; also the strange mixture of curiosity
and pious disgust with which she had followed the reports.

Could the horrified Janet Barr of that dimly remembered
time be the same girl who was now sitting in the closest
intimacy beside the leading female in the case?

On the return across the river, Janet had several questions
on the tip of her tongue, but Cornelia's manner seemed
to discourage inquiries of a too personal kind.  However,
Janet did get in:

"What was Percival Houghton's excuse for refusing to
see you once more?"

"He said we could meet only in secret; but that any
continuation of the secrecy was more than he could endure."

"Do you think that excuse rings true?"

"Why not?  I suppose I should say it rings falsely true,
as faith unfaithful always does."

"I think it was the evasion of a coward."

"Perhaps.  But, Araminta, *all* men are cowards, moral
cowards, I mean.  They face bullets sublimely, but they
shiver and shake before an argument.  They gayly lose
their lives for a hunting trophy or a football triumph, but
they can't bear to lose their dinners for a belief."

Janet, thinking of her father, was inclined to agree with
this view.

"Is that why men let women keep up the marriage system?"

"My dear, it isn't the women who keep up the marriage
system.  It's the men!  Women just fall into a system
that's ready made for them.  Most women are all body
and no soul.  Give them the choice between marriage,
which provides for the body while starving the soul, and
some other condition which provides for the soul while
starving the body, and of course they'll choose marriage.
They prefer to hold a man by his lusts rather than by his
spiritual impulses.  But the men keep the system up, my
dear.  Because of the children they want."

"But, Cornelia, I thought it was the women who wanted
children!"

"So we do.  We want them because life demands them
through us; for are we not the mothers of the race?  But
that is not the men's reason.  It isn't the race that is
calling through them for immortality.  Heavens no!  It's
their boundless male egotism.  And since they know that
they can't live forever in their own selfish little bodies,
they hope to get a new lease of life in the bodies of their
sons.  That is why they have built up an institution in
which they can keep their women wedlocked and can make
sure that their children are their own."

"But perhaps marriage is necessary for the children,
Cornelia.  They are the better off for it, at least when
they are very young."

"Are you so sure?  Remember, loveless marriages seldom
result in healthy offspring.  Look at Percival Houghton's
two children.  One is a girl with hip disease, the other is
a feeble-minded, flabby anæmic boy.  Yet the parents
are both physically sound.  Do you think *I* would have
had such children?"

Her vehemence was over-awing, almost over-bearing.

"I'm not sure I can judge from one case, Cornelia," said
Janet, her firm voice and clear distinct utterance betraying
a will of her own.  "But I'm sure that people who marry
and find that they are mistaken in each other, ought to
be able to rectify the mistake.  It's horrible to think that
they can't."

"Ah!  Now you've come to it.  If people find that they
are mistaken in their butchers or grocers, they experiment
until they find the right one.  They won't go on eating bad
steaks forever because luck or inexperience landed them in
a poor shop at the first try.  But do they take as much
trouble to get the right husband or wife as they do to get
the right mutton chop?  They don't.  Whatever partner
luck or inexperience hands them at the altar, they put up
with for the rest of their lives."

"I wonder why we don't experiment in marriage as in
all other matters?" asked Janet thoughtfully.

"My dear, it's been proposed often enough.  By men,
of course.  You are too young to remember the furor that
followed when George Meredith proposed trial marriages.
It's an easy thing for the men to propose, since it's the
women who must risk the beginning.  The question is, who
is to begin?  The plain women daren't, because the risk
is too great; and the fascinating women needn't, because
they get what they want anyway, within the law or beyond
it.  Now if ever girls like you, Araminta, on whom the eye
rests with delight, began to experiment—"

"What then?"

"Oh, I've no right to urge my views on individuals.
Besides, you are far too young and inexperienced, my dear,
to be one of the first.  Though I'm sure nothing would
suit men like Claude Fontaine better."

"There, Cornelia, you're making innuendos about Mr. Fontaine
again," said Janet.  "It isn't fair.  If you mean
to take me into your confidence at all, you might do it all
the way through."

"Not another word will you get out of me now, Araminta,"
replied Cornelia, with one of the queer laughs she
gave whenever she blocked people's wishes.

However, fearing to weaken the hold she had upon Janet,
she added:

"I'm too famished to talk.  Here we are, landing at last.
Come, we'll get a nice lunch.  I know you're dying to talk
about the irresistible Claude.  I promise to tell you
Lothario's whole history over our cups of tea."

Janet begged to be taken to the Y.W.C.A. Cafeteria,
whose good food, self-service and picturesque quarters she
had heard Cornelia extol.  When they reached the restaurant,
they saw a very long line of waiting customers.

"This will never do," said Cornelia, disgustedly.  And,
quite unwilling to sacrifice comfort in the cause of
self-service, she dragged the reluctant Janet to a French
pastry restaurant on Fifth Avenue.

"I *do* like a waiter and a table cloth," said Cornelia, as
she contentedly resigned herself to these dubious luxuries.
"And I *don't* like to scramble for my napkin and my glass
of ice water."

"What a strange thing for you to say," said Janet,
puzzled.  "It sounds as though, in spite of your advanced
views, you might at heart be thoroughly in love with
conventional ways."

"Don't put such ideas into your head, silly!" said
Cornelia, giving a high-pitched, self-conscious, stagy laugh,
with which she shut off further personal questions.

During lunch, Cornelia contrived to say curiously little
about Claude Fontaine, Janet learning hardly anything she
did not already know.  Claude was heir to the great
Fontaine jewelry establishment.  He was a social swell.  He
was very handsome.  And he was trying equally hard to
dabble in modern paintings and not to dabble in modern
amours.

His success in both attempts was dubious, according to
Cornelia.  Particularly in the matter of the amours.  He
was, of course, the greatest catch of his day.  In his own
circle, every mother had marked him for her daughter.
And it was to escape the conspiracies of matchmakers that
he had taken up with the Outlaws in the model tenements.
In their unconventional atmosphere, he had hoped to move
and breathe more freely.  But if every girl in his own set
was willing to become his wife, every girl in the Lorillard
tenements seemed willing to become his mistress.

It appeared that Mazie Ross had been particularly
shameless in setting herself to catch Claude.  Somehow or
other, the conversation pivoted chiefly on Mazie, her
selfishness, her neglect of her fair share of the work in flat
number fifteen, and her willingness to sell herself.  This
last was the fault which Cornelia proposed to take most
exception to.

"I wish I could get rid of her," she said.  "Then you
could come and live with me, Araminta.  It would be like
exchanging a room that smelled of last night's stale flowers
for a garden perfumed by fresh roses."





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   CHAPTER EIGHT


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No sooner were they back in their Lorillard tenement,
than Robert Lloyd came in.

"Well, Cato, where did you drop from?" said Cornelia,
who was lazily tidying up the rooms while Janet was doing
the breakfast dishes.

"From the Harlem Gorilla in the flat next door."

"Really!  And what did *he* have to say?"

"Not much.  He isn't a talker like me.  He's a doer.  He
tried to explain a few tricks in gymnastics to me.  But
every second sentence or so the word 'Cornelia' crept into
the explanation.  It was decidedly confusing."

"Pray what has the word 'Cornelia' to do with the
subject of gymnastics?" asked the owner of the name.

"Ah, what!  I asked the Gorilla that question myself.
But he simply repeated the name adoringly and looked all
sorts of unutterable things.  Beware, Cornelia.  He thinks
the sun rises in one of your eyes and sets in the other.
I believe he is planning to carry you off by main force to
his cave, his gymnasium cave."

"A lot he is!  He couldn't carry off a buttercup against
its wishes.  Really, Araminta, he's the gentlest and shyest
'wild man' you ever laid eyes on.  How he ever came to
take Gorilla for a nickname, I can't imagine."

"Nor I," said Robert.  "But don't forget that he has
learnt the art of concentrating his enormous strength on
one or two crucial points.  Certainly he treated Hutchins
Burley to a good exhibition of his mastery, didn't he?  For
all that, he's a very singularly gentle sort of Hercules.  If
I had to provide one for you, Cornelia, I'd get a much more
ferocious specimen, if only to pay you out for kiting away
with Janet, after promising me you'd both stay in.  I've
been waiting for you since noon."

"Poor Cato, I'm terribly sorry.  In the excitement of
having Janet here, I clean forgot you were coming.  Waiting
since noon, were you, poor boy!  There's devotion for
you, Araminta.  Never mind, Rob.  Here she is, now.  And
all's well that ends well, I hope."

"I thought you'd like company on your way home,
Janet," said Robert to her directly.

"Thanks very much," said Janet, not wishing to lose
Robert and yet not caring to say that Claude had promised
to call for her, if he could possibly get away from business.
Before she could say more, Cornelia interposed.  She had
not expected Robert to wait and had not quite swallowed
her chagrin over this surprise.

"How do you happen to be off duty, Rob?" she asked.
"Does the *Evening Chronicle* stop work for you on Saturdays?"

"No.  I've stopped work for the *Evening Chronicle* on
Saturdays and all other days."

"What!  Don't tell me Hutchins has discharged you!"

Cornelia gave up the last pretense of working, and sank
aghast into an armchair.

"I didn't give him a chance.  I discharged myself."

"If he had—" she began, setting her teeth vindictively.

"Exactly.  In his sober moments, Cornelia, you are
apparently the only mortal soul he stands in some fear of.
It was only because of a sneaking affection he has for you
that he hesitated to fire me."

"Well, why throw a good bargain away?"

"A nice position it would have left me in.  That of an
understrapper for Burley to play cat and mouse with.  Not
if I know it!  Burley likes to torture the people in his
power as much as you do, the only difference being that
his weapon is coarse brutality while yours is insidious
charm."

"Your comparisons, Cato, have the merit of being as
unambiguous as they are rude.  I trust you gave Hutchins
Burley the benefit of a few of them."

"Oh, no, I always forgive my enemies.  Nothing enrages
them more.  I left Hutchins stunned.  But I've no doubt
he recovered in time to appoint the successor that I sent
him."

"That you sent him?"

"Yes.  You don't know him, but Janet does.  Janet, do
you remember the tall, thin, aristocratic chap who was
always mysteriously turning up and who stopped Burley
at the tent?"

"Of course I do.  He wore a quaint stand-up collar
with two points sticking into his neck.  It was he who
warned Claude about the raid."

"Oh, did he?  Well, when I was on my way up the
stairs here at noon, he suddenly appeared, like a ghost
stepping out of the stone wall.  It gave me quite a start.
I asked him where he was bound for.  'Nowhere in
particular,' was his answer."

Robert had got to talking with the mysterious one, who
confessed that he had just rented a flat in the model
tenements.  On Robert's alluding to the severance of his
connection with the *Evening Chronicle*, his new acquaintance
had asked permission to apply for the vacant place.  He
claimed to have an ear for news and remarked casually
that information was always drifting his way.

"As if I had any permission to give!" continued Robert.
"I warned him what he'd be up against in the person of
Hutchins Burley, and bade him Godspeed."

"He's either a detective or the Prince of Zenda in
disguise," said Janet.  "Which do you think, Robert?"

"From the speed and completeness with which he obliterates
himself, I should favor the detective theory.  On
the other hand, there's his get-up!  That melancholy,
drooping mustache, that semi-clerical collar, and that
comical tip-tilted chin!  The fellow's simply unforgettable.  He
must be a prince incognito."

"Yes, we'll have him a prince!" exclaimed Janet, who,
at twenty-four, had a normal craving for romantic illusion.
"But I should like him in any part."

"A prince!  Nonsense, children!" interjected Cornelia,
in her most languid cadences.  "He's probably a burglar."

"A burglar!"

"Certainly not a detective.  Detectives don't obliterate
themselves.  They don't know how to.  And they never
look like princes in disguise.  They're not clever enough.
All the detectives I ever saw looked like butchers on a
strike.  The only man, rich, skillful and bold enough to
take his fellow man at a right royal disadvantage is a
first-class burglar.  A Raffles, for instance, might be a prince
'incognito.'"

Cornelia's wits could work brilliantly under the stimulus
of a new friend like Janet.

The door had opened while she was speaking.

"Here's a prince, Araminta!" she continued, in the same
musical vein.  "Not incognito, either, to judge by his
handsome motor coat."

Claude Fontaine came in, and the sheer sweep of his
personal attractiveness made Cornelia's slightly ironic
phrasing sound quite empty.  Janet thought that many a
titular prince might be glad to exchange his coat of arms
for Claude's conquering air.



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Her heart beat faster for more reasons than this.  How
was she to let Robert down gracefully and without hurting
his feelings, after having more than half accepted his offer
to accompany her home?

As if in total ignorance of her dilemma, Cornelia, who
had begun sketching a design for a new dress, intoned:

"Admirers never come singly.  Choose your escort, my
dear.  Which is it to be?  Cato and the subway or Lothario
and a limousine?"

They all dissembled very poorly.

Claude, who had not expected rivalry, looked displeased;
Robert, though he had already made up his mind to
withdraw, felt uneasy; and Janet stood up between the two
young men, embarrassed and confused.

Cornelia alone seemed wholly unmoved.  She went on
sketching imperturbably.  But Robert was quite certain
that she was not unconscious of the tableau.  Janet broke
the painful silence.

"Let's all three go together," she said, with one of her
quick graceful gestures, half conciliatory, half pleading in
its effect.

"Certainly, if Robert would like to come," said Claude,
politely, but without enthusiasm.

Robert declined promptly.  He explained that he had
really been free only for the morning, and that, as long as
Claude was to see Janet home, he had better utilize the
late afternoon to hunt up another position.  There were
newspaper offices at which he ought to call.  Before supper,
he had a speech to rehearse.  Perhaps Cornelia would be
good enough to let him say it over to her.

"What kind of a speech am I letting myself in for?"
asked Cornelia, half flattered, half nettled.

"Wait till you hear it."

"A sermon, I'll be bound," chanted this languid lady.

Yet, not at all languidly, she put her sketch aside and
rose, adding:

"A sermon from Cato is as sweet as a *billet-doux* from
any other man.  Come, Araminta, let's show these men
how quickly we can get ready."

They went into Cornelia's bedroom, leaving the two men
alone.  Claude said:

"What's this about hunting up a new position?"

Robert recounted his farewell interview with Hutchins
Burley.

"You're well rid of him," said Claude.  "What do you
think the swine called me at the ball?  A diamond
smuggler.  In front of everybody, mind you!"

He paced the room indignantly.

"I tell you, Rob, if these were the good old days of
duelling, I'd have run his fat carcass through with a rapier
half a dozen times before this.  And done it with relish,
too.  Nowadays, worse luck, it isn't even good form to
give him a thrashing, though Heaven knows he's the sort
of brute that understands no argument but a blow."

"Blows would only sharpen his wits against you, Claude.
Curs bite, as bees sting, by force of nature.  The only
thing to do is to get out of their way."

"I'm not in the habit of getting out of any man's way,"
said Claude, haughtily.  "However, don't let's talk about
the beast.  I'm extremely sorry you're out of a job.  Tell
you what, Rob.  Come up to my office on Monday, and
we'll talk the situation over and see what can be done.
You'll find me in the galleries on the top floor."

"Thanks, Claude, but Monday is impossible," said
Robert, glad of the excuse, for he scented patronage in
his friend's manner.  "I'm giving a talk on 'Unemployment
under the National Guild System' before the Guild Study
Club.  When I arranged to speak on Unemployment I
had no idea I should do so as an experienced hand."

Possibly Claude was dimly conscious of his friend's
sensitiveness.  At all events, he said:

"Well, come on your first free day.  I'm always there
afternoons.  You *must* come, if only to see my two new
Cezannes.  I've just induced father to buy them.  By the
way, old chap, what on earth are National Guilds?"

The return of the ladies cut off a reply.  Janet's natural
grace redeemed the hang of a not too well-tailored suit.
Cornelia was all aglow over a mandarin coat she had put
on.  It was a wonderful dark green silk with dull gold
embroidery.  Her clothes had a remarkable effect of
clinging to her contours.  "Look at me," her body seemed to
call out through its vestments, "did you ever see anything
so ravishing?"

Janet walked over to Robert's side and sought forgiveness
without asking for it.  And he forgave her without saying
so.  Her soft, flexible, thrilling voice disturbed him sorely,
and he wondered whether its sustained riches were as
illusory as he judged the mysterious depths of her gray eyes
to be.

Meanwhile, Claude was telling Cornelia in all sincerity
that she had never looked more enchanting.

"Flatterer!" she said.  "To how many girls have you
said that today?"

"Facts don't flatter, Cornelia.  They simply cry out the
truth."

"Lothario, it's all a matter of the science of pinning and
the art of dressing.  Or rather, of *not* dressing."

For the hundredth time, she assured Claude and Robert
that she never wore corsets or underwear, and didn't believe
in these accoutrements.

"What, nothing?" exclaimed Claude, perhaps to see Janet
blush.

"We are an art-hating people with ugly ideas," continued
Cornelia, unheeding his interruption, "and so we grow ugly,
unsightly bodies.  That is why modern fashionable
dressmaking has but one aim: to conceal deformities.  But
dresses that conceal women's bad points are sure to conceal
their good points, too.  A tragic loss!  Janet is young and
charming; she can stand this loss.  I'm on the wrong side
of thirty; I can't."

"Are you poking fun at my Brooklyn clothes again?"
asked Janet.  "If you go on like this, I shall have to ferret
out all the secrets of your art, in pure self defence."

"We must all take a hand in educating you," said Cornelia,
grandly.  "My part will be to make you see life as
a world of beautiful lines, rhythms, and colors."

"What will mine be?" asked Claude.

"Yours?  To make her see life as a vale of Cashmere—all
roses and wine."

"And Rob's?"

"Rob will make her see it as a vale of tears—all sermons
and social problems.  He'll be a necessary corrective to
you."

"And to you, too," said Robert, quickly, amidst a general
laugh.

Janet was now ready to go.  As she and Claude left,
Cornelia kissed her tenderly and said:

"Remember, if anything serious happens at home, *I* want
you, Araminta."



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Claude instructed his chauffeur to drive across
Manhattan Bridge through Prospect Park and along the Coney
Island Road until the signal should be given to turn back
to Janet's home in the Park Slope section.  Then he took
his seat in the closed car beside his companion.

It was a warm spring day, and an agreeable wind from
the bay blew upon them through the open windows as they
crossed the East River.  The breeze, the river, and the
motion joined to chase from Janet's mind the shadow of
the scene that awaited her at home.

Besides, there was the god at her side.  Nearness did
not rob him of his divinity, it did not make him grow
commonplace.  And although some of the glamor of his
strangeness wore away, she liked him all the better for being
a human god and for having human weaknesses that caused
his diviner side to seem all the more real.  Janet never
gushed, and even her most fervent adorations were shot
through with a cool streak of matter-of-fact perception.

Claude was very happy, too.  Philandering had few new
sweets to offer him.  Yet Janet was a novelty in every way.
What was unique in her was her disinterestedness, a quality
he did not consciously credit her with, however, since he
did not believe that any woman possessed it.  All the
young ladies he had ever known had either struck attitudes
at his social position or groveled more or less openly before
his wealth.  According to his view of women, their one
aim in life was to get money out of him; by marriage if
possible, by fouler means if not.

But Janet was different.

She might have fawned upon him, or thrown herself
unblushingly at his head, or used a frigid hauteur to
emphasize the point that her station in life was better than
appearances indicated.  The girls he knew invariably
pursued one of these courses.  But Janet didn't.  Her
whole bearing permeated the atmosphere with a suggestion
that Claude was a very wonderful being, dashing, handsome,
divine.  A most agreeable suggestion!  But, since
it takes a goddess to detect a god, it was clear that she was
quite a wonderful being, too.  And what is a matter of
divinity among the gods on Olympus.  It is like a title
among peers of the realm.

It was her simple, natural, unaffected behavior, in short,
that kept his fancy intrigued.  Without knowing it, his
suspicion of women was almost completely disarmed.

Cornelia's parting words to Janet had given him some
concern.

"You're not thinking of going to live with Cornelia?"
he said.

"I may soon be glad of the chance."

"Why?"

"Because my mother threatens to put me out of her house."

"But what for?" he said, looking at her in amazement.

"I don't look like an incorrigible, do I?" she said smiling.
"But my mother thinks me one for associating with people
like you."

"With people like me?"

"Well, like you and the other model tenementers."

"But I'm *not* like them," he said, half amused, half
annoyed.

"No?  Do you know what I've noticed?  All the people
in the model tenements say they are 'not like them.'  Cornelia
says so, Robert says so, and now you say so.  Each
one thinks *he* is different, unique."

"Well, I'm sure that *you* are," he said, rather seriously.
He added, lightly.  "That's why it would be fatal if you
went to live there.  Do try to patch it up with your mother,
Janet, and give up this plan of Cornelia's."

"Patching it up with my mother means complete submission.
Her motto is, 'bend or break.'  And I've bent
long enough."

She tried briefly to give him an idea of her mother's
domestic tyranny and of her own rebellion against it.

"You don't know what it is to live in my mother's
house," she said.

"I've heard what it is to live in Cornelia's house," he
retorted.  "She casts a spell over young girls before they
know her well.  But she is selfish and moody.  Her friendships
always end in violent quarrels.  She is now on the
verge of a break with Mazie Ross."

"She may have very good grounds for the break."

"Oh, she's never at a loss for grounds.  That isn't the
point."

"What *is* the point?"

"The atmosphere of the Lorillard tenements.  It isn't
made for you to breathe in.  Have you any idea what the
people there are like?  Gangsters, anarchists and fake
artists or writers, with a very small sprinkling of
well-meaning idealists, most of whom are cracked on social
questions.  The men are all out of business, the women
all out of marriage.  On the loose, every one of them,
either in their actions, or in their beliefs."

"You mean they don't believe in marriage?  Well, after
all I've seen of family life, I don't believe in marriage
either."

This was a confession which, by way of bait, many
another girl had made to him.

"That's the sort of thing for a girl like Mazie to say,"
he said coldly, "but not for a girl like you."

Concern for himself had rapidly taken the place of
concern for her.

"Mazie's way doesn't impress me any more than the
way of all wives," she said, with a delightful gesture of
candor.  "I think she is more of a slave to men than most
married women are.  I want to be mistress of myself."

His doubts were allayed again.  The spring sunshine and
Janet's subtle charm were too strong a team for suspicion
to hold out against.  As the car sped on through Prospect
Park, a delicious breeze, laden with the perfume of flowers
and the rising sap of trees, cooled their faces, and fanned
their senses warm.

"You are a dear little theorizer," he said in a tender
vibrating tone.  "But theories have no interest for me now.
I'm too happy to think about them.  I want to think only
about you."

"Impossible.  You don't know enough about me.  We've
only just met."

"Absurd," he said, taking hold of her hands.  "We met
when the wood nymphs first danced to the pipes of Pan,
when the starlight first threw its enchantment on youth,
when lovers first threaded their way over wild hills and
woodlands by the rays of the crescent moon.  We have
known each other for ages."

"As long as that?  Dear me!  What an experienced
person I must be."

Had her acknowledged objection to marriage affected
him, after all?

"All experiences are nothing to this experience," he said,
putting his arms around her and trying to kiss her.

She resisted him with a quick, firm movement.  All he
could do was to seize her hands and give them the
rapturous embraces intended for her lips.

"Claude!" she called out, more in shyness than reproach.

"But I love you!" he cried, retaining her hands by main
force.

"Since yesterday?"

"Yesterday!  A million years ago.  The moment in which
I felt I loved you, Janet, was a world-without-end
moment.  That is love's way."

"Don't profane the word love," she said, her voice rich
and thrilling.  "You can't love a girl you don't know."

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" he said,
quoting the line reproachfully, and releasing her hands as
he did so.

"Do you believe that love always happens at first sight?
What about the feeling that takes hold of us as we slowly
learn to know another's splendid character?  The feeling of
tenderness and adoration.  Isn't that love, too?"

"No, a thousand times, no!  Call it friendship, comradeship,
esteem, if you like.  Call it glorified toleration.  But
don't call it love.  Love doesn't come like that.  It comes
like the swift lightning that embraces a cloud."

"How I should love to love like that!" she exclaimed,
with a mischievous imitation of rhapsody.

"Then you don't love me?" he demanded.

She refused to admit that she did.  He pressed her for
an answer.

"Don't, Claude," she said at last, disturbed.  "I must
keep my wits about me today, or I shall be as putty in
my mother's hands."

He was bitterly disappointed.  Her use of his name was
some solace, however; for, as her soft, flexible tones
prolonged it, the sound was music to his ears.

"Is that why you won't let me kiss you?" he pursued
hopefully.

"No.  I'm not used to it yet," she said, quite simply.

"Not used to it!  You mean you haven't been kissed
by men before?"

"Nothing so silly.  I haven't been kissed by you before."

"Ah, I might have known the reason wasn't inexperience,"
he said, with incipient jealousy.  "Then why balk
at me?" he went on, seizing her hands again.

"As I said," she replied, calmly matter-of-fact.  "I
haven't had time to think of it.  At least, not much nor
for long," she added impishly.  "I must first see whether
I can get used to the idea."

"Indeed!  But getting used to the idea won't get you
used to the thing itself.  Only practice makes perfect."

"A rehearsal in dumb show is not to be despised," was
her response.

And so they bantered on and made pretty speeches,
while Claude's car bucked the wind until they turned into
President Street and stopped at the corner of her own block.

As Janet got out, she was hard put to it to conceal her
sense of loss.

At parting, all her matter-of-factness deserted her; for
a few seconds she felt like a prisoner half awakened from
an idyllic dream.

The car drove away with Claude less triumphant yet
more satisfied than he had ever felt towards a charming
girl before.  He was profoundly stirred by the magic of
Janet's genuineness, and her rich, clarinet tones lingered
disturbingly in his mind.





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   CHAPTER NINE


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Thoughts of home had flitted intermittently through
Janet's mind during the afternoon's ride.  But her faculty
for living securely in the present had been strong enough
to send the omens flying as fast as they came.  A domestic
crisis now confronted her, however, and she knew it could
not be evaded.  As she crossed the threshold, there was a
sudden bristling of her nerves, a parching and aching of
her throat, and a sense of utter misery.

From Laura, the maid, she learned that her mother
had been ill all day, and had kept to her bed.  As this
was Mrs. Barr's invariable practice when any member of
the family displeased her, Janet was not surprised.  She
crept quietly upstairs to her room at the top of the house.
On the second floor she passed her sister's room.  Through
the open door Janet could look into a mirror which reflected
an image of Emily, dressing for the evening.  She called
to her sister with an assumed cheeriness.  Emily answered
stiffly and without stirring an inch.

Janet, catching the unfriendly glance from the mirror,
continued on her way, hot indignation kindling her
blood.  She could invent excuses for her mother's hostility,
unreasonable as she considered it, but Emily's censorious
manner was altogether intolerable.

In her own room she changed her costume to a simple
black skirt and a plain white blouse.  Claude and Kips
Bay receded to another world while she nerved herself for
the coming ordeal.

In about half an hour, the maid came up with a message
that Mr. Barr wished to see Janet in the back parlor.  She
promptly went downstairs and discovered her father pacing
the floor in agitation.  It was hard to believe that this
tall, imposing man was a moral weakling or that his eagle's
bearing concealed a pigeon's heart.

"Jenny," he said, on the thinnest fringe of reproach,
"thank Heaven you're back!"

The mere sight of his favorite daughter cooled his phantom
anger.  All he wanted now was to see his wife placated
at any price.  For he, poor man, always became the
scapegoat, no matter who the criminal was.

"How could you give us such a fright, Jenny?" he
continued, referring to her absence.

"Really, father, I can't send you hourly bulletins of
my whereabouts, can I?  It's not my fault that I've
outgrown childhood.  It's a law of nature."

"You don't consider your mother," he said, plaintively.
"You know how it upsets her to be disobeyed."

"I'm sorry, father.  But mother will have to get reconciled
to the facts of biology.  When the young of animals
grow up, instinct makes them follow their own bent, even
at the cost of disobliging their parents."

Janet felt rather proud and a little surprised at hearing
herself talk in this bold, scientific style.  She wished she
could repeat it to her mother, but secretly doubted her
ability.

"That may be," said Mr. Barr, on whom her biological
views were completely thrown away.  "But remember that
she has been sick all day, sick with worry over your
escapade!"

"Nonsense," replied Janet, unmoved.  "My escapade
had nothing to do with it.  Her bad temper has made her
ill.  It always does, and nobody knows better than she how
useful the weapon is.  When everything else fails, she gets
sick with rage, and takes to her bed until she gets her own
way to the last dot.  We cringe and cower before her sham
illnesses—"

"Janet!  You mustn't speak of your mother like that.
She *is* ill.  She lay awake the whole night and didn't touch
a morsel of food all day."

"No doubt she enjoyed tormenting herself and blaming
the result on me.  But I don't believe that my absence was
really a source of worry to anyone."

"Janet, I stayed up until three o'clock for you.  And
that was after leaving the bank late and stopping at the
Montague Library to get the books you wanted."

"Of course, you did, you foolish old dear," said Janet,
in an access of remorse.

She put her arms affectionately round his neck.  It was
not easy to get over her childhood idolatry of him.

"Kindness is a bad habit of yours, papa," she said.
"You take to good deeds as some men take to gambling
or to drink."

He smiled and patted her cheek tenderly.  Her remark
was not far from the truth.  His morbid (and never wholly
gratified) passion for approval made him intemperately
anxious to please, and caused his good nature to be freely
exploited by unscrupulous people, who repaid him with
nothing but their contempt.

"That's like my own little Jenny.  Now go up to Emily's
room and make your peace with mother."

"Is that in my power?" said Janet, flaring up again and
disengaging her arms from him.

Mr. Barr was torn between fear of his wife and affection
for his daughter.

"Simply keep quiet and don't answer her back when
she speaks to you," he urged pacifically.  "After all, she's
your mother, she has a right to criticize you."

"I refuse to acknowledge the right."

"Now, don't be obstinate, girlie.  She can't help lecturing
people.  It's a habit she acquired in her missionary society.
Doesn't she lecture me?  If I submit, surely you can."

"I'm neither a heathen nor a husband."

"There now," he said, pleading with her.  "Don't spoil
everything by standing on your pride.  What will you gain
by defying her?  Nothing!  Then why do so?  I tell you,
Jenny, your mother may be a little hasty, but she's a very
clever, strong-minded woman.  In the long run, she is
always in the right."

"How can you cringe to her even when her back is
turned," cried Janet, revolted.  "You know the truth as
well as I do.  She has terrorized all of us as cruelly as
ever her Puritan ancestors terrorized Roger Williams and
Anne Hutchinson."

"Now, that shows how unfair you are," said Mr. Barr,
eagerly, in a vibrant voice, as rich as Janet's own.  "Only
two nights ago, your mother was reading to me from John
Fiske's colonial history.  She came across this very case
you mention, the case of Anne Hutchinson.  And I distinctly
recall that she condemned the persecution severely."

Disdaining to reply, Janet walked away from his side.
In that moment, she hated him.  It was incredible that
he could be such a willing, subservient dupe.

She looked hostilely at his magnificent exterior.  He
had also inherited a lively wit and considerable mental
dexterity.  Had he possessed any force of character he
might have been a great financier or statesman instead of
a petty manager of a small branch bank.  And Mrs. Barr's
temper might have been kept within bounds, and the Barrs
might have enjoyed a happy home, instead of becoming a
phantom replica of a bigoted Boston family in the high
and palmy days of Cotton Mather.

He misinterpreted her silence.

"You need merely say that you are sorry," he urged,
"and that you'll never stay out again without her approval.
That will patch up everything."

"Father," she cried, exploding.  "I can't say that.
Because I simply don't mean it.  From now on, I'm going
to have my own way about some things, even if I have to
leave the family.  Mother may grind you to the very dust.
Marriage seems to give her that right, and you seem to
enjoy the process.  But she shan't do so to me."

"Good Lord, what will happen next?" exclaimed the
unhappy man, appalled at the collapse of his plan of
conciliation.  "The house has been like a funeral all day.
Would to Heaven *I* were the corpse."

But his daughter did not hear this pathetic wish, for
she was already on her way upstairs.



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   \II

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In Emily's bedroom above the parlor, Mrs. Barr was
reclining in an invalid's chair.  Illness had not softened
the rigidity of that too, too solid flesh.  She was pale,
but her pallor merely accentuated the iron lines of her face.

Emily, more matronly than ever, hovered about her
mother in unctuous solicitude, while Laura, the maid,
busied herself setting chairs and knick-knacks wrong, in
order to set them right again.  Mrs. Barr disliked to have
anyone about her unoccupied.

When Janet entered, her mother greeted her coldly, and
then dismissed Laura with studied sweetness.  She was
actually much kinder to her domestics than to members
of the family.  Servants were hard to get and harder to
keep.

"I'm sorry you have been ill," said the impenitent,
politely.

"Sit down, my child.  I'm getting better now, thanks
in part to Doctor Hervey."

"What did the doctor say?"

"That it was to be expected under the circumstances,"
interposed Emily.  "He thought it better for mother not
to go to the missionary society tonight."

This was ominous news.  Janet recollected that her
mother had not missed a missionary meeting in two years.

The pause was filled with a battery of silent criticism.
Usually Janet dispersed these terrible silences with a
torrent of impromptu apologies.  Today, however, she held
her peace.  Though every muscle in her body was taut,
she felt care-free.

Yes, at this supreme inquisitorial moment, she felt
surprisingly care-free.  Except that, in response to Emily's
allusion to missionaries, an old jingle ricochetted weirdly
through her mind.  It ran:

   |  Oh, to be a cassowary,
   |  On the plains of Timbuctoo,
   |  Chewing up a missionary—
   |  Skin and bone, and hymn book, too.
   |

Outwardly, she was as impassive as a Chinese joss.

"Well, Janet?" said Mrs. Barr, outfought with one of
her own weapons.

"Yes, mother?" replied Janet, demurely interrogative.
She folded her hands innocently in her lap, and looked
with a show of impersonal interest at Emily's new pumps.

"Have you nothing to tell me?"

"Not unless you wish to learn about the ball I went to
yesterday.  Are you interested in that?"

Emily gave a scornful laugh.

"I'm not interested in the ball," said Mrs. Barr, "and
no one knows it better than you.  What I am interested
in is your attending the ball against my express wishes."

"Mother, in the twentieth century—"

"Are the ways of God less valid in the twentieth century
than in the tenth?"

In disputes with her children, Mrs. Barr always invoked
God first.  This failing, she took stronger measures.

"Why do you always make poor God responsible for
your severity, mother," said Janet.  "It is not His way
you want me to follow, but your own.  Indeed, whenever
you accuse me of disobeying the will of God, it is because
I have really disobeyed your will, which you identify with
God's.  I wonder whether He likes it?"

"I don't propose to discuss the Deity with you.  You
have studied your Bible so little that you are apparently
unable to give any opinion on the subject which is not
blasphemous."

"As far as I know, the Bible does not prohibit dancing,"
said Janet, shifting the defensive attack so as to bring
matters to a head.

"The Bible *does* say, however, that a child must obey
its parents.  I don't wish to be harsh, Janet.  I believe
that you have no just ground for accusing me of severity.
I say now, as I have said before, that if you must dance,
you may go to the affairs that are given at the church."

"Thank you!" cried Janet, ironically.  "But I don't like
a Sunday School atmosphere or a Sunday School man."

"I thought as much!" said Mrs. Barr, her eyes like
points of steel.  "You prefer to associate with unprincipled
men who, having no religion, lead lives of pleasure and
dance the lascivious dances of the time.

"Mother, I don't dance anything but thoroughly ancient
and respectable dances.  I've never had a chance to learn
the modern steps.  I dance very rarely, anyhow."

"Emily *never* dances," said her mother, cuttingly.

"No, she is rather heavy and men are so lazy nowadays,
and so tender about their toes."

Some demon had made Janet spring up and stop reflectively
in front of Emily.  The latter's podgy bulk became
a size larger by contrast with Janet's mobile slenderness.

"Oblige me by not arguing," said Mrs. Barr, coming to
her elder daughter's rescue.  "I tell you I won't tolerate
anyone in my house that openly flouts her mother, spends
whole nights with a woman of evil reputation, and
deliberately wastes the Lord's time."

In her agitation she rose halfway from her chair.  But
rage and lack of food had so weakened her that she sank
back limply.  Emily, looking unutterable things at Janet,
implored her mother to be calm in tones that invited her
to be just the contrary.

Mrs. Barr hardly needed this spur.  She sincerely believed
that she was fighting the evil one for the possession
of Janet's soul.  Revived by this conviction she bravely
returned to her task.

"See the condition to which you've brought me," she
said, the angry tears welling up in her eyes.  "What with
watching and waiting and praying for you all night, and
fretting about your safety—"

She instinctively followed a religious appeal with a
sentimental one.  But her speech had so much anger mixed
with the pathos, that it left Janet cold.

"I hope you won't get upset about me again, mother,"
she said, unemotionally.  "I'm quite old enough to take
care of myself—"

"You'd better go to your room, Janet!" exclaimed Emily,
"before you kill mother with your cruel selfishness."

"I'm not aware that I'm under orders to you, Emily,
or that you've the right to play the Pharisee because you're
content to lead a stagnant, hole-in-the-corner life.  If
you wanted anything you'd disobey mother fast enough.
Only you happen to *have* no wants.  And you make a virtue
of your necessity.  I have plenty of wants.  And you
persuade mother that my necessity is a vice."

"Be as theatrical as possible, Janet!" said Emily.  "Why
don't you add that I poisoned mother's mind against you?"

"You didn't have to carry coals to Newcastle, Emily.
You merely had to fan the flame in your own sweet, sisterly
way."

Mrs. Barr checked them both with an autocratic wave
of her hand.

"You need not abuse Emily, or me either," she decreed,
black-browed.  "There is absolutely nothing more to be
said.  Either you respect my wishes about your comings
and goings, or you leave my house."

"Mother, do you really propose to put me out for
refusing to submit to an arbitrary wish?"

"I should think I had fallen far short of my duty, if
I did not guard my children against sensual folly—"

"By showing them the door?"

"If you leave your home, it will be by your own choice
and not by your mother's command," said Mrs. Barr,
emphatically.  "This is your home.  It will remain yours so long
as you keep Christian precepts.  But a mother must hold
the family hearth inviolate against evil doing.  I cannot
condone a wicked waste of the Lord's time simply because
you describe the practice as a wish to be free.  If you don't
value a good home, you are certainly quite free to choose
another."

"Why must I adopt the habits that suit your tastes and
Emily's, but that are hateful to mine?"

"My child, you are flesh of my flesh—"

"All the laws and all the prophets can't justify the
narrow, friendless, joyless, medieval life that you wish me
to lead," cried Janet, in a passion of insurgency.  "When
you were young you led no such life yourself.  Aunt Mary,
your own sister, told me that you were the flightiest girl
in the family.  Your girlhood was a perpetual round of
balls, theatres, parties and flirtations.  Do I ask for a life
of pleasure like that?  No.  I simply want to choose my own
friends, trust to my own instincts, and follow my own
bent."

This reference to her mother's youth was not a happy one.
Mrs. Barr looked back on her younger days as a period of
godless frivolity for which she had largely atoned by
enduring with a contrite heart the double affliction of a weak
husband and a wilful daughter.  Her duty, as she saw it,
was to keep Emily and Janet out of the primrose paths
which she herself had trodden with such levity and with
such disastrous results.  Accordingly, Janet's presumptuous
allusion merely stirred her fanaticism to its iciest depths.

"You either obey me or go," she said, with pitiless
brevity.

"Oh, very well," said Janet, affecting a blitheness she
was far from feeling, "I'll go."

Without another word, Mrs. Barr, weak as she was,
rose and walked with a firm step to her own room.  Emily,
not altogether pleased with this climax, followed her
immediately, giving a flabby imitation of her mother's really
magnificent exit.

Janet stood nonplussed for a few seconds.  Then she
went upstairs to the inward refrain of:

   |  "Chewing up a missionary
   |  Skin and bones and hymn book, too."
   |

Her inveterate evenness of spirit amounted almost to a
failing; but now, for the first time, she became conscious
of latent impulses of a vindictive and murderous kind.

Back in her own room, she hastily packed a suit-case
with her most necessary belongings.





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   CHAPTER TEN


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   \I

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About a week later, a tall, thin, immaculate gentleman,
in a suit of neutral taupe, entered the offices of the *Evening
Chronicle*.  A stand-up collar slightly tip-tilted his chin.
But his expression was a friendly, not a haughty one.  His
small roving gray eyes looked around with a humorous
inquisitiveness, as if they wondered what their immaculate
owner could possibly hope to find in such a sloppy,
disorderly place.

In due time, a slovenly office boy stopped pounding on
a typewriter and showed the stranger to an inner office.
Here Hutchins Burley penned those inimitable effusions on
"the ethereal feminine" which gave the Saturday special
half a million female and male readers.  It was an army
that ran the *Saturday Evening Post* brigade a close second,
and rendered Burley's professional position unassailable.

The roving gray eyes saw the swollen bulk of Mr. Hutchins
Burley, squatting like a giant toad behind a roll-top
desk and pawing over a visiting card.

"Well, Mr. Pryor?" said the pillar of the *Evening
Chronicle*, with no waste of civility.  "What d'you want?"

"Frankly, I want Mr. Robert Lloyd's job."

"How do you know it's vacant?  Are you a friend of his?"

"Hardly that.  The information just drifted my way."

"You handed me that stuff at the Outlaws' Ball.  Who
the devil are you, anyway?"

Whenever Burley spoke vehemently, he shoveled the
words from the left side of his mouth, a process that
contorted his face into the exact likeness of a cartoon by
Briggs.

"You might be a spy," he added, putting a cigar in his
mouth and scowling horribly at his visitor.

The latter replied in a quiet and dignified but judiciously
injured tone.

"Mr. Burley, you have my card.  Go into my personal
history all you like.  But first, let me refer to the service
I did you at the ball.  It was a small matter—"

"Don't get puffed up about it then," growled Burley,
with much less hostility, however.

"No fear," continued Mark Pryor, as terse as his host
and much more urbane.  "I mention it only because an
ounce of action is worth a ton of talk.  Or a cartload of
stuffy introductions.  The point is this.  Having learned
that you had discharged Mr. Lloyd—"

"Who says I discharged him?" Burley noisily cut in.
"He discharged himself."

"Oh, did he?"

"Yes, damn him.  I wasn't good enough for him, I suppose.
You know his kind, brains, fatted brains.  But no
guts!  Sticks his nose up at everything and hangs out with
a lot of super-highbrows—New Republic gas-bags."

"The sort that cut a pie from the periphery to the
center?"

"Yah!  That's their lingo.  Still, Lloyd's got a head on
his shoulders.  I'll say that for him.  And I don't fire a
man that's worth his salary.  Why should I?"

"You believe in keeping your grudges out of your business?"

"That's me.  I could have given him his walking papers
for a hundred good reasons.  But I didn't.  And what
thanks did I get?  He left me in the lurch.  That's what
he did.  Left me on his own hook at a damn critical time."

"A case of bad conscience, perhaps."

"You said it!  He'd done me all the harm he could.
He and Claude Fontaine who put him up to it."

Burley enlarged on his two-fold grievance.  First, Robert
and Claude had circulated a malicious story about Harry
Kelly (a professional bruiser) making a punching bag of
him; this story had ruined his prestige among the Outlaws
of Kips Bay.  Then, they had freely slandered him in
Cornelia Covert's inner circle, with the result that
Cornelia's friend, Janet Barr, had conceived an insane and
utterly baseless dislike of him.

His story was full of evasions and suppressions.  Thus
he forgot to tell Mark Pryor that he had twice waylaid
Janet on the street and had been coldly repulsed each time.
It was clear that these repulses had added fuel to his
hatred of Claude and Robert, the two men who found favor
in her eyes.  Against them, rather than against her, he
vented his spleen.  When he spoke of her, his diatribe
degenerated into a whine.

"I know," said Pryor, laconically, cheering him up.  "You
have that 'nobody loves me,' feeling.  Nastiest feeling in
the world.  We all get it once in a while.  I find there's
only one remedy for it, and that's to stop bullying people."

"Bullying people!" shouted Burley, jumping up and
glaring at his visitor.  "Say that again, if you dare."

Mr. Pryor smiled faintly and sat unmoved, save that
his neck seemed to rise a very little out of his stand-up
collar, as the eye-piece of a microscope rises out of the tube.

"I'm a plain man, Mr. Burley," he said, imperturbably.
"And I speak plainly.  If you don't like plain speaking, I'd
better withdraw my application."

"The hell you'd better!"

Mr. Pryor got up, everything quiet about him except
his eyes.

Burley looked as if he were about to launch a thunderbolt.
But the roving eyes of his visitor were now fixed upon him
like points of steel.

"Sit down," said Burley, suddenly limp.

Mr. Pryor sat down very quietly, without taking his eyes
off Hutchins Burley, who sat down, too, almost as if
mesmerized.

"Tell you what," he said, after a while.  "I need a
sort of confidential assistant.  A man who can keep his
eyes and ears on the jump, and his pen and tongue under
lock and key.  Get me?"

He went on to tell Mr. Pryor that he was willing to try
him out and that faithful service would meet with very big
rewards and with increasingly confidential commissions.
For the present, his newspaper duties were to be subordinated
to the one task of keeping track of the Lorillard
tenements.

"Trust me," said Mark Pryor.

He did not think it necessary to explain that keeping
track of the Lorillard tenements was precisely what he had
been doing for purposes of his own.

"And glue an eye on that fellow Fontaine," added Burley.

"To get a line on the diamond smuggling?" asked Pryor,
with the most casual air imaginable.

Burley straightened up with a yell of suspicion.

"What in blazes are you talking about?" he said.

"Merely what you yourself talked about, my dear sir,"
said Pryor soothingly.  "At the ball you called Mr. Fontaine
a diamond smuggler.  More than one person will
remember that remark."

Burley's suspicions were disarmed.

"Forget it, my friend, forget it," he said.  "A man says
a good many things under the influence of liquor that he
has no call to say.  I don't suppose the Fontaines are less
on the square about their importations than the other big
jewelers are.  That's no business of mine or yours,
however, is it?"

He declared emphatically that his interest in Claude
Fontaine's doings had a totally different basis.  On three
occasions Fontaine had come between him and a woman.
He did not hesitate to name the ladies.  One was Lydia
Dyson, another was Cornelia Covert, the third was Janet
Barr.  He had said nothing about the first two.  He was
not a greedy man.  Anyhow, according to the ethics of
Kips Bay, Lorillard females were nobody's property.  That
was no blasted secret, was it?

"But this Janet Barr's no Lorillard female," he said,
bringing his fist down heavily on the desk.  "Any fool can
see that.  And I'm man enough, to refuse to stand by while
Fontaine dirties her good name."

"You don't mean to say that he has—"

"He'll do it, all right.  Or why did he pick the girl up,
when he's just got engaged to Armstrong's daughter?"

"Armstrong, the financier?"

"Yes.  And Dupont Armstrong won't stand for a man
who isn't on the level with his girl.  Just put that in your
pipe and smoke it."

"I know a safer place," said Mr. Pryor, gently tapping
his head.  "Where it won't go up in smoke."

He rose and, after coming to a few necessary understandings
with Burley, took his leave.

As he walked rapidly along Broadway towards the subway,
he felt that he had done a very good morning's work.
He was satisfied that Hutchins Burley knew more about
the diamond smuggling than he cared to admit.  The puzzle
was that, although Burley obviously connected Claude
Fontaine with the smuggling operations, he was unwilling to
give the connection away.  What was the motive that
restrained him from exposing a man he bitterly hated?
Clearly, either a lack of proof, or some consideration of a
more personal kind.

Reminding himself of his maxim that two and two never
make four except in vulgar mathematics, Mark Pryor left
the subway at Thirty-fourth Street, the Kips Bay station
nearest the Lorillard tenements.  Then he went directly to
his flat.



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   \II

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Incoming or outgoing denizens made barely a ripple on
the surface of Kips Bay.  The district was used to a
shifting population.  Even the colonization of Sutton and
Beekman Places by Pierian millionaires "cut no ice."  Honest
men and thieves, artists, criminals and Bohemians, idle
paupers and rich idlers, all these floated in and floated
out, but the net hodge podge was much the same.  Bomb
makers might come and gunmen might go, but Kips Bay
went on forever.

The Lorillard tenements, the hub of the district, had
experienced their fair share of changes during the week of
Mark Pryor's advent.  Robert and Janet were among the
newcomers.  Robert, thrown on his own scant resources,
had secured a nook in Kelly's flat, Number Thirteen, his
berth there being the fruit of Cornelia's good offices.  And
Janet had come to live with Cornelia in flat Number
Fifteen.

This last event was at once followed by a break in
Cornelia's partnership with Mazie Ross.  The three small
rooms and kitchenette were not large enough for more than
two people.  And pretty, slovenly Mazie, her early
enthusiasm for Cornelia cooled, had lately spent more and more
time on her own appearance and less and less on her
companion's wants.

Cornelia always got rid of a companion the moment
a better one turned up.  A "better one" usually meant
one who could do more of Cornelia's housework, or could
look after her creature comforts more diligently, or could
give her more of that flattering attention of which she never
had her fill.  Whenever the time came to change partners,
Cornelia would send the old one flying without the
smallest compunction.  Nor was she ever at a loss for a
good excuse.

Janet's first day in Number Fifteen was Mazie's last.
When Mazie came home that night, "instead of poppies,
willows waved o'er her couch."

The crash came after supper, while Janet was out
shopping with Harry Kelly, who had quickly become a steady
visitor at his next-door neighbor's flat.  As a pretext,
Cornelia chose the matter of Mazie's easy friendship with
Hutchins Burley, a friendship reported to have gone as far
as was possible, since the recent ball.

There was nothing new in the charge that Mazie practiced
principles of varietism about which Cornelia simply
theorized.  The only novelty was that Cornelia now
declared the charge to be a good excuse for parting company.
Mazie thought it a poor excuse.  On this difference of
opinion there sprang up a tempestuous scene.  Words flew
high, and the checks that polite society imposes on candid
criticism of one's friends went completely by the board.

The climax was reached when Cornelia offered the opinion
that if Mazie wanted to become a vulgar little copy of
Camille, that was her affair; but flat Number Fifteen was
not the place in which to practice the part.  In vain did
Mazie reply with an unexpurgated review of Cornelia's
history.  Cornelia was unmoved.  And her languid, cadenced
retorts floated serenely above Mazie's torrent of invective
like a violin obligato above the crashing brasses.

It did not take Mazie long to pack her most necessary
articles into a bag and go.  On her way out, she said, with
a good imitation of Cornelia's sweetest tone:

"Good bye, Cornelia.  I'd like to stay long enough to
tell your next dupe what a fraud you are.  But what's the
use?  She won't thank me for it, as I suppose she has a
crush on you, like I had once.  Well, it'll do her good to
learn by experience.  Finding you out, my dear, is such a
complete education."

By the time Janet and Harry Kelly returned, all was
quiet along the Potomac.





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   CHAPTER ELEVEN


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For the next few weeks, Janet lived excitedly in the
glamor of the Lorillard tenements.  She could not well
have imagined a bigger difference than that between the
complete orthodoxy of the Barrs of Brooklyn and the
complete heterodoxy of the model tenementers of Kips Bay.

Her impression of the new life was put into words for
her by Lydia Dyson, the author of "Brothers and Sisters,"
(then in its twenty-fifth big printing).  Lydia, whose tall,
thin form and pale olive skin lost none of their spectacular
qualities by the snake-like movements she affected, the
huge jet earrings she wore, or the gold-tipped cigarettes
she smoked, assured Janet, in a rich Kentucky drawl:

"We obey only one custom here, and that is to disobey
all customs; we hold only one belief, and that is to hold
no beliefs."

Janet was fully persuaded that the first part of this
statement was true and that the second part was a vast
improvement upon the Barr regime.

In truth, she found the Lorillardian absence of formality,
constraint and regulated behavior a decided relief after her
long course of Calvinistic repression at home.  And, active
though she was by nature, she did not at first notice how
the days slipped by with great ado, but with very little
done.

The Lorillard tenementers were not exactly lazy.  They
were merely idle.  Like the idle rich and the idle poor they
were ceaselessly occupied—in killing time.

Cornelia was in the habit of getting up somewhere
between nine and eleven.  After breakfast, the two friends
would set out to look for a job.  The spirit in which they
proceeded was the spirit in which young people go
skylarking.  Hunting for a job was an old pastime of
Cornelia's.  If she ever came up to a job's requirements, the
job never came up to hers.  Or if by chance it did, she
discovered a bewildering array of reasons for not taking it,
or for speedily leaving it, when taken.

At noon, the day's duty was considered fully done.  After
lunch, there was another jaunt; this time to an art gallery,
concert hall, theatre or movie.  Free tickets from Cornelia's
theatrical friends were reasonably plentiful, and when these
failed, there were return calls to pay.

Thus, Charlotte Beecher's studio was a favorite stopping
place, as Janet soon discovered.  Charlotte possessed a
million dollars or more in her own right, and she had three or
four studios in totally different parts of the city.  She did
her hardest work in her double Lorillard flat every morning;
her evenings were spent warding off fortune-hunting suitors
like Denman Page, who besieged her Fifth Avenue apartment;
on certain afternoons she served an "intellectual
tea" in a studio sumptuously fitted up in Washington Mews.

Janet was always taken to the studio *de luxe* in the Mews.
Cornelia, invariably busy, would be sketching some new
design of a hat, or pinning together a one-piece dress, whilst
she luxuriated happily amidst the rich Chinese rugs and the
soft silken cushions of Charlotte's show room.  The serpent
in this garden of Eden was the "little group of serious
thinkers" (an element alien to Kips Bay) that met in the
Mews by virtue of Charlotte's encouragement.

"These intellectuals!" Cornelia would say scornfully to
Janet on the way home.  "Did you ever hear such
bumptious talk?"

"I find them rather amusing," Janet would perhaps reply.

"Araminta, what nonsense!  They positively put the
furniture on edge.  But that's Charlotte all over.  There's
a nigger in every woodpile, and there's a jarring note in
every one of Charlotte's rooms.  My dear, it bores me
cruelly."

Still, Cornelia went on visiting the Mews, intellectuals,
cruel boredom, and all.  It puzzled Janet for a time.  She
had still to learn that a perfect Kipsite is prepared to suffer
no end of martyrdom in the sacred cause of luxury.

Every evening was like a new party to Janet, flat Number
Fifteen being one of the chief rendezvous in the tenements.
After supper, visitors of both sexes dropped in unannounced
and uninvited, until by midnight, a dozen people, more or
less, were sure to be occupying the whole flat.

Generally, the guests split up into small groups and spent
the time in play.  Some played at dancing or at music,
others at clever repartee or giddy flirting.  To this play,
the counterpoint was enthusiasm.  A magnificent enthusiasm
for self.  In a rapturous torrent of words, each Kipsite
painted a roseate future that led by startling steps to a
supreme moment in which the world lay prostrate at the
enthusiast's feet.

It was a cosmopolitan gathering.  All the arts and
sciences and occupations, all the moral and immoral standards,
and all the races and nationalities of New York were
represented.  A dancer from the Hindoo Kush, several would-be
Fokines or Stravinskys, two or three imitation Oscar Wildes,
Theodore Dreisers or Frank Harrises—these were sure to
be there.  Even the solid banker (or aspiring Pierpont
Morgan), who kept a quiet flat and a lady in it, was an
occasional visitor.  No one was excluded who was piquant
or picturesque.

Cornelia's specially privileged guests were a scanty
handful.  Among the men were Claude Fontaine, Robert Lloyd,
Denman Page, and Harry Kelly, the "Harlem Gorilla."  Soon
after Janet's coming, Mark Pryor, immaculate
and unobtrusive, joined the ultimate circle and began
mysteriously to appear and to disappear.

Still fewer were the women admitted to the inner ring.
Of these the chief were Lydia Dyson, the spectacular, and
Charlotte Beecher, the industrious.  The novelist came in
silks, the heiress in calicos.  Charlotte's cheap but natty
working costume was looked upon among the Outlaws as an
affectation.  Her blouses and skirts gave Cornelia the horrors.

So did her marked preference for Robert Lloyd.

Janet had an idea that these evening visitors came chiefly
to admire Cornelia or to be admired by her.  She assumed
that Cornelia was "the whole show."  It was a pardonable
assumption.  Cornelia sat in a rocking chair in the central
room and was feline, and languid, and observant, while the
excitement eddied and swirled around her.  To all
appearances she held the reins of her party with the masterly
skill of the Borax man who drives the celebrated twenty
mule team.

Robert would have it that Cornelia was neither the star
nor the manager of the nightly performance in Number
Fifteen.  According to him, the only management she
displayed was in the skill with which she focused attention
upon herself.  The cadenced laugh, the sugary stab, the
artful question—these were not the subtle devices of a
clever hostess; they were merely the centripetal pulls of
an egomaniac against the centrifugal interests of her guests.

Janet dismissed this explanation lightly and begged
Robert not to analyze every joy until its very essence had
been probed—and destroyed.  She laughed at his attempt
to convince her that these gay evenings of Cornelia's were
a kind of renaissance.  His theory was that the light of
Cornelia's splendor had been getting dim of late, as it had
got dim on several previous occasions.  But the impact of
a new partner against her, like the impact of an astral
visitor against a dying sun, now as always gave her a new
lease of brilliance.

In short, Robert asserted that it was the replacement of
Mazie by Janet which had caused a tremendous revival of
interest in Cornelia's flat.  Everybody in the inner ring of
the Outlaws or in the outer ring of the tenements, everybody
indeed, that had any shadow of a claim to an entree,
had come trooping in to sun themselves in the restored
glory of Number Fifteen.

To most of Robert's remarks, Janet paid little attention.
But she carefully treasured up one of them.

This was that never before had Claude Fontaine been
such a constant visitor.



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   \II

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Yet for a few days after the Outlaws' Ball, Claude had
behaved as if his confession of love had never been made,
or had merely been the expression of an impulse, for which
he disclaimed responsibility.  There had been no return to
the intimacy that instantly abolishes all the formulas of
mere politeness and all the prescriptions of mere etiquette;
there had been no recurrence of that world-without-end
moment at the ball or of that other moment in the limousine
next day.

At the ball he had treated her as he would have treated
any respectable middle-class girl who might take his fancy.
That is, he had stretched the conventions as far as an
impressionable young woman will usually allow a dashing
young man to stretch them, but not further.

After she joined Cornelia, however, his attitude changed.
He treated her with a certain wariness of manner by which
he appeared to convey the following:

"I took you to be a girl who strictly observed the moral
customs established and honored in Brooklyn, but long
fallen into disuse in certain parts of Manhattan, and
nowhere less respected than in Kips Bay.  It amused me to
tempt you to violate these customs, especially as I had little
hope of meeting with success.  But now that you have
become a Lorillard girl, what spice is there in tempting
you?  Either you never were the girl I took you for; or,
at any rate, you soon won't be.

"At all events I shall be on my guard.  You are the
first girl to work upon me so mightily with a single glance.
But you are not the first girl who has looked as innocent
as a dove and acted as subtly as a serpent.  Be warned!
Neither your innocent subtlety nor subtle innocence can
make me forget that a Claude Fontaine is in the habit of
forming but one sort of friendship with a girl in the
Lorillard tenements."

Janet, always very sensitive to atmosphere, got the effect
of this train of thought, and in consequence kept Claude
at as great a distance as her naturally cordial nature would
let her.

In one of the evening gatherings at Cornelia's the talk
turned on marriage, and it came out that Janet had adopted
Cornelia's views on the wickedness of marriage in its modern
form.  Claude, with the common failing of lovers, promptly
referred her action to himself.

Was this Janet's way of announcing that she meant to
make no greater demands on a rich man than any other
girl in the Lorillard environment?  At first, it seemed so
to Claude, and he felt relieved.  But, on second thoughts,
another question occurred to him.  Might not Janet's
conversion to Cornelia's beliefs in free love be a mere blind?
A pretended dislike of wedlock was a recognized bait for
landing a man at the altar.  Was her conversion of this
type or was it of the franker type of Mazie Ross, who
asked all that was due to a Lorillard tenement girl but
asked no more?

On the whole, it seemed fairly safe to treat Janet on the
Mazie Ross plane, and this he proceeded to do.

Mazie, by the way, had returned as a visitor to Number
Fifteen within a week of her spectacular exit.  Her
doll-like face had recovered its pretty smile and her baby blue
eyes gave no clue to whether she was seeking vengeance
or merely currying favor again.  No one asked or cared,
hatred, like love, being a very fluctuating stock in the
model tenements.

Janet had not failed to notice that Claude made little
difference between his manner to her and his manner to
Mazie.  She did not like it, but she had to wait some time
for the chance of showing how much she scorned his judgment.



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   \III

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The opportunity came at one of Cornelia's gayest parties
given at the end of Janet's second week in Kips Bay.  It
was really a sort of "coming out" party for Janet.  All
the Outlaws, both of the inner and the outer ring turned
out to hail the new favorite.  Even Mark Pryor put in an
appearance and actually remained on deck until the end,
perhaps because the trio of Cornelia's friends who provided
the music played Lehar, Straus, and more recent dance
tunes without the customary sentimental whine.

Contemptuous of the fitness of things, Claude did his
best to monopolize Janet.  When the gayety was at its
highest and the music at its most intoxicating, he danced
her into a room which, for the moment, proved to be nearly
but not quite empty.

Pushed out of the way against a corner stood a screen.
Behind this he whirled her, and then swiftly took her in his
arms and kissed her passionately.  As swiftly, she pushed
him away with an expression of extreme distaste.

"I don't like my friends to imitate Hutchins Burley,"
she said, her voice quiet and cool, her gray eyes full of life
and scorn.

The others in the room laughed in mockery or applause.
For an instant, Claude's all-conquering look was replaced
by a crestfallen one.  But he quickly regained his poise
and spirits.

"Just a kiss to try," he said jauntily, as he attempted to
recapture her arm.

"It's much too trying for gentle Janet," blithely chirped
Mazie, who had danced into the room and taken in the
situation, as Janet again turned away from Claude.

AS a matter of fact, it was Janet's sense of propriety in
public that was offended more than anything else.  As for
Claude, he was only less mortified by the affront to his
vanity than by the haunting fear that Janet's rebuff came
from genuine dislike.

No girl had ever given the brilliant, impetuous Claude
Fontaine a glance of undisguised repugnance.

Janet spent the rest of the evening chiefly in conversation
with Robert Lloyd and Mark Pryor.  Meanwhile, Claude
affected a complete indifference to her actions.  He threw
himself into the party with a mad abandon, and whipped
up the conviviality with a riotous, headstrong wildness until
everybody voted it the merriest evening in years.  Amongst
the other sex, he exploited to the utmost his patrician
graces and masculine daring, and was so much the center
of the occasion that the party might have been his rather
than Janet's.

The women thought him magnificent, graceful, cruel—in
a word, irresistible; the men laughed at his impudence,
and envied or admired his readiness, effrontery and ease.

And yet, as he showed his fine points triumphantly now
to this adoring girl and now to that, his voice vibrated
towards Janet.

Janet took it all in, and continued talking to Robert
with undisturbed satisfaction.  She saw Claude pass recklessly
from one favorite to another, and guessed easily that
none of these was his real aim.

When the party broke up, Claude induced Janet to listen
to him alone for a moment.  He was suddenly all contrition.
To his whispered plea for forgiveness, she said, in a not
unkindly tone:

"Forgiveness for what?  For advertising your emotions?"

"For the kiss," he said, his voice full of sensuous charm.
And he added, on a more audacious note: "I wish I could
take it back."

"Oh, do you?  You'd better begin with the publicity."

"Please forgive the kiss *and* the publicity, Janet."

"I'll forgive the second when I forget the first," she
replied, much more gaily than she intended, thus proving
that Claude was not the only one in the grip of a resistless
passion.

Claude went home, satisfied that his daring had once
again enabled him to snatch victory out of the arms of
defeat.





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   CHAPTER TWELVE


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   \I

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And so it had.  None the less, the experience had taught
Claude a lesson which, for once, he took to heart.  He never
again supposed that Janet's friendship was to be had on
the same terms as Mazie's or even Cornelia's.

True, he remained in the dark as to what precisely her
idea of self-respect was.  Conflicting and irreconcilable
inferences were the only ones he could draw from the
conduct of a girl who lived in the Lorillard tenements, moved
in the Outlaws' circle, professed to be hostile to marriage,
yet stood on her dignity withal, in quite a traditional
womanly way.

But Claude was not the man to waste time on psychological
conundrums.  Besides, he was too happy to be critical.
He was back in the good graces of Janet, or rather,
as he soon paraphrased the case, she was back in his.  He
flattered himself that he was the dominant influence over
a girl who was a piquant, if puzzling, amalgam of Brooklyn
and Bohemia.

In the next two weeks, his position as Janet's particular
friend was established beyond dispute.  Few afternoons
passed in which his motor car did not drive up to the
Lorillard and whirl her away to a place of gayety or
recreation.  The chief rival claimant upon her time was Robert
Lloyd.  But as Claude, in point of social advantages and
personal graces, far outdistanced him, this rivalry was not
taken seriously by any of the three persons concerned, least
of all by Claude.

One day, to Cornelia's astonishment, Janet announced
that she had planned to spend the afternoon, not with
Claude, but with Robert.  She made the announcement
from a tuffet on which she sat soberly, while reading a book
by Mrs. Beatrice Webb.

"Is this your pensive day?" asked Cornelia, ironically.

"Yes," replied Janet.  "Robert complains that I'm
neglecting him, and consequently my education.  I think I
ought to give him a chance to prove both assertions.  So
I've asked him to come here this afternoon.  I can't spend
all my days in sky-larking, can I?"

"My dear, 'youth's a stuff will not endure.'  If you choose
Mrs. Sidney Webb and Robert Lloyd rather than Claude
Fontaine, the choice is your own.  Of course, Robert is
very entertaining.  He pledges you with facts and figures.
But when I was a rosebud like you, Araminta, I preferred
a man who drank to me only with his eyes."

"Cornelia, I adore being made love to; yet I get horribly
tired of it—even of Claude's love making—when it's
kept up too long.  And I hate facts and figures; yet Robert's
never bore me."

"What a morbid symptom, my dear!"

"Oh, don't say that.  I feel sure it's quite a natural
condition, in my case.  But perhaps there's a quality left
out of me, a quality that other women possess."

Janet was clearly eager to carry on her self-analysis,
but Cornelia gave no sign of sharing this eagerness.

Cornelia, in fact, was far from pleased.  Her
unconscious game was to keep Robert revolving in an orbit
around herself.  He was such an excellent drawing card!
For had he not the rare power of raising the value of any
object or person he admired?  Not that people ever credited
him with unusual discernment or insight.  Yet the fact
remained that Robert had only to praise a human being
or a work of art hitherto undervalued or overlooked, and
presto, the article or the person instantly became subject
to an urgent popular demand.  This was one of the reasons
why Cornelia (who felt that she had been handsome enough
in surrendering Claude without a murmur) did not wish
Robert as well to gravitate from her stellar system to
Janet's.

But, seeing no way of cancelling Robert's visit, she
determined not to be a spectator of it.

"I must run in next door, Janet," she said, "and ask
the Gorilla to do an errand for me."

She left, omitting her customary lyrical phrases of
affection.  Janet did not suspect the jealousy behind this
omission.  But she was undeniably disappointed because
Cornelia had not encouraged her to discuss her friendships
with Claude and Robert about whom her heart and her
thoughts were brimful.

Thus quickly did Cornelia damp down the fire of intimacy
by treating the exchange of self-revelation as a strictly
one-sided transaction.  She had (so it struck Janet) a very
low opinion of all confidences—other than her own.



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   \II

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When the bell rang, Janet opened the door wondering
why Robert had come an hour before the appointed time.

But it was Claude who entered!  He came in, like the
god of the glorious spring without, in his gayest, most
engaging mood.

"What luck, to find you in!" he cried.  "Janet, I've come
in an open car on the chance of taking you for a spin to
Mineola to see the start of the great Cross-Continental
airplane race."

"Oh, Claude, how nice of you.  But—I'm afraid I can't go."

"Why not?"

"Well—you see—I've promised to go out with Robert
this afternoon."

His face clouded.

"And you never told me!" escaped from him.

"You are not my diarist," she said, faintly ironical.

"Please forgive me, Janet," he said, dropping his possessive
tone, as he reminded himself how touchy she was about
her independence.  "But I'm disappointed, bitterly
disappointed.  I planned the excursion as a surprise for you.
And how I've counted on it!"

"Not more than I long to go, Claude.  But what can I do?"

He took her hands in his, and said eagerly:

"*Must* you keep the engagement?  Can't you think of
some excuse?  Where on earth was he going to take you to?"

"To the Japanese Industrial Exhibition at the Grand
Central Palace."

He made a contemptuous grimace.

"A stuffy exhibition!" he exclaimed.  "Good Heavens,
Janet, why hesitate to change your plans?  It isn't as if
Robert wanted you for himself, as I do.  He'll understand."

Janet wondered whether Claude would understand if she
confessed that she was actually more interested in the
Japanese Exhibition than in the cross-continent air race.  But
though she kept silent on this point, because she really
wanted greatly to go with Claude, she was rather troubled.
It was not easy for her to gratify a private desire at the
expense of a social obligation.

"I don't like to hurt Robert's feelings," she said, turning
away in her indecision.

"Oh, very well, if you don't wish to come with me!"

He flung himself sulkily into a chair.

Janet was astonished at his complete change of mood.
She might have felt hurt, had she not had a woman's
instinctive weakness for spoiling the man she was fond of.

She sat down irresolutely, and reflected that this would
be the second time she had broken an engagement with
Robert.

"It's idiotic," he said, rising, with a sense of deep injury.
"Here is the most sensational race in a century, on a
perfectly glorious day.  And I'm mad to be with you."

"Perhaps Robert is, too," she said, a merry light dancing
in her eyes.

"Of course, he's no fool.  He'd rather be with a
wonderful girl than an ordinary one.  But what he wants more
even than a wonderful girl is a chopping-block, any
chopping-block, for his sociological theories.  Why on earth did
you leave your home, if all you crave is more instruction,
and if the only freedom you want is the freedom to stand
on more ceremony than before?"

"That has nothing to do with the matter, Claude," said
Janet, refusing to ignore the truth simply because it was
disagreeable.  "Robert may not be offended at finding me
away, but he is sure to be offended at finding me rude."

"It seems to me that you are far more concerned with
Robert's feelings than with mine," said Claude, changing
to a tone of melancholy reproach.

"But I really haven't a good excuse, Claude," she said,
troubled, but still indecisive.

"I know girls who wouldn't take two minutes to find an
excellent one," he said, with a return of his superior
authoritative air.

Janet's temptation was great; greater yet when Claude,
in his most handsome and daring manner, drew her out
of the chair and put an arm around her waist.

"It's an occasion in a million, Janet.  I've set my heart
on this ride with you.  What does it matter what Robert
may think, or what anyone may think, as long as we
two want so much to be together?  You must come.  I shall
believe you don't care a straw for me, if you don't."

His flawless form and vibrant voice annihilated argument.
With a happy heart but a guilty conscience, Janet
dismissed her scruples.

On the way out, she stopped in at Number Thirteen to
beg Cornelia to smooth matters over with Robert.

Cornelia, serene and all smiles again, promised to do
her best.



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   \III

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Robert came home soon after and, getting no response
from Number Fifteen, went to his own room in Kelly's suite
next door.

He got all the news from Cornelia, who politely tried
not to gloat over his disappointment.  She professed to see
no reason for finding fault with Janet's easy submission
to the force of an irresistible attraction.

As it was fairly plain that Robert would have preferred
to be alone, Cornelia perversely lost no time in proposing
that he carry out his original intention of visiting the
Japanese Industrial Exhibition, she, of course, to take Janet's
place as his companion.

She had another reason for inviting herself out with
Robert.  This reason was the Harlem Gorilla.  He, though
almost superstitiously devoted to her, sometimes had to be
"managed," in accordance with Cornelia's view that love
makes the most constant of men uncertain, coy, and hard
to please.  Luckily, the treatment that Harry Kelly's case
required was not a subtle one, and so it was Cornelia's
practice to alternate a little encouraging discouragement, with
a little discouraging encouragement.  On this occasion, by
accompanying Robert who didn't want her, and deserting
Kelly who wanted her very much, she neatly killed two
birds with the same stone.

On the way to the exhibition, Robert gave Cornelia an
account of his latest occupation.  He had been made
organizing secretary of a body called the League of Guildsmen.
Was this a fanciful name for another set of Outlaws?  No,
the Guildsmen were servers of the community, the Outlaws
were spongers on it.

"You have golden opinions of us," said Cornelia, theatrically.
"I marvel that you soil your garments by staying in
our midst."

"It's nothing to marvel at, Cornelia.  I had to learn what
Kips Bay and its slum population were at first hand before
I could desire in earnest to destroy them, root and branch.
Familiarity, which sometimes breeds contempt, often breeds
homicidal mania.  Do you recollect how Caesar spent a
short vacation among a band of desperate pirates and how
the experience filled him with a conviction that it was his
duty to exterminate them?  Well, I am filled with the same
conviction about Kips Bay."

"What a passion you have for reforming everybody and
everything, Cato!  I am sure it is a very noble passion,
though it does include poor me in its program of extermination.
Still, I wonder whether reform, like charity, oughtn't
to begin at home?"

"I used to think so," replied Robert, unmoved by her
sarcasm.  "In my schooldays, my elders obliged me to hack
my way through obsolete French tragedies or the differential
calculus instead of allowing me to gain a working
knowledge of current English plays or of modern political
economy.  And when I made a fearful hash of their
instruction, they voted me a miserable failure.  Whereupon, I
determined to reform myself in order that I might reform the
world.  I am wiser now.  I know that I must reform the
world before I can hope to reform myself."

"Cato, you are a perfectly gorgeous mixture of building
air castles and of seeing things upside down!  One can
never tell whether your head is in the clouds or on the
ground."

Robert indulgently proceeded to say that the Guildsmen
were young people of like sentiments with his own.  In a
general way, their aim was to advance the idea that the
producers and servers of society, being the rightful
possessors of the earth, must eliminate the profiteers and the
parasites who have usurped possession.

"If that is your aim, Robert, I predict that your league
and your secretaryship will have a short life and a merry one."

Robert laughed and admitted that he did not expect a
long tenure of office.  The Guild plan was a European idea
for which America was by no means ripe.

"I fancy we are as progressive in industrial matters as
the Europeans are," said Cornelia, on her mettle.

"Oh, more so," replied Robert, drily.  "Our giant industries
lead the world in maximizing the production of things
of a mediocre quality and the creation of human life of a
contemptible quality.  Yes, in crude capacity, we are ahead
of our European competitors.  But in political capacity,
we still lag far behind.  Hence the difficulty of transplanting
to our soil a high-class social policy like that of the
Guildsmen."

"But when this Guild plan dies a natural death, what
forlorn hope will you champion next?"

"I fear there'll be nothing left but to throw myself on
the mercy of a rich uncle."

"What, an uncle in a fairy tale?"

"No, an uncle in California, a real live one."

Cornelia evinced little more than a languid interest in
Robert's information.  Fabulously rich relatives—who were
cast for the parts of *Deus ex machina*, but who never materialized
in flesh or cash—made a golden splash in the 'scutcheon
of too many veteran Lorillard inhabitants.  She preferred
a conversation dealing with more tangible personages.  Truth
to tell, she rather hoped that Robert would try to undo
the painful impression he had made on her by his recent
criticism of her affair with Percival Houghton.

All the greater was her chagrin when he brought the talk
around to the subject of Janet.



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   \IV

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He began adroitly enough by complimenting her on the
success with which she had made Janet alive to the
galvanic interests of contemporary life.  It was a miracle of
education, he assured her, and he begged her not to spoil
the achievement by converting Janet to her favorite theory
of free love.  He hoped she would rather warn her friend
of the folly of contracting a free union under existing
social sanctions.

"Like the majority of men, you believe love and sex
emotion to be one and the same thing," she retorted,
cuttingly.  "That's why you have no understanding of what
freedom in love means."

"Now, Cornelia, I won't be drawn into a controversy on
the merits of free love."

"Then don't sneer at it."

"I don't.  In fact, like every healthy young human
being, I am by nature something of a varietist myself.
But, as a civilized member of society, I'm bound to take
the institutions of my country and generation as I find
them.  I believe Janet will be better off, if she does so too.
Let her set out to alter or revolutionize our institutions,
but not to defy them."

"My poor Cato!  Don't you know that numbers of the
young women of today are quietly doing what numbers of
the young men have always done?"

"Living in illicit relations, you mean?"

"That is what a ridiculous man-made custom calls it."

"But, Cornelia, although many of the Lorillard girls
have admittedly flung a glove in the face of social
conventions—"

"I'm not talking of Lorillard girls, Robert.  I'm talking
of teachers, lawyers, stenographers—the 'respectable' girls
who remain in their schools and offices without any loss
of self-respect or public esteem, and who merely do what
the 'respectable' men do, that is, pay a mock tribute to
outward appearances, and go scot free."

"Exactly, Cornelia," said Robert, triumphantly.  "They
pay a tribute to appearances.  They quietly disobey existing
conventions.  But they don't defy them, much less try
to alter them.  They are frequently their staunchest
supporters."

"Just like the men."

"Just like the men.  But you are wrong when you say
they go scot free.  You are wrong again when you say that
the tribute they pay is a mock tribute.  It is anything but
that.  It is an endless payment by installments, a payment
in degrading stealth and harassing secrecy."

"What are you driving at?"

"Janet is not the girl to pay a tribute of this kind," he
said, with emphasis.  "If she champions the cause of free
love, she won't do so merely to experience the ups and
downs of an underground existence.  She will do so, believing
it to be a wise or progressive departure.  And she will
defend her championship in the teeth of the whole world,
regardless of its effect on her future."

Cornelia received this speech unmoved.

"Well, why shouldn't she?" she said.  "Others have
endured much more for their beliefs.  To be candid, I really
don't see how Janet's behavior concerns you, any way."

"You forget, Cornelia, that I, too, talked modernism in
a blue streak to her before she broke with her people.
And so I feel that I share with you the responsibility for
her present course."

"Oh, do you?"

"Yes.  There's a lot of moonshine in Kips Bay that
passes for modernity.  I think the least we can do is to
show Janet that modernity is not simply a new watchword
for moonshine.  We ought to prevent her from being taken
in by the illusion which the Outlaws produce of easy,
satisfying intimacies between the sexes."

A stream of silvery laughter escaped Cornelia.  Then,
in a studied tone of superiority, she replied:

"My dear boy, the love relation between two individuals
is strictly their own private affair.  It is nobody else's
business whatever.  I have no right to interfere in Janet's
intimacies, and neither have you.  Anyhow, I believe she
is quite competent to stand on her own feet."

"I'm not so sure, Cornelia.  Janet is utterly different
from the Lorillard Outlaw girl, or the Greenwich Village
Bohemian girl.  The effect of Greenwich Villageism is to
make irregularity (what regularity so often is) a bore.
The purpose of Lorillardism is to make irregularity pay.
But Janet is not likely to adopt a radical creed merely
as a pose or with an eye to its profit.  She will adopt it in
a spirit of sheer blind self-sacrifice.  And every advantage
will be taken of her, precisely because she's not a sex
profiteer."

"Cato, the beginning of wisdom is self-knowledge.  Have
you ever heard of any gain in self-knowledge without some
loss of happiness?  No.  It is a law of life which neither
you, nor I, nor Janet can escape."

"But," he urged, "you must admit that Janet's case is a
special one.  She has just left a home where purely private
gratifications dictate which conventions shall be *kept*; and
she has entered this model tenement life where, again,
purely private gratifications dictate which conventions shall
be *broken*.  She may not grasp this difference all at once.
Are we to let her inexperience cause her unnecessary
suffering?"

"I, too, have suffered for my convictions, Robert!" she
said, with a conclusive gesture of impatience.

Robert felt like telling her that, at this moment, she
reminded him forcibly of the fox that had its tail cut off.
But he didn't quite dare.

Naturally, under the circumstances, the visit to the
Grand Central Palace was a complete failure.  Cornelia,
loathing the exhibition, seized the first available excuse for
asking to be taken home.

The resentment she harbored was too strong to be hidden
beneath the ordinary civilities of polite intercourse.  Her
affection for Robert, which had long been hanging by a
slender thread, was now sharply snapped through the
complete revulsion of feeling she experienced towards him.

From her point of view, the fault was entirely his.  She
had always hated what she termed his moralistic nature.
But never before had he shown such a callous want of
sympathy with her past misfortunes or such a frank
hostility to her present outlook on life.  What she did not
acknowledge to herself was that his concern for Janet had
given her *amour propre* a mortal wound for which she could
never forgive him.

On their return to the Lorillard tenements, she promptly
called Harry Kelly into Number Fifteen.  The Harlem
Gorilla (renicknamed Hercules as a mark of favor) was
highly flattered and only too willing to be a listener and
a comforter.

"Robert is getting to be quite impossible!" she exclaimed,
with a lurid Belasco intonation.  "I can't imagine what has
come over him, or why he continues to honor the Outlaws
with his presence, seeing that he is now an enemy of
freedom and not a friend of it.  Hercules, will you believe it,
he cannot hear the word Lorillard so much as mentioned
without showing the cloven hoof."





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   CHAPTER THIRTEEN


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While Robert and Cornelia were going to and from the
Grand Central Palace, Claude's car was carrying its
occupants through pleasant stretches of Long Island country
to the Mineola aerodrome.  The day, the air, the landscape,
and the man conspired to make the occasion an intoxicating
one for Janet.

Claude's gayety and personal charm were fully matched
by his perfect ease.  This was the quality that magnetized
her, it was so new in her experience of American men.  The
men she had known in Brooklyn, struggling professional
and business men, wore their manners as they did their
Sunday clothes, with a painful effect of unfamiliarity.  Their
behavior was as different from Claude's as a sputtering
torch is from an arc light.

In the company of women, these men were nearly always
ill at ease.  Sometimes they acted obtrusively protective
or aggressively possessive, more frequently they were
apprehensive, timid or even pitiably afraid.  Whatever they did,
they did with constraint.  And they never seemed able to
forget the towering fact that their manhood had an
economic value.  They were as painfully conscious of this
asset as an elderly maiden is of her chastity—and they
guarded it with the same zeal.

Janet was inexpressibly thankful that Claude had never
treated her as if she belonged to an unknown or unclassified
species, and that he was not constantly filled with a nervous
dread that she might at any moment begin picking his
soul, if not his pocket.

They talked of everything under the sun; she of her
childhood, her school days, her aspirations; he of social or
artistic doings in and about New York, with the more
notable and distinctive of which he had a first-hand
familiarity.  But no matter how sober or philosophic the
topic chosen, it was sure, in some mysterious way, to be
sidetracked into the catechism of love.

Janet had all she could do to keep matters from taking
too amorous a turn.  It was delicious to be made love to
as audaciously as only Claude could.  It was great fun
to tremble on the quicksilvery margin between how much
he dared and how little she permitted.  And it was her
native mother wit rather than her instinct that set a limit
to his impetuous wooing.

As soon as they reached the aerodrome, Claude became
a more conventionally courteous cavalier again.  And Janet
got a glimpse of a section of his life to which she had
hardly given any thought.



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   \II

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The Trans-Continental Air Race had been widely advertised,
and the gigantic aerodrome was jammed with excited
crowds.  Claude at once plunged his companion into the
thick of things.  Anybody and everybody appeared to know
him, and he knew everybody who was anybody.  In swift
succession Janet was introduced to the superintendent of the
grounds, the president of the Aero Club, the chief contestants
of the day, several foreign aviators of renown, the
naval officer who commanded the first "blimp" across the
Atlantic, and to so many other notabilities that her head
began to whirl.

Once or twice Claude left her to pay special homage to
some lady, frequently an elderly one and a personage of
uncommon account.  In these intervals, while standing a
little away from the throbbing, bewildering spectacle around
her, she attempted to give some perspective to her
impressions.

It was gradually clear to her that the spectators resolved
themselves into two classes: first, the *hoi polloi* whose
teeming throngs pushed along the common passageways
and packed the benches in the stands to the point of
suffocation; and then a small, compact group of men and
women whose breeding, dress and carriage would have
differentiated them from the other spectators even if the
weather-beaten air of superiority with which they promenaded
within the fenced-off and sacrosanct places, had not
sufficiently done so.

Superficially, the attitude of these chosen ones towards
the gallery was the attitude of actors towards an audience:
they affected to be oblivious of its existence, and yet it was
patent that they were greedily conscious of the snobbish
admiration and flattering envy which the crowd radiated
collectively and in its component parts.

Janet watched these bankers and railroad directors and
senators with their wives and daughters urbanely encircling
the placid airplanes, the restive airmen and the little extra
demonstrations for the elect.  And it seemed to her that
they appropriated the special privileges inseparable from
the governors of a democracy with an affably paternal air
which was as much as to say: "What a very democratic
ruling-class it is that runs this very democratic nation."

Of course she knew that they were not really thinking
this.  Seeing that they were the ruling class, they ought to
have weighty, superior problems of finance, transportation
or statesmanship at the back of their minds.  Had they?
Or were they merely thinking that unless they were on the
*qui vive* they might be caught in an awkward pose by one
of the brigade of camera men who were photographing
celebrities for the Sunday pictorial supplements and the
cinema current topics.

Janet perceived also that the faces of the ladies and
gentlemen of the plutocracy, though set in hard lines and
wreathed in hard smiles, were, on the whole, much less
hard than the faces of the poorer middle-class people among
whom she lived and moved and had her being.  Their
complexions were far better, too.  And they were healthier
and robuster and decidedly cleaner and politer.

Politer, but not better mannered.  Temporarily, Janet
might have been deceived by the surface courtesy with
which the men approached one another and the ceaseless
vehemence with which the women talked and smiled, or
rather, exhibited the whole of a fine set of front teeth from
the top of the upper row to the tip of the nether gum.  But
when she had mingled with them at Claude's side, these
same ladies that paraded their toothful smiles so amiably
for the photographer's benefit, had politely but uncannily
looked her through and through in the most literal sense
of the words.  To put it bluntly, they had instantly sized
her up as an intruder from a sphere they had no personal
contact with.  True, they murmured the necessary courteous
phrases, but they did so to a creature whose common
humanity with themselves their glances insolently and
emphatically denied.

Had Claude sensed this, and left her alone to spare her
(and perhaps himself) embarrassment?  The question made
her feel uneasy and disconcerted.  It also made her wish
him back, in the hope that his presence would restore her
confidence.  What was keeping him so long this time?  By
way of finding an answer, her eyes searched him out among
the machines.

She saw him, not very far away, in the midst of a group
of three other people: a couple in the prime of life, who
were obviously the parents of a young lady of about Janet's
own age.  The attention of the daughter was fixed detainingly
on Claude; that of the parents was fastened proudly
on their daughter.

Thanks to a fine eyesight, Janet was enabled to get an
excellent view of the young lady's appearance.

She was a tall, light brunette, and her frock, her sulky
discontented mouth and her affectation of stateliness were
all highly fashionable.  So was her face, which had a
tolerably clear skin and otherwise neither a noticeable blemish
nor a spark of fire.  It was the kind of standard feminine
face just common enough in America to fit the popular
conception of beauty and just enough above the common
to be in constant request by illustrators as a model for
the covers of monthly magazines.

It struck Janet that she was making some demand upon
Claude which was taxing his charm and diplomacy to the
utmost.  Eventually, as he took leave of the group, she
abruptly turned away from him, the back of her shoulders
expressing the most intense vexation.



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   \III

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Soon thereafter he was at Janet's side again, looking
somewhat harassed.

"Those were the Armstrongs and their daughter,
Marjorie," he said, in answer to her look of curiosity.

"Who are the Armstrongs?"

Claude was taken aback by this question.  In his world,
where everybody knew everybody else, the bare name of
Armstrong had a very definite and compact meaning.

"Dear little ignoramus!  The Dupont Armstrongs, of
course."

This addition meant very little more to Janet, although
it rekindled a vague memory that she had seen the name
somewhere in the newspapers.  Politely concealing his
wonderment, Claude explained more at length.

He said that Colonel Dupont Armstrong came of an old
Southern family, and was the active head of the great firm
of Harmon, Armstrong & Co., the international bankers
whose financial power had built golden bridges between
continents.  His wife had a passion for collecting exquisite
jewels; he had a mania for hoarding Chinese vases.  But
the operation of his esthetic taste being unreliable, he had
struck up an intimacy with Claude's father soon after he
discovered this gentleman to be a thoroughly dependable
guide.  In time, he became a regular patron of the Fontaine
galleries and his purchases of diamonds, necklaces and
porcelains had contributed appreciably to Mr. Fontaine's
fortune.

Janet's curiosity in respect of worldly matters was much
more quickly satisfied than her curiosity in respect of
people.

"Is Mr. Armstrong's daughter as charming as she looks?"
she asked Claude at the end of his explanation.

"Well, most men think so," said Claude, smiling.  "Marjorie
is undoubtedly very beautiful and fully conscious of
the fact.  You may have seen her portrait by Ben Ali
Haggin in the last Academy exhibition?  It was a tone
poem in russet brown, quite the stir of the season."

"Oh, I'm sorry I missed it.  I've never been to an
Academy exhibition, Claude."

"How amazing!  Not even to one?"

"Not even to one.  Imagine how hopelessly ignorant I
am of art!"

"Art!  People don't go to the Academy in quest of art,
you dear innocent.  It would be a waste of effort.  They go
as a compliment to their friends whose portraits have been
painted, not as a tribute to the men who painted them."

But Janet was not to be deflected from her purpose.

"I played the spy whilst your back was turned," she said,
"and watched your pretty friend closely.  She was evidently
displeased with you.  What had you done?"

"Absolutely nothing.  That's just Marjorie's way when
she can't have all she wants—which seldom happens."

"Then she wanted *you*?"

"Yes, for some party or other.  But I'm not going to
leave you merely to gratify a passing whim of hers.
Anyhow, it isn't so much a case of wanting me to be with her,
as of wanting me not to be with anybody else."

"Rather dog-in-the-mangerish, isn't it?"

"Oh, all the tyrants of the earth are like that, especially
the fascinating feminine tyrants," replied Claude, in an
attempt to recapture his good spirits.

But it was plain that his mood had radically changed.
For the remainder of their stay he was preoccupied and his
gayety was forced.

The cloud that this cast over their outing was not fully
lifted that day.  Outwardly Claude recovered his equipoise
and, on the way home, tried to make up for his earlier
abstraction by a deepened tenderness towards his companion.
But something was manifestly weighing on his mind.
Janet herself was in a pensive mood.  She had been quick
to discern that in Claude's manner towards Marjorie
Armstrong and the other young women of his own set there was
an inexpressible something which was absent from his
manner towards her.

This troubled and dissatisfied her.  True, Claude no
longer ventured to treat her as flippantly as he treated
Mazie Ross.  But neither did he treat her as finely as he
treated Marjorie Armstrong.  Why was this?  Did Claude
still misinterpret her considered expression of disbelief in
marriage?  She had a passionate longing to give love and
to receive love on a plane worlds above material considerations.
Could no masculine mind grasp the reality of this
simple passion in a modern girl's heart?  Was it possible
that her freedom from the vulgar commercial associations
of love was precisely what cheapened her to such as
Claude?

The thought was ironic, it was maddening, it burrowed
into one's soul.  But it did not rob Janet of her
self-approval.  She set a high value on her integrity, and she
was secretly resolved that by no mere man should this
value lightly be set aside.





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   CHAPTER FOURTEEN


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   \I

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The Fontaine galleries occupied a conspicuous building
on Fifth Avenue above the Forties.  It was one of the show
places in New York's principal show street, and it received
a daily stream of visitors as much for the sumptuousness
of its interior appointments as for the worth of its stock
and its exhibitions.

Mr. Rene Fontaine had inherited the business from his
father, who had left France in his boyhood and had begun
in a small way as a jeweler on lower Sixth Avenue.  The
founder of the house had built up a fashionable trade in
pearls and precious stones and, having a strong private
fancy for certain kinds of ceramic ware, had been led into
adding a department of rare porcelains.

After the death of the founder, the business was incorporated.
Mr. Rene, as president of the firm, continued his
father's twofold policy with such success that, when the
uptown trend of high-class trade necessitated a change of
quarters, Fontaine and Company transferred their
establishment to one of the choicest corners of Fifth Avenue.
Here the ceramic and other works of art were displayed
in galleries on the second floor.  And the patronage of these
galleries was so profitable that Claude had persuaded his
father to open a gallery for paintings on the third floor
and let him conduct the new department.

Mr. Fontaine was a fastidious man and a stickler for
appearances, particularly British appearances.  The
fashionable set in New York aped English manners, and
consequently, the door attendant at Fontaine's was an English
youth and the salesmen in the art departments were
Englishmen with consciously superior airs fortified by British
university educations, Oxford accents and modish London
clothes.

A humble art lover on a visit to the galleries might easily
have been frightened off by the sumptuous appointments,
or overawed by seven or eight swagger young gentlemen
who would eloquently ignore him as he crossed their several
posts.  They might have been so many heirs to dukedoms
engaged in a feeble game of passing themselves off as
prosaic American commoners.  Yet they could pay a very
flattering attention to multimillionaires, especially of the
feminine gender; and these, as their astute employer knew,
they attracted in considerable numbers.

Moving in and out among his father's young men, Claude
might readily have passed for one of them.  He was like
them in the ingratiating, physical appearance that comes
from a systematic cultivation of the body, and his accent,
if not of an Oxford, was of a Harvard flavor.  The only real
difference was that he was several degrees less arrogant—not
that humility was one of his specialties, by any means.



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   \II

.. vspace:: 2

About ten days after the Mineola outing he was seated
at his desk, opening the morning's mail.  Two letters caught
his eye.  One, from Marjorie Armstrong, supplemented
Mr. Armstrong's invitation to the two Fontaines to attend a
week-end party in the Armstrong's Long Island home.  The
other was a note from Cornelia, reading:

.. vspace:: 2

"Lothario, remember your appointment with us this
evening.  We shall sup *al fresco* in the Japanese pagoda
on the Lorillard roof—Araminta, Hercules and you will
be the guests of honor.  Only the chosen few are invited:
Lydia, Charlotte, Robert and the invisible Pryor.  A special
attraction has been provided after supper—if indeed you
need an attraction other than the piteous spectacle of
Araminta pining away for you.

.. vspace:: 1

Cornelia.

.. vspace:: 2

This operatic reminder was much more welcome to
Claude than Marjorie's frigid message.  Cornelia's latest
party—parties trod on one another's heels in the model
tenements—was in celebration of Janet's admission to the
society of the Outlaws.  Everybody counted on Claude to
be the bright particular meteor of the occasion.  Yet how
was he to follow his natural inclination without offending
his father, to say nothing of Colonel Armstrong and Marjorie?

He turned over a volume of Muther's *History of Painting*
and, while staring vacantly into its pages, raked his
mind for a diplomatic escape from attendance at the
Armstrongs' party.  He was still far from successful, when his
father approached to transact a little business.  This
settled, Claude referred to a Van Gogh he had lately bought
for $5,000.  Mr. Fontaine's face puckered quizzically.

"You are worse than the prodigal son," he said.  "That
young man squandered his patrimony on real extravagances,
while you fritter yours away on unreal mockeries."

"Did you look at it, father?"

"Bless my soul, no.  Its mere presence in the house is
enough to upset me.  As soon as I learned of its arrival, I
looked at a copy of Ruisdael's "Mill" for ten minutes to
steady my nerves.  Whenever I hear of one of your modern
pictures, I steal comfort from an ancient one."

"But you can't judge a picture without seeing it,"
remonstrated Claude.

"My boy, you once induced me to spend ten minutes at
a Matisse exhibition in Stieglitz's Little Secession Gallery.
What I saw there was one horrible libel on humanity after
another.  That will last me a lifetime, thank you."

Claude laughed.  He and his father got along admirably
by rarely pursuing an argument beyond its illogical
conclusion.

"What have you done with my particular 'libel'?"

"I had it sent upstairs, to join your other atrocities in
the Chamber of Indecencies."

This was a nickname Mr. Rene Fontaine applied to a
little room on the top floor where Claude had hung various
"finds" in the later Impressionist, Cubist and Futurist
styles.

"Tomb, not chamber," said Claude.  "Everything there
is practically buried."

"Not at all.  Your friends are forever trotting upstairs.
I even send people there myself.  Only yesterday I invited
J. Tuyler Harmon to go up.  He said he enjoyed himself
hugely."

"What brought the old rogue in here again?"

"His mistress.  She's one of the chief patronesses of the
Religion and Forward movement.  She had to attend a
committee meeting downtown.  He escorted her from her
apartments in the Plaza and waited here for her until the
committee adjourned.  Out of that waiting I made several
handsome sales—but not of your pictures."

"Thus religion and art," said Claude, "are reconciled by
the Mammon of Unrighteousness."



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   \III

.. vspace:: 2

This reflection was lost on Mr. Fontaine, whose thoughts
had switched to another line.  He reminded Claude of the
party they were to attend on the Armstrong estate in
Huntington, Long Island.

"Can't you lunch with me at one, Claude?" he asked in
an excellent humor.  "Then we'll take the train together."

"I'm sorry, father, but I have another engagement this
afternoon."

He elaborated the urgency of the matter with an anxiety
that Mr. Fontaine was quick to detect.

"An invitation from Armstrong Hall, Claude, is like an
invitation from Windsor Castle," he said, smiling.  "It
cancels all previous matters except matters of life and
death."

"I never felt less like breaking my word," countered the
younger man obstinately.

Mr. Fontaine did not press the point.  His easy life and
lucrative business had enabled him to cultivate certain
expensive reticences.  It pained him to drive anyone into
a corner.  As regards the three stages of paternal activity—the
interrogative, the declarative and the imperative—he
held that a competent father need rarely go beyond the
first two.  Besides, he had found by experience that, if
he took a determined stand, his son frequently yielded to
the mere pressure of silent expectation.

Mr. Fontaine, who had been a widower for ten years,
habitually gave great latitude to Claude, his only son,
of whom he was genuinely fond.  He frankly made "keeping
up appearances" the basis of all conduct.  Apart from
that, he had a naive Rousselian theory of education, to the
effect that, if you let a young man indulge all his whims
and passions to the top of his bent, he will settle down at
thirty or thereabouts to a sane and steady career.

As refined tastes and good physical habits came natural
to Claude, the operation of this theory had done him no
bodily harm; but it had trained him to an exaggerated
concern for his own desires and an enormous ignorance of
other people's.  Opposition to his stronger wishes was so
rare that, when it occurred, he was tempted to regard it
as wicked, and hence to crush it with a close approach to
a feeling of self-righteousness.  To put it shortly, he had
the makings of a first-class tyrant, and he would have
become a vicious one if his will had been as pronounced
as his desires.

"You haven't had a tiff with Marjorie?" asked the father,
with a casual air.

"No," said Claude.  "We haven't quarrelled in three months."

"But you haven't seen her more than once or twice in
that time."

"That's why, father!"

"Well, I'm glad you're not on bad terms with
her, anyhow," repeated Mr. Fontaine, a deep interest
beneath his affected unconcern.

"Oh, no.  On as good terms as she'll allow.  I don't
know whether you've observed it, father, but it isn't easy
to break through Marjorie's reserve."

"You don't mean she's a cold nature!"

"Only when Lord Dunbar is around."

The trace of petulance in this reply was the scar of
an old wound.  Claude, always first among his rivals on the
battlefield of love, had once been obliged to yield the
supremacy.  This had happened about a year before, when
the young Earl of Dunbar came to Newport in Marjorie's
train.  With two fine strings to her bow, Marjorie actually
made Claude her second string.  This sensation had been
the talk of the smart set from Bar Harbor to Palm Beach.
And Claude had never quite forgiven the very serious blow
to his pride.

Mr. Rene Fontaine had no fault to find with Marjorie's
supercilious airs and snobbish predelictions.  He liked and
admired her unreservedly and thought it quite natural that,
in choosing a husband, she should prefer a titled Englishman
to a Yankee commoner.  Why not?  That London was
the real capital of American fashionable society was, after
all, a fact no socially ambitious American girl could be
expected to ignore.

"I don't think she ever cared for Dunbar," ventured
Mr. Fontaine.  "At all events, he's gone."

"Gone!"

"He sailed for England yesterday.  I've just heard it
from Mr. Armstrong."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Claude, walking up and down
in marked agitation.

"My dear boy!" cried Mr. Fontaine, uncertain as to the
cause of his son's emotions, "she didn't take him after all."

"No.  Probably she couldn't.  I dare say she means to
take me, now."

"Why, Claude, everybody supposed you two were as
good as engaged long before this Englishman came over."

"So we were—before he came."

"Well?"

"Well—he came."

"Really, Claude—"

"I mean, she preferred him to me.  I don't blame her.
He had more to offer."

"What had that to do with it?"

"Everything.  He's a British nobleman.  I'm only an
ordinary American.  He's got the entree of the best London
circles.  I've only the entree of the best New York."

"That's a very unkind thing to say of Marjorie.  I've
known her since she was a baby.  She has her faults.  But
heartless calculation is not one of them."

Mr. Fontaine's indignation did not sound convincing.
Like Claude, he knew that Marjorie would not hesitate to
sacrifice her feelings to her social ambitions.

"I don't say it's a fault," protested Claude.  "She had
the right to change her mind.  For women, the business
side of marriage is the most important side, since marriage
establishes them in life positions.  I find it perfectly natural,
therefore, that they should knock themselves down to the
highest bidder."

This was a sentiment he had adopted, with his own
modifications, from Robert Lloyd.

"Don't be cynical, my boy," said Mr. Fontaine.  "Business
is business, but family life is quite another thing."

"I agree with you, father," said Claude, pacifically.  "As
I said before, I don't blame Marjorie.  And I'm not too
proud to be her second choice."

"That's the way to talk.  Second choice, like second
thought, is often the sounder."

"Only, it happens that when *she* changed her sentiments,
*I* changed mine, too."

"You mean there's some other girl?"

"In a way—yes," replied Claude, awkwardly.

Then, on the impulse of the moment, he plunged into
an account of Janet Barr.



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   \IV

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Fontaine was distinctly uneasy.  But he concealed
his emotion as well as he could.

"You haven't any wild plan of marrying this young
woman?" he said, adopting the air of a judicious outsider.

"I like her better than any girl I ever met."

"My boy, is that a good reason for marrying her?  Take
the word of an elderly man: It isn't worth while to marry
*solely* for love, because you are bound to fall in love with
somebody else as soon as the honeymoon is over."

"If not for love, what is one to marry for?"

"Why, for compatability, position, money—these are
the considerations that wise men weigh."

Both were silent for a while, Claude thinking sardonically
of his father's charge that his view of family life was too
materialistic.  Then Mr. Fontaine resumed his objections.

"How do you intend to support the young lady?"

"Surely my interest in the firm is enough."

"You never made a bigger mistake, Claude.  Perhaps
the fault is mine, though.  For I have never driven home
to you the relative value of an income of twelve thousand
a year.  That is what you've been spending."

"Good Heavens, father!  You exaggerate, surely."

"Not in the least.  I am in the habit of keeping very
careful accounts, a habit it would do you no harm to
acquire.  Let me remind you that your new car cost five
thousand dollars.  That puts your weekly outgo roughly
at a hundred and fifty, of which your chauffeur alone gets
fifty."

"I'll cut down my extravagances!  Besides, two can live
more economically than one."

"Can they?  Well, just try it, my boy!  I fear you've
picked up that idea in some novel.  But don't forget that
all novels are written by middle-class people and reflect
middle-class notions of economy.  Possibly a middle-class
couple can save if they double up in one sordid flat, sleep
in one bed, limit their amusements to the few which please
both, compromise on the one or two friends whom neither
dislikes too much, and generally lead the spiritual life of
the Siamese twins.  But this can't be done in our class!
With us, the diverse activities and needs of husband and
wife make expenses for two run four times as high as
expenses for one."

Mr. Fontaine returned significantly to the assertion that
he was in no position to play the benevolent father.  He
would not deny that the firm was doing business on a
magnificent scale.  But magnificence was costly, on the debit
side as well as on the credit side.  There were ferocities of
competition that were slicing off the safe margins of profits,
besides pressing the management into transactions involving
a peculiar risk.

"Risk!" exclaimed Claude, greatly surprised.

Ha begged his father to remember the huge dividends
recently declared on Fontaine & Company's stock.

"I didn't say financial risk.  There's a tremendous legal
risk."

Mr. Fontaine felt that the time had come for Claude
to learn more of the technique of a big business in jewelry
and the fine arts.  He pointed out that the war had caused
a substantial reduction in the demand for luxuries accompanied
by a substantial increase in the tax upon them.  And
he asked his son if he had never wondered why, in the
face of this handicap, the firm's post-war profits had
exceeded the records of pre-war years.

"Yes, it did puzzle me," admitted Claude.  "But there's
so much wizardry in your management of the business—"

"No wizardry at all.  One or two of the biggest firms
land their prizes without the Customs House being a penny
the wiser."

Claude made a wild movement to rise, but fell back in
his chair again.

"Then that blackguard was right," he cried, his face
ashen.

"What on earth do you mean?  What blackguard?"

"Hutchins Burley!  He called me a diamond smuggler
right out before everybody at the Outlaws' Ball."

In the greatest agitation Mr. Fontaine pressed Claude
for particulars.  When the whole story had been told, he
breathed a sigh of relief.

"Nothing to worry over, thank goodness!" he said,
reassuring his son.  "Nobody will pay the slightest attention
to what a tipsy man blurts out against the Fontaines."

"No?"  Claude's tone was decidedly skeptical.

"No, they won't dare to."

"Anyhow, we're actually *in* this smuggling game—"
Claude went on gloomily.

"Our competitors call it slight-of-hand organized."

The ghost of a smile flitted over Claude's face.

"And what do they call being at the mercy of a drunken
cur's venom?"

"Don't rub it in, Claude.  I blame myself severely for
your embarrassment.  I ought to have forewarned you
earlier.  But it won't happen again.  Depend upon it, I shall
lock that fellow's tongue, good and tight."

"Is it really necessary for us Fontaines to have truck
with such degraded scoundrels?"

"Well, my boy, it isn't exactly easy to get certificated
gentlemen for the work," said Mr. Fontaine, stung into
irony.  "But don't let's go into that now, Claude.  You must
have confidence in me.  One of these days I shall give you
the history of the whole matter from A to Z."

"But look here, father.  Suppose we were caught!"

Mr. Fontaine sat down in an armchair opposite his son
and lighted a cigar with leisurely grace.

"It's a possibility," he said, "a slim possibility.  But
we have excellent friends."

"Government officials?"

"H'm—yes.  More especially—there's Colonel Armstrong."

"Mr. Armstrong!  You don't mean to say he dickers
with backstairs political grafters?"

"'Dickers' is hardly the word.  Colonel Armstrong stands
above, about and underneath the political machines—both
of them."

"Mr. Armstrong in the boodle game!  I can scarcely
believe it."

"Boodle game!  Don't talk like a grocer or a reporter,
Claude.  Mr. Armstrong is a lover of fine art who, like all
sensible people, thinks it monstrous to tax foreign works of
art destined to do an educational service here.  By virtue
of his influence at Washington, he has been able to use his
good offices to our advantage.  The result is that the
Customs House officials are wise enough not to go behind our
list of import declarations."

"Does he get much out of it?" inquired Claude.

"What a brutal question, Claude!  Armstrong is so rich
that he has nothing to live for except the luxury of being
disinterested."

Mr. Fontaine added that there had never been any
outright verbal understanding between himself and his
protector.  Mr. Armstrong might be said to have slid into the
protectorate insidiously.  He was chiefly interested in the
exquisite vases and textiles handled by Fontaine, and he
was probably ignorant of the fact that it was not these
articles but the precious stones that comprised the larger
and more profitable fraction of the smuggled goods.

"For the rest," said Mr. Fontaine, "he is, as you know,
a steady purchaser here.  He buys whatever suits his fancy
at cost price.  We needn't begrudge him the bargain."

"I wish our relations with the Armstrongs were not
complicated in this way," said Claude, with an ominous
feeling that he, too, might be knocked down at a bargain
if the influential banker should fancy him as a bridegroom
for Marjorie.

Claude had always taken special pride in the irreproachable
origin of the Fontaine riches.  He had looked up to his
father as a convincing example of the possibility of making
trade both clean and aristocratic.  Mr. Fontaine's
disclosures now robbed his son of this illusion, besides
confronting him with the sordid hazards of reality.

One of these sordid hazards was barely a week old.
A new customs inspector, in a fit of unsophisticated fervor,
had stumbled upon an act of smuggling in which the
complicity of the Fontaines appeared in the course of
investigation.  Only the lucky fact of Mr. Armstrong's nephew
being the Collector of the Port of New York had saved
Fontaine & Company from scandal, public exposure and
humiliation.

"By Heaven!" said Claude.  "We're indebted to
Mr. Armstrong for being out of prison!"

"Quite so," replied the father.  "An American business
man who desires to keep out of prison must take one of
two hygienic precautions.  One is to form a friendship with
a leading financier or a political boss; the other is to avoid
being caught.  I have done both."

Mr. Fontaine looked significantly at his son.

"Those plans of yours," he said, "about the William
Morris art center and all that—there can't be anything
in that line if you marry a poor girl, you know."

Claude was silent for a while.  His father, watching him
keenly and sympathetically, supposed him to be in the
throes of a fierce emotional contest between his sense of
duty and his love for Janet.  Claude was under the same
delusion.  In reality, the willful force that swayed him
was not so much inclining him to marry Janet as pushing
him not to marry Marjorie.  For the moment, the easiest
course to pursue was to yield on the minor issue and gain
time on the major one.  He would give up the evening
with Janet and go to Huntington, but he would refrain
from committing himself definitely as regards Marjorie and
marriage.

"I'll be in Huntington for dinner, father," he said briefly.

Mr. Fontaine, greatly relieved, patted his son's back
affectionately and walked away with a satisfied smile.



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   \V

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That evening, just before the theatres opened, a tall, thin
man in a taupe-colored flannel suit and a soft beaver hat
came out of the Commodore Hotel walked westward
along Forty-second Street, and took an uptown bus at Fifth
Avenue.

Mark Pryor, in a very unprofessional mood, had the air
of one who is determined to be seen rather than to see.
Considering the constant use he made of his knack of
fading out of his surroundings to the point of almost total
invisibility, this was not as easy for him as it sounds.  Easy
or not, it was his mood.  Mr. Pryor, whose gift for
self-effacement amounted to a miracle, needed a change.  And
he sought it by trying to make himself manifest, as other
people seek it by trying to hide.

He had not deserted Kips Bay.  But the growing inquisitiveness
of his neighbors, and particularly of the acquaintances
he had struck up in flat Number Fifteen, had driven
him to the expedient of running two domiciles and of
dividing his time between them.  The choice of a room in a
first-class hotel had been dictated not by a craving for
luxury but by a sense of domestic propriety.  "There are
two things I can't live without," he had once told Robert
Lloyd.  "One is an unfailing supply of hot water, the other
is perfect freedom to come and go as I choose.  A man can
always get these treasures among the model poor or the
unmodel rich, but never in a middle-class home."

Robert had heartily endorsed this sentiment without any
suspicion that Mr. Pryor—whom some of the Outlaws
suspected of being a fugitive counterfeiter and others of
being a shrinking novelist in search of local
color—perambulated from an army cot in his Lorillard flat to a
Circassian walnut bedstead in the Commodore Hotel.
On the evening in question, Mr. Pryor decided to explore
a section of Manhattan which he had hitherto neglected.
Accordingly he boarded a cross-town bus going east and
alighted at the corner of Second Avenue and Seventy-second
Street.

Between this point and East End Avenue, he took a zig-zag
course along several side streets and main roads.  Thus
he sauntered past the Vanderbilt tenements—the
aristocrats of their kind—and through the German and
Czechoslovak colonies, which were remote enough from Times
Square to have retained some of their European flavor.

Presently he found himself in a very prettily lighted
shopping section of First Avenue, a section which reminded
him faintly of the chief street in some of the
Teuto-Bohemian towns he had once traveled through.  Reaching
the Eighties, he strolled westward again, not without a sigh
of regret as he noticed that the few quaint German or
Slovak spots left on the East Side were fast being
submerged in the uniform drabness which inevitably descends
on all the quarters of an American city.

The cross street into which he turned was dimly lighted
and quite deserted except for one other pedestrian on the
opposite footway.  This was a man whose hippopotamine
dimensions instantly chained Mr. Pryor's scrutiny.

Surely there were not two people in New York with the
aggressive waddle, the labored locomotion of Hutchins
Burley?  Pryor was in a holiday frame of mind; but here, as
usual, was opportunity knocking at his door when he was
in a mood to be "not at home."

"What must be, must be," he murmured, resigning
himself to his fate.

He kept his eyes glued on Burley, and followed him
slowly until he had watched him enter a cigar and stationery
shop at the corner.  Walking hurriedly past the shop
window twice, he observed Burley, in a rather secretive
manner, handing the proprietor a small bundle of letters.

Then Pryor acted with lightning speed.

In less time than it takes to tell, he had darted down
the dark basement steps of the closed shop next to the
tobacconist's and, after a brief disappearance, had emerged
again.

The man who came trudging up the steps, however, was
not the agile, immaculate gentleman who had descended a
few seconds before.  At least, to outward view, it was a
middle-aged man with stooping shoulders, a painful limp,
clothes that looked trampish and untidy, and a round hat
rammed Klondike fashion far down over his forehead.

This ugly looking customer lurched past the tobacconist's
shop a moment later, just brushing the sleeve of Hutchins
Burley on his way out.  Wholly absorbed in himself, Burley
paid no attention to the incident or the cause of it.  He
plodded on up the street; but the man who had so nearly
collided with him went into the shop, made a quick
purchase—during which he took a good look at the
shopkeeper—and then came back to the street again with a
haste that was scarcely in keeping with his limp.  By this
time Burley had almost turned the corner of Third Avenue,
and Mark Pryor was obliged to throw his limp to the winds
and strike into a lively clip in order to keep his quarry
within view.

Eventually, he contrived to be a passenger on the bus
that carried Hutchins Burley downtown, and got off with
him at Seventeenth Street.  There he watched his man
waddle heavily towards Irving Place and enter a dingy old
house in the middle of the block.

Mark Pryor followed slowly.  As soon as the coast was
clear, he crept cautiously up the front stoop to look at the
name plate on one side of the doorway.  With the aid of a
pocket flashlight, he read the words: "Japanese Consulate
General."

"What in thunder has the Mikado got to do with
Hutchins Burley's smuggling adventures?" he asked
himself, greatly perplexed.

An hour or so later, he repeated this query to a brisk,
florid-faced gentleman in the prime of life who was seated
in what purported to be an actor's agency in the heart of
Times Square.  The florid gentleman, who looked much
less like a theatrical agent than like a military man in
mufti, offered no solution to the enigma.

"Major Blair, I think I'm on the trail of something big
at last," volunteered Mr. Pryor, hopefully.

"Possibly, sir, possibly," replied the gentleman, briskly.

But he paid only a languid attention to his visitor's
spirited account of how he had gradually wormed himself
into the confidence of Hutchins Burley.  When Pryor
finished, he said:

"Somebody else will have to take up the trail of Burley.
Orders came from headquarters this evening that you are
to sail for France the day after tomorrow.  You will report
in Paris to Colonel Scott at the address in this letter."

"Foiled again," exclaimed Pryor, veiling his real feelings
with assumed good humor.  "Whenever I'm on the point of
nailing a case down, headquarters steps in and calls a halt,
as if I were the villain in the piece."

He added sardonically: "What is the use of information
fairly breezing into my hands, so long as headquarters'
notion of Secret Service is that the only conduct becoming
an officer or a gentleman is to keep a secret dark."

"Mr. Pryor, orders are orders!  The first duty of an
officer of the Secret Service is never to ask questions."

"Quite so, sir," returned Pryor coolly.  "And yet the
first duty of a crack Secret Service officer is to ask questions
all the time."

Major Blair stared at this independent, gifted member
of his staff.  Nothing daunted, Mark Pryor took his sealed
orders, saluted and left.





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.. _`JANET ON HER OWN`:

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   PART III


.. class:: center large bold

   JANET ON HER OWN

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   CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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   \I

.. vspace:: 2

Earlier in the same day, a special messenger from Claude
had brought two notes of regret to the Lorillard tenements,
one for Cornelia and one for Janet.  A little before evening,
these notes were followed by quantities of flowers and fruit,
which were for Janet alone.  But Cornelia went into
ecstasies over the presents and caused the rooms of Number
Fifteen to ring with her *arpeggio* laughter.

The note to Janet read:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

Darling Janet:

.. vspace:: 1

Business interests and a promise made long ago
make it imperative for me to go to Long Island today.
The worst of it is, I shall be away for three days, and how
unhappy this makes me, you can't conceive.  Six days
without you will have loitered by when next we meet!
Six endless days away from the miracle of your soft voice
and the wonder of your heavenly smile.

I came back from Washington late last night, not
knowing that I should be prevented from seeing you today.
Even so, I had my car driven, far from its regular
course, past the Lorillard houses.  How I prayed that a
light from your little corner room would invitingly tell me
that you were still awake!  But all was dark, and I had to
be content to let my fancy play around a certain maze of
curly bronze hair, two eyes as limpid gray as an Adirondack
lake before dawn, and a pair of ruddy lips that smile
divinely or talk with so much sense and charm.

You are not like any other girl I have ever known,
dearest Janet!  I think of you as a rare and delicate flower
whose perfume holds my senses as your spirit engrosses
my soul.

I want you to have a happy evening, dear girl, despite
my absence.  Only, every now and then, you are to give
a passing thought to me—disconsolate, forlorn
impatient to be with you again.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Ever your
        Claude.

.. vspace:: 2

Of course, in Claude's absence the party was declared
off, all but the supper in the pagoda.

Cornelia read the letter over twice.  The second time,
she uttered some of the more lyrical passages aloud, rendering
them with a faintly exaggerated stress or mock-heroic
inflection as the case might be.

"Exquisite!" she carolled, handing the note back to
Janet.  "A perfect love letter!  By what an expert hand!"

Lydia Dyson came in just then and had to be told all
about the disappointment.  The author of "Brothers and
Sisters," in an abbreviated accordion pleated frock, a
necklace of jade beads, and very French shoes, looked as
professionally Cleopatrish as ever.

"Janet," she said, knowingly, "Claude has gone to
Huntington, to that Armstrong girl, Marjorie—the one that
was hotfoot after the Earl of Dunbar.  She didn't get the
Earl, you know.  Now they all say she'll marry Claude.
I bet she will, too."

"He doesn't love her," protested Janet.

"As if that made any difference!  Every man needs a
woman to represent him in social life and to advertise the
dignity and solidity of his own rooftree.  Any woman who
can do these things satisfactorily qualifies as a suitable
wife.  Men, you see, are more conventional than women.
Or perhaps I should say, more businesslike."

"Businesslike!" Cornelia interposed.  "Say disgusting,
and you'll be much nearer the truth.  Didn't I tell you,
Janet," she continued, "that men think of women in only
one way—and that a beastly one?"

"On the contrary, they think of women in two ways,"
contended Lydia in her drawling Southern tongue.  "To a
man, all womankind is divided into two groups: the woman
who stands for his home, and all the others—the women
who stand for his pleasure.  The one woman is a necessity;
all the others a luxury.  Every man gets the first at any
cost, and then bids for one or more of the second, if he
has the price."

"Don't be bizarre and crude, Lydia," said Cornelia, not
relishing this analysis in Janet's presence.

"Crude?" said Lydia, repelling the charge as melodramatically
as it was made.  "It is not I who am crude.  It
is man.  It is man who divides our whole sex crassly into
these two groups.  It is man who sees in every woman either
a housekeeper or a wanton.  It is man who fixes a trade
price for affairs of the heart and rates marriages by their
market value.  Call *this* crude, if you like!  Or call it an
incurable blindness to the differing blend of vital forces
that makes each woman unique.  In this respect, how unlike
men are to us, who see in every man a new, mystic union
of protector, lover and father of our children!"

"The new trinity!" chanted Cornelia, with a significant
laugh.  "But I'm sure, dear Lydia, that not every woman
has *your* gift for discovering this mystic trinity in so many
unique specimens of the other sex."

"Dear Cornelia, you flatter me.  My only advantage over
other women lies in the prudence which caused me to get
a husband before I set out to make the discoveries you
allude to."

"Don't let us talk about marriage as it exists today,"
said Cornelia, parrying the blow as best she could.
"Marriage is so banal."

"Yes, and so convenient," drawled Lydia, who reluctantly
supported her husband in idleness and luxury.  "Also, so
expensive.  Husbands now come dearer than ever before
in the history of family life, while lovers never were
cheaper."

"Lydia is joking," said Janet, sending her clear,
mollifying voice into the breach.

"No, I'm not joking," said Lydia, with the utmost
gravity.  She lit a cigarette, adding as she did so:

"I'm making hay while the sun shines."

"Does your husband agree with you on this point?"
asked Janet, curiously.

"My dear, he's used to me.  He takes my word for
everything.  Also my money.  But I'm frank to say that
I don't hold with Cornelia's notions about free love.
They're too fantastic and impractical.  I hold with the
French system: Marry first and experiment afterwards.
It's not logical, Janet, but it works well.  If you experiment
first, you are sure to be done out of marriage, and you may
even be done out of love."

"Really, Lydia," said Cornelia, now thoroughly incensed.
"You must know that Janet believes, as I do, that love is
a surrender, not a sale.  She isn't offering her affections to
the highest bidder."

Janet, intervening, remarked that this was true; but, as
she found Lydia's views very interesting, she begged
Cornelia to let their visitor have her say.

"Oh, very well," said Cornelia, biting her lip.

"That's right, Janet," said Lydia Dyson, grateful for her
support.  "I'm sorry to disagree with Cornelia.  But in this
matter, she's all at sea.  Believe it or not, in modern life,
love is a commodity for sale, like any other commodity.
What else can you expect?  Do you know of any other gift
in the possession of man, woman or child which is not sold
to the highest bidder?  Doesn't a playwright subdue his
creative faculty to the requirements of the manager who
offers the most royalties?  Doesn't the novelist or the
musician or the engineer do the same in his line?  How
indeed can they help it in a country where everything is
bought and sold, where the greed and gluttony of men put
everything under the hammer, from a glass of water to a
draught of genius?  Why marvel that women have to sell
their bodies, when poets and artists have to sell their
souls?"

"Take it from me, Lydia," Cornelia burst in, caustically,
"when you apply the oratorical powers of Robert Lloyd
to the moral principles of Mazie Ross, the product is hard
to beat!"

"Cornelia, you wouldn't say spiteful things like that if
you only knew the truth about sex relations.  I forgive you
because you don't."

"If *I* only knew!" said Cornelia.  She gave a florid
operatic laugh.  "Do you really suppose I *don't* know?"

"No woman does who hasn't been married to a man.
Not until she has been chained in wedlock for some time
does she see the cloven hoof or feel the mark of the beast,
or get her fanciful pictures about love put in a proper
perspective.  That's one thing marriage does for a woman."

"By your own admission, then," remarked Janet, "Cornelia
is right in thinking that the game isn't worth the
candle, isn't she?"

"Dearie," said Lydia, with unction, "ask the most
wretched wife on earth, and she'll answer: 'Tis better to
have wed and lost, than never to have wed at all.'"



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   \II

.. vspace:: 2

Cornelia, observing that Janet took Claude's absence
with surprising composure, wondered whether it was a case
of still waters running deep.  It was partly that, but there
was another reason.  The apparent ease with which Claude
had yielded the preference to Marjorie's claim upon his
time carried with it an unflattering implication as regards
the value he set upon Janet's friendship.  To be sure, there
was the rapturous love letter.  But fine words buttered no
parsnips; they pleased the ear but they neither explained
Claude's course nor justified it.

Thus Janet was as much nettled as disappointed by her
lover's absence.  Yet it was not her way to stew in misery.
And her control of her feelings was made easier by the
pressure of some secretarial work for which she had just
been engaged by Howard Madison Grey, the playwright.

Immediately after supper, therefore, Janet left her friends
in the Japanese pagoda on the roof, having arranged to
spend the evening in Harry Kelly's office in flat Number
Thirteen, where she proposed to practice on the athlete's
typewriter.

Her object was to "increase her speed" so that her most
recent position might be made securer.

Through the Collegiate Bureau, to which Cornelia had
introduced her, she had already been given two opportunities
in business offices downtown.  She had lost them both
within a week, her refinement and charm of manner having
been voted poor substitutes for the experience that she still
lacked.

The fault was not wholly Janet's.  Before she left home,
she had taken a course in shorthand and typewriting (in the
teeth of her mother's opposition) at an Evening High
School.  It was one of those carefully pasteurized courses
for which the American educational system is famous; it
was showy, time consuming, and totally useless.  But how
could Janet have known that high-school stenography was
as pitiably inadequate to the practical needs of a modern
mercantile office as high-school French or German to the
practical needs of a tourist on the Continent?

Not wanting to get into the bad books of the Collegiate
Bureau, Janet was anxious to avert a third discharge.  Moreover,
her post with the playwright had the intrinsic merit of
being more congenial, as well as more lucrative than any she
had filled before.

Janet was thankful that Cornelia would be occupied with
the party, for her efforts to make herself more competent
invariably excited her friend to derision.  Cornelia, like a
true-blue Kipsite, was no devotee of good workmanship.
Endowed with the makings of success in any one of half
a dozen professions, she had achieved failure in all of them,
her inveterate lack of industry and application having
botched a promising career in turn as an author, singer,
painter, dancer, decorator and dress designer.

A born worker, Janet stood in no danger of imitating
Cornelia's business vagaries.  She could not have afforded
it, anyway.  Unlike Cornelia, she had no private income, her
only resources being a small bank deposit (a relative's
bequest), which was dwindling with alarming rapidity.
Thus, inclination and necessity were as one in spurring her
on to making a success of her new post as typist and
amanuensis for Howard Madison Grey.



.. vspace:: 3

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   \III

.. vspace:: 2

The keys of the typewriter were going at a merry gallop
when Robert Lloyd, who had a desk in Kelly's office, came in.

"What do you mean by breaking the commandments
of the Lorillard Tenements?" he said, putting a sheaf of
papers on his desk and getting ready to attack them.

"Which commandments, Robert?"

"All ten.  The first five prohibit any useful work in the
daytime on penalty of loss of caste.  The second five
prohibit the same at night on penalty of excommunication, if
not expulsion."

She laughed and asked him why he hadn't joined Cornelia's
supper party in the Japanese pagoda.  He explained
that he had been detained at a meeting of the Guildsmen's
League, of which he was now the organizing secretary.  He
added that he had brought home a quantity of raw material
to be hammered into a tract on Waste in Industry, a job
which would take him all night.

They each buckled to the task in hand.  Janet liked to
work in the same room with Robert, who knew when to be
silent as well as when to talk.  He treated her like a fellow
worker of his own sex, paying her none of that exaggerated
show of consideration which most men give to women outside
their own family circle.  Thus his presence stimulated
her and in no wise interfered with the concentration
demanded by her typewriting practice.  When she reached
a good stopping point, she offered to help him.  He accepted
the offer eagerly and dictated several letters to her.

"A good job," he said, after she had handed him the
typed sheets to be signed, "and a quick one, too.  You're
improving by leaps and bounds.  Indeed, you might develop
into a 'speed demon,' but for your un-American weakness
for accuracy."

"I've got to be accurate.  I do all sorts of work every
morning, for Mr. Grey, the playwright."

"Grey?  The author of 'The Love that Lies' isn't he?
The play that ran for two seasons.  Is he very exacting?"

"No, but his wife is.  She keeps an eagle eye on all the
typing that's done for him."

"Why?"

"Why?  Well, she serves him as a sort of combination
mother, nurse, watchdog, and general superintendent.  Just
as most wives do."

"And just as most wives will continue to do, until they
choose an independent living in preference."

"Do you think that women are solely responsible for the
social arrangement by which two distinct things like
motherhood and housekeeping are tied indissolubly together?"

"No.  And I don't believe that men are solely responsible,
either."

"Aren't they?"

"No.  Remember, marriage was not always what it is
today.  In the middle ages, the home was also the place of
business, and the wife was her husband's business associate
as well as his mate.  Later, when business went out of the
door, slavery came in through the window.  This was not
exclusively man's doing.  Men and women muddled things
up together.  Honors are very nearly even on that score."

"Be fair, Robert!  Hitherto, men have had all the power."

"Yes, and women have had all the glory.  They were
every bit as well satisfied to belong to the fair, privileged,
and law-evading sex, as men were satisfied to belong to the
coarse, responsible, and law-making sex.  As soon as the
majority of women follow the lead of Lady Cicely in
'Captain Brassbound's Conversion,' that is, as fast as they
'scorn death, spurn fate, and set their hopes above happiness
and love,' they will be able to cope with man's supremacy
as successfully outside the home as they have already done
within it.  What is more, they will work their will in public
much more openly and honorably than they have so far
worked it in private."

"Men are always declaring that women could easily get
full independence if only they would go about it in the right
way.  Clearly, men know the right way and women don't.
Cornelia says that if they are so very much cleverer than we
are, it is a pity they don't set their wits to work so as to
help instead of hindering us in the struggle for equality."

"Never mind what Cornelia says," exclaimed Robert,
energetically.  "She is crazy on the subject of men; that is
why she keeps forever harping on it.  One way of doing
this is to accuse men of everything evil under the sun, from
the creation of God to the invention of the cardboard
kitchenette flat.  Please don't join her in the vulgar senseless
game of pitting one sex against the other."

"You do Cornelia an injustice.  She doesn't maintain that
all women are angels and all men devils.  Nor do I.  But
suppose some men are angels.  I shouldn't care to be a
housekeeper for the archangel Gabriel."

Robert hoped that any lady who consented to share
Gabriel's bed and board would find the archangel up-to-date
and gentlemanly enough to excuse her from washing dishes
and scrubbing floors.  Why should an archangelic or any
other sort of gentleman shortsightedly insist that a talented
bride on her way to becoming an excellent banker, merchant,
or politician, should transform herself into a mediocre
woman-of-all-work?  Why should he consider his own
bargain bettered by such a questionable transformation?

"On the other hand, Janet," he added boldly, "why
should an up-to-date young lady jump from the devil of
housekeeping into the deep sea of free love, as I fear you
will end by doing if you follow Cornelia's suggestions?"

She knew that he had Claude in mind.  But she was
unable to take offence at his uncandid candor and his
disinterested interest.

"Robert, what a tantalizing mixture of the liberal and
the conservative you are!" she exclaimed, refusing to take
up his challenge.

"I am merely the child of my age, Janet.  I was born with
reactionary habits and nursed on radical ideas.  All logic
counsels me to become an enemy of existing institutions; all
instinct drives me to conduct operations within the enemy's
camp.  I betray under two flags."

"You can't make me believe that.  If you were all kinds
of a traitor, you wouldn't be such a jolly companion to work
with or to talk to.  Do you know the most delightful thing
about you, Robert?"

"Modesty forbids me to say—but not to hear.  Tell me."

"It is the fact that you can behave towards a woman
friend as frankly and decently and unsentimentally as you
would towards a man friend.  You can't imagine what a
relief it is to a girl to know one man who'll always treat
her man-to-man fashion."

"Will I?  Janet, if you were perfectly sure of my future
conduct you'd find me an insufferable bore.  Besides, no
fascinating woman ever wanted to be treated like a man—at
least not for long at a time.  You won't be the first
exception."

"Don't be silly, Robert.  If ever I should get married—which
Heaven forbid!—it will be to a man like you, one
who can work with me without constantly remembering my sex."

"Oh almost any man will be able to do that, as soon as
being your husband loses its novelty for him.  Still, I'm
grateful to you for your well-meant opinion, Janet.  I shall
try to deserve it by offering you a small business partnership."

He rapidly sketched the plan he had in mind, pointing out
that, as only her mornings were engaged by the playwright,
Grey, she might help him afternoons with the Guild League's
work.  He was hard pressed for assistance; the League could
just afford a part-time worker; there was a good deal of
editing and typewriting which he was sure she could
undertake.

Janet begged to be taken on trial.  The bargain was
struck amid the sounds of merrymaking that came, none
too faintly, through the walls of flat Number Fifteen.  She
remarked that Cornelia's party appeared to have been a
huge success after all.

"Yes, it has given birth to the firm of Barr and Lloyd,"
said Robert, jestingly.

He was aware of the conflict in Janet between the temptations
of the love chase and the attraction of the force that
moves the sun and the stars.  And he fondly believed that
this conflict no longer existed in himself.  The love of man
for woman against the love of life!  He had made his
decision, she had not.

Two questions remained uppermost in his mind.  One
was: "Could he capture Janet's great natural talents for his
own side, the side, not of the fires of sensuous gratification
but of the flame that burns at the heart of the world?"  The
other was: "Did Janet really want him to act towards her
precisely as towards a man?"

Curiously enough, the irrelevance of the second question
to the first, did not strike him.





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   CHAPTER SIXTEEN


.. class:: center large bold

   \I

.. vspace:: 2

In the days that followed, Janet's morning duty as
Mr. Grey's secretary and her afternoon employment as assistant
to Robert left her with very little leisure.  Such time as
remained on her hands she spent chiefly with Cornelia or
with Claude.

Neither of these friends exhibited much enthusiasm over
Janet's determined effort to earn her own living.  Cornelia
looked with ill-concealed disfavor on an exhibition of
diligence which, besides being foreign to the atmosphere of
Kips Bay, used up so much of her protegee's time that the
burden of housekeeping in flat Number Fifteen was
inevitably shifted to Cornelia's own shoulders.  As for Claude,
his reaction, equally cool, was governed partly by the
scarcity value which now attached itself to Janet's leisure
hours, partly also by another reason which he hardly dared
to face.

Somewhat daunted by the lukewarm attitude of her
friends, Janet nevertheless kept courageously on with the
task of making her independence secure.

Howard Madison Grey, the playwright, was then composing
his fourth play, "Cleopatra's Needle."  His practise
was to dictate rapidly to Janet for an hour and a half, after
which she was expected to typewrite the sketchy dialogue,
changes in grammar and syntax and even in diction being
left, as time went on, more and more to her discretion.  As
the work appealed to her interest as well as to her skill, she
despatched it with zest.

Bit by bit, two drawbacks emerged, however.  One was
Janet's liability to mistakes because of an absorption in the
plot, an absorption so deep as to interfere seriously with
quick mechanical transcription.  The other was Mrs. Howard
Madison Grey.

This lady had opened a correspondence with her future
husband during the short run of his first play, "The Spice of
Life," for the hero of which (a masterful but incorrigible
polygamist) she had conceived an unbounded admiration.
The correspondence ripened into matrimony, Mrs. Grey
bringing her spouse the money and influence that lifted him
swiftly to a solid place in the theatrical world.

When his second play, "The Love that Lies," financed by
her father, scored a big hit, she noticed that he became
the gratified recipient of a good deal of feminine attention.
Mindful of the polygamous experiments of his two masterful
heroes, she remembered that precaution is the better part of
safety.  Marriage had considerably modified her point of
view, and she now had a conviction that there should be a
yawning gulf between the pluralistic imaginings of the
dramatist and the monogamic behavior of the husband.

To give this conviction shape, she enframed him in a
watchful chaperonage.  Chaperonage was not the name she
used.  She called it, "being a helpmeet."

The helpmeet's first official act was to place Mr. Grey's
communications with the world beyond-the-home under a
strict censorship.  She looked after his correspondence,
registered his engagements, and kept in telephonic touch with
him when he went to a club or directed a rehearsal.  Let the
enemy idolaters capture him (if they could) through the
barbed-wire entanglements of her devotion!

In the same spirit, she threw cold water on his business-like
proposal to do his writing in an office building.  Such
an environment, she said, would kill the soul of his art.  Her
substitute was a study, comfortably fitted up in his own
home; and there, accordingly, he and Janet were obliged to
work.

Mrs. Howard Madison Grey was a woman of fixed
opinions.  She was firm in the belief that a transcendent
artistic talent was lodged in her husband; she was equally
firm in the belief that a transcendent executive talent was
lodged in herself.  On the principle that it pays to specialize
she held it to be no more than right that any power or
glory acquired by the name of Howard Madison Grey should
be exercised by the executive branch of the family.  About
this opinion she was entirely frank.

"I've made him," she said to Janet, one day.  "Why
should I let others enjoy the fruit of my labors?"

This was said as much in warning as in confidence.  Janet
was greatly amused, inasmuch as her feelings toward her
employer were unsentimental to the point of prosiness.

None the less, Mrs. Grey's never ending readiness to suspect
Janet of a design on her vested interest in Mr. Grey soon
became a great bore.  It was also somewhat trying to the
nerves.  At the most unexpected moments, the good lady
would shoot in upon her husband and his assistant like a
cartridge from a noiseless gun, and explode into
embarrassing explanations.

Until, at length, Mr. Grey's perfectly correct and
unemotional attitude towards Janet underwent a dangerous change.



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   \II

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By the time Claude returned from his visit to Huntington,
Janet had already settled down to her new routine.  Claude
did not seriously object to her morning engagement with
Howard Madison Grey, but her afternoon work in Kelly's
study—the work she did for Robert's league—this he viewed
as an intolerable encroachment on his privileges.

Out of regard for Janet's warm espousal of the cause of
woman's independence, he concealed his feelings as best he
could.  But he used his prodigal gifts without scruple to
lay siege to Janet's hours of employment, especially to her
afternoons.  Four or five days out of seven, on one excuse
or another, his imposing car would draw up to the Lorillard
tenements, and its owner, handsome, dashing, persuasive,
would tempt Janet away from laborious tasks to the delights
of an excursion.

In vain did Janet upbraid herself each time she yielded,
or school herself diligently against the next occasion.  When
the next occasion came, she found, as likely as not, that she
was as helpless as ever to resist his thrilling voice, his ardent
eye, and his magnetic wooing.

In Cornelia, Claude had a subtle and insidious agent on
his side.  If Janet gave a crushing refusal to one of Claude's
incitements to truancy, Cornelia would flash a reason in
his favor as unanswerable as a sword.  Or if Janet,
persuaded, but not convinced, gave signs of an uneasy
conscience, Cornelia was always ready to annihilate doubt with
some apt quotation (or misquotation) such as "Work no
further, pretty sweeting—youth's a stuff will not endure."

Naturally, this spasmodic holiday making was the cause
of frequent delays in the performance of the work for the
Guildsmen's League.  Janet tried to make up for lost time
by working late at night, a practice that drew upon her the
reproaches of Cornelia who alleged that it interfered with
her sleep.  Needless to say, Cornelia exhibited no
compunction for the serious inconvenience that all this caused
Robert.  Far from it.  She appeared to get a lively
satisfaction from seeing his partnership bedeviled and his
remonstrances ignored.

As a fact, she feared that Robert's influence over Janet
was quietly undermining her own ascendancy.  But what
was there to justify this fear?  Janet's enthusiasm for the
free life of the model tenements had not yet abated and
her admiration for Cornelia's talents was still very strong.
But a straw showed Cornelia which way the wind was
blowing.

Janet was gradually but steadily cutting down the
amount of housework she did in Flat Number Fifteen!

The terms on which Cornelia chummed up with her
successive companions always included an agreement to have
the housework done, share and share alike.  In practice,
the adoring friend took over most of Cornelia's share,
at least while the friendship was in its early stages.
As time went on and illusions were shattered, the unequal
burden was slowly whittled away by the active partner
until Cornelia's shoulders stood in grave danger of having
a full half of the cleaning and marketing thrust upon them.
At this point, she generally unearthed a new adorer as well
as excellent reasons for breaking with the old one; and then
she started the whole cycle afresh.

Like her predecessor, Janet had begun by doing far more
errands, dishes and cooking, than a strictly fair division
called for.  At first, the respective proportions had stood at
about three-quarters for Janet and one-quarter for Cornelia.
After a few days of this arrangement, however, Janet had
begun so to manipulate matters that her allotment fell
rapidly to one-half.  And the pendulum had swung gaily
on.  In fine, within a few months of her arrival, this new
convert to modernity had reversed the original proportions
so that they now stood at about three-quarters for Cornelia
and one-quarter for Janet.

If this was feminism—Cornelia confided to Hercules
("among the faithless, faithful only he")—it was feminism
with a vengeance!

The situation was without precedent in the history of
the Outlaws of Kips Bay.  Even more unprecedented was
Cornelia's acceptance of the situation.  But this compliance
of hers was in no wise dictated by generosity or affection,
as some innocents conjectured.  Cornelia was simply shrewd
enough to see that Janet was the magnet which had drawn
back to Number Fifteen its departed splendor and had
restored to herself the position of the first lady of the
Lorillard tenements, a position she greatly prized.

One question that Cornelia put to Hercules was: Had
Janet's repugnance for housework merely kept pace with
her growing appetite for women's rights, or was Robert
Lloyd at the bottom of all the mischief?  How should the
mute and glorious Hercules reply to a purely rhetorical
query?—Cornelia favored the second explanation, a fact
which boded Robert no good.



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   \III

.. vspace:: 2

Although Robert had in no sense entered the lists as one
of Janet's suitors, Cornelia instituted comparisons between
him and Claude, never to the former's advantage.  She took
occasion to contrast Claude's noble bearing and look of
sovereign strength with Robert's simpler and frailer
appearance.  She dwelt on the cosmopolitan aura that clung to
Claude, his subtle atmosphere of wealth, breeding and high
social origin, the amalgam of gorgeous qualities that offered
so much more than Robert's radical connections and
straitened financial circumstances.  Her trump card was
to call attention to Claude's free and easy response to the
Lorillard conception of the rights of women and to offset
this picture with an allusion to Robert's prudent
reservations on the same subject.

If these comparisons were of an offhand and haphazard
sort, nothing was thereby lost in effectiveness.  Far from
it.  They glorified Claude by what was carelessly said:
they damaged Robert by what was carefully left unsaid.

Although unaware of the Machiavellian promptings of
which she was the innocent cause, Janet became dimly
conscious of the conflict already sensed by Robert, the
conflict between her work (which was bound up with Robert)
and her love affair (which was somehow bound up with
Cornelia as well as with Claude).  She felt the tug of
Robert one way and the tug of Claude and Cornelia the
other way, without fully grasping the difference in the two
directions or the final significance of either goal.

It was Claude, however, and not Cornelia, that gave
Janet's friendship with Robert an importance that none
of those concerned attached to it.  Claude simply could not
understand why Janet should refuse to neglect Robert's
League, whenever the work of the League stood in the way
of their outings together.  Economic independence, the
reason advanced by Janet, was a reason he laughed at.  The
words meant hardly anything to one who from birth had
been glutted with the thing itself.  Surely a few beggarly
dollars, more or less, did not adequately account for Janet's
readiness to cloister herself in Kelly's bare and sunless
study!  Yet what other motive could there be, if not one
of tender feeling on Robert's part, or soft pity on hers?

Still, the rivalry that actually sprang up between the
two young men was not a rivalry in love, at least not in
Robert's sense of the word.

For Robert was no fool.  He was soon convinced that
Claude and Janet had surrendered unconditionally to a
mutual infatuation which he was in no position to
challenge.  Yet he had a magnetism of his own, a magnetism
of the spirit rather than of the flesh.  To this magnetism
Janet responded.  Why should he not claim the same title
to Janet's response in the one sphere that Claude laid claim
to in the other?

At all events, he meant to fight for what he considered his
rights, regardless of Claude's frowns or vanishing friendship.

Between the two, Janet had a hard time of it.  Claude
professed to accept free love as a new and improved social
principle, and praised her for holding it; yet he grew
unmanageable the moment she gave the least hint of exercising
this freedom in connection with any other man than
himself.  On the other hand, Robert rejected free love as
a pernicious Greenwich Village or Lorillard tenement
eccentricity, and even severely scolded her for entertaining it;
yet his actions showed that she might love as many different
men as madly as she pleased, without causing his friendship
for her to undergo any really radical change.

To cap the oddity of this contrast, she found that
Robert's unlimited tolerance, though socially much the more
agreeable attitude, was not without its suggestion of tepidity
of sentiment, a suggestion which piqued her not a little.

The rivalry, such as it was, followed a very human
course.  Robert, as an outgrowth of his work with Janet
took to promoting her education in contemporary thought
and political theory.  Claude, not to be behindhand, made
the most of his special knowledge of art as well as of his
wide first-hand acquaintance with the men and events that
figured picturesquely in the ruling social and political rings
of Washington and New York.  In the matter of books,
Claude generally took the cue from Robert.  The latter
would lend her works by Shaw, Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy,
Bertrand Russell, Anatole France, Barbusse, Romaine
Rolland; Claude would follow suit with the latest fiction by
Robert W. Chambers or Rupert Hughes, his authors
ranging as high as Rudyard Kipling, Maeterlinck or Barrie.
One would take her to a symphony concert in Carnegie
Hall, the other to a Sunday Pop in the Hippodrome.
Robert held out invitations to a Theater Guild's play by
Masefield or Andreyev, Claude would counter with an
evening at a revival of Florodora or San Toy.  If Janet
accompanied Robert to a Labor Mass Meeting at Cooper Union or
to a radical Cameraderie at the Civic Club, she was sure,
soon after, to be escorted by Claude to a Titta Ruffo recital
in Aeolian Hall or to a midnight cabaret in Moloch's Den
off Sheridan Square.

To Janet, who had broken with the Barrs of Brooklyn
and who was as much on pleasure as on emancipation bent,
it was not Robert's offer that usually seemed the happier
one.

Not the least of Claude's advantages was the fact that
he moved in Kips Bay as a representative of the great
forces of finance and fashion.  He reflected the high lights
of that glittering social system of which he was a favorite
child.  Direct and intimate was his contact with the celebrities
of the day—the bankers and politicians, the diplomats
and society leaders, the cabinet set in Washington, and the
inner opera box set in New York.  These were his real
people; the Lorillarders were merely the people among
whom he was sowing his radical wild oats.

In short, Claude was one of the persons "in the know."  He
knew a good deal more about the personages whose
names were on everybody's tongues than the public knew
or the newspapers thought fit to print.  He could tell about
the opera soprano of the first magnitude whose attacks of
hysterical jealousy would cause the curtain to be held down
between the acts for forty minutes, while the poor director
tore his hair in desperation.  He could laugh at the
"mystery" of the appointment of a certain mediocre woman
teacher to a superintendency in the city's schools, the
mystery vanishing upon his inside story of how the lady in
question "had been good" to Big Jim Connolly, a local
political boss.  And he could explain the connection between
the failure to float a certain foreign loan and the omission
of a well-known financier's wife from the group of guests
invited to meet the Prince of Wales.

Thus Claude Fontaine, whose handsome face and
dashing airs would have made him an idol in almost any society,
enchanted his fellow Outlaws with the aroma clinging to
him from the world of fashion and the glimpses he afforded
into the secret workings of the world of power.  Small
wonder that to Janet, as to the others, Claude was bathed
in a romantic glamor.

By contrast with Claude, Robert seemed to lead a
decidedly work-a-day or humdrum life.  Especially so, since
his newspaper employment had been cut off and his active
time given up to the League of Guildsmen.  As far as Janet
could see, Robert's entire thought and energy were absorbed
by an overwhelming interest in the Labor movement.  For
though he had plenty of esthetic diversions, she noticed
that the books he read, the music he delighted in, and the
pictures he admired were all in some way expressive of
souls in bondage, aspiring to freedom.

Now for the time being, Janet wanted to forget about
the lowly and the oppressed.  She had the same feeling
towards "causes" and "reforms" that a released convict
has towards societies for Improving the Condition of
Prisoners on Parole.

It must not be supposed that Janet took an unsympathetic
view of the movements for human freedom which
were convulsing society after the Great War.  She was a
sincere convert to the principle of woman's equality and she
made an honest effort to be open-minded to the theories
that Robert expounded.  But her heart was not in theories.
Her pulse refused to quicken when Robert told her of the
new social cleavage which was fast ranging the useful
active people on one side, and the parasitic profiteering
people on the other.  In common with a great many of her
contemporaries, she sat heedlessly on a volcano, enchanted
by the twinkle of the stars.

What if Robert *did* prove up to the hilt that the world
was in the birth throes of a new social order!  Youth must
have its glamor.  And there is no glamor about birth
throes, not even about the birth throes of a new world.

Besides, the old social alignment in which princes of the
purple and masters of the gold ruled in pomp or circumstance
over the toilers of the factory, the office and the soil—this
old alignment was much more familiar to poor Janet
(and to everybody else) than the new one predicted.  Literature
and legend, the school room, the pulpit and the press—all
the regular organs of education, in fact—had mesmerized
her into viewing the practical politics and the dominant
economics of the day as splendors and glories without
parallel.  Was the psychology of a lifetime to be uprooted
or transformed by a few weeks of unconventional conduct
in a Kips Bay tenement, or even by a brief high-tension
course of reading in the works of Samuel Butler, Bernard
Shaw, Romaine Rolland and other prophets of the life to
come?

Clearly not.  And so when Claude came with his many-colored
news from the seats of the mighty, he found it easy
to engross and transport Janet.  But when Robert talked
to her of strikes, trade unions and labor congresses, he left
her bewildered or mystified, though seldom cold.  In short,
the rivalry even for the mind of Janet was a rather
one-sided affair, Claude, the darling of the gods, holding an
immense initial advantage over Robert, the advocate of
rebel causes.





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   CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


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   \I

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On an afternoon late in May, Claude took Janet to see
the boat race between Yale and Pennsylvania over the
so-called American Henley course on the Schuylkill.  Nature
was in one of her soft and sober moods.  The weather was
mild, the sky lightly overcast, and the colors of the
landscape as well as of the living things upon it were toned
down to various shades of slate, dove or lavender, all
blending into the serious beauty of a dominant pearl gray.

After the race, while the crowds were melting away, the
two lovers walked into the pathway along the river.
Perhaps in response to the pallid coloring around, Claude
became a prey to melancholy thoughts; and the day, the
mood and the girl impelled him to confidences about the
marriage with Marjorie Armstrong into which he felt
himself being forced.

Janet made an ideal confidante.  The exercise of putting
herself sympathetically into other people's shoes was a joy
to her.  Not only did she see herself as others saw her;
she had the rarer gift of seeing others as she saw herself.
In doing so, she could leave her own desires and feelings
entirely out of the prospect.  Thus, the story of Claude
and Marjorie, like any other human drama, appealed to
her judgment on its merits.  Nor did she disturb Claude
with the intrusion of any vulgar jealousy because the lover
was her own lover and the woman was a rival woman.

The narrative began with the tenderness Claude had
conceived for Marjorie some two years before.  He told Janet
how the proud beauty had first encouraged him and then,
with unexampled coolness, had allowed the Earl of Dunbar
to displace him in her favor.  Later the Earl in his turn
had jilted Marjorie.  Could he be asked to care for her
after such an ill-starred episode?

Unluckily, he was by now far the most desirable match
among the young men whose names she consented to put
on her list of eligibles.  In this preference she had her
father's hearty support.  Naturally.  For Mr. Armstrong was
a slave of every wish she framed.  Meanwhile, his own father
had the most urgent private reasons for promoting the
Armstrong project.

"You see my horrible position," he said.  "I'm expected
to marry a girl I don't love in order to get my father out
of a bad box.  It's like a story of the eighteenth century;
only, in those happy days, it was the daughter, not the
son, who had to pull the chestnuts out of the fire."

"But surely, Claude, not all the king's horses nor all
the king's men can *compel* you to marry if you don't want to."

"No, but compulsion isn't the only form of coercion in
the world, Janet.  Nor even the worst.  Can you think
what it means to have everybody in your set *expecting* you
to do a certain thing?"

"Expecting you?"

"Yes, it sounds fantastic.  But it would sound real
enough if once you had a taste of it.  They show their
expectations by word and deed, by sign and innuendo.
They show it constantly, mercilessly, in a hundred small
and super-subtle ways.  I tell you, Janet, concerted
expectation is the strongest form of pressure that can be brought
to bear upon a man.  It can bring about miracles.  It can
move mountains.  Only a hero or a coward can resist it."

"I suppose it's like the pressure of public opinion or of
one's family," she said, her soft clarinet tones pouring balm
on his feelings.  "I know what family pressure means.  I
am so sorry for you, Claude, sorry from my heart."

"I love you for saying that, Janet!  I love you for your
adorable pity.  I love you for being so unlike Marjorie.
She has her good points; but fellow feeling is not one of
them.  You see, her social ambition and the ease with
which she can gratify her every wish have quite dried up
the tender places in her heart.  She has no pity left in her
nature.  And pity is always the essential thing in a woman's
soul."

They sat down on a grassy slope in a secluded corner of
the park.  In a lyrical mood, Claude pointed to the sun
just then flaring out and splashing a thousand colors on the
livid sky.

"Look, Janet," he said, "how the whole earth thrills to its
warm radiance!  Just as everyone thrills to your divine
gift of sympathy."

He was lying on the ground with his head in her lap,
while her hand was gently stroking his curly hair.

"I am so happy to be in this spot with you, Claude, and
to hear from your lips the things that only you can say.
When you make love to me, I feel as though I were in some
Enchanted Valley with a prince from the *Arabian Nights*."

"Yes, and he a miracle of discretion, too!"

"A miracle of indiscretion, rather!" said Janet, as he
drew her head down to his, kissed her once and kissed her
again.

He soon became pensive, however.  Pursuing his former
train of thought, he declared that if he remained in New
York, "public expectation" would certainly drive him into
the dreaded marriage with Marjorie.  There was only one
avenue of escape.  That was to go abroad and stay out of
harm's way until Marjorie should choose some one else as
in due time she was bound to do.

"But the force that holds me back," he said, "is far
stronger than the one that bids me go.  I can't live without
you, Janet, darling."

"Then I suppose you'll have to take me along," she said,
bending low over him.

Their lips met in a sustained and ardent kiss.

"No," he said.  "I dare not assume a responsibility so
great."

"If I go with you," she said quietly, "I shall go on my
own responsibility."

"Janet, it would be too wonderful.  Don't let me think
of it, or my good resolutions will stand no firmer than a
flag in a strong wind.  But you are an angel to offer to
come.  You do love me then, very, very much?"

"What a question, Claude!"

"Well, you keep a pretty tight rein on your feelings,
darling," he said, with the least trace of reproach.  "Tender
and true you are, I know," he added.  "But you don't say
any of the things that girls say when their hearts are in the
grip of a wild, extravagant passion.  Do you know that you
have never even asked me once whether I really and truly
and madly love you?"

"Whether *you* love *me*?"

"Yes, that is the question girls ask their lovers over and
over again."

"Well, Claude, the important thing to me is that *I* love
*you*."

"Do you mean to say, Janet, that you don't care whether
I love you or not?"

"I don't mean that.  But what I care about most is that
you are the sort of man whom *I* can love.  That is the
thing that makes me happy.  It's delightful, of course,
to know that you love me in return.  Still, if you didn't
love me, I don't think I should be in hopeless misery.  If
you turned out to be different from what I dreamed you
were, so different that I could no longer love you, then I
should be heart-broken."

To Claude, this seemed a bitter-sweet reply.  More sweet
than bitter, however, and so he did not contest it.

What a puzzling girl she was, he thought.  So sensible
and yet so imprudent.  And totally devoid of the instinct
that induces most women to exploit the amorous moment.
Claude could not get over it.  Any other girl would have
made the most of his present mood, the mood in which he
was ready to think the world well lost for love.  When the
blood is hot, the tongue is prodigal of vows.  Claude, at
all events, was willing to promise anything, especially as he
was still in pursuit, and as his promises were not to mature
until he was in possession.

Yet Janet asked absolutely nothing!  This surrender,
as open-handed as it was confiding, moved him to compunction.
He sat up and put his arms around her.  Her head
buried in his shoulder had the effect of seeking refuge there.
And she looked so trusting, so helpless, so innocent, that a
great love for her welled up in his heart.  Ought he not to
do the noble, the chivalrous thing?

"Look here, Janet," he said, with the air of Sir Philip
Sidney offering his last drink of water to another wounded
soldier on the battle field, "why couldn't we be married?
My father would get over it in time."

"Yes, your father might.  But *we* might not."

"No, no, dearest.  You mustn't say that.  My love is
not a thing of whims and fancies.  I shall love you till life
itself has passed away."

"Then what difference does it make whether we get
married or not," she said.

With infinite tact, she refrained from accepting his lofty
pledge of eternal constancy.  She also refrained from a
similar commitment of her own affections.

"Don't misunderstand me, Janet," he said, as sadly as
if her disagreement cut him to the soul.  "I merely felt
in honor bound to offer to marry you.  I know better than
you do what an unconventional step means.

"All the more reason why I should learn by experience,
then.  No, Claude.  If I married you, I'm sure I should
soon stop loving you.  The thought that you had a legal
claim on my affection would be enough to kill it."

"Oh, you mustn't take the law so seriously, darling.
Nobody does, nowadays."

"I know nothing about the law, Claude," she said, repudiating
all jurisprudence with one of her eloquent gestures.
"Do you want us to become a careworn, broken-spirited,
isolated married couple, hating all the other careworn,
broken-spirited, isolated married couples of the western
world?  Do you want me to grow to hate and despise you
as my mother hates and despises my father, as so many
wives appear secretly to hate and despise their husbands?"

"How can you say such monstrous things, Janet?"

"How can you pretend to believe that love should be
free?" she retorted.

"Well," he replied, "I admit there's a lot in what you
say.  I suppose," he added with a fine masculine
irrelevance, "that we can always change our minds and get
married later on if we choose to."

He could not fully persuade himself that Janet really
believed in free love.  Nevertheless, he was hugely relieved
to learn that, whatever her motive might be, she had no
ulterior matrimonial designs on him.  If only he could have
suppressed a sneaking fear that he was "taking advantage"
of Janet, as he called it, or satisfied himself that he was
legitimately taking the good the gods provided, as the
Outlaws boldly called a step of this sort!

But Claude's Bohemianism was only skin-deep.  Like
a good many Bohemians, he discarded traditional forms,
costly conventions and social restrictions, chiefly in order
to extract from social intercourse and philandering, the
greatest amount of pleasure with the smallest amount of
risk.  Being a Bohemian was merely a sybaritic pastime for him.

In short, Claude lacked the courage of his experiments.
The only morality he genuinely believed in was the current
morality (and immorality) of his peers.  Thus loose love
could be allowed to have a certain place in the scheme of
things, but free love, as an avowed principle, was incontestably
wrong.  Claude might humor the model tenementers
to the extent of using their free-love propaganda for his own
ends.  At heart, however, he was profoundly shocked by
Janet's stubborn contention that her views of marriage,
though glaringly heterodox, were morally sound.

As Claude had worked it out, there were two ways of
getting past the limitations of a social institution.  One was
to support the institution while sneaking over the fences
and enjoying the secret breach of law as a delightful bit
of "living in sin."  The other way was to defy the institution
by boldly climbing over the fences and asserting the
sin to be a virtue.  Surely, the first was the pleasanter, the
wiser, nay, the more ethical proceeding!

Of course Claude did not reason the distinction out as
clearly as this.  But he felt its force and, for his part,
was resolved to act upon it.  However, he did not attempt
to convert Janet to his way of thinking.  That would have
been fraught with peril to the smoothness of their future
relations.  Besides, a long didactic argument would have
spoiled the tender passages in the journey home.  And
Claude never encouraged his conscience to make a martyr
of him.



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   \II

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When they got back to Kips Bay, they found Cornelia
and her Hercules in Number Fifteen.  Harry Kelly, silent
and worshipful, was washing the accumulated dishes of the
day, in a supreme exhibition of devotion.  His inamorata,
ensconced in state in her favorite armchair, was tacking a
blue denim smock together with bits of fancy colored
worsteds.

She announced her intention of marching in the parade
of the Overalls Economy Club, an organization recently
formed to protest against the high cost of living.

Robert, it appeared, had greeted this announcement with
gibes and with an ironic contrast between her expenditure
of time and her economy of money.  Nor had he confined
his sarcasm to her.

"What do you suppose Cato said when I told him about
the parade?" Cornelia retailed vindictively.  "He said,
'I suppose Claude will march, too?  He will have no difficulty
in getting the right kind of uniform.  In the Times
this morning, a Fifth Avenue store advertises overalls with
solid gold buckles from fifty dollars up.'"

"There's a typical reformer for you," said Claude,
bitterly.  "Always shying bricks at the very people that
want to build with them."

Hereupon, Cornelia, in the role of a loyal though
long-suffering friend of Robert's, undertook to extenuate his
conduct.  She observed that he had doubtless been made
angry because his work was retarded by Janet's absences.
The best proof of his state of mind was a threat he had
made to engage another secretary.

"I wish he would," said Claude, compressing his lips,
while Janet tried not to look conscience-stricken.

"Of course he doesn't in the least mean to part with
Araminta," continued Cornelia, wallowing in the emotional
effect of her news.  "Not he.  Cato knows a good thing
when he sees it.  But he doesn't approve of Janet's parties
with you, Lothario.  The principle is wrong, he claims."

"The principle is wrong!" cried both Claude and Janet
with very different inflections.

Cornelia laughed musically up and down the scale.

"Just fancy what he said: 'A friendship which doesn't
grow spontaneously out of joint partnership in work is
built on quicksands.'"

"He's a fanatic," said Harry Kelly, breaking his silence
and one of Cornelia's saucers in the violence of his feelings.

"Nonsense, Hercules," she said, in a tone that poured
contempt on his vehemence.  "He has simply let all the
soft places grow in his head and all the hard places in his
heart."

Janet went into the next room to hang up her hat and
coat.  Claude followed her.

"I think Robert's ideas are getting more and more
unbalanced," he said, dictatorially.  "If I were you, Janet,
I'd finish up my work with him at once."

"It takes two to break a bargain, Claude."

"Well, you might at least keep your relations with him
on a strictly business footing—and as little of that as
possible."

He ignored her slight mutinous gesture.

"He's a difficult man to get along with," he went on.
"Look how even Hutchins Burley had to fire him.  And
as if his dismissal from the *Chronicle* were not bad enough,
he joins these Guildsmen people who are trying to wreck
the very basis of modern society.  That has just about
dished him, as far as the Outlaws are concerned.  They
all cut him now."

A new imperiousness crept into his voice as he added:

"I wish that, for my sake, you would not be seen going
about with him, ever."

He accepted her silence as an evidence of tacit consent.



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   \III

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The very next afternoon, before a full hour's writing
and typing had been done, Robert amazed Janet by
proposing that they suspend work and take a walk.

"I want particularly to talk to you," he said.

"About what?"

"About love," said Robert, gravely.

What girl could resist an invitation like that?  Despite
Claude's stern admonition, Janet did not wait to be urged.

They walked near the East River towards the gas-house
district, and presently turned into a recreation pier which
was almost deserted.  Clearly, Robert was looking for a
very private and sequestered corner.

On the way, every topic was broached except the one
that Robert had advanced as an excuse for truancy.  Did
suspense sharpen Janet's anticipation?  No.  Janet was
curious, but not consumedly so.  She had a marvelous
power of attracting confidences and was quite used to
having young men, who had known her only a few days, confide
in her their love affairs, their religious or financial
troubles, and indeed the whole history of their lives.  True,
Robert might be in love, not with another girl but with
herself.  Having no false modesty, Janet entertained the
suspicion for a moment.  Only for a moment, however.  For
the presumption against it seemed conclusive.

Meanwhile, they walked happily along, until Robert
found the spot that suited him.  This was at the end of
the pier farthest from the street.  No watchman being in
sight, they sat down on a great terminal beam and let
their legs swing over the green and choppy water.

The Janet who laughed and chatted with Robert was a
very different girl from the Janet who was accustomed to
hang romantically on Claude's lips.  Nothing, of course,
could equal the magnetism of Claude or match the fire and
glory of their mutual passion.  Still, in Claude's presence
she seemed constantly to be playing up to some magnificent
part; she felt like a cross between, say, the Lady of Shalott
and the ecstatic lady in the Song of Songs.  Without
denying that it was a rapturous game, a game well worth the
candle, she found it a trifle exhausting.

With Robert, on the other hand, the high-tension, party-dress
Janet could be put away (so to speak) and the simple,
work-a-day, blouse-and-skirt Janet substituted.  Now Janet
was the kind of girl who always looked her worst in her
best things and was most herself when least dressed up.
Naturally, she did not apply this symbol to her two
friendships.  Being a young, rebellious, and infatuated
young lady, how could she?  Besides, had she done so, she
might have reasoned the matter out to a disturbing conclusion.

"Well, Robert," she said, cheerily.  "Begin, and tell me
all that's in your heart of hearts."

"It's not my heart I mean to talk about.  It's yours."

"Mine!  What an idea!  Why, my heart's in the pink
of condition.  Positively no inspection needed.

   |  'Oh my heart is a free and a fetterless thing,
   |  A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing.'

I don't mean to say that it's a flighty object, though," she
added, with a smile.

"No, if it were, it would be much easier to talk to you
about it," said Robert.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, a whole century separates the Janet I first
knew—the Janet who hesitated to go to a picture play on the
Sabbath—from the Janet who reads Bernard Shaw and
Bertrand Russell, attends labor meetings on Sundays, and
catches each newest whiff of radical opinion.  The change
takes one's breath away."

"You admit it's a change for the better, don't you?"

"In every way but one."

"Which one?"

"You have taken Cornelia too seriously.  Her views on
sex are morbid and totally unsuited for adoption by a
healthy, inexperienced girl."

"Now, Robert, please don't begin that over again.
You've said it all before."

"I shall say it and say it again until I've convinced
you.  Even you must admit that Cornelia has a chronic
grudge against men."

"Well, it isn't so unnatural, after her unhappy love
affair, is it?"

"Precisely.  As a result of that love affair, all her sex
emotions are inverted.  She sublimates her sex into acts of
spite, usually unconscious acts.  For instance, she is subtly
encouraging you to run off with Claude as she ran off with
Percival Houghton.  Forgive me for mentioning it, Janet.
But I can't bear to see you duped.  Believe me, if you
followed her example, with an equally unhappy result, she
would like nothing better."

"Claude is not in the least like Percival Houghton,"
said Janet coldly.  "Whatever else he may be, he isn't a cad."

"Of course he isn't," Robert hastened to say.

"Then stop making horrid comparisons.  It is such an
easy thing to do.  Suppose I were to say that you are like
an X-ray machine, finding out all that is bad in people,
while Claude is like a magnet drawing out all that is good
in them.  What would you say to that comparison?"

"I should accept it," replied Robert, with a smile.  "The
superiority of the X-ray in point of social usefulness is, I
think, beyond dispute."

"Oh, with you social usefulness is everything, and
personal happiness nothing!"

"Suppose Claude is a magnet," he went on, unheeding
her exclamation.  "Is that a good reason for flying into
his arms, like a willless iron filing, on *his* terms instead
of on your own?"

"On my terms!  What do you mean?"

"Janet, my friendship will be worse than useless to you
unless I can tell you exactly what is in my mind.  I either
do that or hold my peace forever.  Will you let me speak
frankly?"

"Will I let the rain fall or the sun shine?  I'd like to
see the person who could stop you from speaking frankly.
But please don't attack Claude."

"Have no fear.  I don't intend to play the part of the
heroine's second friend confidentially warning her against
the first.  What I want to urge, with all the force I can, is
this: if you mean to live with Claude, why not marry him?"

"Quite apart from my own preferences in the matter,
Robert, how do you know that Claude wants to marry?"

"Oh, no doubt he doesn't want to.  In the eyes of the
modern man, marriages made in Heaven are as popular as
canned beef made in America.  But what of that?  Claude
is young, self-willed, accustomed to get his own way,
and—he worships you.  And you—well, I have no superlatives
to do justice to the case.  You are you.  You could marry
him in a twinkling if you played your cards right."

Janet laughed.

"Oh, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing—" she
sang, saucily.

"Stop coquetting like Cornelia," he remonstrated.  "You
are making it totally impossible for me to talk rationally.
Are you a butterfly or a woman?  Am I discussing
your glorious voice or your precarious future?  Be
serious."

"How can I be serious when you ask me to be a bargain
hunter in hearts and coronets?"

"Now you're acting like one of Marie Corelli's heroines,
Janet!"

"Thank you.  Why are you so anxious to have me get
married?"

"Because I think that your fine spirit of independence
and your divine gift of imagination ought not lightly to
be wasted.  Because I think, in short, that you have a
nobler purpose in the world than mere loving or being
loved."

"Than mere loving!"

"Yes.  The world was not made for the gratification of
our own feelings."

"So you are fond of saying, Robert.  But, as a matter of
fact, I'm not trying to gratify my feelings.  I'm trying to
carry out my principles."

"The world isn't a grindstone to sharpen our principles
on, either," said Robert, with prompt conclusiveness.

"From watching you, I rather thought it was," said
Janet, stung into sudden irony.

There was a pause.  He tried to take her hand, but she
drew it sharply away, with difficulty repressing her tears.
After a while, he began again, with impetuous candor:

"Janet, don't go into this adventure with your eyes shut.
Remember, you can't give yourself up to an experiment
in free love without giving up everything else.  That is the
strongest argument against the step.  All your gifts, all
your energy, all your purpose will be consumed in explaining,
defending, evading.  Your whole life will be one long
course of swallowing the consequences and warding off
criticism.  Do you wish to be a life-long martyr to free love,
like Cornelia?"

"I've never posed as a martyr to anything—not even
to drink," said Janet, recovering her good humor.

"Then why become one?  Martyrdom is all very well
for fanatics like your mother who enjoy it, or for idlers
like Cornelia who have nothing better to do.  But you are
neither a fanatic nor an idler; you are a worker."

"But when one believes that an institution has served
its turn, isn't it one's duty to destroy it?"

"Institutions are never destroyed.  They are sometimes
transformed, as tadpoles are into frogs."

"Are you sure?  Cornelia says that every free union is
a mine exploded beneath marriage.  I think she's right."

"A mine!  Better call it a squib, Janet.  And all the
trouble you invite will be like laying a long and elaborate
fuse to ignite the squib."

"Oh, you have no ideals left!" she cried, revolted at this
demolition of her romantic conceptions.

"I have a little common sense left," he answered.  "We
can't escape the customs or the institutions of our time,
however much we may disbelieve in them.  Flying in the
face of a decadent institution does not destroy it.  It only
gives it a new lease of life by putting the props of public
sympathy and traditional morality at the disposal of its
defenders.  Look at the case of George Eliot.  Did her
entirely justifiable free union help the cause of marriage
reform?  No.  It actually turned her into a defender of the
very institution she had set out to challenge."

"What a very wise young man; this wise young man
must be," she said, parodying a line of Gilbert's.

"No side-tracking!  Promise me you'll turn the matter
over in your mind."

"In my mind?  Yes.  But what about my heart?" she
said.  And with dancing eyes she sang:

   |  "'Oh, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing,
   |  A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing.'"
   |

Her voice turned his blood to paradisaical currents.

"If you sing that again, I shall kiss you on the spot,
in public or out of it," said the tormented young man.

"Why, Robert, what abysses of passion lurk hidden in
you!" she exclaimed mockingly.  "I believe you said you'd
always treat me just like a man.  Do you talk like this to
your male chums?"  Then demurely: "We'd better go
home at once."

On the way home, she resumed the discussion.  In a
more earnest tone than before, she thanked him for taking
so much trouble over her and promised to think about his
point of view very carefully.  She insisted, however, that
his reasoning had not convinced her.  She and Claude
appeared very well suited to each other now, but who could
tell what changes a few years might not bring forth?

"True," said Robert.  "But the future is dark to us in
other matters besides marriage.  As things stand now,
Claude couldn't do better, and you might do worse.  And
if the very worst happened, you could get a divorce."

She replied by reminding him that she and Claude were
not the kind of people who lightly repudiated their ties or
the responsibilities that grew out of them.  Consequently,
once married, they would probably remain so for life.  In
any event, if she changed her mind, it would be infinitely
simpler to do so under the other plan.

"Say I grew tired of Claude, for instance, and quite
suddenly wanted you," she said with a mischievous look.

"Well, it couldn't be done," said Robert, decisively, her
complacent assumption jarring his pride.

"Oh, couldn't it?"  She flashed him a challenging glance.

"Not in my case," he returned, in clipped tones.  "Free
love is the most expensive luxury in the world.  Only the
very rich or the unambitious can pay for it.  As for me, I
never can have anything to do either with free love or
with a woman who has had a free lover.  It would ruin
all my plans."

Janet replied with the faintest shrug, whereat all his
self-assertion promptly went bang.  Neither yielded a point;
but they divined each other's feelings and, as they walked
on, steered the conversation into lighter channels until they
got back to the Lorillard tenements.

Standing in the dark hallway at the foot of the stairs,
Janet told him with a touch of impishness that his logic
had been irresistible.

"Has it?  It hasn't touched your heart," he said,
somewhat dolefully.

"Ah, well, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing—"

As Janet darted up the stairs, the door of an apartment
opened overhead, and she fancied she heard Claude's voice.





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   CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


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   \I

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On her own floor, she halted and, with Robert's kiss
still burning on her lips, waited until he had turned into
Kelly's flat.  Then she opened the door of Number Fifteen.

Sure enough, Claude was there, full of resentment at
her absence on a jaunt with Robert.  She thanked her
stars that Robert's visible presence could not fan the flame.
Even so, Claude acted badly enough.  He was in a vertigo
of jealousy, and at small pains to hide the fact.

At first, Janet tried to carry the matter off lightly, and
strove to mollify him by saying that Robert had asked her
to consider a very serious problem.  She was a little
conscience-stricken over this fib, but believed it the best thing
to say.  She pointed out that while it was with Robert
that she worked, it was with Claude, after all, that she
played.

At this Cornelia executed an unnecessarily tuneful laugh.

"There's nothing like a man's problem for disarranging
a girl's hair," she observed, dropping the inevitable dress
she was busy with.  "Araminta, your hat's a sight!  Do
look at yourself in the glass."

Naturally, Claude was more furious than ever.  He
sulked in silence whilst rebuffing the advances that Janet
made.  Finally, maddened by Cornelia's pin-prick innuendoes,
he strode out, flashing a terrible look at Janet as he
did so.



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   \II

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When will the play of Othello be absolutely unintelligible?
Perhaps five hundred years from now or, let us
hope, sooner.  Surely, at some distant date, the private
ownership of a woman by a man or of a man by a woman
will seem as barbarous as the rings our ancestors stuck
through their noses or as unfashionable as the three
hundred concubines of Solomon.  And the jealous passions
arising from this ownership will be classed with rage,
hysteria and other forms of emotional disease or pathological
bad manners.

Indeed, do not the best people already look upon a
pronounced fit of jealousy as an exhibition of arrested
development or mental inferiority?  If the jealous man is not
destroyed, root and branch, by the refuse-reduction plant
of ridicule, he will be rendered obsolete and perhaps extinct
by the spread of the conviction that, after a human being
has discharged his obligations to himself and his obligations
to the community, he owes no other personal allegiance
whatever.

Herself singularly free from jealousy, Janet was in
direct touch with three persons whom the malady afflicted
sorely.  Besides the case of Claude, she had on her hands
the case of Mrs. Howard Madison Grey in business, and
the case of Cornelia at home.

Cornelia, who was no believer in keeping her emotions
hermetically sealed, made her frame of mind patent to
Janet on an unforgetable occasion.  It was not the first,
nor was it to be the last, of a series of blows, which were
fast converting Janet to the belief that her own opinion of
Cornelia was founded on an illusion, whilst Robert's
opinion was the correct one.

For some time past it had been Harry Kelly's practice
to come into Number Fifteen before breakfast and put the
two girls "through their paces," as he called the light drill
he prescribed for them.  Always on the lookout for some
new outlet for his tremendous supply of energy, the
physical culture expert had hit on the scheme of improving
Cornelia's bad health by reforming her bodily habits.  Cornelia,
who considered early rising bad form and breathing exercises
a superstition, was for a prompt veto of the scheme,
but Janet's cordial support of it saved the day.

So, early in the morning of the day after Claude's wrathful
departure, Kelly, in gymnasium garb, made his entrance
as usual.  The athlete was not a man of many words.
Words, after all, were not needed in his case, since, as he
strode along with the nervous muscularity of a Rodin
statue, his lithe, powerful body proclaimed his mission to
all the world.

"Wake up, girls," he called out, "and fill your bellies
with the good south wind."

The unvarnished word always moved Cornelia to a protesting
shriek and a well-trilled "How do you do!"  Kelly
enjoyed both immensely.

After throwing the windows in the sitting room wide
open, he paced the floor like a panther in his den.  Janet
was the first to appear.  She was still drowsy, and her short
dark hair, in tight somnolent curls, hung down her back.
She wore a short-skirted bathing suit, a custom Kelly held
in high regard for the business in hand.

As she toddled sleepily towards the athlete, the energy
pent up in his frame unbottled itself on the impulse of the
moment.  Catching her at the waist, he lifted her high up
in the air and spun her around three times as if she were a
featherweight.  Then, clasping her lightly by shoulder and
leg, he set her tenderly down again.

"Do it again, Hercules, do!" articulated Cornelia, coming
in just at the close of this maneuver, whilst Janet, still
laughing and protesting, was in the act of resuming control
of her well-shaped limbs.

But as there was that in Cornelia's eye which belied
her command, Kelly was careful to make no move to
execute it.

Cornelia's golden hair was done up on her head in a
makeshift coil, she herself being enveloped in a long kimono
that trailed to the ground.  Kelly looked at this garment
without ecstasy, a fact that did not escape the wearer's
observation.

"Hercules," she commanded peevishly, "you might close
this window near me.  I've got a very bad headache from
too little sleep.  Do you want me to catch my death of
cold, too?"

He complied with all haste, and then pitched into his
calisthenics, Janet joining him with gusto.  Cornelia followed
suit, though in a very languid spirit; and soon she stopped
altogether, on the pretext of unusual weakness.

Her chilly aloofness cut the period short.  It was now
time to prepare breakfast, a task theoretically shared by
all four, including Robert, who was unaccountably late this
morning.  Habitually, three of them did the actual work
while Cornelia "directed," a process which, she firmly
believed, enabled the others to save time.  But, as Robert
sardonically put it, "Cornelia's method of showing us a
short cut is to send us round Robin Hood's barn."

It was Kelly's special business to convert a part of the
kitchen into a dining room, and thereafter to make the
toast.  He had just reached this stage, when Cornelia took
another hand in the proceedings.

"Go down and get the letters for me, Hercules," she said
suddenly, relieving him of the toaster.

"Why, what's the hurry?  Rob always gets them after
breakfast."

"Oh, do let Harry make the toast," said Janet, chiming
in with him.  She, too, had thought of the letters, and was
in no hurry to bid the devil good morning.  "Nobody can
eat toast the way you make it, Cornelia.  And Robert is
sure to—"

"No doubt Robert will do exactly as *you* tell him," said
Cornelia, interrupting her sweetly.  "Please let Harry do
as *I* tell him.  Hercules, go *now*, please.  I have a notion
there'll be some famous news for me this morning."

Kelly, having been her devoted (and despised) slave
since the day he ejected Hutchins Burley, obeyed submissively
by mere force of habit.  He ran down the three flights
of stairs and in a very short time came back again with a
single letter.

It was for Janet from Claude, and sarcasm was its
prevailing tone.

The writer began by deploring his fatuous inability to
remain away from her side.  He pointed out that, as his
chance visits might take her by surprise or catch her off
guard, not to say worry her into thinking of promises she
had no mind to keep, he should take steps to rid her of his
manifestly superfluous attentions.  He had accordingly
arranged to spend some time with his friends the
Armstrongs, in Huntington.  By doing so he should at least
please his father, which was better than nothing, certainly
better than not pleasing either himself or her.

In short, it was just such a petulant note as a spoiled
woman's darling like Claude might be expected to write.
Having always received complete submission from women,
he regarded the least opposition to his self-indulgence as
outrageous and even wicked or perhaps blasphemous.

The depth and passion of Janet's nature were not easily
stirred, but this letter startled her out of her usual
lightheartedness.  She sat down in a chair by the window and
looked out fixedly, in an effort to repress her feelings.  Kelly,
sympathetic and bewildered, gave vent to sundry heartening
murmurs and exclamations; and, as these accomplished
little, he moved dishes attractively and hopefully around
Janet's empty place.

From her point of vantage at the table, Cornelia surveyed
her handiwork with a pious simulation of sadness, surveyed
it, and found that it was not so bad.

Janet blue and still, Kelly heavily anxious, Cornelia
sweetly sanctimonious, such was the curious tableau that
Robert saw when he came in, his slender frame and
vigorous movements forming a direct contrast to the static
spectacle before him.

"Now, see what you've done, Cato!" declaimed Cornelia,
in one of those complacent greetings which only she could
make sublime.

She fluttered Claude's note aloft and called out the
sender's name for Robert's information.

Ignoring her, but grasping the import of the scene,
Robert went over to Janet's side and asked her in all
simplicity whether he could be of any service whatever.

But she, to hide her tears, turned decisively away from
him.  Robert gave her movement a totally different
interpretation, drew back, and walked quickly out of the room.



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   \III

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The alarums and excursions for which Claude and
Cornelia were responsible might well have monopolized Janet's
mind.  But her thoughts were kept in flux by a thunderstorm
which threatened her peace from another quarter.

The new cloud on her horizon came from no less a
person than Mrs. Howard Madison Grey, the wife of her
employer.

Mrs. Grey served Janet as a symbol, a symbol opposed
to the Outlaws.  The Outlaws were a convenient symbol of
the world *within* Kips Bay.  Mrs. Grey was an equally pat
symbol of the world without.

It amused Janet to study her own reactions to these two
symbols and to analyze her experiences with the moral
codes symbolized.

According to one of the primary conventions of the
Outlaws, sex was anybody's to have and nobody's to hold;
there was no recognized private property in sex.  In Kips
Bay, Janet had acted in the spirit (though not in the letter)
of this convention.  And the results had been disastrous.

On the other hand, in the world beyond the model tenements,
the right of private property in sex was absolute.
In Mrs. Grey's world, Janet had acted in the spirit and
even in the letter of this convention.  And again the results
had been disastrous.

The second disaster materialized slowly.  Its point of
departure was the visit paid by an ex-President of the
United States to a performance of Mr. Grey's third play,
"The Great Reprieve."

As originally written, this was a drama in which a
Vermont Yankee resigns to a younger brother the girl he
madly loves, after which lofty sacrifice he starts life anew
in the Klondike, makes a fortune there, and later turns up
for a brief visit to the old homestead.  To his dismay he
learns that the girl of his dreams has been left a widow
and that, with poverty and distress staring her in the face,
she has no choice but to take up the lot of an actress in the
great Subway Circuit.  Nothing but his hand in marriage
can save her from the doom in store for her!  And the
curtain falls on the Great Reprieve.

The play was a triumph of mediocrity in conception,
construction, and style; yet for some unaccountable reason it
fell flat.  The producer was reluctant to accept the verdict
of the playgoers for a fact, but a second footing-up of the
box-office revenues conquered his reluctance completely.

Half a dozen play-surgeons—writers of Broadway successes,
high-priced, fifth-rate super-hacks, before whose
names the public prostrated itself—were hastily called into
consultation and an immediate and drastic operation was
advised.

No time was wasted in thinking.  All six consultants took
a hand, so did the producer, so did the favorite chauffeur
of the producer's second best mistress.  Three days and
three nights of heroic writing, drinking, and rehearsing
followed.  At the end of this furious interlude, "The Great
Reprieve" had been whipped, or as the favorite chauffeur
said, "Goulasht" into shape.

The chief character in the revised version was a typical
American boy of fifteen (erstwhile the heroine's brother),
and upon his pranks, antics, impudence, and callowness, the
play now pivoted.  The lad's capacity for noisy pertness
and imbecile clownage was represented as inexhaustible, yet
even so, the producer expressed a fear that the audience
might not be equal to the intellectual pressure of the
dialogue.  Relaxing incidents were introduced—a woman
purring over a poodle dog, a chorus girl spouting the real
American language invented by George Ade, a squawking
parrot, and a Southern mammy (out of "Uncle Tom's
Cabin") worshipping the ground the leading juvenile treads on.

These features were warranted to give the play its
"universal appeal"!

Dramatic action there was none.  Why cast pearls?
After all, there was plenty of movement, plenty of "pep"
and "kick" as the producer said.  All the characters made
their entrances and exits with frenzied vehemence and,
whilst on the stage, jerked arms and body and legs ceaselessly
to and fro, as if in the last throes of St. Vitus' Dance.
The audience would get its money's worth of "speed"—so
much was provided for, if nothing else was.  The dialogue
was spoken with a short, sharp, pop-gun explosiveness,
except in the maudlin sentimental scenes in which it was
drawled out into one world-without-end whine.  Apart from
these details, nothing in particular was to happen in the
play; for nothing in particular mattered.  However, a
squealing child was kept in reserve, ready to be trotted out
for "sure-fire" applause, if the "action" should chance to
flag.

In its renovated form, Mr. Grey hardly recognized "The
Great Reprieve."  It seemed to him that his comedy had
become an exact replica of each of the other ten American
comedies then playing in Times Square.  This, though
Mr. Grey was no intellectual giant, made a difference to his
artist's pride.  It made no difference to the Broadway
theatregoers.  They fairly devoured the play.  They
swallowed all the old wheezes and all the old slush and all
the George Ade lingo and all the Southern mammy stuff.
They swallowed it all without winking.  Despite the fears
of the producer, they proved themselves to be almost fully
up to the intellectual level of the fifteen-year-old leading
juvenile.  They greeted his every act of clownage and horseplay
with salvos of applause.  They laughed themselves sick
over him.  And when the poodle dog and the baby appeared,
the applause brought down the rafters.

To put it mildly, Mr. Howard Madison Grey was
stupefied.  However, the success of "The Great Reprieve"
became the talk of the town.  An ex-President of the United
States went to see it and drenched his box with the tears of
hilarity and contentment.  Next day, he described the play
as "a clean, wholesome play of American life, manners and
thought!—every one hundred per cent American will be
satisfied with it."

This description was henceforth underscored in every
advertisement of "The Great Reprieve."  Seats were sold ten
weeks in advance.  The producer and his crew of
play-salvagers added another feather to their caps.  And
Mrs. Howard Madison Grey began to look for an apartment on
upper Park Avenue.



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   \IV

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The ensuing increase in the volume of engagements and
correspondence threw Janet together with Mr. Grey for
uninterrupted stretches, oftener than Mrs. Grey thought
wise.

Before long, the author's wife noted significant alterations
in her husband's behavior.

Mrs. Howard Madison Grey was nothing if not scientific.
She believed religiously in the scientific method and applied
it to all her activities, even to her excursions in jealousy.  As
she hadn't read "Science and Power" by Fitzfield Tyler, the
efficiency engineer, for nothing, she understood thoroughly
that the proper method for scientific research proceeds by
three stages, namely:

One: Observing facts, without any preconceived notion.

Two: Imagining a general explanation or hypothesis that
establishes the relation of cause and effect between two
groups of facts.

Three: Verifying this hypothesis, a process of determining
by means of personally conducted observations, whether
the hypothesis fits the facts it proposes to explain.

Observing, imagining, verifying—these were the three
stages the trained investigator had to grasp.  And
Mrs. Howard Madison Grey grasped them with considerable
kinetic energy.

In the first place, observation of the library during work
time ceased to reveal Mr. Grey in the careless act of dictating
in shirt sleeves and suspenders or of puffing cigarette
smoke unconcernedly towards Janet's innocent lungs.
Instead, it disclosed him in a handsome velvet smoking
jacket and betrayed the astonishing fact that from the very
moment the smoking jacket was exhibited the smoking
habit was suppressed.  Clearly, Mr. Grey's behavior in the
past and his behavior in the present showed the existence
of two utterly different groups of facts.

To imagine a general explanation which should connect
these two groups of facts was the second and by long odds
the easiest step.  Mrs. Howard Madison Grey formulated
the hypothesis that some perverse piece of femininity had
lost her head over Mr. Grey's resplendent fame and fortune,
and had set out to tempt him into the primrose path of
dalliance.

The third step was to verify this hypothesis with a series
of experiments.

Mrs. Grey began by putting Janet through a systematic
cross-examination.  Didn't she think men looked revolting
in shirt sleeves and suspenders?  Quite so.  Frankly,
hadn't she simply longed to know a great literary genius
intimately?  Naturally!  And what might be her views on
the subject of nicotine?  She thought smoking a disgusting
habit?  Ah, well!

These answers were supplemented by scraps of information
obtained, it must be confessed, by experiments that
might have daunted any but a most dispassionate investigator.
Disregarding ethics, it is an open question whether
a personally conducted observation is better served by
studying truth face to face or by studying her through a
keyhole.  Mrs. Grey's contribution to the answer was to
adopt the latter plan on the principle that all is fair in love
and science.

She ratified the somewhat precarious keyhole method by
the surer method of sudden sallies into the library.  She
heard Mr. Grey addressing his secretary in musically
resonant tones, and saw him showing undue solicitude for
her comfort.  Nay more, she surprised them in animated,
unworkmanlike conversations.  True, she did not get the
precise drift of these talks, but she was morally certain that
the talkers were discussing six of the deadly sins and
wishing the seventh.  Though further proof was scarcely needed,
she found the straw that topped the climax.  Mr. Grey
offered to double Janet's salary without request.  The
conclusion forced itself on Mrs. Grey that her hypothesis was
incontestably established.  It brought light out of darkness
and order out of chaos, besides fitting all the facts it
proposed to explain.

She lost no time in acting on the verified conclusion.

One Monday morning before Howard Madison Grey
returned from a week-end on the New Jersey coast, she
intercepted Janet.

"The new play," she said accusingly, "isn't progressing
very fast."

"No," admitted Janet, "it isn't.  So many topical matters
have had to be disposed of lately that the final copy of the
play has been held back."

Janet could scarcely dwell on her employer's growing
penchant for conversation with her when his wife was
presumed to be securely occupied.

"Mr. Grey," said his wife, half reflectively, "Mr. Grey
has the creative temperament."

She frequently aired this phrase; it had, she believed,
the ring and tang of distinction.  Privately, she thought
that the artistic temperament incapacitated a man from the
sane discharge of his most elementary duties.

"The creative temperament," she went on, "is too fine to
cope with the details of business."

She gave Janet to understand that it was imperative that
the success of "The Great Reprieve" should be followed up
without delay.

"Mr. Sarsfield, the manager," continued Mrs. Grey, "has
just telephoned anxiously for the next manuscript."

"Mr. Grey is still working on the revision of the third
act," said Janet.  "As soon as he finishes it, I shall rush the
whole play through.  Of course, I can type the first two
acts at once."

"Yes, do.  But can you work uninterruptedly here?  Perhaps
you could finish it faster at home—instead of coming
here?"

Janet jumped at the chance.  "Certainly," she said, "I
can finish it at home in half the time."

Mrs. Grey was taken aback.  On second thoughts, she
put Janet's eagerness down to the new feminist strategy.

"There's the risk," she said, uneasily picturing the
precious pages at the mercy of the New York transit
services.

Anxious to escape the assiduities of the wife, if not of the
husband, Janet gave reckless assurances of her devotion to
the manuscript.

Mrs. Grey finally assented to the arrangement.  Janet
was to take the manuscript in sections and, if the scheme
worked well, she might do all future typewriting for the
playwright in the same way.  She need come to the Greys'
house only for the dictation.

"I hope Mr. Grey will be satisfied," Janet could not help
saying, once the bundle of papers was safely tucked under
her arm.

"I hope so," said Mrs. Grey meditatively.  "But who can
fathom the ways of the creative temperament—?"

She left an eloquent hiatus.

From which Janet inferred that the shortest way with
that particular temperament was to let the explanation
follow the act.



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This bout with the green-eyed monster had taken place
shortly before Claude's petulant flight to the Armstrong
estate in Huntington.  To Janet the whole affair was very
ludicrous, and none the less so in that she had given
Mrs. Grey little cause for anxiety.

Not for a moment had the newspaper acclaim of Howard
Madison Grey imposed upon her.  Having measured her
own wits with the playwright's, she had formed an estimate
of his talents which caused her to reject with contempt the
fantastic eulogies of him in the press.  She continued to
see in Mr. Grey what she had always seen, namely, a
decidedly middle-aged man with a bald head and a graceless
figure, a man whose amorous pleasantries and elderly
sentimentalism inspired her with the same distaste as the odor of
stale tobacco smoke with which his person seemed to reek.

She knew quite well that she had captured his emotions
and his illusions, but as she had found no difficulty in
keeping his advances within bounds she had seen no reason
for giving the matter serious thought.

On the day of Mrs. Grey's interference, Janet returned
to Kips Bay in high feather.  This had mystified Cornelia,
who could not see in her friend's recital of events any great
cause for congratulation.  She gloomily predicted that Janet
would soon lose her position altogether.  Janet said she
didn't care.  A change was the only stimulant she ever took
or needed.  And any change, even a change for the worse,
would serve the purpose admirably.

Cornelia wondered what was back of all this optimism
until Janet pointed out that, with her new program of work,
she could repay Robert for his many services to her.  The
firm of Barr & Lloyd could now carry on business in the
mornings as well as in the afternoons, Robert sharing with
her the work that came in from the Greys and perhaps from
other authors, just as she had shared with him the work
that came in from the League of Guildsmen.  This statement
was received in silence by Cornelia, who drew her own
conclusions and communicated them only to Harry Kelly.

Janet's offer to pool her secretarial jobs from all sources
with her typewriting for the League had been very welcome
to Robert.  His funds were running uncomfortably low just
then.  The reason was that the League was not a paying
concern.  The economic changes advocated by the Guildsmen
were so drastic in character and called for so much
discipline and far-sighted cooperation on the part of the
working classes that the very people whom they were
intended to benefit fought shy of them.  Leaders of labor
received the Guild proposals coldly, and the rank and file
gave them little sympathy and less support.

For several mornings Robert and Janet pitched in with
a will on the typewriting of Mr. Grey's manuscripts.  In the
afternoons they had continued the League work.  Their
comradeship was a happy and an intimate one, how happy
and how intimate Janet did not fully realize until long
after it was over.  Perhaps the most delightful periods
were those in which they proofread the manuscripts they
had finished.  They took turns reading aloud, and endless
was the fun they extracted from the lines of Mr. Grey's
new play.  More delightful still were excursions into the
fields of literature and economics, the play or some Guild
pamphlet furnishing the starting point.

Thus the partnership of Barr & Lloyd had gone on
swimmingly for two weeks, until the afternoon on the
recreation pier, the memorable afternoon that had begun with the
long talk about free love, and had ended in the model
tenement with Robert's kiss and Claude's sulky fit of
jealousy.



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   \VI

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On the morning after this fateful day, Janet had to go
to the Howard Madison Greys' to return some finished
manuscripts.

She had gone there for this purpose some two or three
times a week, since the last arrangement with Mr. Grey.
On these occasions, the playwright himself met her.  And
usually he spun out the interview as long as possible, due
regard being had to the prudent Mrs. Grey who, hovering
watchfully in the background, reminded Janet of a quiet
but overcautious museum attendant.

Mrs. Grey would frequently contrive to come into the
room for the undisguised purpose of glancing at or even
criticizing Janet's typewriting.  The expectation of such a
visit made Janet, on this particular day, decidedly nervous.
For, what with her distraction by Claude's anger, and a
sudden crotchiness that had overtaken the typewriter, her
papers bore the glaring evidence of innumerable corrections
and erasures.

However, Mrs. Grey seemed for once to be off duty.  So
at least Janet concluded from the fact that the author
himself received her with much less than his customary
constraint and far more than his ordinary enthusiasm.
And not only was he in the best of spirits; he was groomed
to perfection.  He had put on a suit cut in a fashionable
English mode, with quaint cuffs on the sleeves of the coat
as well as on the bottoms of the trousers.

These and other details of sartorial artistry were probably
lost on Janet, but she was sensible enough of the general
effect to surmise that her employer had dressed himself
to conquer.  This surmise would have forced itself upon
her in any event, for Mr. Grey soon launched into repeated
hints looking to an assignation with her outside his home,
hints that presently crystallized into a direct invitation to
a dinner at Sherry's.

According to the principles of Kips Bay—and Janet at
this time subscribed to these principles—there was
absolutely no reason why Mr. Grey should not invite her and
absolutely no reason why she should not accept.  But the
heart has a reason to which reason must bow.  Janet's
heart was in submission to but one law, and that was the
law of her integrity.  She could no more strike up a
friendship with a man to whom she was not naturally,
spontaneously drawn than she could fly.  And she could hardly
pretend to be drawn to Mr. Grey.  No, not even for the
pleasure of giving the suspicious Mrs. Grey something to be
suspicious about.

Besides, the man was too cocksure.  He appeared to
share Mrs. Grey's conviction that the slightest nod on his
part would incline Janet (or any other woman) to follow
him to the ends of the earth.  This was amusing.  But it
was also irritating to one's pride of sex.

The trouble with Mr. Grey was that, having realized the
first of the two ambitions which governed his desires, he
felt satisfied he was about to realize the second.  As an
author, he had conquered the public; as a man, he now
meant to conquer women.

To Janet, Mr. Grey's illusions about himself were as
transparent as his illusions about her.  It was plain that
he took with the utmost seriousness the greatness that
had recently been thrust upon him.  His reasoning was
quite simple.  If success in pleasing the crowd and its
leaders did not imply the possession of superior gifts and
of a masterly technique in exploiting those gifts, what did
it imply?

This reasoning struck Janet as puerile.  Yet Mr. Grey
could hardly be expected to share her view that talent and
superb execution had never by themselves attracted the
plaudits of the crowd, or that the only man who could
please the million was the man born with the taste of the
million.  Mr. Grey had been lucky enough to inherit this
taste.  Why demand that he look a gift horse in the mouth?

But the judgment of youth is direct and pitiless!  It
seemed nothing less than ridiculous to Janet that Mr. Grey
should seriously pose as a fount of the divine fire, and
calmly invite her to become a ministering angel to the
sacred fount.  What was still more ridiculous was that he
disguised his offer in weird, roundabout phrases calculated
to enable her to "save her face."

He was still confidently urging the project, when
Mrs. Grey swept in and fell upon them like a moral landslide.

Mrs. Grey did not stop to account for her unexpected
return, to disclose how long she had been eavesdropping, or
to listen to Mr. Grey's stumbling and embarrassed explanations.
Her belligerent manner left no doubt that she put
the very worst construction on what she had heard.  Ignoring
Janet altogether, she opened her batteries full on her
husband and discharged a broadside of questions, short,
sharp and desolating.

Her questions were entirely rhetorical.

Was this the loyalty he had sworn to her, when she
picked him out of the gutter of obscurity and married him?
Had she not, all along, suspected that he was plotting an
affair with this girl?  No doubt the girl had been setting
her cap at him, but was that a legitimate excuse for
inconstancy?  At his age, he ought to be beyond a desire to
sow wild oats.  Didn't he know that a mature man sowing
his wild oats presented as idiotic a spectacle as if he were
sucking his thumb?  She didn't know or care what *his*
family would think, but was he proposing to besmirch the
unstained record of *her* family with a divorce scandal?
And so on—

Janet listened in icy humiliation whilst the storm broke
over and around her.  She expected every moment to be
caught up in it, whirled into its vortex, and destroyed.

What actually happened was that Mr. Grey played a
ghastly imitation of his masterful hero in "The Klondike
Mail," until his lady, infuriated by even this shadow of
defiance, reached a degree of tension that would have burst
a twelve-inch gun.  Death and destruction were almost
afoot when she spied the typewritten papers which Janet
had just returned.  She pounced upon these papers and
violently projected them to a point within three inches
of her spouse's nose, after which she regaled him with a
description of the flaws in the typewriting and the
deficiencies in the typist.

This description was pithy, elaborate, exhaustive, but it
was not exactly verified.

Followed an effective oratorical pause.  And then
Mrs. Grey begged to be informed whether the quality of the
work was not ample evidence that the worker came for no
good and sufficient business reasons.  No one venturing to
reply, she hurled the manuscripts at the head of Mr. Grey's
rapidly retreating form and, as her aim was marred by a
trifling miscalculation, she picked up another document and
took a shy at Janet.  While Janet was warding off this
missile, the playwright made good his escape.

"Really, Mrs. Grey," said Janet, standing her ground
boldly as her indignation got the better of her fright, "you
are behaving worse than a fishwife."

Mrs. Grey sobered down with incredible suddenness.

"My poor girl," she said, solicitously, "did I hit you?"

"You came within an ace of knocking out one of my eyes!"

"Just so.  Within an ace.  That was my intention,
precisely.  I aimed for effect, not for damage.  I assure you
I'm a first-rate shot."

Mrs. Grey had now composed her feelings and her dress,
both of which had been considerably ruffled.

"A husband is hard to get nowadays," she went on,
smiling, "but he is even harder to keep.  When a charming
girl makes this comparative difficulty a superlative one,
she does a wife grave wrong.  Still, under the circumstances,
I forgive you."

"You mustn't presume too much on my wickedness," said
Janet, smiling at this strange turn of affairs.  "I'm
disgracefully inexperienced."

"Inexperienced!  Ah, well, men have an amazing weakness
for some kinds of inexperience—in a girl.  In a wife
they're not so keen on it.  My dear, if unmarried girls
would only put themselves in a wife's place, what a lot of
trouble they'd save—for us now and for themselves later on.
But of course, they can't do it.  They think marriage is
a picnic on a motorcycle with the bride in the carriage
attachment.  What a dream!  Marriage is more like a
tennis game with the two players facing each other across
the dividing line of sex.  You'll find that out the day
after the wedding!  You'll know then that the only way to
manage a husband is to discover his weakest point and
keep driving at that until the game and the set are in your
hands.  Mr. Grey's weakest point is his horror of facing
facts.  He dreads a fact the way a boy dreads soap.  I
discovered that at our honeymoon hotel when we debated
how to stop the waiter from serving us with cold soup.
Rather than compel the waiter to change it, Mr. Grey
tried to prove that the soup was really quite hot.  No, I'm
not the tartar you think I am.  I don't object to a man
having his fling now and then, provided it's a short fling.
But I can't let him get into the grip of a girl of your sort,
the permanent sort.  That might introduce fatal complications,
and I don't mean to take any chances."

"Then why did you let me come here in the first place?"

"Because you took me in completely," replied this
astonishing woman.  "You had none of the obvious female
ways.  You were almost pathetically businesslike and
you seemed to be—well—no beauty.  Excuse me for being
frank."

"The excuses are all on my side, I'm sure," said Janet,
highly amused.

"Not at all, my dear.  I'm convinced I was quite wrong.
You grow on one, even on a woman.  I soon found out
that beneath your dovelike innocence there was a
serpentine wisdom.  It's a magic combination.  No man can
resist it."

"Thank you, Mrs. Grey.  This flattery is more than I
deserve, but—"

"It's no good protesting.  There is a devilish fascination
about you.  If I'm beginning to feel it myself, what must
poor Mr. Grey feel?"

And with a gesture which betokened that, in these
matters, feelings transcended verbal arguments and oral
contracts, she paid Janet what was owing to her and made
it clear that she need not come again.

At the door, she wished Janet good luck.

"My dear," she said, "as a typist you cut rather a poor
figure.  But that combination I spoke of—it's worth a
fortune—"

Janet went away not knowing whether to laugh or to
cry.  A good cry would not have come amiss; and yet, as
she counted up the fortunes of the last two days, she
could not help observing that her mishaps had trod on one
another's heels in a procession that was well-nigh comic.
Claude's letter and flight, Cornelia's bad temper, her own
involuntary rudeness to Robert, the crop of errors in the
playwright's manuscript, Mrs. Grey's impertinences, and
the crowning loss of her position—here was a downpour of
calamities amounting to a regular deluge!

And not a single ray of sunshine in sight, either.

On second thoughts, she had to admit that this statement
was not strictly true.  For Robert would probably be
home, and what an immense relief it would be to tell him
all that had happened to her!  At the same time she would
be able to obliterate the effect of yesterday's rudeness.

For she guessed that Robert's feelings had been deeply
hurt by her gesture of withdrawal from him.  But she felt no
doubt of her power to conciliate him or to conquer his just
resentment.  In fact, she had so little doubt of this power
that, the nearer home she got, the more she looked forward
to the prospect of exercising it.

Ah, yes, it would be simple and sweet to make up with
Robert, and they should spend a very jolly afternoon
together, working over sundry papers and planning new
activities for the firm of Barr & Lloyd.

And (such is the peremptory, indomitable influence of
the heart!), her spirits rose again.  In the full flush of
agreeable anticipation, she began to turn the day's
adventures over in her mind.  As she did so, she gave them a
humorous twist, for she meant to relate them to Robert
entertainingly, in return for his expected concession to her.





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   CHAPTER NINETEEN


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   \I

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On reaching her own street, Janet had to plough her
way to the Lorillard tenements through shoals of children
that scampered about as derelict as herself.  She felt the
keenest pity for these little tots who came from the very
immodel tenements not far away, where five or even eight
people existed in a single room, defying the decencies of
life by day and mocking them by night in order to live up
to "the highest standard of living" in the world.

She did not expect Robert until two o'clock, when he
regularly returned from the League of Guildsmen.  In the
interval she looked, as a matter of course, under Cornelia's
alarm clock, where the four friends were in the habit of
putting brief communications for one another.  She found
the following note addressed to her in Robert's painstaking
hand:

.. vspace:: 2

Dear Janet:

.. vspace:: 1

Forgive me for not being on hand this afternoon.  During
the next few days, and perhaps longer, I shall be in
Pittsburgh.  For some time, therefore, the whole burden of
the firm of Barr & Lloyd will have to rest on the
shoulders of one partner.  Lucky that this partner is so
thoroughly staunch and dependable, isn't it?

What is taking me out of town is the strike in Pittsburgh.
Thousands of steel workers have laid down their
tools in protest against the conditions under which they are
obliged to work.  The contest between these men and their
all-powerful employers is horribly uneven, and the apathy
of the general public towards the issues at stake is
appalling.  Naturally, every agency that is pledged to the
success of a healthy labor movement must pitch into this
prickly business.  For the strikers need all the help they
can get, whether of a material or a moral kind.

It is on the moral side that our League of Guildsmen
comes in.  The recent war has filled the earth with
indescribable bitternesses and resentments.  It has also given
sovereign strength to the idea that henceforth the control
of the world's affairs must be taken away from the idlers
and profiteers and given to the workers and producers.  At
every turn, omens of a vast incalculable change force
themselves upon our senses.

Clearly, those who don't want a bloody revolution have
got to work tooth and nail for a pacific one.  Now the
Guildsmen, being advocates of a change that shall be peaceful
though drastic, have a vital interest in drumming it into
people's heads that violence can never breed anything save
violence and violence again.

You see, don't you, that I am needed there far more than
here?  Please believe that I'm sorry in the last degree to
upset our joint business plans and to hold up "The
Klondike Mail" on the typewriter at just the critical moment
when Mr. Grey's double-dyed desperadoes are holding it up
in the middle of the third act.  It makes me feel like an
accessory to the crime, all the more so in that it gives you,
at the secretarial end, the task of foiling one more villain.

Arrangements have been made at the League office for the
delivery to you of another batch of Mss.  Could you call in
there tomorrow afternoon?

More later, as soon as my plans are surer.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Ever yours,
        Robert.

.. vspace:: 1

P.S.  On second thoughts, it seems a shame that you
should be saddled with a partner who is bound to be more
or less on the jump.  I recall the plan you confided to me
last week, the plan of turning Barr & Lloyd into a real
secretarial business on an extensive scale.  With this on
your mind, you may well fear that my haphazard movements
will prove ruinous to any settled policy.  If so, and
whenever you can find a more stable associate, please have
no compunction about making a change.  We must not let
sentiment stand in the way of good management.

.. vspace:: 2

"He can't even say good-bye without delivering a lecture,"
said Janet bitterly.

She felt aggrieved.  Just when she needed Robert most,
he left her in the lurch.  True, his direct connection with
the labor movement made his departure inevitable.  But
did he have to rush off to Pittsburgh the very moment
the strike broke out?  She supposed his haste was partly
prompted by his injured feelings.  If not, why had he so
needlessly offered to dissociate himself from her, why,
indeed, had he written such an entirely cold, unsympathetic
letter?

"Like his cold, unsympathetic views on love," she said
to herself, recalling with some scorn his severe, intolerant
pronouncements on the free love theme.

She reviewed the business-like contents of the letter with
a growing sense of desolation.  It looked as though she were
in for a dismal evening, one of those dismal evenings that
are enormously good for us *afterwards*, because at the time
they so thoroughly plough up our deepest feelings.



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   \II

.. vspace:: 2

But the facts of the present were too disturbing to
permit her to extract much consolation from a philosophy
of the future.

For Janet's difficulties were by no means entirely
sentimental.

Much as Claude's anger and Robert's coolness tortured
her feelings, it was the destruction of her plans that chiefly
occupied her thoughts.  These were the plans that Robert
had referred to in his letter.

Ably assisted by Cornelia, whose power of sketching the
most imposing schemes quite exhausted her capacity for
executing even the humblest ones, Janet had mapped out
a very ambitious career for herself.  Her intention was to
make the most of her stenographic foothold; to accumulate
enough resources to permit a spur, so to speak, to be run
into the domain of the law; and eventually to reach a point
where the secretarial specialty and its legal intertwinings
should be united in one occupation.

It was, as Cornelia all aglow remarked, a time when
women were not only casting down the barriers raised by
men around the old professions, but were actually
bestirring themselves to carve out brand-new professions.

What Cornelia put into enthusiasm, Janet proposed to
put into cold deeds.

As a first step in this direction, she resolved that the firm
of Barr & Lloyd, which had been born in jest, should
be reared in dead earnest.  Her work for Mr. Grey, a
certain amount of casual work which she was getting from
friends of the playwright, and such odd jobs as Robert
brought from the Guild League—these three sources were
to form the basis of a secretarial office dealing with authors'
manuscripts in relation to typing, revision, criticism, and
so on.

In short, Barr & Lloyd (Barr first, because Robert, as
an advocate of the absolute equality of men and women,
insisted that the correct order of precedence was a strictly
alphabetical one)—Barr & Lloyd were to be manuscript
specialists, handling every conceivable matter linked up
with the preparation and sale of manuscripts and the
protection of authors' rights.

From Robert, Janet had extracted a promise to supervise
the department of criticism and revision.  Claude (this was
before his flight in a fit of pique) had refused to take the
project seriously.  Cornelia, in her most pronounced *bel
canto* style, had volunteered to "lend a helping hand" to
the typewriting department and to give her moral support
to most of the other departments.  As Janet's last illusions
about Cornelia were being speedily dissipated, and as she
judged that some birds in a bush are worth ten in the hand,
she contracted for Cornelia's moral support and nothing
but her moral support in all the departments.

Then, as regards the legal department.  Janet held that,
in order to round out her business in the most complete
way, one member of the firm ought to be equipped with a
first-hand training in jurisprudence.  She saw nothing for
it but to be this member herself, and accordingly she had
already made arrangements to attend the coming fall sessions
of an Evening Law School.  Needless to say, this part of
her dream had not been so much as breathed to Claude.

Janet intended, as soon as she had passed her bar examination,
to specialize on all points of law bearing on literary
and dramatic productions, the rights of authors, and the
relations between the buyers and sellers of manuscripts.
She had been put onto this idea by a popular short-story
writer, one of Mr. Grey's friends.  This man had assured
her that the literary field, on its legal side, was practically
a virgin field.  Merchants, inventors, landlords, captains
of industry and the like could, where the law touched their
spheres of influence, find appropriate legal specialists with
all the precedents, traditions, decisions, appeals, evasions,
etc., at their fingers' ends.  Authors alone were in no such
happy case.  The legal background of authorship was a
vast morass of contradictions, quibbles and uncertainties.
Authors were frequently at sea in respect of their rights,
constantly handicapped in the matter of expert advice, and
always liable to be done in the eye by the more unscrupulous
members of the fraternity of editors, publishers, managers
and agents.

This, then, was the field that Janet meant to conquer.
She had a roseate vision of Barr & Lloyd occupying a
suite of offices on the lower end of Madison or Park Avenue.
If fortune favored her, these offices were to be staffed with
ambitious young women assistants whom she would help
to useful and honorable careers (as far as male prejudice
and discrimination would allow).  Barr & Lloyd, in other
words, besides their primary business as manuscript
practitioners, would have a secondary mission, namely, that
of multiplying the avenues along which woman might march
towards economic equality with men.

Such was the purpose which Janet had already begun to
work for.  She now saw all her plans collapsing like a
pricked balloon.  The action taken by Mrs. Grey meant
the loss of much potential custom which she had hoped
would grow by recommendation out of the Grey patronage.
The most galling, stabbing fact in all this sorry business
was the reflection that she had failed not merely in her
human and business dealings but in her workmanship.  If
only she hadn't made a mess of those last manuscripts for
the playwright, the ones she had prepared under the strain
of Claude's tempestuous displeasure!  Mrs. Grey's taunt
still rankled in her ears: "As a typist, you cut a very poor
figure—"

True, Mrs. Grey had tacked on another phrase—the
one about her "magic combination."  But what did this
trumped-up compliment weigh against the maddening
behavior of Claude and Robert?

Both of them had deserted her!

Janet was not addicted to the windy heroics cultivated
by the Outlaws of Kips Bay, but for once she believed
herself entitled to indulge in them.  She really felt deserted.
By Claude, by Robert, by Cornelia and, of course, by her
family.

"How naturally I think of the family when I'm glum!"
was her silent comment.

Her thoughts ran back to the time when she had left
home in defiance of Mrs. Barr's ultimatum.

Since then, her mother had written one letter full of
that spirit of Christian forbearance that has driven so
many people into the devil's camp.  After that, not another
word from her.  But there had followed a steady stream
of appeals from her father, imploring her to come back at
any price, swearing that life at home was not worth living
without her, and promising to do anything in the wide
world she demanded (except, as Janet sardonically observed
to herself, damp down her mother's tyranny a trifle.  He
had never had, and he never would have, the nerve to do
this or to put up the least show of fight.)

As a last effort, her sister Emily had paid a visit to the
Lorillard tenements—partly perhaps from curiosity.  She
affirmed that she had come of her own free will, and
probably believed this statement to be the truth.  Janet knew
very well that her sister was, consciously or unconsciously,
the family ambassador.  The Barrs always throve best when
their right hand did not know what their left hand was
doing.

Emily, all a-tingle with the exhilaration which an angel
inevitably feels when descending upon a glittering abode of
vice, had tried hard not to betray her excitement.  In a
tone essenced with pious sorrow and celestial distress!
She had assured the erring one (though not in these words),
that all would be forgiven if only she returned to her home
before the world (of the Barrs) should discover that a Barr
had abandoned Brooklyn for Kips Bay, and her family for
the society of atheists, Bolshevists, and Bohemians!

"But I haven't the faintest notion of abandoning you,"
Janet had replied.  "I believe I can lead a fuller, freer, more
active life away from mother's apron strings, that's all.  Of
course I want to see the family from time to time.  I could
come on short visits—"

Emily had assured her, not without a trace of
exultation, that Mrs. Barr would never hear of such a cool
arrangement.  Either the prodigal daughter returned once
and for all, or the family would treat her as dead.

"Really!  But how you'll miss the funeral!" Janet had
wickedly exclaimed.

At which Emily had put on her gloves.

All later messages sent by Janet to her mother in an
effort to put their mutual relations on a more reasonable
footing had been severely ignored.  The only communications
she had received were growingly infrequent notes from
her father, and these contained nothing but the same old
appeals—sentimental, pathetic, fatuous.



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   \III

.. vspace:: 2

The doorbell startled her out of her long, melancholy
reverie.  She flew to the threshold, and in came Claude!
She had proposed to treat him coolly at their next
meeting.  But his return was as sudden as it was
unexpected.  And he was Claude, the same Claude with the
same striking appearance, the same telling voice, the same
handsome face.  Instantly, the magnetic spark that had
darted from one to the other at the Outlaws' Ball made
its swift, poignant, thrilling leap between them again.

Though words were superfluous, Claude, as he clasped
her in a passionate embrace, murmured:

"Janet, darling, forgive me.  I was a beast to write a
letter like that."

"Confession is good for the soul," said Janet, laughing
and trying to release her head.

"Are you angry?  Well, you ought to be.  And I ought
to grovel in the dust at your feet.  You are a saint to
forgive me, and I should be ashamed to accept forgiveness
if I hadn't suffered.  Yes, Janet, I've suffered cruelly.  I
never had so keen a grief and I never so thoroughly
deserved one.  But I'm nearly ill with worry."

He *did* look pale, nor did it hurt his cause that pallor
became him.  Besides, his apologies were as overwhelming
as his fits of temper.  How could the poor girl help
forgiving him?

And so Janet, who but a few minutes before had been
considering (mock-heroically to be sure) sundry historic
forms of self-slaughter, now forgot all about jumping off
Brooklyn Bridge, etc., and poured a heavenly compassion
on Claude.

"Something happened in Huntington," she said.  "Something
serious.  Does it involve me?  I want you to tell me
straight."

"That scoundrel Burley tipped my father off about us,
and as a result, the old man is half out of his wits.  He is
determined that my marriage with Marjorie shall not fall
through, for the one terror of his life is that of disobliging
Mr. Armstrong.  In what form the word was passed along
the line, I don't know.  But they were at me, one and all,
day and night, giving me a hundred and one sly intimations
of the general satisfaction that would follow the much
desired event.  The pressure got to be unbearable."

He said that the older people had left no stone unturned
to bring the Armstrong-Fontaine alliance to pass.  Pacing
the floor restlessly, he spoke of the delicate hints, the veiled
references, the consummate skill with which he and Marjorie
were engineered into tete-a-tetes.  Could Janet picture
him alone with Marjorie, and the resultant sessions of
sweet, silent thought?  Had she any idea of what the
imperious will of Armstrong's daughter could do in the way
of maneuvering a man into the most difficult situations?
Janet had little difficulty in calling up an image of
the stately brunette with lustrous dark hair, patrician
nose, and sulky, discontented mouth.  This imposing young
lady had impressed herself indelibly upon Janet's mind
at the Mineola Aerodrome, and, such are the unfathomable
processes of sex, Janet profoundly pitied Claude.  She
did this without a suspicion that he might be drawing
generously upon his imagination for the sake of that very
pity of hers, which she gave him so divinely.  Nor did it
occur to her that there were few young men in all New
York who would have been in unrelieved misery if
Marjorie Armstrong had set her cap at them.

As a matter of fact, Claude quite omitted to mention
that he had gone to Huntington with more than a vague
notion of finding out whether he and Marjorie couldn't
hit it off together, after all; also that, if Marjorie, with all
her eagerness to capture him, had not so plainly exposed
her design of "bossing" the marriage after it had taken
place—well, then—

What he did say, was:

"Of course, I was left quite free to do as I pleased.  Oh,
quite free.  They wouldn't lead the horse to water—not
they, that would be brutal coercion—they would simply
make it drink."

This irony expressed the full truth.  Claude had virtually
given his father a promise not to marry Janet.  But
Mr. Fontaine senior put no faith in vows that were subject to
the stresses and strains of love.  Mistrustful of his son's
infatuation and also of the unknown quantity of Janet's
ambition, he did not scruple to adopt any tactical measure
by which the union of the Armstrong-Fontaine forces
might be achieved.

"What do you mean to do?" asked Janet, greatly troubled.

"What *can* I do?  What can *any* prisoner do?  Run
away, I suppose."

"What—without me?"

"Well, you see, I'm planning to go to Europe, darling.
Separated by the Atlantic I shall be able to make my position
much clearer to my father.  An ocean is an astonishing
convenience when it stands between the giver and the
receiver of an explanation."

"Yes, but why can't I go, too?"

"You dear innocent," he said, taking her hand tenderly,
"we can't go cavorting over two continents as if we were
merely joy-riding from here to Quakertown."

"Why not?" she persisted, with her customary refusal
to be sidetracked.



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   \IV

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The question embarrassed him.  Even had he been clear
about the train of thought at the back of his mind, he could
not, in all brutal directness, have said: "A man in my
station does not flaunt his mistresses in the face of the
public.  That is all very well for the vulgar rich.  But not
for my sort.  High-class polygamy is strictly *sub rosa*."

Claude did not explicitly think this, much less say it.
His chief difficulty in the way of reaching a straightforward
understanding with Janet was that his mind did not work
straightforwardly upon the problem of sex relations.  His
adopted radical professions were entirely subordinate to
powerful, instinctive reactions along traditional lines.

Thus, at heart, he had little use for Janet's views about
free love.  To Janet, the term meant a public abandonment
of an obsolete institution.  To Claude, it was little more
than a polite synonym for illicit intercourse.

Claude, in fact, had no deep quarrel with existing
institutions.  He prided himself on being tolerant, and his
tolerance extended to the institutions of Bohemianism
(which had no recognition in law), as well as to the
institutions of the established order (which enjoyed this
recognition).  His support of "advanced" art, his membership
in the Outlaws' Club, his philandering among the Lorillard
tenementers—these were all ways of escape from the
particularity of normal civilized life.  Bohemianism, by
systematically discarding troublesome forms, costly
conventions and restrictive social obligations, really organized
these ways of escape for him and provided a maximum of
pleasure with a minimum of effort.

He was, therefore, by no means prepared to go as far
as Janet wished to go, openly; yet he was fully prepared
to go to the limit, clandestinely.  So much so, that a severe
critic like Robert would have said that Claude was deliberately
taking advantage of Janet's inexperienced outlook on
life.  And it was quite true that Claude was willing to profit
by her belief in free love, although he was far from willing
to champion this belief, much less to become a martyr in
its promotion.

But if he was exploiting Janet's infatuation for him,
he was not doing so consciously.  And the fact remained
that, had she been so minded, she could just as easily have
exploited his infatuation for her.  Indeed, the latter would
have been easier.  Claude was not aware of this.  He was
aware only of his own power, and he believed he was
exercising almost superhuman self-control in an effort to avoid
compromising her future.

He believed he was doing this now, whilst fishing for an
answer to Janet's candid "*why not?*"  A few hours earlier, in
Huntington, under the concerted pressure of the Armstrong
family, he had realized that he would have to give up
either Marjorie or Janet; and it had occurred to him that
if he took Janet now, Marjorie was not lost to him later;
whereas if he took Marjorie now, Janet was lost to him
forever.

Naturally, it was not in terms of pitiless realism that he
sought to explain his choice.

A more heroic explanation was that he had given up
Marjorie for Janet's sake, and that, on a peremptory
summons of the heart, he had run away from Huntington
determined to risk everything—from his father's wrath to the
loss of Mr. Armstrong's protection in the matter of
smuggled diamonds.  The heroic explanation was the one he
meant to give to Janet.

Looking, at the moment, into Janet's gray eyes in their
superb setting of long, dark lashes, he was ready to give
his thoughts any form that might be acceptable to her.
Surely, such a mixture of radical daring and native good
sense, of enticement and candor, of self-reliance that
ennobled her and soft yielding that flattered *him*—such a
mixture had never before been found in one woman.  It
made her exquisite, enigmatic, thrilling and quite
indispensable to him.

So reasoned his heart.  And all his commanding
nonchalance returned.



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   \V

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The result was that when Janet, failing to get an answer
to her question, repeated anew her wish to accompany
him abroad, he enfolded her in his arms and said:

"After all, why not?"

And after a fervent embrace, he added:

"Janet, I think you ought to face what's in store for us."

"Don't let's cross bridges, Claude," she pleaded.

"We'll get married, of course," he went on, unheeding her.
"Frankly, my father won't like it.  He'll probably make
Rome howl.  However, he'll get used to it in the
end—especially when he meets you.  But, though there's a storm
ahead, you are brave and we'll weather it, I'm sure."

"Your father won't raise a storm," said Janet, with a
strange smile, "for a small but important reason.
Remember, I'm not going to be married."

"Janet!"

"You know I don't believe in it."

They argued the matter pro and con, she spiritedly, he
lamely.  Janet pointed out, among other things, that when
Mr. Fontaine senior learnt of their free union he was little
likely to attempt any serious interference, but would count
on time to separate them.

"'Love's not Time's fool!'" said Claude, quoting dithyrambically.
"We'll never be separated, darling, will we?"

"Well—not for the present," said Janet, with dancing
eyes.  "I won't vouch for our dim and distant feelings."

"No teasing, you darling imp!"

"Claude, I mean it.  If—if it should turn out that your
father was right, that will merely prove that we were
wrong."

He was at a complete loss how to treat her incredible
self-surrender.  As a man of the world, he was part
scandalized, part uneasy, according as he swerved from the
conviction that Janet was candid, to the suspicion that she
was designing.  Again, as a gay Bohemian trifler, he saw
in her attitude an easy way out of possible complications.
Whether he should or should not carry out his offer of
marriage was now a question he would not have to face.
She did not mean to put his vows to the test!  This was
breath-bereaving, staggering; it was even slightly annoying.
But, her eccentric choice being a fact, surely the
consequences did not rest on his soul?

"Janet, you don't know what you are doing!" he cried
out involuntarily, being torn many ways at once.

She, too, was greatly agitated; but, under the pressure of
her theory, she kept her head.  While he stood there as if
distraught, she poured out a flood of reasons to which he
scarcely listened.  For instance, she said it was criminal
for two people to form a permanent union or bring children
into a family until they were sure of being well-suited to
each other and of establishing a family that children would
wish to enter.

All marriages ought to be trial marriages of the kind that
George Meredith had suggested long ago.

Moreover, until she became independent in the matter
of money, she couldn't dream of subscribing to any
permanent arrangement.

He replied that this was all nonsense and derided
Meredith as a bookworm and a dreamer.  For his own part,
hadn't he money enough to provide for them both?  If she
wouldn't take half his money, she didn't love him.  That
was flat!

"I do love you!" cried Janet, with more visible emotion
than before.  "That's why I mustn't marry you."

He rose with a wild movement.

"I must save myself—and you, too!" he murmured.
"I'm going abroad by the first steamer."

But these words were dashed with insurgent passion.
Handsome, hypnotic, intense, his whole being vibrated
towards her.  She surrendered incontinently.

"Not without me!" she said, enchaining him in her arms.

He kissed her tempestuously.

"It's a daring step, and a perilous one," he said, more
in weak protest than in forceful remonstrance.

"No, no, no!" she cried, as with a gesture of ecstasy
she hid her face on his shoulder.





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.. _`NEMESIS!`:

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   PART IV


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   NEMESIS

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   CHAPTER TWENTY

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   \I

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One morning in the middle of August, Harry Kelly cut
short his gymnastics and went downstairs to get fruit,
cream and rolls for Cornelia, as he had done daily since
Janet left.  The letter box held one letter, a fat one,
postmarked Paris.  Cornelia was inclined to be lackadaisical
before breakfast, but a letter enlivened her at once,
especially if it came from a long-lost friend or bore a foreign
postmark.  Kelly sent his powerful form bounding up the
staircase, the victuals being safeguarded by a miracle of
balancing.

"A letter from Paris," he called out joyfully, as he
entered Apartment Fifteen.

"From Janet!" exclaimed Cornelia with conviction.  One
glance at the handwriting verified her guess.

"Janet's hand," she said, and tore the envelope open
feverishly.

"Wouldn't you enjoy reading it more after breakfast?"
he said wistfully as he watched Cornelia unfolding a great
many pages of writing.

"What an idea!  Make the coffee, Hercules, there's a
good boy.  The water is boiling; all you need to do is to
pour the water on the coffee and let it stand."

As Kelly had fallen sole heir to the daily duty of
preparing her breakfast, he uncomplainingly went to work.
Meanwhile, Cornelia, in a very becoming green-and-gold
Mimosa jacket, sat down on a lounge and buried herself
in Janet's letter.



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   \II

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Dear Cornelia:

.. vspace:: 1

Here I am in the Luxembourg Gardens, alone with my
fountain pen and my pad of paper, Claude having gone to
the races as the guest of a Russian Grand Duke.  I feel ages
removed from the days of Kips Bay, though by the calendar
only four weeks have gone by.

Why haven't you heard from me in all this time?  That,
I imagine, is the first question you would ask me if we met
face to face.  No, you wouldn't.  You would divine the
answer.  You would know that the blinding, paralyzing,
notoriety into which we were suddenly plunged, left me with
but one desire, the supreme desire for solitude.  A desert
without a single oasis would not have been too lonely for
me to live in.  For a few days even Claude—

Those cruel headlines, those stabbing capital letters!
Like points of fire in a demon dance they riot in and out
of my memory yet.  "Affinity or Elopement!"  "Fontaine
Heir Meets Enchantress on Baronia!"  "Diamond King's
Son in Joy-Ride to Europe!"  How did the inquisition
happen to overlook such exquisite weapons of torture as huge
red capitals on a smooth white space?

Writing the letters down affords a mild relief.  To my
physical sight, not to my mind's eye.  Oh yes, I actually
saw the headlines that Hutchins Burley fabricated in his
newspaper story.  Some thoughtful enemy of Claude's
took pains to have a copy of the *Evening Chronicle*
forwarded to his Paris address.

Didn't you guess at once that Hutchins was the beast
responsible for the publicity we got?  That vicious man
has a mortal grudge to pay off against me or against Claude
or perhaps against us both.  But what for?

How he got on our track, heaven alone knows.  Heaven
and Mark Pryor.

Yes, Cornelia, our own Mark Pryor (the human embodiment
of the theory of protective coloration, as Robert
called him)—he it was who brought me the fateful news.
In this wise.

On the second morning out, I was taking a turn around
the deck by myself, while Claude was chatting with the
captain.  (The "Baronia's" captain is an old friend of
Claude's family, the Fontaines being heavy shareholders in
the steamship company.  This was the connection that
enabled us to get accommodations at such short notice,
the purser's room having been given up to me and the
second engineer's quarters to Claude.)

As I said, I was roving about the upper deck, when one
of the ventilators or posts or something, suddenly became
alive.  Or so it seemed to my startled eyes.  Walking
remorselessly towards me, this no longer stationary object
magically assumed the form and voice of Mark Pryor!  You
could have knocked me down with a feather.  (By the way,
I'm more certain than ever that he's a detective or a spy
or a Soviet propagandist—or can he be merely an American
novelist studying life for the *Saturday Evening Post*?)

Whatever the key to his inmost mystery, I've always been
greatly taken with him.  He's like a flash of lightning on a
pitch-dark night: his comings and goings are never more
sinister or mysterious than when his sudden vivid presence
gives them a momentary relief.

Without letting me into the secret of his skill at sleight-of-hand
(or rather, sleight-of-feet), he drew me aside and
told me in a most sympathetic way of the story about
Claude and me that was being headlined in the *Evening
Chronicle* and that was soon to be the gossip of two
continents.  The information had breezed his way—by
wireless.  Out of pure regard for me, he had bribed the radio
man to keep mum.  Wasn't it splendid of him?  But he
warned me to prepare for a leak.  "The only thing you
can keep dark nowadays is the truth," he said, in his quiet
way, without a twinkle in his eye.

He also said that Hutchins Burley was certainly at the
bottom of the whole scandal.  He was sure of this, because
he had seen Burley on the pier shortly before the "Baronia"
left, and because of other reasons which he declared he was
not at liberty to divulge.

After predicting that we should meet again, Mr. Pryor
"faded away" as imperceptibly as usual, leaving me a prey
to my thoughts.  My heart was mostly in my boots and I
can tell you I was getting pretty limp when I pulled myself
up short with the reminder that I must pluck up a little
courage if only to show that I deserved a disinterested
friend like Mr. Pryor.  (He's in France at present, on some
dark business or other.  I don't care how dark, I'm glad
he's here.  The mere fact gives me the sensation of being
watched over.  I'm confident that Mark Pryor's keen
sight is at least as far-reaching as the long arm of
coincidence.)

It wasn't exactly a picnic to tell Claude the news.  Like
most of us, Claude thrives wonderfully well on good luck
but takes bad luck hard.  Naturally, to a man who has so
many important friends, newspaper notoriety is a bitter pill
to swallow.  Claude raged at his fate with a violence that
frightened me.  He tortured himself by anticipating the
libels to which his character would be exposed, the pictures
of himself and me that the yellow newspapers would print,
the slanders that the busybodies would privately circulate.
How his father and the Armstrongs would take the affair
was another source of torment.  And then there was the
fear that the story might leak out on the "Baronia" and that
we should become the talk of the ship.

It was a calamity.  And the worst of it was that Claude
appeared to think I was in some way directly responsible
for it.  His anger worried me far more than the notoriety
did; the angrier he got, the more the notoriety sank into
relative insignificance.  He accused me of being callous!
Wasn't that monstrously unjust?  Merely because my
advice was that we should make the best of a very bad
matter and face the world as if nothing had happened of
which we were ashamed.  He took my calmness, which was
all on the surface, as a personal affront.  It infuriated him
more (if that were possible) than the exposure, and caused
him to accuse me of disloyalty and lack of sympathy.  Are
men ever satisfied?  They pretend that they can't endure
a weeping woman.  Yet, give them a stoical countenance,
and they'll ask for tears.

No, Cornelia, this was not the first rift.  That had come
on the very evening we sailed, when the passengers held a
dance on deck in the moonlight.  I was not feeling very
well and danced only once, but Claude did full duty as a
leader of the cotillion.  During his absence from my side,
a young British captain in mufti (he had been an ace in
the war) sat down in a steamer chair next to mine and
helped me, what with his charming manner and his
gorgeous British accent, to while away the time.

All went swimmingly until, in an interval between dances,
Claude came back to me.  Can you call up an image of
Claude, the magnificent, approaching at a temperature of
absolute zero?  His manner, of the ice icy, froze the poor
captain dead away.  This done, he turned on me and asked
me what I meant by "picking a man up!"

You can imagine that I replied pretty tartly, and one
word led to another till we reached a point where Claude
threatened that he would never marry me—no, not for all
the king's horses and all the king's men.  At this, I burst
out laughing.  My laughter was immodest, unladylike,
spiteful.  And I should have regretted it, had Claude
understood me.  But Claude is in some respects a reincarnation
of Kipling's famous vampire lady.  He had never
understood, and now, he never will understand.

But I'm running ahead of my story.

As we feared, rumor and gossip about us soon had free
rein on board the "Baronia."  Poor Claude had to bear the
brunt of this annoyance and of the Captain's anger too.
That Claude and a lady were together on the voyage had
certainly been a secret, but a secret to which the old
sea-dog was a party.  The Captain's sense of propriety was not
outraged by the secret.  It was outraged only when the
secret became a matter of common knowledge.  And he
did not permit a feeling of delicacy to restrain his
indignation against his fellow conspirators.

What happened on the "Baronia" was trifling compared
to the furor of our landing at Southampton.  We were met
by "all the latest London papers" filled with the wildest
details of our "elopement."  That is the way they featured
our experiment over here.  It was described as the
elopement of a young multimillionaire with a poor plebeian
stenographer, an elopement carried out in the teeth of a
tyrant father with invincibly aristocratic prejudices.  Shades
of the Barrs and their Mayflower ancestry!

Worse remained behind.  The English reporters promptly
spotted Claude.  You can't be six feet two in your socks
and have the airs and graces of Prince Charming, without
being conspicuous even amongst a crowd of first-class
passengers on a fifty-thousand-ton liner.  When the
newspaper men plied poor Claude with questions, I began to
weaken at the knees.  But Claude was a trump.  He kept
his most nonchalant air, gave cleverly evasive answers, and
even begged one of his tormentors for a cigarette quite in
the style of the imperturbable villain of a screen play.
Then a battery of motion picture men turned their cameras
on us.  Mark Pryor and the British captain swooped down
to the rescue at this critical moment, which was very lucky
for us, as we had just about exhausted our nerve (to say
nothing of our nerves).

We stayed in London barely forty-eight hours.  In spite
of our assumed names we were bundled out of three hotels,
thanks to the curiosity of reporters who kept after Claude
as though he were a ticket-of-leave man.  I had supposed
that only American journalists hounded people, but
evidently the London tribesmen have taken a leaf out of the
New York book in the matter of pitiless persistence.  Claude
felt so harassed, outraged and persecuted that he could not
get out of London fast enough.  He saw a reporter in every
strange face and lived in constant dread of another forced
interview until we were safely across the Channel.

And now I had better answer the question that I know
is uppermost in your mind.

We have been living as a married couple!  Now it's out.
Your Janet, the bold and fearless advocate of free unions,
has been masquerading as a wife, a timorous and trustful,
cowering and respectable wife, differing from other wives
only in being a fraud.

It's a terrible comedown, a sickening fall from grace,
isn't it?

But what else could I have done, short of leaving Claude
entirely?

You see, Cornelia, the stark fact was that we couldn't get
accommodations anywhere except by pretending that we
were married.  Had we declined to make this pretense, we
couldn't have remained together at all unless we adopted
all sorts of secret, underground, time consuming devices.
It was a choice between the pretense and the secrecy—a
Hobson's choice, so far as I could see.

.. vspace:: 2

Cornelia's lips curled with contempt.  She could not
escape the reflection that she had showed much more
courage when *she* had been in London with Percival
Houghton.

.. vspace:: 2

I must add that free love, at any rate in my case, has
proved a failure, a dead failure.  I do not say that trial
experiments in loving and living together should not be
made, but I do say that the time is not ripe for them.  At
present, the two scores I have against free love are: First,
that it simply won't work; and second, that the only thing
about it that is *free* is the undesired advertising one gets.

This conclusion has not been reached in what Mrs. Grey
calls the cool, disinterested spirit of the dispassionate
investigator.  All the same, it is my conclusion.

Of course, it is an abominable thing that a unique,
intensely individual experience like love should have to be
made the subject of public inquiry and official registration
before it can claim to be legitimate.  In a more highly
civilized nation, such a state of affairs would be
unthinkable.  But amongst us!  Well, when you think of our
housing, transport, and domestic arrangements, when you
remember how primitive and rigid these still are, can you
expect more fluid and elastic relations between the sexes to
be welcomed or even understood?

.. vspace:: 2

"Huh," exclaimed Cornelia, half aloud, "she got all that
from Robert."

.. vspace:: 2

Please don't picture me as sitting down and wringing my
hands.  What's done is done and can't be undone.  I've
made an experiment in love.  And if the result hasn't been
what I expected, I have, like the experimental chemist,
made discoveries I never dreamed of, discoveries about
myself, about other men and women, and about human
institutions.  I can truly say that I haven't spent four more
unhappy weeks in my life, nor—mark this—four weeks
that have done me more good.

I call them unhappy weeks.  But suppose I had *married*
Claude!

Well, I dare say you've been thinking to yourself: "She
is capable of anything; now she will try to sell out to smug
respectability and settle down as Claude's duly wedded and
articled wife."  I admit this would be the logical sequel to
my new conclusions about love and marriage.  But though
I'm still fond of Claude, a great streak of doubt has
crossed my dreams of a happy future with him.

Shall I tell you the truth, Cornelia?  Claude and I
would make a very poor team.  I have in mind, not his fits
of bad temper, which are very annoying, nor his attacks of
jealousy, which are monstrous.  I have in mind his outlook
on affairs and his active interests, which are in every
respect different from mine.  Claude is in love with the
pomps and trappings of life; and I am not.  He goes in
passionately for elegance, luxury, all the externals which
men admire in society or public institutions; and I do not.
He wishes to study and master the ritual of social
intercourse in all its forms (even in its Kips Bay form); and I
will not.  He is fond of the gay boulevards, the fashionable
restaurants, the crowded promenades; I am fond of
quiet places and a chair to myself in a corner of a park.
Our divergence of tastes is almost absolute.  We don't like
the same theatres, concerts, pictures; we don't even like
the same games.

The only game we ever enjoyed together was the great
game of love.  "What," you will exclaim, "you mean to
contend that this game, which you played with such
abandon, so thrilled and absorbed and united you both as to
smother the thousand differences between you?"  Precisely.
That is what I contend, for that is what happened.  It is
weird, disconcerting, inexplicable, yet it is true.

Equally true is the fact that Claude lacks the talent for
companionship.  With women, at all events.  He has no
use for a woman except as a plaything or a wife.  And he
does not want his wife to be a companion or a partner in
his work.  He wants her to be an ambassador plenipotentiary,
representing him in polite society, and also a species
of superior twentieth-century domestic scientist taking full
charge of his creature comforts at home.  I don't see
myself in either role.  Do you?  Can you picture me as a sort
of mother, nurse, housemaid, valet, cook and errand girl
rolled into one?

All of which means that I'm not quite ready yet to handcuff
myself with Prince Charming's household keys.  "Hoity-toity,"
say you, "isn't this a bit like piling the evidence
sky-high to prove that the grapes aren't sour?"  Perhaps
it is, but I think not.  It is true that Claude hasn't asked
me to marry him yet.  It is true that whenever he is out of
sorts with me he tells me that my reputation is damaged
beyond repair and that I need not look to him to patch it
up.  It is true that when I smile at this he invariably insists
with explosive fury that he will never, never ask me to
marry him.  He repeatedly insists that he will not.  Still,
I believe that he will.  My problem is not what will become
of me if Claude *doesn't* marry me, but what will become
of me if he does.

As for my damaged reputation, I'm really not worrying
about that.  Say I have *sullied* my character.  In one respect,
a spot on a character is like a spot on a fine satin dress:
hard work will wash all spots away.

But it stands to reason that things can't go on like this
much longer.  The little Sorbonne *pension* in which we
are staying (as Monsieur and Madame) has its good
points.  And there are evenings when Claude, a little tired
of all the famous and imposing Parisians he has met,
expresses a longing to be quite alone with me again, and
transforms himself once more into the Claude he was before
we lived together.  Then we walk along the Seine or drive
on the wondrous roads towards Fontainebleau or Versailles.
And these evenings are very delightful.

But they cannot be repeated forever.  Any day I may
take the step that I ought to have taken some time ago.

Write to me, Cornelia dear.  Tell me all the news about
the tenements.  I suppose the Outlaws are as tame and
bourgeois as ever.  Does dear old Harry keep you fit and
sylph-like with his rising exercises?  And how is Lydia
Dyson shaping?  I see she has another serial in the *Black
Baboon* (I found a copy in Brentano's here)—she must
have coined bushels of money by it.  I wish I could work as
copiously on *my* diet as she does on hers of cigarettes and
Haig and Haig.  Charlotte Beecher, I fear, will be "through
with me" as the cinema heroes say.  Has she exhibited
again or married Robert yet?  Tell Robert I shall write
to him as soon as I've done something he'll approve of.

Need I give further hints of my insatiable hunger for
news?  Don't let me continue to be cut by the postman.
Write and write soon to

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   Your affectionate friend,
        Janet.



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   \III

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"Janet's a little fool," was Cornelia's laconic comment
as she folded up the letter.

Under Kelly's persuasive service, she attacked breakfast.
Between mouthfuls she epitomized the contents of the letter,
a proceeding that she punctuated with caustic exclamations.
At the end, Harry Kelly expressed much sympathy with
Janet's predicament.

"She has made her bed; she'll have to lie in it," said
Cornelia.

This was a far cry from the line Cornelia used to take
when she told Janet that "marriage is either a vulgar sex
deal or a legalized debauch;" or when she declared in
lyrical accents that "a free union is the golden key to the
garden of spiritual love."  Her sentiments on this subject
had undergone dilution since Harry Kelly with his athletic
build, fair prospects, and standing offer of marriage had
become a fixture in Number Fifteen.

But then Cornelia had never really had the courage of
her radical opinions.  Beneath her advocacy of new forms
of sex relationships there lurked a strong affection for the
old forms.  Essentially, her instincts fitted her for the
orderly virtuous days of bustles and bust pads, not for these
latter days in which established conventions were being
summarily overhauled.  For her, the time was decidedly
out of joint.

It had been so since her affair with Percival Houghton,
the artist who had "stolen her soul."  This affair had been
an accident of conduct and circumstances, and not, as she
always declared, a logical outcome of her character and
convictions.  And it was as a result of this accidental episode
that she was now an irritable, spiteful, new-fangled woman
instead of the old-fashioned wife and mother (of seven
children) that she should have been.

Some dim perception of all this stirred in the head of
Harry Kelly the ex-Harlem Gorilla.  Kelly's mentality fell
far short of his bodily development.  Still, he was no fool,
and he rightly guessed that Cornelia was unfair to her
former protegee.  He did not approve of Janet's flight with
Claude.  But he had seen too much of life in the Lorillard
tenements to be easily scandalized.  Moreover, his fondness
for Janet disposed him to put the blame, if any, on her
lover.  Like many amiable persons, he reserved his moral
censure exclusively for people he did not know or did not
like.

"The poor kid's down on her luck," he ventured gingerly.
"It's not up to us to hurry the post-mortem."

"Down on her luck!  With a man like Claude at her
side?" cried Cornelia, the words curving by slow ascent to
an unmusical top note.

"Claude's a grand looking man, that's true.  But I've
known many a grand looking man who was no better
than a four-flusher when you had to share your bunk
with him."

"Poor Hercules, what do you know about it?  If Claude
was a rotter, she should have left him.  In all decency,
she should have left him the moment she saw that her
passion was merely physical.  What has she done?  Nothing.
They are still together on the most intimate terms."

Kelly put his arm soothingly round her waist.  It was
a privilege she had allowed him in the dull days of
late—though not often and always grudgingly.

"I don't suppose she's going to have a child," she went
on, in a bitter tone, "yet that would be her one solid
happiness.  She's too selfish, I fear.  Look how idiotically fate
deals out the cards.  *She* could have a child, but she doesn't
want one, while I want one so much, but—"

It was a generous hiatus, and her voice softened as she
approached it.  She was forever telling men that she wanted
a child of her own; they were usually embarrassed or
piqued by the information; and whatever the effect she
enjoyed it.

For once, Kelly was not nonplussed.  He drew his arm
tighter.

"Listen, sweetheart," he said, sentimentally, "what's to
prevent it?  I want kiddies, too."

"Do you indeed," said Cornelia, with a dangerous light
in her eyes.  "I said I wanted a child.  The difficulty is
that I don't want the father for it."

"Why not, if we're married?" he proceeded with unexampled
obstinacy.  "I'd rather follow Janet than go on
being tormented like this," he concluded, drawing the long
bow at a venture.

She withdrew from him and rose, her cheeks parading
an angry red.  Ordinarily, a look was enough to make him
quail, but, lo and behold, he was marching with unprecedented
independence to the door.  And how could Cornelia
know that his body went hot and cold by turns for fear
that she would let him walk out?

She could not afford to lose him, so she called him back.

"Here, goose!" she cried, coming swiftly down from her
high horse.  "Here's Janet's letter.  You'd better read it
through before you quarrel with me about it."

He took it happily and obediently, she getting little
pleasure from such an easy victory.

While he read it, she reflected once more that she could
not afford to lose him.  She set small store by his doglike
devotion and, though he had recently obtained an excellent
position as physical trainer in a fashionable men's club,
she considered him vastly beneath her.  That he was
physically a veritable Borghese Warrior was wholly offset by
the fact that he was socially little better than a superior
handicraftsman.  In her eyes, that is to say, he had his
points, but they were not the points of a polished gentleman.

Yet he was the one friend left to her in Kips Bay, the
one friend whose constancy to her was undeviating and
unimpaired.

Cornelia's decline from glory had proceeded rapidly since
the departure of Janet.  The renaissance of flat Number
Fifteen as the social and artistic center of the Lorillard
tenements had been shortlived.  That renaissance (which
Cornelia tried to believe was of her own making) had
really begun with Janet's advent.  While it lasted, the
Outlaws and their cohorts had paraded back, with all
flags flying, and had restored the flat to the pinnacle of
importance which it had occupied when Cornelia, in the full
flush of the Percival Houghton notoriety, had first settled
down in Kips Bay.  For a brief space Cornelia, glittering
like the morning star, had been "the first lady of the model
tenements," and had tasted again what she called life,
splendor, joy.

But Janet had gone, and Claude had gone with her.  As
a direct consequence of Janet's flight, Robert had more and
more often invented excuses for absenting himself from the
Lorillard flats.  Charlotte Beecher's visits ceased as soon
as Robert's did, and Denman Page's as soon as Charlotte
Beecher's.  In its turn, the loss of Claude deflected a whole
galaxy of feminine stars, including Lydia Dyson at the top
of the scale and Mazie Ross at the bottom.  And so on,
ad infinitum.

Thus, almost in a week, the brilliance of Number Fifteen
had been extinguished.  Forever, or so Cornelia feared.
True, her queenly state had ended in a burst of radiance,
as a sky-rocket ends in a dazzling shower of gold.  But
this was cold comfort at best.  Cornelia knew that, without
some novel attraction, there was no hope whatever of
recapturing the fickle homage of the model tenementers.  And
no such attraction was in sight.  For once, no other
adventurous young lady was ready or eager to step into Janet's
shoes as Janet had stepped into those of Mazie Ross.
Cornelia's stock had fallen to its nadir.

She felt deserted.  In a mood of bitter, unreasoning
resentment, she gave Janet full credit for dimming the
splendor of Number Fifteen, the splendor she had never given
her any credit for enkindling.

She was very angry with Janet on another score.  This
adventurous young lady, after a gorgeously romantic time
abroad with Claude Fontaine, had apparently come a cropper,
as her tirade against free love sufficiently betrayed.
Reading between the lines, Cornelia fancied that she
detected a veiled reproach.  It was as if she were being held
responsible for pointing out the step that had landed the
writer in disaster.  Cornelia repudiated this responsibility
and was intensely irritated by the reproach.

What, hadn't she and Janet threshed out the whole question
of sex in the most open and aboveboard fashion?  And
hadn't she drawn a sharp line between free love as she
sincerely advocated it for the sake of a woman's rights, and
free love as it was practiced among the Outlaws and in
Greenwich Village for the sake of a woman's pleasure or
gain?  She had told Janet (and told it with some feeling)
that many young women nowadays regarded free love as
simply a very convenient antidote against man's growing
disinclination for matrimony.  It was a new bait for the
old trap, and a very successful bait, too, as numberless
marriages growing out of free unions attested.  In Greenwich
Village marriageable girls used this bait by instinct;
in Kips Bay they used it with cool professional dexterity,
as a surgeon uses a knife.

For Janet to insinuate that she had been taken in, was
a trifle strong.  If she had been duped at all, she was
self-duped.  And was this likely?  The curve of contempt in
Cornelia's lips indicated her belief to the contrary.  There
was such a thing as carrying a pose of artless inexperience
too far.  And what did Janet mean by all this talk of
casting Claude off?  Casting Claude off, indeed!  What
was she really up to?

Harry Kelly, having finished the letter, now handed it
back.

"Janet's getting a bit flighty," he remarked with true
male cynicism.  "Seems to me Claude has got somebody else
on a string."

Cornelia gave a scornful laugh.

"Don't be an idiot, Hercules," she said.  "More likely,
Janet has got somebody else on a string."

Kelly held his peace.  Like King Lear's daughter, he
adored and was silent: his love was mightier than his
tongue.





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


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   \I

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By the time Cornelia's answer reached Paris, Claude had
taken Janet to Brussels.  The immediate cause of this move
was a stringency in Claude's funds.  A brief and somewhat
acrid correspondence between father and son had followed
hard on the latter's international adventure.  After much
shilly-shallying on Claude's part, Mr. Fontaine had laid
down the terms on which alone he proposed to continue
polite relations.

Mr. Fontaine proceeded on the theory that in some cases
the most effective sort of moral force is material force.  He
did not demand that Claude abandon Janet, although this
was the goal of his desire.  He simply made it emphatic
that until his son *did* leave Janet, the old days of
independence coupled with generous financial supplies were over.

Meanwhile, he made a point of thwarting Claude at
every turn.  Claude longed for leisure and also for a fairly
free hand with the Fontaine Company's bankers in Europe;
Mr. Fontaine offered him definite work at a far from
princely salary.  Claude wanted to travel (as heretofore)
in the role of a commanding member of the firm; Mr. Fontaine
allowed him no choice but a paltry assistancy to
one of Fontaine's European agents.  Claude vastly
preferred the conspicuous agency in Paris, if an agency he
had to be reduced to; Mr. Fontaine detailed him
peremptorily to the humble agency in Brussels.  And so on.

Clearly, Mr. Fontaine believed that a series of pin pricks,
tirelessly administered here and there, would serve his
purpose much better than a dagger inserted under the
fifth rib.

Claude, having some means of his own, planned a summary
rejection of his father's terms.  But his available
funds were pitifully inadequate to his tastes and habits.
It was in vain that Janet threw herself sturdily into the
task of retrenchment.  She lacked experience; and as for
Claude, he was born to the purple and had inherited the
aristocratic idea that economy consists in making lesser
people do the saving.  He could not refrain from living on
a handsome scale or from entertaining his Parisian friends at
costly parties.  The day of atonement drew swiftly nearer.

And came in due course.  All his pecuniary sins were
visited upon him at one and the same inopportune moment
(when ordering a dinner at the Ritz in honor of the
Prince de Cluny).  At that moment he experienced the
novel sensation of finding himself suddenly without a single
penny of credit.  Had the ground been abruptly withdrawn
from his feet, the shock could not have been greater.

There was nothing for it but an immediate acceptance
of the terms on which his father had proposed a truce.
The Brussels agency was in charge of a hard-headed
Walloon between whom and Claude little love was lost.  The
pin pricks were warranted to do their work to a nicety.

Thus it was that in no very amiable frame of mind Claude
set foot in the Belgian capital and reported to the Fontaine
agent there.  Janet shared his contracted fortunes,
accompanying him from Paris in spite of a series of quarrels
which had chequered the weeks preceding their departure.

She accused herself of weakness for remaining with
Claude.  But she felt she could hardly leave him when he
was so completely down on his luck.  True, their quarrels
furnished her with a pretext, but not with a worthy one.
They were all in the nature of petty bickerings, trumpery
matters seemingly unrelated to the real issue.

But she began to suspect that the real issue between
herself and Claude would never be brought into the open.



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   \II

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Their hotel was in the aristocratic *Quartier Leopold*.
Scarcely a year had elapsed since the armistice was
proclaimed, yet the *Boulevard Anspach* and other central
highways were again the glittering rendezvous of international
idlers indefatigably bent on expunging the last unpleasant
memories of Armageddon.  This expunging process
appeared to involve the consumption of much bad food and
the production of much loud noise.

Early in the morning of his seventh day in Brussels,
Claude was awakened by the penetrating backfire of a motor
car in the street.  Having already been aroused by
disturbances twice, he sprang from one of the twin beds in the
room and closed each window with a furious bang.  Janet,
in the other bed, changed from her right side to her left,
but was too deep in sleep to wake up.

"Damnation!" he called out, first towards the street and
then, as this bore no fruit, in the direction of the occupied
bed.

Getting no response he stalked to the sleeper's side.

"How can a man get any rest," he shouted angrily,
"with pandemonium in the streets and every window in the
place wide open?"

The world in general showed no interest in this
conundrum propounded by a very good-looking young man in
pajamas.  And Janet, after stirring uneasily for a moment,
returned to a motionless slumber.  The street noises had
kept her, as well as Claude, awake until the small hours
of the morning.  Once asleep, however, she slept soundly
and could defy Bedlam.

Seeing no prospect of petting or sympathy from this
quarter, Claude nursed his anger to leviathan size.  He
paced the room like a madman, distributing a liberal supply
of imprecations on everything and everybody as fast as
the images raced into his thoughts.  This proceeding relieved
him of a part of his fury.  The rest he sublimated in the
act of tidying up the room.

He went at this task with breakneck speed.  His method
was to set chairs and tables in and out of place with
vicious thumps; then to pile books, newspapers, brushes,
combs, wearing apparel and the like into roughly classified
heaps.  He took special pains to pick up Janet's scattered
articles of underwear and to fling each one on top
of the last with the force of an invective.

Under this steady percussion and repercussion, Janet
finally woke up.

"What's the matter?" she murmured drowsily, pushing
the rebellious dark curls from her face.

Claude bombarded her with reproaches.

"The matter!  The matter is that you have the nerves
of a rhinoceros.  I can't sleep with the windows open,
while you could sleep with them shut.  But it means
nothing to you that I haven't slept a wink for seven nights
running, just because you insist upon keeping the windows
open."

(Janet's hands gestured: "Oh dear, another tempest in
a teapot!")  She sat up in bed and, with her feet tucked
under her and her hands folded over her knees, braced
herself for the storm.

"I thought we agreed to compromise by changing off,"
she said mildly.  "The windows have only been kept open
every other night."

"Compromise!  Compromise!"  He sprang from his chair
with a violent laugh.  "How can oil and water compromise?"

"I'm sure I don't know.  I'm not a chemist.  They don't
mix, but they may get along very amicably together side
by side, for all I can tell.  What difference does it make,
anyway?  The real trouble is that you've been made nervous
and irritable by your father's letters.  If you'd only
let us talk the whole matter over sensibly and in good
humor—"

"My father's letters have nothing to do with the case,"
he cut in savagely.  "The trouble is with your idiotic
superstition that the sooty, dusty air from the street is more
important than peace and quiet."

"What is the use of saying the same thing over and
over," said Janet, with a touch of asperity in her clear, soft
tones.  "You are in a perfectly childish temper, Claude.
If I were your wife I'd have to put up with it.  As I don't
have to, I won't."

"My wife!  If you were my wife, you wouldn't dare to
be so selfish, or to ignore my rights so shamelessly."

"Luckily, I'm *not* your wife."

"No, thank Heaven.  It's also lucky that you're so well
satisfied with your limitations and your sorry future.  Like
all the Barrs of Brooklyn, you may well glory in your
irresponsibility.  It's all you have."

"Oh, I have my freedom.  I glory in that, too.  If I
were married to you, I dare say I should have to cringe
and even ask your forgiveness.  As it is, before this day is
over, you will probably ask mine."

"Don't flatter yourself!  I'm going for good.  That'll
spike your prophecy."

He began to dress posthaste in order to put time and
space between his threat and its retraction.

Janet watched him through the long dark lashes of her
half-closed gray eyes.  He was spoilt, tyrannical,
contemptible.  Yet his energetic masculine beauty and the
seductive ring of his voice still had power over her.

"Don't imagine I can't see through your game," he flung
out, recklessly scattering the heaps he had so painfully
assembled, in a frenzied search for a necktie.  "Your fine
pretense of not wanting to marry me is a clever way of
getting me to do it.  Exceedingly, overwhelmingly clever!
But it hasn't fooled me.  Not a bit!  There are some things
I don't swallow."

"Thank goodness.  Perhaps you won't swallow me then,
though you seem on the point of doing so."

She lay down again.  Her averted face permitted only
her dark curly head to show.

"I might have married you," he shouted, brandishing
the recovered necktie at the bed.  "I might, if you hadn't
shown yourself in your true colors.  Thank God, I found
you out in time."

"Yet you don't seem a bit pleased."

"You little serpent!  Is there no escaping your sting?"

"A minute ago I was a rhinoceros, now I am a serpent.
A pretty swift evolution, isn't it?  Of course, the 'Descent
of Woman' *would* beat the 'Descent of Man' all hollow."

And she turned her back upon him contemptuously.
Stung by her disdain, he moderated his temper somewhat
and said:

"It is the trick of women to put men subtly in the wrong.
You fight, but you never fight in the open.  You send us
into a devil of a temper, and slyly perpetuate the quarrel
until you can make capital out of our degraded condition.
Patient Griseldas, martyred angels, persecuted saints!  If
only you'd drop the pose of injured innocence!"

This impassioned speech was really a bid for a truce.
But Janet, her heart hardened, lay quite still, the back of
her head expressing defiance.

The silence maddened him more than a flood of reproaches,
and he continued dressing *fortissimo*.  Finally,
he reached for his hat, sending her, at the same time, a
parting shot.

"Keep it up," he said, "and you'll be a past mistress in
the art of demoralizing a man."

He went out with a spectacular exhibition of bad manners.

Poor Claude!  He did not feel entirely guiltless.  But he
was absolutely certain that the fault lay vastly more on
her side than on his.  In the breviary of love, he had pledged
his soul to an eternity of devotion, but not his temper to
a five minutes' trial.



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   \III

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The door had scarcely been closed before Janet turned
out of bed and began to put on her stockings.  She got no
further than the first one before she heard returning
footsteps.  Quick as a flash she resumed her former position in
bed, so that when the door opened, her face was buried in
the pillows and the back of her head was one obstinate,
unconciliatory curve.

Claude had come back on the pretext of getting his
walking stick, really in the hope of finding Janet penitent
or at least willing to placate him.  When he saw that all
the advances would have to come from his side, he turned
sharply on his heels and marched out, in his anger
forgetting his cane.

Janet now waited until she was sure that he had gone
in good earnest.  Then she finished dressing, reflecting the
while that for the third time within a week she was left
quite alone.  It was the discord that troubled her, not the
solitude.  Solitude had no terrors for her, although it had
a drawback of a practical sort.

Namely, in the matter of the language.  She was almost
totally ignorant of French, her opportunities in Paris for
acquiring the vernacular having been extremely few.  She
knew that Claude expected his absence to make a virtual
prisoner of her.  In fact, with this punishment in view, he
had stayed away until late at night on the two occasions
of their recent quarreling.  And she did not doubt that
he meant to punish her in the same manner again.

She went downstairs to breakfast full of pity for herself
and of indignation against Claude.

Breakfast changed her mood completely.  It occurred to
her that Claude might feel the discord between them as
keenly as she did, though he might not be as conscious of
the reasons.  This led her to feel sorry for him and to
wonder whether she might not have been more conciliatory.

Her nature was so essentially sound that she was inclined
to look on Claude's outbursts of rage as symptoms of a
mental disorder.  She told herself that her equable temper
gave her an immense advantage over him, an advantage she
ought not to exploit too far.

It was Robert who had first made her conscious of the
worth of her well-poised temperament, not to mention other
good qualities which had seemed as inevitably her own as
her two arms and two legs.  Lately, since realizing what
a surprisingly large number of people were ill-humored and
bad tempered, she had begun to prize her even-mindedness
for the rare gift it was.

Her self-esteem improving, her spirits followed suit.  It
was too fine a day to spend indoors.  And, Claude or no
Claude, she made up her mind to gratify a desire to
wander through the fashionable shopping district.

She bethought herself of a pocket English-French
dictionary, and a little "Colloquial French in Ten Lessons,"
which she had picked up at Brentano's in Paris.  Thus
equipped, she sallied out on an adventurous journey in
the direction of the Hotel de Ville.

Her course from the *Quartier Leopold* to the *Boulevard
Anspach* was intentionally zigzag.  Walking leisurely and
observing critically she was able to confirm or correct
impressions of the capital gathered while riding with
Claude in taxis or motor buses.

It struck her that Brussels was cleaner, wholesomer and
more competently managed than either New York or Paris.
Had the *Bruxellois* taken a leaf out of the book of
Prussian efficiency or were they a more competently executive
people?

Brussels was, of course, much smaller than Paris, less
ostentatiously "grand" or "cosmopolitan."  Janet did not
agree with the orthodox tourist opinion that the Belgian
capital was merely a pocket edition of the Gallic.  Brussels
was lively without being chaotic, and picturesque without
being dirty.  Paris, on the other hand, was in some respects
a very American city.  Its Rue Royales, Champs Elysees,
Faubourg St. Germains and other show sections were
perhaps more numerous and certainly more beautiful than the
corresponding show sections in New York.  But apart from
these picked quarters, Paris and New York had the same
tawdry glitter, the same rag-bag dishevelment, the same
noisy, neurotic people, the same morbid chase after
pleasure.

These results of modern civilization seemed by no means
entirely missing from Brussels, but they existed in a
smaller degree, even in proportion to the city's size.  Life
on the streets of Brussels still had an appearance of being
orderly, sane.  You could walk along the main thoroughfares
without the sensation that you were steering your
way through scurrying, erratic, homicidal pedestrians.  In
a crowd in New York or Paris you might well become a
prey to the fear that Darwin was right, after all, and that
the evolution of man was guided chiefly by the principle
of chance, Nature being a sort of brute Junker force which
imposed *Kultur* on the survivors.

With these reflections, Janet sailed along, and though
remembrance of the quarrel with Claude gave her an
occasional sinking feeling, this was but the ground swell after
the storm.



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   \IV

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At the Grands Magasins de la Bourse, Janet experienced
little difficulty in making several minor purchases.  Not
because she had memorized a score of colloquial questions
and answers from her little book, "French Guaranteed in
Ten Lessons."  For the questions and answers which she
had conned so trippingly from the text were amazingly
inapplicable to her needs.  In the realm of trade or barter
the phrases she needed always called for a subtly different
twist from the high-flown phrases in the text-book.  The
book model advised her to say: "*Sir* (*or Madam*), *have
the kindness to direct me to the street by which one may
proceed to the Rue Royale*."  She actually wanted to say:
"*What's a good short-cut to the Rue Royale?*"  But as to
this racier version the text-book was mute.

These difficulties proved no insuperable barrier to Janet.
A glance, an eloquent gesture, and a copious use of the
phrase *comme ça*, bridged the worst gaps in the course of
communication.  *Comme ça* alone, used at the end of the
index finger, so to speak, worked wonders.  Single-handed,
it was mightier than a whole battalion of text-book phrases.
Yet Janet flattered herself that she could, at a pinch, have
dispensed even with this omnipotent demonstrative.  To be
sure, she was far swifter at divining other people's wishes
than at getting her own wishes divined.  Still, though she
had a genius for the first process, she had at least a talent
for the second.

"It would be strange," she thought, "if a New Yorker
could not talk inarticulately in more languages than one."

The shop assistants met her attempts to communicate
with them fully halfway.  Their friendliness and courtesy
in difficult situations astonished her.  So did their efforts
to comply with her precise wishes.

It was all very different from the American shop men
and girls that she was accustomed to.  A New York salesman,
who slept in a hall room in the Bronx and lunched at
Child's, on a ham sandwich and tea or on griddle cakes and
skimmed milk, was professionally guiltless of every effort
save one, and that was an effort to convey to each
customer a sense of the latter's abysmal insignificance; also
an intimation of his supreme good luck in being waited on
by the most distinguished clerk in the metropolis.

Standing at a counter in New York, one might be
excused for supposing that the salesman accepted the
purchaser's custom only as a grudging favor to the purchaser.
Standing at a similar spot in Brussels, one might hope that
the favor would be allowed to be the other way.

Perhaps the Brussels salesmen did not really feel favored.
In view of the final disposition of the profits, they probably
merely pretended to feel so.  If this was the case, their
pretense carried conviction, by virtue of the artistry of
their politeness.  Were there not, then, as many fictions in
the life of New York as in the life of Brussels?  Yes, but
they were neither convincing fictions nor polite ones.

Artistry and politeness, Janet concluded, though they
might be minor virtues, were not the minor virtues of an
industrial republic.

Her last errand in the Grand Magasins was to buy
Claude several pair of socks.  The redoubtable *comme ça*,
in a choice variety of modulations, did yeoman service in
facilitating the selection of the correct color, quality,
size.

She was sure Claude did not deserve the pains she was
taking over him, particularly in view of his conduct that
morning.  But Janet's indignation had failed to blot from
her mind a picture of the night before at bedtime, when
Claude had pathetically drawn attention to the spectacle
of both his great toes protruding rudely from the tips of
his socks.  This picture of Claude walking about Brussels
with protruding toes offended her sense of the fitness of
things.  And, as she did not believe that the fitness of
things should be tempered with revenge, she made the
necessary purchases without pluming herself on her
magnanimity.

Parcels in hand, she came close to a section set apart
by a low railing.  A somewhat depressed looking woman in
front of the railing was talking humbly to a magnificent
young man behind it.  From a sign which read *Bureau
d'Emploi*, Janet guessed that this was the section in which
applications for employment were received.

If only she knew the language well enough to apply for a
position herself, what a lot of problems this would solve!

The magnificent young man, who was patently the absolute
monarch of the section, looked disapprovingly at the
somewhat slatternly applicant who was abasing herself
before him.  With an air as superb as his sartorial
equipment, he concluded the interview.  So Cophetua might
have concluded an interview with an unavailable beggar
maid.

The dismissed applicant was the picture of dejection as
she walked past Janet, who pitied her from her soul.

Suddenly Cophetua saw Janet.

Was she a lady or was she a beggar maid?  He reasoned
that ladies rarely burden their arms with a load of parcels,
nor were they in the habit of making lingering stops in
front of a *Bureau d'Emploi*.  On the other hand, the object
of his speculation was young, supple, well dressed; her
gray eyes glancing his way thrilled him as no salesgirl
beggar-maid had ever thrilled him before.

Decidedly, if she *was* a beggar maid, she was a most
uncommon one.  Cophetua saw that she was still looking
at him, not artfully, and yet not disinterestedly either.  The
problem was disconcerting and insoluble; the call of the
blood was peremptory and imperious.

He resolved to chance it.

Unbending as much as so magnificent a young man could
unbend, he called out to Janet in a most inviting tone.

Alas, she couldn't understand a single word.  All she
could catch was the note of interrogation.

"*Je ne comprends pas français*—I'm sorry, but I don't
understand," she informed him in polyglot.  She wondered
whether he could possibly be offering her employment,
although she doubted this, for his glances were far from
businesslike.

Again Cophetua spoke, more slowly.  Yet on the same
suave, interrogative note.  He eyed her with immense favor.
She understood his looks; and, as it was clearly not a case
for the use of her pet *comme ça*, she lost all desire to
understand his words.

Flushing and not quite knowing what to make of it all,
she prepared to walk away, discretion seeming to be the
better part of valor.

"Can I be of assistance?" said a gentleman who had
suddenly stopped on his way past her.

She saw a short, robust, handsome man with an auburn
beard and somewhat darker hair faintly tinged with gray.
He took off his hat and bowed.

"I can speak a little English," he said, fluently enough,
though to Janet's ears the accent sounded rather German.

Then he and Cophetua rapidly exchanged a few sentences
in French.  From the latter's frigid manner, nothing was
plainer than that he regarded the stranger's mediation with
extreme distaste.

"He merely wishes to know whether you are seeking a
position," said Janet's self-appointed interpreter.

"How could I be?  I don't know a word of the language,
as you can see," she said, with one of her fascinating
gestures.

This reply was duly conveyed to the chief of the
employment bureau who, with a thousand daggers in his
parting smile, withdrew majestically into his shell.

"It is impossible to know the reason for a mistake so
deplorable," said he of the auburn beard, apologizing for
Cophetua.

He lifted his hat again, and made as if to go.  But he
did not go.

"Oh, I don't mind a bit," said Janet, laughing
unaffectedly.  "If only I knew French, I should like nothing
better than to take some position or other."

For a second, they looked into each other's eyes with
mutual approval.  Then he said boldly:

"In that case—would you like to be—what do the
English call it—tutor to my little girl?"

From Cophetua, looming in the background, came mesmeric
waves of hostility.  Sensing this, they walked away
together.  He gave her a card inscribed with the name of
Anton St. Hilaire.  He told her he was an Alsatian, a
widower with one child of about fourteen years.  His wife
had died during his absence on service at the front.  His
daughter having sickened, he had been to Italy with her.
Now he meant to make a long stay in Brussels in order to
be near a famous specialist for children.  Later he and
Henriette would travel.

Henriette had a nurse who for many reasons was
unsatisfactory.  His wish had long been to place the child in
charge of a cultivated woman who should be a friend to
her rather than a mere attendant, and who should inspire
him with entire confidence.  After a few not very searching
questions, he professed to have entire confidence in Janet.
He waved aside as immaterial the objection in respect of
Janet's ignorance of French.  She would pick up French as
quickly as Henriette picked up English.  Henriette had
already had some English instruction; and Janet, for her
part, had no doubt of her ability to manage the child as
far as the linguistic difficulty went.  Had she not proved
up to the hilt her genius for making foreigners understand
her when such was her desire?

"I could get along with a Choctaw," she said to herself,
exultantly.

They talked as they proceeded along the Boulevard
Anspach.  The long and the short of it was that Janet
agreed to consider the offer.  She promised to pay a visit
next day to M. St. Hilaire's apartments in order to meet
Henriette.  She would then make up her mind whether to
take the position or not.

Upon this understanding the Alsatian left her.

Janet, all agog with her adventure, gave up shopping for
the day.

The encounter appeared to her to be a godsend.

She liked M. St. Hilaire.  If she also liked his daughter,
if she and Henriette took to each other enough to make the
proffered place attractive, she would be in a position to
part company with Claude immediately.

As she had a strong conviction (backed by plenty of
experience) that she could get along with any halfway
tolerable human being, she considered the step as good as
taken.

True, she anticipated a bad quarter of an hour in having
it out with Claude.  But what a jolly thing it was to be in
possession of a powerful weapon like economic independence.
It was the last argument against tyrants, in this
case against Claude and the special set of circumstances
that made her absolutely dependent upon him.

She wished she could be candid with Claude and tell him
all about the Alsatian.  But this was impossible.  Claude's
capacity for candor was like some people's capacity for
alcohol.  A little of it went to his head and made him
quarrelsome.

She was not like that!  She could stand being told any
amount of truth (or so she flattered herself).  This was
why so many people made her their confidante.  Having
an illusion stripped away might give acute pain, but it
never outraged her.  Witness her disenchantment with the
theory of free love.  But Claude, in common with most
people, was like the famous prisoner who had spent years
in a dungeon and who, when released, was quite overpowered
by the fresh air.  An unusual supply of truth all
but killed the average man.

In this matter, the only one she had ever met like herself
was Robert Lloyd.  How she had underestimated Robert!
Worse, how she had underestimated the strength of her
attachment to him!  Her partnership with Claude, a
partnership of infatuation, had been a weak thing.  A breath
had made it, and a breath had blown it away.  But her
partnership with Robert, a partnership of work and mutual
interests, had been a bond of adamant.  Time could not
wither it nor custom stale its precious memory.

She had a passionate longing to write Robert and pour
out her heart to him as in the old days of the firm of
Barr & Lloyd.

But no.  This would never do.  In questions of sex,
Robert was as fanatic as any average American business
man.  The scene on the East River pier came back to her
vividly.  There he had stood like a reincarnation of Cato
the Elder (Cornelia's nicknames certainly did hit the
bull's-eye at times!) lecturing her and saying:

"I sha'n't have anything to do with free love or with a
woman who has had a free lover."

The remembrance caused a wave of bitter feeling to
surge through her.

By this time she had reached the Place Rogier.  There
she took a bus to the office of the American Express
Company in order to inquire for mail.  The one letter handed to
her had been forwarded from Paris.  The superscription
was in Cornelia's handwriting, and Janet tore open the
envelope without delay.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


.. class:: center large bold

   \I

.. vspace:: 2

As was her custom, Cornelia had written in a decidedly
lyrical vein, sounding in turn the strings of pathos,
misgiving and melancholy sympathy.  Without formal
salutation the letter began:

.. vspace:: 2

My heart is torn for you, Araminta dearest, as I follow
the story of your wanderings.  It is a story that reopens
old wounds, for in your sufferings I again experience my
own.  With what a different poignancy!  Different as
Claude Fontaine and Percival Houghton are different.  I
know that Claude possesses the supreme fascination that
leads so many women to throw themselves recklessly into
his arms.  He turns their heads; but at least he does not
rob them of their souls.  This, Percival Houghton did.
Thank your kind stars, my dear, that Claude is not as
Percival, that he has not the latter's dominating will or
piratical psychic personality.  Your soul can still be called
your own.

How I pray that your trials may turn out for the best!
Araminta, every woman is fated to learn at the hands of
some man how unscrupulous all men are in matters of sex.
But is it not strange that men should outflag us at what
is called our own game, and that women should let themselves
be deceived by the fact that they are always credited
with the victory?  This indeed is man's greatest cleverness.
He snatches the spoils even whilst loudly protesting that
we have him completely at our mercy.  Yes, men are our
masters in the game of love, the game that is said to be
*our* profession and *their* pastime.  My dear, the amateur
who gaily calls the tune has a much better time of it than
the professional who is compelled to do the fiddling—unless
the fiddler plays wholly and solely for love or is clever
enough to exact a price insuring freedom after the dance
is over.  But this is an elementary principle which I need
hardly point out to *you*, Araminta.

You say you do not mean to marry Claude, although you
believe it lies within your power to do so.  At the same
time, you speak in harsh disparagement of free unions.  To
be candid, this mystifies me.  I hope, however, that I'm
wrong in detecting, beneath your criticism, a subtle
reproach.  If I'm right, you've done me a grievous injustice.

Didn't I consistently urge that free love is for daring
and devoted spirits only?  And what wonders have not
the bold and brave done for our sex in the last thirty years!
Look how the market value of men has fallen and how the
market value of women has risen, if I may use the crude
language of Mazie Ross.  No longer do women live, as did
our grandmothers, for the sole purpose of "charming" men
or of sipping the nectar of their "homage."

Pray observe, dear child, that I never decried marriage
in the case of the few women who are strong enough to
command the legal tyrant instead of submitting to him,
and who thus are in a position to straighten out the
irrational knot from the inside.  As for the common rule of
females, if they *will* go on flocking to the altar in droves,
if they *will* be infatuated with marriage after we have
opened their eyes to man—why, let them rush in where
angels fear to tread.  And let them take the consequences,
too.  Small blame to the nuptial fire if it scorches the likes
of *them*.  Is the flame guilty because the moths dash in?

But now for the news, although there is precious little.

First, Lydia Dyson has produced a new novel—and a
new baby.  You know she lets this happen (I mean the
baby) every once in so often because she says it is the
only way to keep her complexion perfect.  (It really is a
perfect olive, in spite of the quantities of gold-tipped
cigarettes she smokes.)  The baby, like its predecessors, has
been given out for adoption to a childless couple in good
circumstances, Lydia contending (*a la* Rousseau) that an
artist makes a very unsatisfactory parent.  Lydia's other
achievement, her novel, "The Mother Soul," has been
running serially in the *Good Householder*.  It's netting her
the usual mint of money, ten thousand dollars down, to
say nothing of copious extras in the shape of book and
dramatic royalties.

There's Lydia for you, flourishing like the green bay
tree!  Not like your poor Cornelia, who'd be happy enough
to take the child and let the royalties go.

Robert is rarely here nowadays.  Charlotte Beecher,
therefore, doesn't show up often, and so, what with you
and Claude in Europe, I'd be monarch of all I surveyed,
if Hercules didn't take pity on me and come in to drive
the blue devils away.  He spoils me almost as much as you
did.  A dear, dutiful boy he is, as fond of work as a camel.
I feel conscience-stricken when I think how lightly I accept
his devotion.  Ought I to make him happy?  Ah, well-a-day!
I'm sometimes tempted—ah, *how* I'm tempted!

But a poor soulless thing like me mustn't think of such
things.

Harry's prospects have improved wonderfully of late.
You know his heart was never in professional wrestling.
He deliberately gave up a promising career *on the mat*,
as they call it, where he acquired that odious nickname
of the "Harlem Gorilla."  Poor Hercules is about as much
like a gorilla as I am like an elephant.  Refusing
engagements to appear in public contests brought him down on
his luck for a time.  That's how he happened to land in
the model tenements.  He never was even the least bit of
a radical.  Among the Outlaws, our gorilla is quite a lamb.

Well, this repulsive part of his career is over for good.
He is now the physical director of the Bankers' Club.
(What think you of my prophetic nickname for Hercules?
The bankers have their monster clubhouse on
Fifth Avenue, almost next door to the Pillars of Hercules,
as the Gotham and St. Regis hotels are called.)  It's a good
position.  And an even better one is in sight.  The Life
Prolongation Institute (I say, Araminta, what a name!)
has lately approached him in regard to a post at one of its
European branches.

Wouldn't it be odd, if we all met some fine morning in
Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysees?

As for Robert, he has become as mad as a March hare.
His Guild League seems to have dropped through a hole
in the ground.  (I predicted that, too!)  He says the
Guildsman propaganda was too radical for the old-style
Laborites and too conservative for the Bolsheviks.  But I
can't pretend to follow these distinctions.

At all events, he was very much at loose ends for a while.
One or two excellent openings in the newspaper line he
calmly turned down with the remark that a successful
journalist would have to be as corrupt as Falstaff and
Hutchins Burley rolled into one.  He is really quite
incorrigible.  He never seems to be content until he has got
himself thoroughly on the wrong side of everybody who
might be of service to him.

There are any number of instances of this trait.  His
personal quarrel with Hutchins Burley was quite unnecessarily
lengthened into a business feud.  He never made the
most of his friendship with Claude (think what a chance
it was for a man in his circumstances to be intimate with
a man in Claude's!).  He got himself in the black books
of the whole newspaper world because of his agitation for
the Guildsmen.  And he is always flinging off violently
from his friends.  To this day, he rebuffs Hercules and me
whenever we try to help him.

But finally, on account of his mother and sister out West,
he had to put his pride in his pocket.  It was too late!  Did
Cato ever tell you that he had an uncle with bushels of
money in California?  Well, it seems there *is* such a
relative, and Robert applied to him for temporary help.  The
uncle, a chip of Robert's block—for he evidently has little
use for affection, family or otherwise—preserved a discreet
silence.  After cross-questioning our friend, I found out
why.  He had painstakingly sent the old gentleman (who
made a fortune in real estate speculation) his own pamphlet
on land profiteering!  As I said before, Robert is
incorrigible.

What does he do next but hit on the brilliant scheme of
going to work as a clerk in an insurance company,
downtown.  Denman Page's insurance company, as it happens.
Fancy our fastidious Cato with his quick ways and ideal
enthusiasms sitting from nine till five at a poky desk in
Wall Street.  And is this fearful sacrifice made for the sake
of turning over an honest penny (thirty dollars a week,
to be exact)?  Never believe it.  Robert's little game is
to help organize the mercantile employees into a radical
labor union.  Can you beat it?

He says that the clerk is the most abject boot-licker and
willing slave of the ruling robber bankers to be found in
the whole industrial system (I won't vouch for the accuracy
of this description).  He (the clerk, that is) needs
redemption.  But although plenty of rich people go a-slumming
amongst the very poor and downtrodden, nobody is
self-sacrificing enough to go on a mission of mercy amongst
the benighted and degraded "clerkical" classes.—And so he
raves on.

In retaliation, the big bankers and insurance chiefs
have also formed a society to resist the inroads of Robert's
infant union.  Denman Page, Charlotte's indefatigable
wooer, is one of the most aggressive leaders in the
employers' society and is doing his utmost to persecute Robert
and make his life as miserable as possible.  Robert, loathing
business, hangs on downtown, purely out of regard for his
union.

He is simply throwing his natural talents away.  All so
unnecessarily, too.  At any moment, he could marry
Charlotte Beecher for the asking, and develop his executive
ability—become a great public administrator or something
like that.  Charlotte isn't noted for her beauty; but she is
young, she has several millions in her own right, and she is
no mere society trifler either.  She works almost as hard at
her sculpture as if she had to earn her own living.  Lots of
men are after her, naturally enough.  They say Denman
Page would give his eyeteeth to add Charlotte's fortune to
his bank account.  But she seems to want Robert.  Rumor
has it that she has even proposed to him several times.  To
Cato!  And leave it to him to fish up some silly scruple
about not selling his independence to a rich wife!

Still, I saw him in Charlotte's studio in the Mews lately.
He was quite lover-like (in his Catonic way).  I hear he
goes there pretty often.  So perhaps there's hope.

What a picture I could draw of how your departure with
Lothario set the Lorillard tenements by the ears!  The
headlines, the excitement among the Outlaws, Kips Bay in
a buzz, buzz, buzz—but you can imagine it much better for
yourself.  Cato alone took it with stoical calm.  Araminta,
he astonished me!  Hardly a syllable would he say about
it.  A stern sort of "make your bed and lie in it" expression
was all we could get out of him.  And he shut off questions
with the remark that it was entirely *your* affair.

Yes, we all thought Big Hutch held the key to the leakage
into the papers.  He hates Claude with an undying hatred
for some reason unknown to me, and he has an immortal
tomahawk out for you because you so openly showed the
disgust he filled you with.  "Hell hath no fury like a
Hutchins scorned."

The old villain was lately appointed a member of a
newspaper mission to travel *de luxe* to Russia.  Trust Hutchins
to keep himself in clover.  Mazie Ross, as bad, as pretty,
and as syrupy as ever, is to be his traveling companion
(all on the quiet, of course—the purpose of the mission
being to report on the stability and morality of the
Bolshevik regime).  And they say that ethics is a humorless
science!

Keep me informed, dear child, of your plans and
movements.  What shall I send to Lothario?  Rosemary and
rue, or poniards and poison?  My fondest hopes and
wishes—from my heart—wing their way to you.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Ever your devoted,
        Cornelia.

.. vspace:: 2

Janet finished reading with a sigh.  The letter changed
none of her opinions or plans.  It merely determined her
all the more strongly to suppress her desire to write to
Robert.



.. vspace:: 3

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   \II

.. vspace:: 2

On returning to her room at the hotel she got rather a
start, for Claude was there.  Usually when he went away
in anger, he returned late at night, and it was now only
late in the afternoon.  A glance showed her that he was in
gay spirits and that he had communicated this mood to the
apartment by filling it with the color and fragrance of
flowers.  It was a part of his peace offering.

Hardly had she entered, when he rushed forward, relieved
her of her parcels and kissed her ardently.

"Darling," he exclaimed, "what a bad-tempered beast
I've been!  Can you forgive me once more?"

She fought desperately against the spell of his romantic
personality.

"Why not?" she said, withdrawing from his caresses.

"You are an angel, dearest," he said, seizing her hands.

"Then I shall be an angel on the wing, Claude."

"Janet!  Say anything but that.  Prescribe any punishment
you please.  But do let's begin again, with a clean
slate."

"You can't get the slate clean when the scratches are
too deep, Claude.  To forgive and act as though nothing
had changed is hard; to forgive and act as though everything
had changed is harder still.  We must both be sensible
and do the second, the harder thing."

"What do you mean?" said Claude, in alarm.

"I mean that we'll be much happier apart."

"Don't say that again, Janet dearest.  You are taking
my conduct of the last two weeks too seriously.  It isn't
fair.  I've frequently behaved abominably.  I don't try to
excuse it.  I admit it.  But remember the constant worry
I've had to put up with at this cursed Brussels office.  That
boor of a Walloon in charge has undoubtedly had orders
from my father to be a thorn in my side.  And he's doing
his level best to please.  Not a day passes but what he
gives me a hundred lancet scratches ending in a good
stiletto stab."

Worry had not made Claude less handsome.  The ring
and tang of his voice thrilled Janet almost as much as of
old.  His patrician manner and flashing blue eyes were
almost as irresistible.  Yet Janet put away his arm and
said:

"Claude, I know you've had a very trying time.  It's
altogether on my account, isn't it?  All the more reason for
me to go away."

"But what on earth do you want to leave me for?"

"For a thousand reasons."

"You might deign to mention *one*."

"Well, when you frown, you want me to be sad; when
you laugh, you want me to be gay.  You never think that
I may have moods of my own, moods that won't dance to
your piping.  You never think of any one but yourself."

"Oh, don't I?  I've had you on my mind all day.  I've
thought of nothing else.  And it's not the first day that
I've spent in a torment of worry about your attitude
towards me."

A great wave of self-pity swept through him and quite
carried him off his feet.  By precedent, it should have
carried Janet off her feet, too.

She stood her ground in silence.

"For Heaven's sake, don't be obstinate," he said, his
confidence beginning to desert him.  "It isn't late yet,"
he added, in a more pleading tone.  "We can still have an
awfully good time this evening.  Do be nice—"

"Nice!"

She stood up and looked at him.  He mistook the mocking
expression in her smiling gray eyes, and did not notice
the faintly contracting brows above her long-lashed eyelids.

"Yes, nice and reasonable," he went on, pursuing what
he thought an advantage.

"Reasonable!"  The faint contraction was now a forbidding
bar.  "I'm trying hard to be reasonable, Claude."

After a pause, she smiled again.  "You pull me one way,
reason pulls me another," she said, with characteristic
candor.  "Now see if my plan doesn't follow reason.  You
left this morning, for a short while; I'm leaving tomorrow,
for good and all.  You left me in anger; I should like to
leave you good friends.  It isn't as easy as it sounds.  Will
you help me?"

He flung himself angrily into an armchair.

"You must be mad to think you can shift for yourself
in a strange country."

"Mad or not, that is exactly what I think," she said,
coldly.  "And I shall begin to pack my things now."

She actually drew out a bag and suited the action to the
words.  Claude looked on, speechless.  After a while he
went over and, roughly taking hold of one of her arms,
continued his remonstrance.

"You can't even *read* the language, let alone speak it.
And you haven't a penny of your own.  Or do you expect
to earn money on the streets?"

"Not until I've exhausted the *regular* channels," she
said, maddeningly calm.

Inwardly she was boiling.  She looked at him steadily
until he released her arm.  Then she added:

"I feel perfectly capable of looking out for myself, even
in a strange country.  Here are some socks I bought for
you at a counter where no English was spoken."

"The devil take the socks!" he said, hurling the package
to the other end of the room.

She sat down on a tuffet beside her case.

"You know quite well that I had a little money of my
own, which I brought with me," she said.  "That will do
me to begin on."

"To begin on!" he raged, pacing the floor violently.
"What do you mean by *begin on*?  Is this another secret?
As for your money, I know nothing about that either.  I'm
continually being slapped in the face with something or
other that you've kept in the dark.  But what's a little
deceit among lovers?"

"I've never deceived you," she said, growing bitter as
she went on.  "In any case, deceiving you would be a trifle
compared with the crime of deceiving myself."

"Deceiving yourself?"

"Yes.  Do you suppose I could ever have lived with
you, without first thoroughly deceiving myself?"

Claude's anger cooled at this bitter question.  Janet was
now worked up, and anything was better than the killing
indifference she had so far maintained.  He closed her
valise and sat down on it, at her side.

"Janet," he pleaded, "you were never like this before.
So unyielding, so cold.  And I had planned that we'd make
a gala night of it.  Look at these lovely flowers.  Don't
you understand their symbolism?  I'm going to do the
right thing.  I mean to marry you now, here in Brussels,
at once!"

"You've offered to do that before."

"Yes, but I really mean it this time."

"And I really meant it Claude, every time I refused.
You see, I always assumed that your offers were made in
good faith."

"You are making a fool of me."

"No one can do that but yourself."

He got up abruptly and stood there nonplused, while
she calmly went on packing.  He hated her for it.  She
was rude, inflexible, callous.  Her motives were unfathomable.
She was never twice the same.  Yet at this moment
he believed he wanted her more passionately than he had
ever wanted her before.  He burst into suspicion.

"What's the real reason, Janet?  Some one has written
to you—Robert, I dare say?"

He took her silence for an affirmation.

"I thought so.  Now I understand your change of attitude.
He's been preaching at you.  It's his specialty.  His
views, curse them, are like a drought.  They dry up all
one's spontaneity and natural affection.  Long ago, in the
tenements, I noticed his sinister effect on you.  Whenever
you went out with him, you came back with your heart
hardened against me."

She laughed and said:

"What nonsense!  You're quite wrong.  Robert hasn't
wasted any of his valuable sermons on me.  He hasn't sent
me so much as a scrap of paper."

"Then what has changed you, all of a sudden?  Is it my
father you're afraid of?  That would be too absurd.  He'll
come around.  He has got to come around.  He can't help
himself.  I know too much about the business, its secrets
and its weaknesses.  So don't worry on that score."

"Claude, it's all very fine.  But I don't see myself as
your wife.  I'd never do.  You need a woman to manage
you like a mother and to flatter you like a squaw.
But—these jobs not being in my line—I'd criticize you like an
equal.  And you know you simply can't stand criticism."

Was she really rejecting his offer of marriage?  Claude
was appalled at the apathy of the feminine intellect in the
face of a miracle.  Didn't she know what his offer meant?
(He tried to convey it to her—not in the exact words, but
in euphemisms.)  It meant a change of estate from mistress
to wife.  The wife of Claude Fontaine!  The wife of
a merchant prince of Paris, London, New York, etc. (the
only sort of prince that counted in the twentieth century;
no mere paper prince or petty Venetian dogeling, but a
prince whose rank had an international validity and whose
means could challenge the heart to name its wildest desire).
It was not conceivable that she knew what she was about.
Still, he had to face the possibility.

And this desertion on top of all he had endured in
consequence of leaving America with her!

"Isn't there a shred of gratitude in you?" he cried out,
aghast at her unyielding front.

"I'm not ungrateful, Claude," she said, gravely.  "Living
with you has been a liberal education.  I've learned the
truth about marriage without binding myself for life; I've
also learned the difference between affection and infatuation
without breaking either your heart or mine.  Can I
ever repay this?  If every girl could have some experience
in living with a man or two before she made a
permanent choice, I believe marriage would be far more
popular."

"Confound your opinions," he shouted, in an agony of rage.

With a wild movement, he seized both her arms and
furiously lifted her to her feet.

"Look here.  Do you think you can calmly turn your
back on me after what I've put up with, after all I've
suffered on your account?  Exactly why do you want to
go away at the very moment that I'm marooned in this
infernal town?  You've got to tell me straight!  Is it sheer
insanity, or a craze for romantic adventure?"

With cheeks glowing and lips quivering, she said:

"I'm leaving you because we have nothing in common
except our physical attraction.  And that is mostly
physical repulsion now, as you see."

"Haven't you one spark of love for me left?"

"Claude, with all your faults I love you still," she replied,
smiling, as she rallied her self-command.

He relapsed into his seat, utterly overwhelmed.

Deeply moved, she went over to his side, and looked at
him with a pang of remorse.  He edged away from her with
a passionate sense of injury.

"Remember," he warned her, "if you leave me, that will
end everything.  Society may ostracize you, or toss you
back into the gutter.  Don't ask me to lift a finger."

The friendly words froze on her lips.  She quietly resumed
packing.

He sprang up, beside himself, his whole person vibrating
with his fury.

"If you're going, you needn't wait until tomorrow!" he
said, drawing in his breath.  "You can go now, for all I
care."

He walked to the window, his teeth clenched and his
body set.

While she hastily assembled the rest of her most necessary
things, he was saying to himself:

"This damned idea of independence!  She thinks she
can frighten me.  She thinks I won't let her go.  I'll call
the bluff, and she'll come back flying."

All this on a horrible quicksand of doubt.

But she saw only his hostile back and heard only the
echo of his savage tones.

How like her mother he was!

Without a word, she picked up her bag and went out.





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


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A sedan drove up to M. St. Hilaire's house in the
*Quartier Leopold*.  The young lady who got out was met
at the door by a girl of fourteen who enfolded her in
affectionate embraces.

"Oh, what a slow poke!" cried the girl reproachfully.
"You were gone for ever and ever, Jeanette!"

"Two hours and ten minutes, Henrietta," said Janet
looking at her wrist watch, "is pretty short measure for
eternity.  I'm glad you're not my butcher or baker."

Henriette grimaced.  They went upstairs together, the
girl's arm tightly clasping her companion's waist.

Henriette St. Hilaire was a lovely girl, lithe and slender.
Her fair hair was bobbed and her eyes were the soft blue
eyes of the North.

She complained again of the dull time she had had.

"Serve you right for having a headache when I left," said
Janet.  "According to Herbert Spencer, if I went out for a
drive by myself every time you had one, your headaches
would soon disappear."

"Mine has gone already.  Show me all you bought,
Janski.  May I open the parcels?"

"Yes, one by one."

For Henriette was recklessly attacking strings and
wrappers, to the great peril of the contents.

Among the parcels undid was one containing a book.

She read out the title: "Tom, Dick and Harry."

"What's this?"

"That's a book of light reading for a young lady well
advanced in the English language."

Henriette had taken to English as a duck takes to water.
After a year of continuous practice, she spoke it well; and
read or wrote it passably.

"Oh, it isn't a girl's book, is it?" she said, dubiously, and
scanning the title again in the light of Janet's words.

"No, it's a boy's book.  Boys' books are the only ones I
know about because they were the only ones I used to read.
They were much jollier than the girls' books."

"Did your mother let you read boys' books?  My mother
wouldn't."

"Nor mine either.  But I read them on the sly.  That's
what made them so enticing, I suppose."

"I can't imagine that you ever did anything on the sly,
Janski," said the child, who still took idioms somewhat
too literally.

"Oh, can't you?  Then I'm not half such a fool as I look."

Henriette laid the book down and went over to make a
demonstration of tenderness by way of intimating that she
believed Janet to be the best and cleverest person in the
whole world.

Janet skillfully cut this demonstration short.  She believed
that a child's affections, like its disaffections, should be kept
well within bounds.

"Your enthusiasm for 'Tom, Dick and Harry,'" she said,
in her musical voice, "leaves much to be desired.  Let me
tell you that it is not a book for study, but a book for
light reading.  If you really mean to make English your
'adopted tongue,' as you sometimes tell me, you must get
used to light reading.  The English-speaking nations read
very little else."

Henriette gave her a look full of adoration.

"Oh, I don't need light reading while I have you.  To
be with you is like—it's as exciting as watching the
loop-the-loop!"

"Look here, Miss, do you imply that I'm a sort of
three-ringed circus or professional jumping-jack?"

"No.  I don't mean anything horrid and jumpy like that.
I mean you are never like other people.  That's why it's
such fun to try and guess what you will do or say next.
And I hardly ever guess right."

"I see.  I'm more like a Christmas stocking, full of
surprises."

"There, you see what funny things you say!  It's far more
absorbing than a hundred books of light reading."

"Henriette, you are becoming highly skilled at flattery.
It's a very useful accomplishment.  If my absence brings
out virtues like this, I think I shall make a point of
deserting you for two hours every morning.  You will become a
paragon, and I shall be famous for my absent teaching."

"Oh, no, no, most dearest Jeanette.  If need be, I'll say
the most awful things about you.  I'll do anything to keep you."

She gave a great sigh.

"You don't know how I worry about losing you.  It's
terrible!  Why weren't you my sister or my aunt?  Then
I'd be sure of keeping you always!"

"Don't be too sure of that, darling.  If we were close
relations, everybody would expect us to be fond of each
other.  And this expectation would probably destroy most
of the fondness, unless our attraction for each other
happened to be overwhelming."

"Oh, it is overwhelming, isn't it?  It must be, Jeanette.
Why, I wouldn't mind even if you were my mother!"

"That's what I call crushing proof."

"Yes.  And it's taking chances, too.  I don't really
want another mother, you know.  Mothers are only truly
nice to their sons.  Now do you see how much I love you?"

"I do, you little philosopher.  And I conclude, from so
much undeserved affection, that, as a teacher, I have
probably been far too easy-going.  In future, I shall have to
be much more severe."

"Oh, that has nothing to do with it," said Henriette,
laughing.  "It isn't the way you treat me.  It's—well, I
don't know what.  Perhaps it's the deep, deep mystery
about you.  Papa has noticed it, too."

"Has he, indeed?"

"Yes.  And speaking of mysteries, I forgot to tell you
that some one called to see you while you were out.  A
gentleman—"

"A gentleman!  Who could it be?"

"Well, he was a great big mountain of a man.  Ugly, oh,
like the ogre in a fairy tale.  I didn't like him a bit."

"Oh, you saw him?"

"Yes.  I peeked over the banisters.  What a monster!
Papa wasn't home.  Berthe let him in because he said he
was an old friend of yours.  Here's his card."

Janet read the name of Hutchins Burley, and needed all
her self-control not to show her dismay.

"Did he leave a message?"

Henriette prattled on, unaware of Janet's emotion.

"He asked Berthe to tell you that he would call again
about five o'clock tomorrow afternoon.  He said he especially
wanted to see you.  If you couldn't be in, he would be sure
to see papa."

"Five o'clock, did he say?"

"Yes.  Just when my riding lesson comes.  I suppose
we shall have to give up our ride," she added mournfully.

"Let's wait and see, dear."



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   \II

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Had Burley chanced upon her in the street and followed
her home, or had he seen her in one of the shops or at one
of the English tea rooms in Brussels?  Janet did not pursue
this fruitless inquiry.  The question was how to meet
the fact, the perilous fact.  For she could hardly doubt
that Hutchins Burley's visit boded her no good.

She passed the events of the last nine months in quick
review.  M. St. Hilaire had engaged her without references.
True to his agreement, moreover, he had given her a free
hand with Henriette's education and had been well pleased
when a growing attachment between Janet and his daughter
relieved him almost entirely of routine parental cares.

As the virtual guardian of Henriette, Janet had had
little to complain of and much to be thankful for.  Her
pupil and her pupil's father had treated her from the first
as one of themselves, so that she enjoyed all the advantages
of membership in a family of wealth and refinement.  These
advantages were not to be scoffed at.  M. St. Hilaire was not
only a man of cultivated tastes; he possessed the means
(derived from extensive realty holdings in Alsace and
Switzerland) which permitted him to indulge his tastes on
a very liberal scale.

All in all, Janet thanked her lucky stars, especially as the
pose of chivalry, which M. St. Hilaire had contributed to
their first meeting, had worn very well.  True, at the outset,
he had made a few advances ranging from the demonstrative
to the amorous.  But she had set these experiments
down to the incorrigible habit of continental gallantry.  He
had not gone beyond them, had accepted her gentle rebuffs
with a very good grace, and had not thenceforth encroached
upon her intimacy further than she wished.

Of late, she had not been able to close her eyes to the
fact that her employer was engaged in a mental debate as
to whether or no he should propose marriage to her.  She
regretted this fact and dreaded its sequel.  For reasons that
seemed good and sufficient to her instincts if not to her
intellect, she had no desire to marry M. St. Hilaire.  Her present
berth was very comfortable and altogether to her liking.
It gave her the rest she needed after the strain of her
adventure with Claude; it also gave her an opportunity to
reflect on the past and get her bearings in the present,
before she took another leap.

It was in the light of these relations with M. St. Hilaire
and with Henriette that she wondered what she ought to do.

As regards Hutchins Burley, she was sure that he meant
to play the heavy villain.  Why not?  Nature had cut him
out for the part, patterning him magnificently upon the
"heavies" that trod on the blood-and-thunder stage.  After
all, one had to give this stage its due.  If the literary drama
could create characters which nature copied (and sometimes
improved on), so could melodrama.  And certainly,
in Hutchins Burley, melodrama had prompted nature to
make her masterpiece.

Janet had rather settled it, then, that Hutchins would
have the audacity to approach her with a repugnant offer
(the same old offer), hoping that her recent experience
might have left her less squeamish than in the days of the
model tenements when she had repeatedly repulsed him
with scorn.  On being repulsed anew, he would proceed to
inform M. St. Hilaire of her affair with Claude Fontaine in
the expectation that the news would bring about her
discharge.  For it was unlikely that a father would wish his
child to continue in the care of a young woman who had
"gone wrong."

The mischief done, Hutchins would live in hopes of
snatching from her weakness the gratification he had vainly
striven to beg, borrow or steal from her strength.

Should she now, like a movie heroine, try to head
Hutchins off, temporize with his expected offer, pay him
blackmail, or what not?  She laughed heartily at this idea,
its execution was so foreign to her nature.

What would Robert advise her to do?  At this point
she repeated an act that had lately been a favorite part of
her daydreams.  She called up Robert, as Saul called up
the Witch of Endor, and had a long, sensible talk with him
one of those long, sensible talks so frequent in the days of
Barr & Lloyd in the Lorillard tenements.

Robert advised her to obey her common sense unless her
instinct kicked over the traces, in which case let her feel
no compunction about obeying her instinct.  She had better
have as little direct dealing with Hutchins Burley as
possible.  You could no more put off a scoundrel than you
could buy up a gentleman.  The basest as well as the best
of men were incorruptible.  If Hutchins had it in mind to
do something nasty, he would do it, no matter what course
she took.

Of course, she might throw herself on M. St. Hilaire's
mercy.  But then, though M. St. Hilaire was a decent sort
of man, was he not, like most cultivated men, a classicist?
That is, were not his reactions towards matters of sex
thoroughly traditional?  If so, the only attitude of Janet's
that he would comprehend would be that of a penitent
Magdalene with uplifted hands and tearful eyes.  Was she
prepared to assume this role?

"Decidedly not," was Janet's hot reply to Robert's shade.
"I may have been rash or worldly-unwise, but I won't
admit that I was wicked.  If I am asked to pay up for my
folly, I shall not try to evade payment.  But if I am asked
to pay up for my wickedness (which I do not acknowledge),
I shall fight payment to the last ditch.

"No doubt, M. St. Hilaire will think me wicked, but do you?"

"There are three kinds of people," solemnly responded
Robert's astral spirit.  "And they correspond roughly to
three kinds of existence we recognize: animal, vegetable and
mineral.  The mineral people are the dead people.  Not
more dead than the so-called minerals.  But, like rocks and
stones, they are incarnations of law and custom petrified.
Then there are the vegetable people, the people who fold
their hands and piously accept such crumbs of life as are
showered upon them from the lap of High Heaven.  Lastly
there are the animal people, the people who go out to find
life instead of waiting for life to find them.  If you intend
to remain in the last-named class, you must cheerfully
assume the risks of adventure."

"Dear me," ejaculated Janet, "if his very shade isn't
lecturing me for old times' sake!"

It was a little humiliating to be so dependent on Robert,
even in the spirit.  She wouldn't have minded it so much
if his terrestrial self hadn't, with desolating coldness,
washed his hands of her fate.

Still, take it all in all, he had done what all sagacious
ghostly advisers should do, he had told her to do exactly
what she wanted to do.

Consequently, Henriette's riding lesson should not be
interfered with tomorrow.  When Hutchins Burley came at
five o'clock, he would find her out.  Tableau of a raging
ogre!  His fury would know no bounds, and he would surely
embellish Janet's life history so that M. St. Hilaire should
put the worst interpretation on everything.  Well, let him
do his vilest.  Come what may, time and the hour would
run through the roughest day.

Losing Henriette!—Ah, that would be a bitter pill to
swallow.  Still, it wasn't the first bitter pill and it wouldn't
be the last.

In every other way, she felt ready for a change.



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   \III

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"Can I see you for a few minutes?" said M. St. Hilaire
to Janet, intercepting her outside his study, a little after six
o'clock next day.

She and Henriette were on their way upstairs to take off
their riding clothes and to dress for dinner.

"If you two are going to chatterbox, I shall take a little
nap," said Henriette, climbing drowsily up another flight
of stairs to her room.

"Don't be too long, *mon pere*," she added, stopping
half-way and looking down over the banisters.  "I'm even more
hungry than sleepy.  Jeanette, please wake me when you
come up."

Janet, from within the study, promised to do so.

Neither her voice nor her manner betrayed her apprehensiveness.
Her sailor hat was set rather jauntily on her
head.  Her light-brown riding coat and breeches made a
most becoming costume, one that showed the undulating
grace of her movements to excellent advantage.

M. St. Hilaire followed her into the study and closed the
door a shade too circumspectly.

His glances and the vibrant tones of his voice puzzled her
considerably.  She could guess the substance of what he
meant to convey but not the form in which he meant to
convey it.

"That man—" he began in a hesitant manner.

"Mr. Burley, the man I said was coming today?"

"He came.  You didn't tell me what he was coming for."

"I knew he'd do it so much better."

"He treated me to a long, long story about you."

"Yes, I rather thought he would."

"Oh, so you knew that, too?"

"I had no cause to suspect him of amiable intentions,"
she said, swinging her sailor hat by the elastic band.  "I
suppose he told you that I lived with Claude Fontaine?"

"Yes, but of course, I—"

"Oh, it's quite true."

M. St. Hilaire, nonplused by her candor, stroked his
auburn beard and feasted on the sight of her as she sat in
an armchair not far away.  The indefinable suggestion of a
devil-may-care mood enhanced her vital charm until it
stirred, thrilled, intoxicated him.

"Perhaps—at one time—you have loved this Burley?"
he asked, nursing the suspicion.

"A beast like that?  Never!"

He moved his chair very closely to hers.

"Just Monsieur Fontaine?"

"You don't expect me to go into details?" she said,
coloring deeply.

"No, no, my dear.  But—what has been, can be.  Is it
not so?"

"I don't know what you mean."

He didn't quite know himself.  Being in no condition to
reason clearly, he had leaped rashly to the conclusion that
she had wished him to learn of her love affair as an indirect
way of encouraging him.

Janet could not know his thoughts precisely, but she had
an inkling.  She wondered that she could have been so
blind as not to have seen that his studied chivalry towards
women covered a strongly sensual nature.

Even then, she was not insensible to the fact that Anton
St. Hilaire was a pleasing man to look upon.  His bright
blue eyes and clear, ruddy complexion testified to a sound
physique.  Perhaps he was a trifle too robust.  But there
was a feminine comeliness about him which was a foil to
his surging virility.  In many women, the first quality
calmed the piquant fears which the second quality excited.

"Burley naturally told all sorts of lies about you," he
added, for want of a better line to take.

"I expected he would."

"And of course I sent him about his business."

"I rather expected that, too," she said, smiling in spite of
a growing sense of alarm.

For he had abruptly approached her and advanced as
fast as she involuntarily withdrew.  She retreated around
the desk towards the closed door, on one side of which stood
a wide leather couch.  Against this she stumbled slightly,
and he caught up with her.

"Janet," he said, in a low voice, thick with excitement,
"the way he dared to talk about you, you—so sweet, so
clean, so adorable.  I could have strangled the brute."

"I wish you had."

"You must let me protect you—"

They were at cross-purposes.  She thought she could
still reach the door and make a dignified escape.  He felt
her withdrawal as an added incitement.  He had so long
dispensed with the anticipating, insinuating maneuvers in
the technique of love-making that he had lost the knack
of using them.  Moreover, his muscular strength, a sanguine
temperament, and past successes in sexual experiments had
primed him with the belief that direct action was the
shortest way with all women.

"You must let me protect you—"

With the words still on his lips, he took her violently
in his arms.

The touch of his hand against her body filled her with an
enormous, sexless anger.  Making an almost superhuman
effort, she struck back his head and succeeded in wrenching
herself from his grasp.

He stumbled, but instantly picked himself up.  As he
tried to back her away from the door, she again raised
her hand.

"I can protect myself," she said, with a passionate
repugnance that chilled him to the soul.

"Don't go like that," he cried, springing forward and
clutching at her arm.

She dragged it away, rang for the maid, and rapidly
turned the door knob.

"Berthe," she called down the hall, in clear ringing tones,
"please open the storeroom.  I want to get at my trunk."

Then she turned and looked at him, cold, distinguished,
unapproachable.

M. St. Hilaire plumped into the nearest seat.

"I meant no harm," he muttered, numb, and crestfallen
as a dried pear.





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


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   \I

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Ten days later.  A large sitting room in exclusive
lodgings near Picadilly, London.  Two men in an animated
conversation.  The decidedly younger one, breezy and Times
Squarish, and yet politely deferential to the experience of
his senior; the latter, a tall, wiry man immaculately dressed
in a suit of neutral coloring.

The young man was saying:

"Yes, Mr. Pryor, he's slowly warming to me.  Slowly.  I
tell you, sir, a Japanese naval attache can give points to
an icicle.  Still, I think he's biting!"

"Did you tell him that the U.S. Army of Occupation had
sent machine guns to the number of three thousand two
hundred and fifty to the Ukraine?"

"No.  I followed your instructions to the dot.  I merely
said I was in a position to tell him the number."

"Well?"

"He replied, with a sour smile, that he was in the same
position as regards me.  I ventured to question the
correctness of his information.  He volunteered the figure."

"And the figure he gave?"

"Was three thousand two hundred and fifty."

Mark Pryor's rather long neck collapsed telescopically
down his high, straight collar.

"And you think he's biting!" he said, turning his roving
gray eyes quizzically on his companion.  "Take care, Smilo,
my boy, or he'll have *you* 'biting' before you know it.  And
that will be a case of the biter bit."

"Have your little joke at the expense of the service,
Mr. Pryor," said young Smilo, with an air of tactfully
conveying a rebuke.  "But is a mere Jap likely to come it over a
real American like you or me?  I *don't* think."

"Let's waive discussion on a point so personal.  In
temperament and disposition we are exact opposites.  That's
why we get on so well together, and why I'm going to
take you into my confidence."

"Mr. Pryor, you mustn't think—"

"I know it, my boy, I know it.  I must never think, and
I ought never to take you into my confidence, either.  Both
acts are first-class infractions of the rules of the military
secret service.  I admit it shouldn't be done.  It might result
in important discoveries.  It might even lead to the
disentangling of one of the mysteries we're working on.  Think
of it!  There'd be only one thousand two hundred and
fifty-six mysteries left."

Young Smilo laughed good naturedly (to cheer the old boy up!).

"None the less," continued Pryor, gravely, "I shall now
violate another inviolable rule.  I shall give you four pieces
of information.  The first: Running across Hutchins Burley
in Paris twelve days ago, I told him the number of machine
guns sent by us to the Ukraine."

"So that was the dodge.  I see!  You told him the exact
number?"

"Hardly.  I told him three thousand two hundred and
fifty.  I thought that number would do as well as any.
Much better than the real number for a variety of reasons
which I won't stop to detail.  Suffice it, the number agrees
with the number which you, in your capacity of informer
to the Japanese Secret Service, offered to reveal to the
attache, and which he already knew."

"By George!  With all the other dope you've got in the
Burley case, you must be pretty nearly ready to close in on
the man?"

"So *I* thought.  But Headquarters didn't.  You see, I had
followed Burley along a devious route to Brussels.  By the
way, he nearly slipped through my fingers there.  I muffed
him, so to speak.  But I picked him up again before he left
Belgium and dogged him to Coblenz."

"Coblenz?  In the thick of the American occupation?"

"Precisely.  And bang under the noses of the American
army, Mr. Hutchins walked into a tobacconist's shop and
sent a letter to the Japanese embassy.  At this tremendously
exciting moment, Headquarters, in all the majesty of its
omniscience, shunted me off to London and ordered me to
take you in tow and mark time."

"We marked time all right," chuckled Smilo.  "You might
say we hall-marked it, what little we had.  Linking Burley
up with the Japs on the one hand and with the smuggled
Fontaine diamonds on the other, wasn't such a bad week's
work, even though we haven't got the goods on him yet."

"That's all very well, my boy.  But what do I get today?
Here is your second piece of information.  I get word to
quit the Japanese case."

"What for?"

"For a post of honor in the business of trailing certain
dangerous American radicals who are temporarily in
London.  How do you like that?"

"I don't like it, Mr. Pryor.  And I don't blame *you* for
not liking it.  It looks like a raw deal.  But are you sure it
hasn't some remote connection with Burley?"

"No, I'm not sure.  The devil has many irons in the fire.
So has Hutchins Burley.  Most energetic gentlemen whether
of the diabolic or the celestial brand can gobble up an
astonishing number of miscellaneous jobs.  For all I know,
Hutchins may be the new Head Bolshevik Bomb Thrower;
or he may be the old chief *Agent Provocateur*; or he may
be merely somebody with a friend in Washington whose
word can make Headquarters quail.  It's a conundrum.  A
pretty, picture-puzzle, play-box conundrum, if you like.
Still, a conundrum.  And I'm heartily sick of conundrums.
I'm done with them.  I joined the Secret Service to become
a detective, not a musical comedy magician."

"You don't mean to say you are going to resign?"

"I do.  You have guessed my third item of news.  As
fast as a steamer can carry me, I mean to proceed to
Washington, there to give my resignation and sundry pieces of
my mind to the Chief in person."

"But keeping its agents in the dark is an old, cherished
method of the Service, isn't it?  Mr. Pryor, I feel sure you
have another reason."

"I have.  Item four: I'm being followed."

"Followed—I don't understand."

"I began to suspect something the moment I came to
London.  Well, I put my suspicions to the test yesterday.
Before going out I folded a pair of trousers in a very
particular way and left them on a chair.  When I came back
they had been refolded in a slightly different way."

"Did you question your landlady?"

"Yes.  Naturally she denied that any stranger had
entered, but her confusion was obvious.  I quickly suggested
that my tailor might have called, and she as quickly agreed
that this was so.  When, an hour later, I interviewed the
tailor and he confirmed me in my belief that he had not
been near the house, the inference was clear.  I was being
watched.  And, mark you, Smilo, I have reason to believe
that the watcher is one of our own colleagues."

"Lord, no!"

"Judging from the awkward way the pockets were
crumpled in the act of refolding the trousers, I have further
reason to believe that the watcher is a woman."

"Impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible in this best of impossible worlds."

"It's a low-down shame, Mr. Pryor.  But, after all, it
can't hurt you.  'Sticks and stones may break my bones,
etc.'  You know the saying."

"My dear boy, being a detective you can't begin to
realize that the knowledge that you are being carefully
watched gives you a very jumpy feeling—especially when
you know you're guilty."

"In heaven's name, guilty of what?"

"Of doing a good job in your own line; in my case,
tracking down criminals."

"Surely you don't mean to imply that Headquarters
would permit influences—"

"I imply nothing.  I give you the benefit of the facts.
But if you think it's a pleasure to surmise that your every
movement has an unseen spectator—you don't know who,
but you fear it's a young and beautiful woman—"

The sudden ring-a-ling of the telephone bell cut across
the room.

Mark Pryor took up the instrument.

"Yes," he said.  "It's Mr. Pryor speaking.  A young
woman?  Indeed!  Well, I'll see her up here."

He hung up the receiver.

"A young and beautiful woman," he repeated with a
singularly straight face.

Young Smilo, whose way of life was still in the green, the
callow leaf, was divided between admiration and bewilderment.
In half a minute or so there was a knock at the door.

The young woman who came in was Janet Barr.



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   \II

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Smilo's parting look was one of stupefaction at the reception
the visitor got, Pryor's enthusiasm being a startling
abandonment of his neutral, self-contained manner.

Left to themselves, Janet informed Pryor of the troubles
that had brought her to see him.  The chief of these was
Hutchins Burley.

Would Mr. Pryor advise her how to deal with him if he
turned up again, as seemed highly probable?

There were other difficulties.  She had nearly exhausted
her funds.  She didn't wish to return to the United States.
Not at the moment, anyhow.  Yet she couldn't get a
position without a character.

This last she had learned recently, after several bitter
experiences.  Europeans seemed firmly persuaded that a
character existed not in yourself but in the minds of other
people, or rather in their handwriting.  In the United States
a good presence was worth a thousand good characters and
your own opinion of yourself, expressed with imaginative
brilliance, went much further than other people's opinion of
you, expressed with dullness.  In Europe, the reverse was true.

Would he make out a good character for her, and have
it on tap within easy reach in case she referred employers
to him?

She was sure that any testimonial coming from him—yes,
from him—

"Oh, I know you're a mystery," she said, in answer to
his deprecatory gesture.  "But not an ordinary mystery.  A
mystery linked to the pink of propriety is a sublime
mystery.  Like Mrs. Grundy's husband, whom you remind me
of.  No one has ever identified that mysterious man.  Yet
who'd have the courage to turn down a character made out
by Mr. Grundy?"

She told him of her break with Claude, of her situation as
the companion of Henriette, and of her experience with
M. St. Hilaire as a result of Burley's interference.

"I left Brussels the very next day."

"For Coblenz?"

"Via Coblenz, for Munich, to see you, if possible.  It was
a Munich address you gave me, on board the 'Baronia'."

"I left Munich some time ago."

"So I learned.  You see, I followed you here.  But how
do you know I went to Coblenz?"

"On the seventh of October?"

"On the seventh of October.  How *did* you know it?"

"I didn't know it.  The information just drifted my way."

"You are a detective then, Sherlock Holmes and
M. Gaboriau rolled into one."

"Janet, disabuse yourself of that idea.  If I *were* a
detective I'd be a very sorry one.  Let me prove it to you.  In
the course of my duties (whatever they are), I had occasion
to look up Mr. Burley.  I located him in Brussels on
the sixth of October.  I had scarcely found him before he
slipped through my fingers."

"Slipped through your fingers?"

"Yes.  Slipped through my fingers.  You see, I'm trying
to live up to the detective role to oblige you.  Well, I got
on to Mr. Burley's movements again on the seventh of
October, just in time to follow him to Coblenz.  *Why Coblenz?*
I asked myself again and again.  By the way, did you ever
hear of a real, live detective asking *himself* a question?"

"No.  But what is the answer?"

"*You* are the answer, of course.  And I've only just
discovered the fact.  Fancy Sherlock Holmes following
Hutchins Burley all the way from Brussels to Coblenz and
from Coblenz to London and not discovering a quintessential
answer, until the answer had crossed the Channel and
stationed itself under his very nose."

"Do you mean to tell me that that odious Hutchins
Burley is also in London at this very minute?"

"Don't be alarmed; I give you my word he sha'n't molest
you again.  I was about to res—I was about to transfer
my valuable services to another sphere.  What you have
told me determines me to hang on a little longer, for the
sole satisfaction of bringing Hutchins Burley to book."

"Oh, you mustn't injure your prospects on my account."

"No fear.  There's pleasure in checkmating a fellow like
Burley, and profit, too.  You know, Janet, the real
old-fashioned heavy-weight villains are deplorably scarce.
Goodness, routine goodness, is so easy nowadays, it is so
much in fashion, it is so thoroughly rammed down our
throats by compulsory education, that very few people are
inclined to be wicked and fewer still are energetic enough
to carry out the inclination.  Mr. Hutchins Burley is a rare
beast.  He does not identify his wickedness with our
goodness.  Not he.  He believes in himself from top to bottom.
Unlike the usual criminal of today, he doesn't suffer from
the cowardice of his convictions."

They discussed Janet's plans.  Ways and means, and how
to get her off the rocks, were the first considerations.

"Do you know what?" said Pryor, reflectively; "your old
friend Cornelia Covert could give you a lift."

"Oh, no; I can't go back to America—not yet, anyhow,"
said Janet resolutely.

"But she isn't in America.  She's in Paris.  You didn't
know it?  Then I've a big piece of news for you.  She's
married!"

"Cornelia married!"

"Yes.  Benedick, the married man, isn't in it with Diana,
the married woman."

"It's Harry Kelly, of course.  Give me a moment to
catch my breath.  Mrs. Harry Kelly!"

"Not a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"You've heard of Paulette crepe, haven't you?"

"The crepe that's all the rage this year.  Mr. Pryor, when
I see a Paulette crepe blouse in a London shop, the cells
of my great-great-grandmother rise enviously within me
and turn the clock back to Noah."

"The curse of Eve," said Mr. Pryor, in his driest vein.
"Well, everybody knows that Paulette crepe is named after
Madame Paulette, one of the first dressmakers of Paris.
Not everybody knows that Madame Paulette's real name is—"

"Cornelia!"

"Precisely."

Prior briefly narrated the curious story of Cornelia's
migration to Paris, her marriage to Harry Kelly, her
transformation into a fashionable dressmaker.  Through a
convergence of happy events, in which Pryor had had a
hand, Cornelia had been able to enter the old and famous
house of Paulette, then noticeably on the decline.  Her
artistic gifts and Kelly's industry had rejuvenated the
management and revived the glories of the Paulette tradition.
In a little less than a year Cornelia and Kelly had bought
out the aged proprietors of the firm.

"No wonder I didn't hear from her," said Janet.  "All
my letters came back unopened.  I began to think she had
turned her back on me."

"Marriage has not changed her as much as that," said
Pryor, smiling.  "But I warn you that it has changed her
a good deal."

"For the better or for the worse?"

"For the better *and* for the worse.  But wait and judge
for yourself."

"Perhaps Cornelia will think me in the way, now that
she has a husband to look after."

"Cornelia lose sleep over Harry?  No, dear girl; don't
worry on that score.  And don't forget that she'll be glad
to do me a favor as well as you.  More than one tony
customer has come to her shop at my instance.  When I tell
you that I brought Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the mother of the
Duchess of Keswick, to her, you'll admit that I'm a crack
barker."

"Mr. Pryor, you are my *deus ex machina*.  I believe you
are every one else's, too.  It must be a hobby with you to
help people out of difficulties."

"Quite the contrary.  It's a hobby with me to get people
into difficulties.  The worst of it is, I rarely succeed.  I
rarely get anybody into difficulties except myself."

"Is that true?"

"Well, it's as true of me as it is of certain other people.
Sensitive people.  People like you, or Charlotte Beecher, or
Robert Lloyd."

"Oh, Robert never gets himself into difficulties," said
Janet, with a trace of bitterness.  "He's too efficient, too
perfect."

"You do him an injustice, I'm sure.  Lloyd merely puts
up an exceptionally good front.  He stands the strain of
existence with skill and courage.  So do you, for that
matter."

"Thanks.  But I really haven't had much to stand."

"It seems ample to me."

"Not half what I expected.  When I went away with
Claude I thought the universe would be arrayed against me.
I dare say that in the margin of my thoughts there was
a dim picture of Janet flinging a glove in the face of a
decadent, despotic world."

They both smiled.

"What happened?"

Janet went on, sub-ironically: "A geyser of slander and
mockery that spurted up from the newspapers.  Nothing
else.  Nothing diabolic on the world's side.  Nothing heroic
on mine."

"That's the rule in these cases, Janet.  The Flatbush
suburb idea that all the world loves a lover is about as true
as the Greenwich Village or Kips Bay idea that all the
world hates a free union."

"You think both ideas are fictions?"

"Not entirely.  Modern society has its own way of giving
a pat of approval to a regular marriage and a kick of
disapproval to a free union.  Apart from these casual
demonstrations it doesn't get tremendously excited over what its
men and women do as males and females, so long as they
pay their rent regularly, refrain from incurring bad debts
with tradesmen, and bow the knee (at least in public) to
the seventh commandment."

"Yes, I soon found that out.  Nobody cared a pin
whether I was married or not, or whether I was more to be
pitied than scorned, provided I wore the proper clothes
and told the proper lies."

"Nobody?"

"Nobody, except Hutchins Burley."

"Ah, there's sure to be a Nemesis!"

"Yes.  But why Hutchins Burley?  What am I to Burley,
or Burley to me?  Why should that horrible wretch
be commissioned to persecute me?  Why was he destined
to snap the bond of comradeship between Henriette and
me?  He isn't exactly one's notion of a social censor, is he?"

"A scavenger isn't a popular notion of a sweet and clean
man.  Yet he serves a public purpose."

"What an extraordinary analogy!"

"Not at all.  You see, Janet, we moderns are too squeamish
or too lazy to do our necessary dirty work ourselves,
dirty work like punishment, for instance.  The result is
that when some one rashly assails the majesty of one of our
institutions, we punish him by proxy.  We kill by the hand
of the public executioner.  We get revenge by the hand
of the judge.  We dispense poetic justice by the hand of a
Hutchins Burley."

"Well, Hutchins Burley as society's Nemesis is a brand
new idea to me.  I shall need time to let it sink in.  But
what have I done to deserve so mighty a thing as poetic
justice?  I haven't even stolen another woman's husband.
Haven't I been my own worst enemy, as Laura Jean Libby
used to say?  Isn't that vice its own reward?"

"Janet, your question is fair.  But your voice and your
eyes are not.  Now I come to think of it, there may after
all be a teeny weeny bit to say—no, not on Hutchins
Burley's side—but on Monsieur Anton St. Hilaire's side."

"Mr. Pryor!"

"I don't mean a twentieth part of what I say.  But let
me say it.  You are strong enough to take it straight.  To
begin with, the enigma of Hutchins Burley: answer me this.
Didn't you of your own free will settle down amongst the
Outlaws?"

"Yes."

"Well, you can't touch pitch without a little of it sticking
to your fingers.  But let us consider what you are to do
next.  It's a safer topic.  We've talked unguardedly enough,
considering that there's a dictagraph in the room, put
there by no friends of mine."

"A dictagraph!  Then you're not a great detective,"
said Janet, seriously disappointed.  Hopefully, she added:
"If you are not Sherlock Holmes, perhaps you are Raffles?"

"Well, it takes a thief to catch a thief," was the
enigmatic reply.

He did not tell her that the hiding place of the dictagraph
had been located and that Smilo had received instructions
to tamper with the instrument as soon as the coast
was clear.



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   \III

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They took a bus to Janet's lodgings.

Several plans were agreed upon.  Chiefly, they were
both to write to Cornelia asking her to find a position for
Janet in the Paulette establishment.

Fashionable dressmaking was not precisely the work that
Janet's heart was in.  But she was prepared to take any
position as a means to an end.  Her real goal was active
participation in the later phases of the women's movement.
Recent happenings had revived in her the old longing to
enter the thick of the battle, to pitch into the struggle for
equal pay in every sort of occupation and for an equal title
to legislative and administrative power.

"But I shall have to get an income of my own before I
can be a factor in this struggle," she said.

"One must get an income of one's own before one can
be a factor in any struggle," said Pryor, dryly.

"Yes, I've learned that, too.  Feminists say that a woman
must have an independent income in order to enter marriage
with self-respect.  They could go further and say that
a woman must have an independent income in order to
enter a free union with self-respect."

Pryor told her that he expected to return to the United
States in a few weeks.  Should he, in case he ran across
Robert Lloyd, inform him of her altered views?

She said that Robert wouldn't thank him for any
information about her.

"But you were such exceptionally good friends,"
expostulated Pryor.  "Your little firm of Barr & Lloyd—what
a pity you couldn't pick that thread up again, instead of
joining Cornelia.  If Robert weren't as poor as a church
mouse, or if you both weren't too proud to borrow a little
cash from me—"

Janet interrupted to veto all suggestions along that line.
Pride had nothing to do with the question.  It was true that
she and Robert had been very good friends and excellent
working partners.  But Robert had emphatically said that
he had no use for a woman who had damaged her social
and businesss value by indulging in an adventure such as
hers [Transcriber's note: several words missing from source book]

"Hm!" said Pryor.  "When the shoe pinches his own
foot, what astoundingly conservative exclamations even a
radical fellow will make."

Janet went on to say that, although she had changed her
views, she had every reason to believe that Robert had not
changed his.  Thus, he had taken no step whatever to
communicate with her, despite the fact that she had indirectly,
in her first letter to Cornelia, asked him to do so.

"Besides," she added, "didn't you know that he was
about to marry Charlotte Beecher?"

"Oh, ho, so that's how the wind blows?"

Pryor, standing in front of Janet's house, gave the curb
a sharp whack with his cane.

"That marriage has no place in the scheme of your *deus
ex machina*," he said, with a quizzical frown.  "We'll have
to take it out on Burley—give the devil an extra twist of
the tail to relieve our feelings."

"Yes, when you catch him.  Meanwhile, what am I to
do about him?"

"Forget him, forget him serenely for half a dozen weeks
or so.  Then you'll hear from him again."

"Hear from him again," she said, with a shade of alarm.

"Not *from* him in person," corrected Pryor, straightening
up till he looked like a hickory stick.  "*About* him,
through me.  Good news for us, bad news for him.  Until
then good-bye."





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.. _`HEARTS AND TREASURES`:

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   PART V


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   HEARTS AND TREASURES

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   CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

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   \I

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On a cool February morning a private office in the
Maison Paulette, Boulevard Houssman, was occupied by
five persons of the feminine sex.  Four of the five,
gorgeous as to clothes and cosmetics, moved busily about in
comet-like orbits that brought them periodically near the
desk.

The fifth, seated at the desk itself, dominated the room.
She was a striking blonde, whose handsome dull-green dress
challenged the glint of gold alike in her pupils and her hair.

Seemingly occupied with a book of accounts, this lady
was really engaged in inventing petty tasks for the four
young women dancing attendance upon her.  (*Mariette,
ou est le livre bleu?  Mon dieu, Gabrielle! les ciseaux;
quelqu'un a enleve mes petites ciseaux.  Toinette,
apportez-moi le boite aux lettres.  Tiens, Amelie!  Prends ce
mouchoir*, etc., etc.) These requests for service continued in a
fairly steady stream, amidst much hurrying and scurrying,
sharp cries of *tout de suite, Madame*, and a general
atmosphere of sulky obsequiousness.

In the thick of the confusion the door was opened by a
young woman in a soft suit of brown heather.  She stood on
the threshold for a moment and, as she looked questioningly
towards the lady in command, a slight frown brought
a bar of hazel brown over her beautiful gray eyes.

The lady at the desk, who saw everything, affected not to
see the figure on the threshold and went on languidly
issuing orders.

Thereupon the newcomer, in clear, agreeable English,
called out:

"Evidently you don't want me, Cornelia.  Good, I'll go
back upstairs.  I've stacks and stacks of work to do—"

"Araminta, wait!  Of course I want you.  I want you
most particularly."

"You've got an army here, already.  What do you want
me for?  If you keep on calling me away from the manikins
whenever Harry is explaining matters, he'll never be able
to train me into taking charge of them."

"My dear!" trilled Cornelia, bringing her most musical
*arpeggio* into play.  "When you've been married as long
as I have, you'll understand that no sensible woman ever
interferes with her husband's work except for a positively
overwhelming reason."

"Really, the reasons here in Paris are as bad as the
seasons," said Janet with a smile.  "I wish they'd calm
down and not overwhelm us quite so often."

"Ah, Janet, you well may jest.  Little do you know of
the heavy responsibilities involved in managing both a
business and a husband.  If I had only myself to think of
the worries and risks would be as a whisper in the wind.
But I think of Hercules sharing my anxieties, working
himself thin and gray—"

While she went on in this theatrical vein, Janet was
thinking to herself: "She makes as great a virtue of being
married as she formerly made of not being married.
Whatever her condition, there's a terrible to-do about it."

Aloud she said:

"Look here, Cornelia, if you want to talk privately to me,
hadn't we better get rid of this retinue?"

Without awaiting a reply, she calmly released Marie and
the other manikins from service and sent them out of the
room.  This done, she took a chair opposite the desk where
Cornelia sat staring at her in speechless indignation.

Cornelia cherished a sort of mental chromo of herself as
the active ruler of the Paulette community, a ruler at once
imperious, genial, and adored.  In point of fact, her
insatiable appetite for attention, reinforced by a sharp tongue,
spread an atmosphere of dread and anxiety around her.
Janet was the only person who had ever succeeded in
weakening Cornelia's illusion about herself by bringing it into
occasional juxtaposition with reality.

"You'll greatly oblige me, Janet, by not ordering my
servants about under my very nose."

"Your manikins are not your servants, Cornelia.  They're
your employees.  You slave-drive them outrageously.  If
you don't look out, you'll have a strike on your hands
before long."

"With you as the strike leader, I dare say?"

"Why not?  Your inability to respect other people's time
is simply appalling.  The moment some whim pops into
your head, one of us is called upon to gratify it.  You quite
forget that when you arbitrarily take us from our jobs,
bang goes continuity, a most important factor in good
workmanship.  Mazie, who came here grovelling in the dust,
is now up in arms; the manikins are unitedly rebellious;
Harry is almost a nervous wreck.  This, with business
simply deluging the establishment.  I tell you, unless *you*
stop, we all will."

Cornelia quailed under these words, although she kept
her face admirably.  She was in some respects like a
wrongly bound volume: half Becky Sharp and half Hedda
Gabler.  And it was the Hedda Gabler pages she always
turned up to Janet.

"Well, what next?" she exclaimed, on the defensive in
spite of her brave words.  "I've rescued Mazie Ross out of
the gutter where Hutchins Burley flung her; I've sacrificed
my own creature comforts to make those of the manikins
secure; I've given *you* a very tidy berth and no questions
asked; and I've worked myself to skin and bones for
Harry's sake.  Now you all turn on me and call me an
interfering busybody, or worse.  That's human gratitude."

Janet, giving the faintest ironical shrug, merely looked
at her.

Cornelia smothered a sob of rage.  After a pause, she
informed Janet that Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, her most valued
customer, had made an appointment that morning to look
at some frocks and gowns.  This lady had a single hobby,
clothes; and she spent an appreciable fraction of her untold
millions ("she's divorced two multimillionaires, Araminta,
and driven a third into the diplomatic service!") on this
hobby.  She had expressed profound dissatisfaction with
Paulette's offerings on her last visit two weeks ago.  It was
therefore of prime importance to please her this time.

"I want you to be in the salon with me when she looks
at the models," said Cornelia.  "She's extremely susceptible
to flattery.  As the head of the house, I can't very well lay
it on too thick, can I?  I have a feeling that your presence
will make the sales go smoothly."

"You'd better leave me out of it, Cornelia.  I never sold
a thing in my life.  Why, I couldn't sell a sandwich to a
starving man."

"*I'll* do the *selling*, my dear.  I simply ask you to be on
hand.  The fact is, you have a peculiar influence over
people.  When they get to talking with you, they suddenly
forget about *things*—the earth-earthy things by which we
are all so obsessed nowadays—they appear to forget about
things and begin to occupy themselves with thoughts and
dreams.  In that condition, a man or woman will buy anything."

"Cornelia, you'll admit that I've done all sorts of odd
jobs for you without a murmur.  But I really don't like to
bamboozle anybody into—"

"Bamboozle!  Araminta!  No one who buys a Paulette
frock is bamboozled.  Be quite clear about that."

She added, less belligerently, that Mrs. Jerome, though
so very rich, had no taste in clothes.  Or, more bluntly,
had a most execrable taste.  She went in for suffrage,
feminism, woman's rights, and all that sort of thing.  (Here
Janet pricked up her ears.)  So you might know what to
expect.  She was, in short, faddy and temperamental.  Her
purchases were made or not made, as the case might be,
because the seller pleased or displeased her.  The articles
themselves were of quite secondary importance.

"Forgive my curiosity, Cornelia.  But you have regiments
of customers.  Why are you so anxious about just this one?"

"What a question, you babe in the wood!  Don't you
know who Mrs. Jerome is?"

"I know she's rich and that Mr. Pryor had something to
do with her coming here."

"That's not it, child.  She's the American mother of the
Duchess of Keswick.  And the Duchess—  Well, it's Madge
and Mary between her and the Queen of England.  Think,
Araminta, what a feather in our cap, if we get the
patronage of the Duchess of Keswick, and a Paulette frock is
worn at the Court of St. James!  It's the chance of a
lifetime.  You won't disappoint me, dear?"

"No.  We'll make it Madge and Paulette and Mary.
When is this dowager Mrs. Jerome expected?"

"That's her carriage now, or I'm very much mistaken,"
said Cornelia, all agog.  "She hardly ever uses a motor.
It's *so* ordinary."

In some amazement Janet watched her old friend going
out to do the honors in the reception room.  What a
transformation a short year had effected in the Cornelia of
the Lorillard tenements!  Bohemianism, outlawry, and the
one-piece dresses of Kips Bay seemed remoter than Mars.
Cornelia was attired in the height of fashion, her cheeks
were delicately touched up, her hair was elaborately
coiffured.

Even her congenital languor had evaporated, for the
moment, as the thrills of social snobbery electrified her.



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   \II

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Entering the salon, Janet saw that Mrs. Jerome was a
podgy little tub of a woman, the symbol of the fortune
which her father, Theodore Casey, had made in wash-tubs.
She took a chair beside the visitor, who sleepily watched the
crack Paulette manikins whilst they exhibited a variety of
frocks and Cornelia nervously courted the favor of her
outspoken customer.

Mrs. Jerome examined one of the manikins at close
quarters.

"I don't think much of your dresses today," she said
bluntly.  "The lines are all wrong."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Jerome," said Cornelia with dignity.
"But they ought to be at that angle.  A Paulette frock is a
work of art.  It is designed to produce a definite effect from
a definite point of view.  The lines are like those of a
Phidias statue, perfectly right at the proper distance."

"I don't care if they *do* look like a Fiddlesticks statue.
Look at that charmeuse gown there.  Can't anybody tell
that girl a mile away for what she is?"

"I fear I don't understand."

"Well, if the gown don't hide the fact that she's a manikin,
it won't hide the fact that my figure's no Fiddlesticks
statue, or whatever you call it."

This opinion, delivered in an unmistakable New York
voice and accent, made Janet laugh.  Not disrespectfully.
She discerned at once that Mrs. Jerome, like Shakespeare,
had far more native wit than college learning.  Her
judgment was confirmed when the visitor, turning abruptly
towards her, said:

"What do you think of these Paulette dresses, young
lady.  I don't expect you to say that they're pretty rotten.
But do they satisfy the eye?"

"I think, Mrs. Jerome, that if they don't *satisfy* the eye,
they'll at least astound it."

Mrs. Jerome brightened up at once.

"Well, child," she said, "when I want to astound people,
I'll do it on less money than a Paulette gown costs.  I'll
walk around Columbus Circle in my bathing suit."

"Oh, I'll bet you do it, too," said Janet, at the top of
her exuberance.

"Do what?" said Mrs. Jerome, now totally oblivious of
the manikins on exhibition and of Cornelia on pins and
needles.

"Wear a bathing suit around the house.  I used to, regularly.
In the tenements in Kips Bay I always did the dishes
in my bathing suit.  Annette Kellerman tights, a skirt to the
knees, no sleeves, no stockings.  A dandy rig-out for quick
action."

"Permit me to say, Janet—" began Cornelia, in frigid,
authoritative tones.

Mrs. Jerome impatiently waved her away, an indignity
so astounding that Madame Paulette could scarcely trust
her eyes.  Janet, fearing she had been indiscreet, hastened
to add:

"Of course, Cornelia—Madame Paulette—doesn't allow
it in Paris.  She requires us to be perfectly proper here."

"She would!" said Mrs. Jerome significantly, her back
still turned to Cornelia.  "But what good does it do you?
Nine-tenths of the people in Paris are perfectly proper;
but they don't look it.  The other tenth are perfectly
improper; but they, as often as not, don't look it either."

The manikins received another inning.  A brief one,
though, for Mrs. Jerome inspected and dismissed them in
quick succession.

"Well, well," she said, half aloud, "to think that you
came from the tenements."

She gave Janet a quick, sceptical glance.

"I can scarcely believe it."

"I can scarcely believe it myself," said Janet, with a
perfectly straight face.

Cornelia bit her lips and, flashing an angry look at her
friend, went out of the salon, unable to trust her feelings
any longer.

"If the Duchess got wind of it," Mrs. Jerome mused on,
"that would finish Paulette's for me.  She don't think a
shop is a classy shop unless the proprietor has a classy
pedigree."

"Oh, our pedigree will seem classy enough to the
Duchess," said Janet, "if you don't give us away.  And you
can't do that, you know.  I only told you in the strictest
confidence."

"Don't you go shifting your responsibilities on me, young
woman.  If you want your secrets kept, you just keep them
to yourself.  I'm no safe deposit vault for anyone else's
hidden thoughts.  For your comfort I'll tell you this, though.
I've never given my daughter food or information that I
knew she couldn't digest.  I'm too old to begin doing it now."

"You're quite right, Mrs. Jerome.  Things slip off my
tongue that oughtn't to.  Personally, I don't care a straw.
But other people—"

"Don't worry about other people, my dear," said Mrs. Jerome,
who had enjoyed the tit-for-tat immensely.  "I'm
not likely to desert Madame Paulette.  At least not while
she keeps anyone with your healthy face and fascinating
eyes here to talk to me.  Mind, I'm not gone on these
Paulette frocks.  I guess the Madame knows that pretty well.
But this establishment is run by a woman, a woman from
my own country.  That means a good deal to me.  For
although our sex is coming into its own, the pace isn't a
dizzy one.  The men see to that.  And so I say, this is a
time for all good women to stand by one another."

The little lady sank back in her seat and, as though
exhausted by her long speech, closed her eyes.  When she
opened them again, Cornelia had returned and the parade
of the manikins was resumed.

This spectacle always started Janet on a series of curious
reflections.  As a result of the training in rhythmics which
the girls received at the hands of Harry Kelly, they were
free from those grotesque mannerisms of gait, posture, and
demeanor which manikins cultivated and which were accepted
by the trade as superlative expressions of esthetic
correctness.  Yet Harry's talent yoked to the service of
fashion seemed as wasteful a thing as an artist's genius
drafted in the service of futility.  It reminded Janet of the
story of the Medici prince who compelled Michelangelo to
mould a statue out of snow.

But to Mrs. Jerome the Paulette manikins were a sight to
see.  She made Janet sit on the lounge beside her and
coaxed her to give an opinion on every frock subsequently
shown.  She purchased all those that Janet praised and
several that she made fun of.

It was one of the best day's work that the sales
department of Paulette's had ever done.

In spite of which, Madame Paulette considered it her
duty to take Mrs. Jerome to one side and apologize for
Janet and her artless indiscretions.

"She means well, Mrs. Jerome," said Cornelia, deferentially.
"She's—well, I might say, she's naive, incredibly
naive in matters of social position.  It's only lack of
training, I assure you."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, she's absolutely ignorant of distinctions of rank.
Absolutely.  Why, she would talk to a Duchess with no
more ceremony than to a scrubwoman."

"Then I'll bring the Duchess here to be talked to.  It
might do her good."

"Oh, do bring the Duchess.  I shall be charmed to display
for her inspection the best that the Maison has."

"No doubt.  But let me give you a tip.  Don't waste
your time training that dear little Janet girl.  She'll learn
the deceitful ways of the world fast enough, and no
correspondence course needed either."

Janet came up to them as they reached the outer door.

"My dear," said Mrs. Jerome, putting her arm around
Janet's waist, "you've given me the best quarter of an hour
I've had in Paris these two months.  It's been a treat, a
royal treat."

As Cornelia beheld these two, standing there intertwined,
a strange expression formed on her face, an expression that
bespoke an agonizing doubt of the sanity of the universe.

Unheeding her, Mrs. Jerome continued to say to Janet:

"The people I meet everywhere!  In Europe they pick
my pockets while they lick my boots; in America they rifle
my purse with barefaced assurance.  You are the first one
I've met in a very long time who has talked to me as though
I were a human being and not a walking cash box."



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   \III

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The conquest of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome produced a sensation
in the Paulette establishment.  It also gave an element
of security to Janet's precarious tenure of office there.

Janet knew full well that Madame Paulette had received
her in the Boulevard Haussman with nothing like the
enthusiasm that Cornelia had welcomed her in the Lorillard
tenements.  In the interval between these events the two
friends had burned several bridges behind them.

It was obvious that Cornelia was now glutted with hands
to wait on her, ears to pay heed to her, and tongues to
flatter her.  Her natural taste for dependents being completely
gratified, she felt less need than ever for friends of
an independent turn of mind like Janet.

Moreover, in a year and a half of compact adventure,
Janet had matured more rapidly than many young people
do in ten years of tame drifting.  Time, which had whittled
away some of her imprudence, had robbed her of none of
her daring; it had left her with her almost naive freedom of
utterance intact.  Her candor was a trait to which Cornelia
had formerly been much drawn.  But that was in the
days of her first arrival in Kips Bay, the days when the
young girl had all but worshipped the experienced woman.
Now that blind devotion had given way to challenging
criticism, Janet's candor seemed far less attractive.

That is, far less attractive to Cornelia.  As regards
Paulette's in general, Janet was a great favorite.  Her official
duties were chiefly those of an assistant to Harry Kelly in
the physical training of the manikins, (a branch of their
professional instruction on which Kelly laid great stress).
She bore somewhat the same relation to her chief that the
concert master of an orchestra does to the conductor.  This
arrangement was Cornelia's doing.  In one and the same
bold stroke she had thought to cut down the time that Kelly
spent with the manikins (this being the time in which his
heart lay most); and to shift to Janet's shoulders the odium
that frequently devolves on the deputy chief (who exercises
authority without possessing power).

But Cornelia's spirit of negation, active as ever,
accomplished only one-half of its object.

Janet discharged her duties with so much vivacity and
with such invincible good-will that she was idolized by
everybody in the Paulette firm from Kelly and the manikins
down to the work girls and the magnificent porter who daily
consented to guard the street door.

In short, she was the life of the house; than which,
Cornelia could have brought no stronger indictment against her
of unimaginable *lese majeste*.

The two had a long private conversation in Cornelia's
office the day after Mrs. Jerome's visit.

"Araminta, you've certainly made a hit with the old
lady.  Just as I predicted.  It's a fine thing for us both.
Paulette's prestige will go up and up.  And it should mean
a great deal to you."

"How, I wonder?"

"You can make her friendship a stepping stone."

"Easy stepping stones for little feet—so to speak?"

"You know quite well what I mean.  Some day you'll go
back to America—"

"Is this a hint or a prediction, or both—"

"Don't be silly, Janet.  I'm thinking of your future.  Your
future in your own country, naturally.  Mrs. Jerome is a
woman of enormous influence.  You know how it is over
there.  Much gold will wash all guilt away."

"You mean my chequered past?" asked Janet, with a smile.

"Yes," said Cornelia, adding handsomely, "although your
affair with Claude Fontaine will probably be quite forgotten
by that time.  Nobody will remember it."

"Robert Lloyd will!"

Cornelia was up in arms at once.  She always was, when
Janet mentioned Robert's name.

"What difference does that make?  You aren't going
to marry *him*, I suppose?"

"I suppose not.  He's too poor, for one thing.  He isn't
going to ask me, for another."

"One would imagine you wanted him to," said Cornelia,
with concise sarcasm.

"We got along splendidly as partners."

"Partners!  What has that to do with marriage?"

"What has anything to do with marriage?  I understood
your reasons when you believed that marriage was a prison.
I confess I don't understand your reasons now that you
believe marriage to be a haven of bliss.  Mind, I don't say
it is a prison, and I don't say that it *isn't* a haven of bliss."

Janet tried to check her sub-ironical impulses: they were
irrepressible.

"I feel too much in the dark about the whole thing," she
went on, "to be as cocksure as I used to be.  But if one isn't
to marry a man because one has found him to be a splendid
companion in the wear and tear of working together, why
is one to marry him?"

"How you do run on, Araminta!  Prisons and hells,
Paradises and havens of bliss—you jump from one extreme to
the other.  Who mentioned these things?  My dear, one
marries a man because he calls to what is deepest and
truest in one.  Because he responds to—"

"The mating instinct?"

"How can you sit there and say such vulgar things?"

"Vulgar!  Well, you *are* going it!  Isn't the mating
instinct as deep and true as any of them?"

"It isn't a reason for marriage," said Cornelia, in staccato
accents.  "And you know perfectly well I never said or
thought it was.  Quite the reverse.  I opposed marriage
because the sex instinct, which is what induces most people
to marry, is a good ground for a temporary union but not
a good ground for a permanent one."

"Then there *are* good reasons for a permanent union?"

"Yes.  And they absorb the sex reason a million times
over."

"It's easy for you to talk like that, Cornelia, with Harry
thinking that the sun rises in one of your eyes and sets in
the other.  But where shall *I* find a Harry to be absorbed in
me a million times over like that?"

"If you go on making nasty sarcastic replies to all my
well-meant suggestions, I shall wash my hands of you," said
Cornelia, rising with frigid haughtiness.

She added, on a superior note:

"You'd better see a little less of poor, bedraggled Mazie
Ross, if it's on *her* level that you're being tempted to think."



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   \IV

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Janet hastened after her in a complete change of mood.

"Come back, Cornelia," she called out, remorsefully.  "I
had no right to be sarcastic.  Forgive me, and I'll eat all
the humble pie you like."

Cornelia sat down again.

"This is a new tack for you to take," she said, making
the most of an advantage Janet seldom gave her.

"The fact is, Cornelia, I'm—my feelings were ploughed
up today, ploughed up from top to bottom.  The postman
brought me an offer of marriage this morning."

"An offer of marriage!"

"From Monsieur St. Hilaire."

Cornelia had of course heard the facts of the whole
St. Hilaire episode.  She also knew that Janet still
corresponded with Henriette, and that all the recent letters of
the girl's father had been sent back unopened.

"I thought you never read his letters?"

"This one was folded up in Henriette's note.  I'm sure
the child wasn't a party to the trick.  Here it is.  Will you
read it?"

Cornelia did so.

"Well, I must say I'm surprised," she said, returning the
letter.  "He writes in a very decent, manly strain.
Altogether different from what I expected.  The devil doesn't
seem to be nearly as black as he's painted."

"Oh, he's not a professional satyr, if that's what you
mean.  I never implied that he was."

Cornelia pondered the matter for a minute.  She recalled
forgotten particulars about M. St. Hilaire, amongst others,
the account of his generous income.

"So he's in Paris with Henriette," she mused.  "I notice
that he says he's coming here tomorrow to get his answer
in person.  What will you do about it, dear?"

"I wish I knew.  I want to see Henriette again,
tremendously.  But I don't want to see her father.  Do give me
your advice, Cornelia.  What do you think I ought to do?"

"Well, why not give him another chance?  He's made
you a perfectly straight and honorable offer this time.  As
I recall the whole story, he wasn't really repugnant to you,
except at that one time."

"No.  But am I lightly to forget that he—that he
touched me without my consent, presuming to think that,
because I had loved one man, my body was at the free
disposal of all men?"

"It was a wretched mistake to make—"

"A mistake!  It was a monstrous piece of stupidity and
impudence."

"Quite so, my dear.  I'm not standing up for him.  Still,
don't let us forget that men are not built like women."

"That's a truth that cuts both ways, isn't it?" said Janet.

She had given up being astonished at Cornelia's peculiar
mixture of the old and the new in the matter of theories
about men and women.  She merely wondered to what weird
angle Cornelia meant to shift her outlook now.

"The point is," continued Cornelia serenely, "that a
woman's sex emotion is generally excited by something that
takes her fancy; a man's, by something that stirs his blood.
The mind plays the bigger part in the one case, the body
in the other.  That's why, in the duel of sex, the
psychological moment is so important to the woman, the
physiological moment to the man.

"These acute distinctions are quite beyond me.  A man
has as much gray matter as a woman, or even more.  Then
why should he let his mental processes suffer paralysis
whenever a nice woman looks at him?"

"Well, that's one of the mysteries that marriage helps us
to understand, Araminta.  In the life of a man there come
these physiological moments, these sex storms, different
from anything in the experience of a woman.  I don't mean
to say that men have more physical passion than women.
But there are occasions when their physical passion takes
a more violently concentrated form.  Mazie, in her vulgar
little way, isn't so far wrong when she says: 'Scratch a fine
gentleman, and you'll find a cave man.'"

"Do you mean to tell me that there are absolutely no
men who feel about love as we do?"

"I've never met one.  Have you?"

Janet was thinking: "Surely Robert isn't like that!"  Aloud
she said nothing.  There was a dangerous glint in
her friend's eyes.  Cornelia had an uncanny way of
penetrating one's thoughts when Robert was the object of them.
Had she accomplished this feat of divination again?  At all
events, an acrid note entered her voice as she continued:

"Is it really only Monsieur St. Hilaire that you can't
make up your mind about?  If so, take my advice.  Come
down off your high horse and make the most of your good
fortune."

"My good fortune!"

"Let's be perfectly frank with each other, my dear.
Here's a man who wants to marry you.  He's well-born,
cultivated, rich.  His one child is a girl who adores you and
whom you adore.  The only thing against him is that he
once committed a serious breach of decorum—"

"And that I don't love him—" interpolated Janet.

Cornelia blandly ignored the interruption.

"His letter shows," she went on, "that he is willing to
make the most handsome amends, the only amends a man
can make in a matter of this sort.  What more do you ask?"

"I'm not asking him for amends.  I simply want to be let
alone."

"Araminta, let me beg you not to deceive yourself about
the changing moral values we hear so much of nowadays.
Has the price of virginity really gone down?  Judged by
the conversation of radicals and Outlaws, yes.  Judged by
the ticker of the matrimonial exchange, it is still pretty
high.  Bear that in mind, and remember that a bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush."

"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Janet, in great astonishment,
"that you, of all people, advise me to *accept* this
offer?"

Her tone irritated Cornelia.

"Beggars can't be choosers," she began.

"They can remain beggars," replied Janet tersely.

"If that's the way you feel about it, you needn't ask my
advice again.  We're wasting each other's time."

Saying which, Cornelia rose and left the office.





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


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   \I

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The Paulette manikins, famed throughout the world of
fashion for their grace in attitude and correctness in
position and movement, owed their prestige to a system of
hygienic training conceived and carried out by Harry Kelly
himself.  Yet these young ladies took their distinction so
seriously that they held it beneath them to assist their chief
in straightening out the classroom disorder when the period
of instruction was over.

"Here's a mess!" called out Mazie Ross, walking into the
Paulette gymnasium, immediately after the dismissal of a
small class of manikins.  "You might think they'd been on
a grand jamboree."

"Anything up?" said Harry, shortly.

"Janet asked me to help you this morning."

"What for?"

"She went out for a horseback ride with the St. Hilaires."

"This morning.  Why, as it is, she goes almost every
afternoon.  She went yesterday afternoon.  A fine way to
do business, I'll say."

Mazie sulkily began to pick up stray articles.

"You needn't pitch into me, Harry," she said.  "You're
not half so sorry as I am that your gentle Janet isn't here
to do this rotten job.  Is it my fault?"

"Does Cornelia know she's away?" said Kelly, fuming.

"Can a cat miaow within a mile of these precincts without
Corny being on to it?"

"Why don't they keep me posted then?  I never hear of
a blessed thing that goes on in my own home until it's all
over."

"Say, do you want to start a row?  Then take a tip from
me and land into a certain party in the main office.  If
you'd knock her down and then jump on her with both feet,
you'd be doing something.  What's the use of picking on
a dead bird like me?"

"Don't talk that way about Cornelia," said Harry,
fumbling amongst the papers on the desk, and trying vainly
to be stern.  "I've told you before I won't have it.  Where's
your gratitude?"

She made a face at him behind his back.

"Gratitude!" she said.  "What's the good of me wasting
gratitude on Cornelia when she reminds herself and everybody
in Paulette's daily that she picked me up out of the
gutter that Hutch left me in?"

"Lock up the wardrobe and clear out, will you?" said
Kelly, frigidly.  "I can do the rest myself."

"Here's your hat, what's your hurry," she muttered to
herself.  But she stayed and continued to put things to rights.

Mazie had changed greatly since the palmy days of the
Lorillard tenements.  She looked ill and haggard, a mere
shadow of the jaunty "Follies" girl of old.  Her willowy
posture had degenerated into an undisguised slouch, her
hair was frowsy, and her dress was slung together.

But her tongue had not lost its stab.

She closed the wardrobe door with an unintentional slam
that caused Harry Kelly to jump up in his seat.

"Damn!" he said, in that mild voice of his.

It was as if Vesuvius had emitted a puff of tobacco smoke.

The metamorphosis of the "Harlem Gorilla" into the
husband of Madame Paulette was astoundingly complete.
Harry Kelly's Van Dyke beard and fashionably tailored
clothes alone would have effected a radical change in his
appearance.  Kelly was transformed not only physically but
psychically.  His muscles were still the muscles of a Titan,
but his nerves had become the nerves of a fanciful man or
a delicate woman.

Mazie, who was no student of spiritual transformations,
went up to the desk at which Kelly sat and began to tidy it.
She whisked away stray papers and envelopes that lay near
his hands with much the same air that a waiter lashes the
crumbs off a table to speed the lingering guest.

He grew more and more fidgety, but she showed him no
mercy.

"Janet didn't know those St. Hilaires were coming this
morning," she finally volunteered.  "But you can gamble
on it that Cornelia knew.  When my fine gentleman got
off his prancing horse and marched into the reception room
clanking spurs and all, Corny was right there on the job
in her softest, sweetest tone.  My! butter wouldn't melt in
her mouth.  And all the time Janet hangs in the background,
saying she's too busy to go out, and looking as
stubborn as a mule.  When gentle Janet gets that stubborn
expression, it means: You can move the Woolworth Building,
but you can't move me!"

"Then why in thunder did she go?"

"Because that St. Hilaire kid got busy with her.  A
pretty little kid, a regular father's darling, the kind that
coos away like a turtledove till she gets everything she
wants and a tidy slice of the moon extra.  Well, she draped
herself pathetically around Janet—all that heartstring
stuff—and Janet, like any fool of a man, fell for the
pathos."

"You can't persuade me that Janet didn't want to go,"
said Kelly, gloomily.

"I won't try to, then.  Just the same, she didn't.  That's
the weird part of it."

"What's weird about it?"

"Why, she doesn't want to marry that millionaire and
he's crazy to get her.  Gee, some people have all the luck."

"If she doesn't want him, where's the luck?" said Kelly,
with the logic of simplicity.

"Harry, don't be a nut.  Here's the ABC of it.  All my
love affairs were on the q.t., though I say it that shouldn't.
Everything respectable and under cover.  Nobody rattled
my adventures in the ears of the public, did they?  Yet,
from the way everybody points the finger of scorn at me,
you'd think I produced the whole Venusburg show and
ran it single-handed.  Now look at Janet.  She hops off
with young Claude Fontaine right under the eyes of the
moving-picture brigade.  The front pages of all the leading
papers give her a full week's publicity.  She boards with
Claude for a month or two, carefully omitting even the
formality of a fake wedding ring.  She lives in sin!  But
everybody shies at using 'them crooel woids.'  And what are
the wages of sin?  A couple of millionaires pining away
on her doorstep and Sousa's band a-playing at her feet.
And she's no great beauty at that."

"Quit it, Mazie.  What's the good of fooling yourself
with the idea that Janet hasn't had her troubles.  My guess
is that Claude threw her overboard."

"Well, you can guess again, my simple Samson."

"Anyhow, they wouldn't have separated in a few weeks
unless there had been a fierce blow-out, would they?  That's
the kind of thing that can hurt a whole lot, a whole lot
more than shows on the surface.  A sensitive girl like
Janet!  By thunder, we don't know what she went through,
do we?  She's not the sort that wears her feelings on her
sleeve."

"In other words: 'Gentle Janet meek and mild,'" said
Mazie witheringly.  "What that girl can't get away with!
I'd like to go through a few of her sufferings, I would.  I'd
like to see yours truly riding horseback every day in the
Bois de Boulogne with a plutocrat by my side and a couple
of grooms toddling along in back.  There's a terrible
penance for you!  And to think I can't even get a second-hand
man to take me to a third-rate cabaret in Montmartre.
Me, Mazie Ross, the wickedest girl in the wickedest city in
the world.  Gee, life is tough!"

"You've seen enough cabarets to be sick of them—and
you are sick of them," said Kelly, with unwonted harshness.

"Yes, I suppose my cabaret days are over.  But listen to
me.  There'll be no more skylarking for gentle Janet as
soon as Cornelia engineers her marriage with the Alsatian."

"Janet's marriage is none of your business, and none of
Cornelia's either."

"You don't say so?  Well, you just tell the Empress that
yourself."

Mazie, with her hand over her mouth, flung these words
at him just as Cornelia entered the gymnasium.



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   \II

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With the expression of a tragedy queen Cornelia came in
and handed Kelly a telegram.

"From Robert!" she said, in a voice choked with emotion.
He took it and read:

.. vspace:: 2

Am leaving Geneva International Labor Conference
tonight.  Hope to see you and Janet in Paris tomorrow.

.. vspace:: 1

Robert Lloyd.

.. vspace:: 2

"That's one on us!" remarked Kelly, awkwardly, and a
little afraid of the storm signals in Cornelia's eyes.

His fatuous slang irritated her enormously.

"Isn't it like Robert to turn up at the most inconvenient
time imaginable?  Just as Janet is on the point of being
engaged!  It spoils everything."

"How did he locate us, I wonder?" said Kelly lamely.
"I thought you had lost all track of him."

When they had taken over Paulette's, Cornelia had
insisted on ruthlessly dropping former friends in impoverished
circumstances on the plea that every connection that
was not an asset was a liability.  It had been a sore point
between the two at first.

"Pryor—the meddling fool—probably put him onto us,"
replied Cornelia.  "Now everything's sure to go to pot
unless we can keep Robert from interfering.  As long as
he's around, Janet will never marry Monsieur St. Hilaire."

"She's just crazy enough to throw away the chance of a
lifetime," said Mazie, judging it expedient to chime in with
Cornelia.

"I don't believe she'll marry St. Hilaire, anyway," said
Kelly, with the obstinacy of a mild nature.  "She doesn't
love him, to begin with.  And she isn't the sort that'll do
a thing simply because other people say that it's good for
her.  She's the sort of girl that shapes her own future."

"You're as big a fool as Pryor," said Cornelia, flinging
tempestuously out of the gymnasium.

Poor Kelly was crestfallen.  He walked sadly to a window,
opened it, and took several deep breaths, his infallible
remedy for depression of spirits.  Mazie, relieved at
Cornelia's exit, lighted a cigarette and waited for him to finish.

"Why is she so blamed anxious to have Janet marry
this St. Hilaire?" he asked, turning slowly from the window.

"Why?  Ha, ha, the poor fish asks me why?"

She punctuated the question with a hollow laugh.

"Only because Janet doesn't *want* to marry him," she
went on, perching herself jauntily on the desk.  "Why,
Simple Simon, the old girl would have nothing left to live
for, if she couldn't make people do what they *don't* want
to do.  Or, at least, if she couldn't *prevent* them from doing
what they *do* want to do—"

The door flew open.

"So that's the way you talk about me behind my back?"
cried Cornelia, the picture of outraged majesty.

Mazie rapidly came down from her perch and slunk out
of the room.

The intruder turned her guns upon her husband.

"And you encouraging the little snake.  I wonder you
don't summon the whole staff in here to plot against me."

Kelly, dismayed and crushed, received the broadside with
head bowed.

Cornelia expressed her passionate resentment at the
universal treachery and ingratitude.  This was her reward
for helping girls in the plight that Mazie and Janet were
in!  She had put all the social and material resources of
Paulette's at the disposal of Janet in order that, by a most
fortunate marriage, a well-nigh irretrievable blunder might
be retrieved.  She had herself strained every nerve to help
the girl to obliterate her past.  And what were her thanks?
The unfeeling ingrate acted as if she hardly realized that
there was a past to obliterate.  She now washed her hands
of the whole business.  Never again—.

And so on.

Had Harry Kelly been of an inquiring turn of mind he
might have ascertained whether or no Cornelia's fury was
in part due to being frustrated in the desire to get Janet
off her conscience, and in part to being thwarted herself in
that game of thwarting others at which Mazie had
pronounced her an expert.

As it was, he listened like a Mohammedan prostrated before
the muezzin.  His silent prayer was that when Cornelia's
rage had spent itself, she would not refuse to bestow
upon him a little of that affection for which he
passionately and hopelessly craved.



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   \III

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A few hours later, Janet and Mazie were alone in the
gymnasium, the former greatly excited about the news from
Robert.

"It's a pity he didn't think of looking you up a little
sooner," said Mazie who was in a mood for throwing cold
water on enthusiasms that strayed her way.

Janet was a little dashed by this reminder of Robert's
indifference to her fate.

"All the same," she said, "I shall enjoy introducing him
to Paris, as he once introduced me to Manhattan."

"What, the Eiffel Tower, The Champs Elysees, the Boul. Mich.,
the American Quarter, and all the other rubberneck
sights?"

"No, I'll show him the places he'll like: the office in
*L'Humanite* where Jaures worked, the central hall of the
*Confederation Generate de Travail*, and the Seine by
moonlight."

"The Seine by moonlight!  Now we're coming to it.
Janet, you're getting sentimental.  Do you think Robert
is coming particularly for you?"

"Oh, no, I hope I know him better than that."

"Then what is he coming for?  To see me?  I don't
think.  And if ever he was stuck on Cornelia, he took the
cure complete, as soon as you breezed along."

"Nonsense, Mazie.  Perhaps he has made a fortune and,
in passing, means to drop in on his poor relations."

"Robert rich?"  Mazie laughed the idea to scorn.  "A man
who likes work for its own sake will never have a stiver
to his name."

She ventured to surmise that all his expenses were being
paid by some labor organization.  That was the way with
these professional radicals.  They traveled around the
world on their own wits and on somebody else's money.
They never succeeded in making even a bowing acquaintance
with a check account.  Never.  She trusted Janet
would not be such a fool as to forget this fact.  Now,
M. St. Hilaire was a very different story.

"Marry a rich man, Janet, and the memory of that
Claude affair will die a natural death.  Marry a poor one,
and it will keep on bobbing up."

"I shouldn't care if it did."

"No, *you* wouldn't, but your husband would."

"So my friends are at some pains to remind me," said
Janet, rather bitterly.  "You and Cornelia keep on telling
me so, and Robert once expressed the same opinion."

"Well, he was right.  I don't say it from spite, like
Cornelia does.  I say it because I'm—because I'm damned fond
of you—"

She repressed the tears in her eyes.

"You're the only one here," she went on, choking down a
sob, "that doesn't treat me as though I was an escaped
inmate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and ought to be sent back
there."

Janet went to her side and comforted her.  But Mazie
would not be comforted.  She burst out with:

"The trouble with us girls is that we're too soft about
love, as soft as putty.  What good does all this talk and fuss
about the equality of women do us?  Where does it get us?
Just exactly nowhere.  And women won't be worth as
much as men, until they're as hard about love as men are;
and that means as hard as nails."

Divining Janet's silent comment, Mazie added defiantly
that it was because she herself hadn't been hard enough
that she had come to grief at the hands of "that swine
Hutchins."

After a marked pause, Mazie reverted to the subject of
M. St. Hilaire.  Had he proposed as usual during the
morning's ride?

"Yes," said Janet.

"No other news?"

"He assured me that I could have everything I wanted.
Even my soul should be my own."

"I don't like that sob stuff about souls," said Mazie
whimsically.  "What did you answer?"

"I told him that women would never be able to call their
souls their own until they could call their bodies their own."

"My God, Janet!  You have to give the poor man *something*
for his money."

"Exactly.  And as I can't give him a fair return for it,
it's clear that I oughtn't to marry him, isn't it?"

"Fair return!  Did you ever see anybody give a fair
return in this sex business?  I can gamble on it you didn't.
Fair return!  Look here, Janet, who started putting a price
on love?  Did women start it or did men?  Was it men or
women that threw love on the curb to be bought and sold
with other junk?  Say, did you ever see a man who'd take
love for a free gift?  Let me give you a tip, dearie.  If a
woman don't sell her love for all she can squeeze out of a
man, and give him underweight into the bargain, the man
don't think he's getting his money's worth."

She went on to say that every relation between the sexes
was a case of the shearer and the sheep.  Somebody was
certain to be shorn.  The man would fleece the woman
unless the woman fleeced the man.

"And here's another tip, my gentle Janet.  When Cornelia
sees you prancing off to the Bois de Boulogne with
Monsieur St. Hilaire, she don't believe you're putting up
with him because you dote on Henriette.  Not for a
moment.  Well then, there'll be a rude awakening for
somebody.  If you don't fleece St. Hilaire, she'll *skin* you.
She'll have you in her power at last."

"No, she won't.  Mazie, I'd like to tell you something.
But I don't want Cornelia to know.  Will you promise not
to tell her?"

"Will I promise not to feed cakes to a crocodile?"

"Mrs. Jerome has offered me a job."

"Well, I'll hand it to gentle Janet.  You'll be going to
heaven on a feather bed next.  What's the job?"

"I don't know yet.  She doesn't either.  She has some
scheme in mind for helping professional women to make
their way in the world.  My work is to come out of that.
Just the sort of work I have most at heart.  Do you
remember the plan I had when we lived in Kips Bay, the plan
of creating a new profession for women?  What a magnificent
castle in the air it was!  Robert helped me carry the
first brick or two down to earth where we could build on
solid ground.  By the way, I told Mrs. Jerome all about
Barr and Lloyd."

"Did you tell all about Barr and Fontaine, too?"

"No," said Janet, swallowing this bitter pill with some
resentment.  "But I will, before I accept her offer."

"And you think it won't make any difference to her?"

"No.  She's a woman with a great deal of good sense.  She
sizes you up by your future, not by your past."

"Janet, you are a clip," said Mazie, with immense
admiration.  "Aren't you afraid of the future?  Adventures
can break a girl as well as make her.  Look how they've
broken me."

"Mazie, don't be a fool," said Janet, putting her arm
around the sick girl.  "You're not half broken yet.  You're
only a bit cracked.  And for your comfort I'll tell you what
Robert once said.  He said nowadays everybody was a bit
cracked—especially in the head."

"Where's the comfort in that?"

"Why, it's the cracked pitcher that goes longest to the
well, goose.  That's what I tell myself when I get the
blues."

"Do you, too, get in a blue funk, sometimes?  I don't
believe it.  I always think of you as being the twin sister
of the man in the fairy tale, the man who couldn't be
taught to shiver or shake.  You're a wonderful girl, Janet.
Still, I'd like to see a man come along some day and make
you shiver and shake just a teeny-weeny bit.  Perhaps
Robert will."

"Ah, Mazie, do you think he'll try?"





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


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   \I

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She was present, with the other principals of the Maison
Paulette, the night that Robert arrived.  Her heart beat
faster when she set eyes on him again.  He seemed perfectly
collected (too perfectly collected!) though very cordial.
How was she to tell, amidst so much handshaking and
greeting that his heart was beating time with hers?

The thing she was most conscious of was that one look
of his mobile brown eyes had given a strangely different
twist to her adventure with Claude Fontaine.  For the first
time in her experience she felt uncomfortably on the
defensive.

She resented this novel sensation.  She regarded it with
hostility, as though it were some treacherous thread that
crossed her homespun integrity.  To think that Robert
should be its agent!  Or could she be mistaken?  No.  It
appeared that even the most charitable of human beings
liked to see you in sackcloth and ashes, and looking
remorseful, conscience stricken, punished.  Well, she had not
given Cornelia the satisfaction of looking so, nor Harry
Kelly, nor Mazie Ross, nor anybody.  And Robert should
be no exception.

With defiant vigor she resolved that, as she had no cause
to acknowledge remorse, fifty Roberts should not make her
acknowledge it.

There was little time that night for an interchange of
news.  Next morning, the machinery of the Paulette
establishment, too big to be suspended for a mere visitor,
automatically began its daily grind.

In the course of the day Janet caught fleeting glimpses
of Robert, little more.  Cornelia kept him under her wing
and guarded him as carefully as though he were a crown
jewel.  She went so far as to relieve Harry Kelly of the
half-hour's treat he had promised himself, the treat of
showing Robert the sights of the great Maison.

Cornelia not only undertook the ceremony herself; she
protracted the ritual far beyond her husband's intentions.
Cato's complete mentor, that was what she blandly
constituted herself.  All that poor Hercules could do was to
leave his work once in a while, dash hastily to whatever
quarter of the building his wife had conducted Robert, slap
the visitor gently on the back, and fling a gloomy
monosyllable at him by way of showing his good will.  He
insisted that Robert was too thin, and trotted out his famous
formula.

"You don't breathe deep and down enough, old boy.  Fill
your lungs and your belly with good fresh wind, or you'll
never travel on asphalt."

Cornelia had ceased to shudder at the inelegant word.
But Mazie, happening to pop in at the moment, promptly
caught it up and used the occasion to favor the two men
with a fusillade of flippant, slangy phrases, not forgetting to
add several thinly veiled impudences directed at the
mistress of the house before the latter had time to expel her.

Cornelia herself suffered so many interruptions that even
she had to postpone the confidential talk she had planned
to hold with Robert before noon.  After lunch, she allowed
Robert to take his first stroll through Paris alone, reminding
him to come back for an early dinner at half past six.
According to her plan, the evening was to be spent in a
general confab and merrymaking.

Unluckily, she forgot to announce this plan in so many
words, but took it for granted that no move involving
Robert would be made that day without first consulting
her.  Her overconfidence defeated her.  In one of the few
moments when she was off guard, Janet contrived to get
Robert by himself and secured his joyful acceptance of an
invitation to a concert in the evening, for which she
chanced to have two tickets.

When Cornelia heard of it, she was in turn astounded and
furious.  Privately, to Harry and Mazie, she described Janet
concisely as a selfish beast.  In public, she kept herself
commendably in hand.

The dinner passed off without much hilarity and with no
incidents other than one or two casual allusions, on
Cornelia's part, to M. St. Hilaire.

As Janet went out with Robert, Kelly, full of mournful
resignation, hoped that their purses would survive the
brigandage, and their lives the epileptic locomotion, of the
Paris taxi-cab drivers.  Mazie called out:

"Janet, my gentle pet, don't let Rob land by mistake into
the *Miroir de Venus*."  (This was a cafe notorious for its
high jinks.)

"Why not?"

"He might reform the joint, before the joint reforms him."



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   \II

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They got into an Odéon bus.

On their way via the Boulevard des Italiennes to the
Seine, she named a few of the sights they passed, such as
the Théâtre Français and the Tuileries.  Crossing the Pont
du Carrousel, the bus jounced him against her and, as she
thrilled to the touch, she felt his magnetic response.

Yet, outwardly, a year and a half had not changed him
greatly, she thought.  There was the same fire in his eyes
(but wasn't there perhaps a shade less of friendliness?).  He
listened as politely as ever to routine chit-chat, and
exhibited the same impetuous candor when the conversation
flung up a new idea.

"*You* haven't changed much, either," he said, rather suddenly,
as though he had divined her reflections.  "Your contours
are a little rounder, that's all, and I think your chin
is much firmer."

"And my big nose?"

He pretended to appraise it judicially.

"It's a size smaller.  Perhaps a size and a half."

She laughed delightedly.  It was a new thing for Robert
to pay attention to such physical details.

"Well, as long as you say it's a change for the better—"

"I don't," he said, affecting a stern tone.  "Not in the
least.  Do you know what?  I'm afraid you're fast turning
yourself into one of these popular Paul Helleu beauties, a
Parisian version of the Penrhyn Stanlaws girl."

"I wish I could.  But I'm not a magician, Robert."

"Oh, there's no magic about it.  Any girl can do it, if—"

"If, of course.  Let's hear the gigantic *if*."

"If she has a very moderate allotment of brains and
looks, and a single-minded passion for beautifying herself."

"If this is praise, give me dispraise," she said, with a
mischievous gleam in her eyes.

His senses were assailed by the tone and timbre of her
voice.  In self-protection he somewhat rudely remarked:

"The fact is I didn't come to Europe to tell you how
beautiful you are."

"No, you came over on business," she said, drily.  "You
always do come on business.  We all assumed that.  You
needn't fear that we're any of us flattering ourselves that
you came specially to see him or her.  You were sent as a
delegate to some labor conference or other, weren't you?"

"Not as a delegate, but as a staff correspondent of the
Confederated Press."

She learned that the Confederated Press was a new
venture backed by several radical newspapers and designed
to supply its clients with the news of the world, the
straightforward news, before it was cooked or adulterated
by the old established press services.  Robert's assignment
gave him an enormously valuable experience, although his
position was not a lucrative one.

"That's what brought me to Geneva," he concluded.
"But I came to Paris to see you."

Just before he left New York, he had seen Pryor, he told
her.  Of course Pryor had let out one or two startling bits
of news gathered from the four quarters of the earth.  About
Hutchins Burley and Lydia Dyson—things he would tell
her later.  Pryor had all the town talk (Kips Bay talk) at
his fingers' ends.  The man was a regular human wireless
station.  Did Janet recall how he always spoke of information
drifting his way?  Well, it was from Pryor that he
first had heard that Cornelia and the famous Madame
Paulette were one and the same person.

"You see I'd lost complete track of Cornelia after she left
the model tenements," he said.  "I'm pretty sure that she
wanted to sponge the Kips Bay connection clean off the
slate.  Naturally, my turning up now isn't in the least to
her liking.  I can feel that, in spite of her tremendous
surface cordiality.  But I had to come.  Finding her was
finding you."

("A pity you didn't look me up a little sooner," said
Janet, to herself, not stopping to enlighten him as to the
subtle cause of Cornelia's displeasure.)

"Look, here's the Ecole des Beaux Arts," she said aloud.
"We'll be in the Boulevard St. Germain in a minute."



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   \III

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Whilst he obediently turned his gaze from the sparkle of
the arc lights and the glitter of the shops and streets, his
thoughts were preoccupied by her puzzling manner.  She
was friendly, of course.  Janet was always that.  An
equable, agreeable temper was the very essence of her.  But
what was this disconcerting aloofness of hers which was
cleaving the air between them!  Her generous eyes
and her low clear voice were sending out vibrations that
penetrated to his very soul; yet her mind was stubbornly
withholding the confidence which in the old Lorillard days
she had given him without reserve.  What did the paradox
of her behavior mean?  Was this a new Janet at the
opposite pole to the candid, unaffected Janet of Barr and
Lloyd?  He supposed that the Claude episode might
furnish the answer.  Had it changed her spiritually for the
worse as it had changed her physically for the better?

Well, that episode had certainly changed him, though
not precisely in any way that he could have predicted.
Changed him!  For one thing it had opened his eyes to the
fact that he had been a good deal of a prig, as his Outlaw
acquaintances were so fond of intimating.  He blushed to
recall his *ex cathedra* pronouncements on the subject of
free love.  With what assurance he had asserted that he
did not object to free love as a matter of prejudice but only
as a point of expediency.  Hypocrite!  The very reverse
had been the case.  When Janet ran away with Claude, the
Old Adam had risen within him and almost smothered him
with possessive emotion.

Like any common jealous man!  To be sure, he had
stoutly told himself that the Claude adventure made no
difference in his estimate of Janet's worth.  Absolutely
none.  She was, as always, a prize for any man.  For any
man?  Well, he himself, on the sole ground that his life's
work might suffer, would not consider himself eligible for
the prize.  That was how he had put it.  That was where
the prig had shown the cloven hoof.

Still, he could say this for himself.  When he had met
Janet face to face again, all these piffling considerations of
expediency had instantly, along with his vulgar prejudices,
gone by the board.  The moment he set eyes on her in
Paris, he felt himself at one with her as he had never felt
at one with any other human being (save perhaps a certain
long-lost friend of his own sex).

The cause was not far to seek.  Janet could pull the
trigger that released and expanded his faculties as no one
else had ever been able to do.  In her presence, not merely his
better self, but his more adventurous self, his more
aspiring self, his more poetic self, and his more heroic
self—the several Roberts that other people were too dull to
perceive, or too futile, ignorant, or base to cultivate—all these
craving selves came into their own and grew in stature.
What was a previous love affair, what were a dozen previous
love affairs, in the teeth of this miracle?  Claude
Fontaine!  One look into the depth of Janet's eyes, and all
theories, prejudices, principles, expediencies, and
conflicting emotions went up in smoke.

Meanwhile, Janet's thoughts had been taking a very
different shape.

She did not know that Robert had never seen the long
letter to Cornelia in which she had described her journey
with Claude and had given her European address.  Cornelia
had withheld this letter from Robert for reasons scarcely
admitted to herself; and what Cornelia did not admit to
herself she was little likely to admit to an interested friend.
In fact, in her letter to Janet and in casual conversations
since their recent reunion, Cornelia had so often allowed it
to be inferred that Robert had had access to the letter, that
she ended by making this convenient inference herself.

Not unnaturally then, Janet reasoned that Robert's
failure to communicate with her had been deliberate.  What
dovetailed with this conclusion was the memory of his
dictum on free love.  How well she remembered the relentless
words: "I can never have anything to do with free love or
with a woman who has had a free lover.  It would defeat my
purpose in life."

His purpose in life!  He was the sort of man who took
more joy in finding and working *that* out than in loving
any woman.  True, she no longer concurred in Cornelia's
view that Robert was a fanatic.  No.  He just escaped
fanaticism by the skin of his teeth.  This view explained
both his long silence and his sudden reappearance.  That is,
she knew quite well that he had borne her no grudge on
account of the past, had indulged in no theatrical repudiation
of her friendship because of her liaison with Claude.
He had simply found it profitless to pursue a friendship
with a woman in her situation.  That would be enough to
commit him to silence.

Nor did she take too seriously his assertion that he had
made a special trip to Paris to see her.  Why shouldn't he
pay her or Madame Paulette a visit if the ordinary course
of his business brought him almost to their doorstep?  After
all, a representative of labor interests could hardly come to
Europe without visiting Paris.  Paris, where a lurid,
underground drama of industrial insurrection, half smothered by
gold dust, was going on!

Was there any sensible reason why Robert shouldn't
pick up the thread of an old friendship, if it was all in the
day's work?  It might even be useful to a labor man to get
in touch with people who knew the ropes of the French
capital.  Anyhow, Robert would be the last person in the
world to abstain from such a course if it promised to
advance his principles.

His hateful principles!  The worst of it was, she was
beginning to have sympathy for his conviction that the
drudgery which served a purpose you believed in might be
a real pleasure, compared with which the pleasure that
served no purpose worth believing in would be an
intolerable pain.

Well, all these speculations were as nothing against the
fact of the moment.  The fact of the moment was that the
swaying of the bus crushed Robert's arm against hers in an
impact that was poignantly delightful.  Nor was this all.
Robert, his imperious principles notwithstanding, acted in
every respect as if he liked having his arm against her; no
as if he would like to have his arm *around* her.  Robert
Lloyd amorous?  She gave him a sidelong glance.  Her
senses provided her with abundant evidence that her surmise
was correct.  But this was a world of sensory illusions
as she had learned to her cost; and she reminded herself
sharply that she had more than one decisive reason for
trusting neither to his feelings nor to her own.



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   \IV

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"You're not doing your duty," she said to him.  "We've
just passed the church of St. Germain-des-Pres.  Quick
look back.  Even darkness can't subdue those imposing
walls.  Doesn't it look solid and impregnable?  Just like
my mother and like your convictions.  It's a structure that
commands your faith, though you have it not.  You'll miss
the silhouette of St. Sulpice, too, if you don't look out."

"Janet, I didn't come to Paris to look at churches.  I
came to look at you."

"Well, you came, you saw, and—you conquered."

"I saw more than you think," he went on, smiling at her
flippancy.  "As I said before, you've changed physically.
But the physical change is of no importance."

"I knew it.  Those fine compliments were all bunk."

"Not at all.  You've changed physically for the better.
But what is more important is that you've changed
spiritually—"

"For the worse, of course.  Now we're coming to it."

"I didn't say it.  I'm not at all sure."

"This may be candor, Robert.  But it sounds like revenge."

"You may as well be serious, Janet.  I've got volumes
to pour out to you, and pour them out I will.  When I'm
with you, I'm like the Ancient Mariner.  I want to tell you
everything."

"Everything?"

"Well, almost everything, as they say in the comic opera.
What do you suppose was the most wonderful companionship
I ever formed?"

"I can't guess."

"Barr and Lloyd.  Do you know why?  Because, for one
thing, there was nothing in reason that I couldn't talk to
you about, with the most unvarnished frankness.  I still
feel that way."

"I'm glad you do.  We were very good pals, weren't we?"

"Yes, and I hope we still are.  Anyhow, I want to speak
of something I heard about you from Mark Pryor."

"What was that?"

"Pryor seems to have kept in touch with Cornelia right
along.  You know Pryor."

"Not a sparrow falleth but his eye doth see," she quoted.

"Exactly.  He has been keeping tabs on this rich Alsatian.
And, by the way, I ought to mention that he repeated to me
what you told him about Monsieur St. Hilaire."

"That's a nice way to treat my confidence," said Janet,
seriously annoyed.  "Pryor of all people.  And I took him
to be the only original human clam!"

"Well, I think he was fully justified—"

"In what way, I'd like to ask?"

"Please don't make me go into that now, Janet.  The
thing I'm driving at is this.  Pryor heard that you were on
the point of—of forming a free alliance with this Alsatian
gentleman.  Chiefly to escape Cornelia and this horrible
business of clothes."

"You've been misinformed," she retorted coldly.  "Not
about the clothes.  I *do* loathe them.  But I've no intention
of forming a free alliance with anybody.  Certainly not with
Monsieur St. Hilaire.  Why should I?  I don't love him.
But I don't mind telling you that he has asked me to marry
him."

"Oh, then, that's what you're considering?"

"Yes," she said concisely.

And "put that in your pipe and smoke it," added a
defiant glance from her half-parted long-lashed eyes.

If he had any notion of playing the medieval knight,
plunging through fire and water for the damsel in distress,
she would spoil that chivalrous pose in a jiffy.

"Janet, I don't understand you," he said, with quite
unnecessary vehemence.  "You said you wouldn't marry
Claude, your reason being that you loved him.  Now you
say you will marry Monsieur St. Hilaire, and your reason
is that you don't love him."

His eyes added: "You are inexplicable, exasperating,
maddening—and yet adorable: in short, you are Janet."

The bus came to a full stop, and a few minutes later they
were in the concert hall.



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   \V

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The concert was one of a special series given by an
orchestra from Rouen.  Janet's attention had been drawn to
the series by two circumstances.  One was that a third of
the members of the orchestra were women.  The other was
that the inclusion of women in a first-class orchestra had
plunged musical circles into a controversy which the
newspapers eagerly seized upon and played up with caricature
or abuse, satire or eulogy, according to the partisanship,
but never the merits of the case.

Robert knew nothing of this controversy until he ventured
on a remark during the first intermission.

"The tone and workmanship of the orchestra are splendid,"
he said.  "I don't feel qualified to judge, but it strikes
me that the women are doing every whit as well as the men."

"As well?  They're doing far better.  Do you see that
first violin in the front row, the third from the left?  I could
tell he was slacking all through the Cesar Franck number.
And there were four or five others as bad.  You couldn't
say that of one of the women."

"No.  Their performance is amazing, isn't it?"

"Why amazing?" asked Janet, still detecting an echo of
masculine superciliousness.

"Well, women don't generally reach the top-notch in
the fine arts, do they?"

"How can they," said Janet warmly, "when the patronizing
disparagement and merciless rivalry of men hold them
back at every turn!"

"Well, they've managed to break into this crack orchestra.
That doesn't look like merciless rivalry."

"Ah, but wait till I tell you the facts, Robert.  As the
war went on, managers found it impossible to deny women
the privilege of playing in high-class bands.  But the men
are now recovering their monopoly as fast and as
unscrupulously as possible.  How?  They have set up a hue
and cry against the women and have won the musical
pundits to their side.  I am told that the management of
this Rouen orchestra is almost certain to yield to masculine
pressure, which means that the women will be dislodged at
the end of the current series."

Did Robert appreciate the injustice of this abominable
proceeding?  It was a fact that the women brought a fire,
intensity and freshness to their work which improved the
tone and effectiveness of every band they played in.  They
were twice as keen as the men and worked fifty times
harder.  Several of the younger, more liberal musical critics
both in Paris and in London fully admitted this.  Not so
the old-timers who sat in the seats of the mighty.  And yet
the men who were doing their vicious best to elbow their
rivals out of the way were the very men who fluttered about
town and with crocodile regret assured the public that, no
matter what *equal chances* the weaker sex received, the
final incapacity of women to reach the top was beyond dispute.

Janet's shot went home.  But the resumption of the program
made it impossible for Robert to offer a defense.  He
was annoyed at himself for having spoken tactlessly on a
topic which Janet might well be touchy about.  Still, he
considered that her rebuke was far too severe to fit the
crime, especially in view of his genuine equalitarian feeling
toward women, a feeling that Janet ought to have been the
last to deny him.

It occurred to him that, if she was capable of regarding
him, of all men, with so much detachment (not to say
indifference) as to make him the target for a sharp
anti-hominist fire, she might be deeper in the M. St. Hilaire
entanglement than he or Mark Pryor had suspected.

By the time the concert was over, Janet was sorry for the
way she had pitched into her guest.  Would he forgive her
for letting the heat of argument carry her away?  Not that
she retracted a word she had said.  Far from it.  It was
impossible to say too much on that score.  Had he noticed
the wide publicity which the Paris newspapers had given to
an assertion appearing in one of Arnold Bennett's recent
books?  It was the assertion that women are inferior to men
in intellectual power and that "no amount of education or
liberty of action will sensibly alter this fact."  This gesture
of finality with which men, even men of genius like Bennett,
invariably polished off the future of women and consigned
them to an eternity of subordination!  When would this
superficial generalization ever stop, if avowed feminists like
Robert fell to using the language of their opponents even
while avoiding their errors?

"I'm only taking the words out of your mouth, Robert,"
she concluded, in her softest pacifying tones.  "I'm only
repeating what you've told me a hundred times over in the
past."

He smiled at this sop to his vanity, which none the less
helped to restore good feeling.



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   \VI

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Janet had taken him towards the river.  They walked
arm in arm along the Quai Voltaire and the Quai d'Orsay,
the tranquil Seine and the starry skies almost their sole
companions.

The dispute of the evening still fresh in his mind, Robert
alluded to Janet's former ambition to create a new profession
for women of the middle class.  A branch of law, wasn't
it?  Authorship law, so to speak.  Had she given it any
thought of late?  What a nuisance it was that money
should have to be the root of all experiment as well as the
root of all evil.  In the absence of enough capital, it was
probably just as well that she deferred another attempt to
realize her dream.  Still, it was a pity.  She had made such
a good beginning with the firm of Barr & Lloyd, humble
though the scale of its operations had been.

"Well, Robert, are you ready to renew the partnership?"
she challenged him.

"Is this a strictly business proposal?" he replied, in a
hesitating manner.

She was chilled by his clumsiness.

"Barr & Lloyd was always a 'strictly business' affair,
wasn't it?" she said, in a cool, quiet voice.

He wanted to burst out with: "No, I never believed it
was wholly that.  If you'd had my sort of partnership in
mind, I'd give a very swift and a very different answer."  But
the words stuck in his throat.  For two reasons.  Her
sudden return to the almost hostile manner that had baffled
him earlier, was one.  His knowledge that the limited and
precarious means he disposed of would make an offer of
marriage from him seem ridiculous, if not insane, was the
second.

Had he voiced his thoughts, they might then and there
have thrashed their differences out in half an hour.  But
he could not voice them.  For the first time in their
friendship, neither of them was candid when candor was the
sensible course.  "This comes of caring for a woman not wisely
but too well," thought Robert.  He was amazed and incredulous
to find that he cared so much; he was also a little indignant
with himself, for he had vowed never to do that very
thing.

"Don't be alarmed," he heard Janet saying.  "I'm not going
to impress you into the cause.  You have bigger fish to
fry than the feminist movement.  As for me, I've had a
very good offer from Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome."

She sketched a picture of this whimsical lady, and gave
a short account of Mrs. Jerome's interest in the organized
effort to rid women of their professional disabilities.  Robert
learned that Mrs. Jerome had repeatedly expressed a desire
to put Janet to some use in the cause she had at heart.

"The work would be quite in line with my old plans,"
added Janet.

"Then why don't you accept her offer at once?"

"I wish I knew," she said, evasively.  "Perhaps I can do
all I've wanted to do, and more, if I follow the beaten track,
if I buy cheap and sell dear in the marriage market; in
short, give as little of myself as I can to the richest bidder
that offers.  What do you think?"

"I think a cynical step of that sort would do very well
for Mazie, whose words you appear to be repeating."

"Oh, don't underrate Mazie's cynicism.  It has been
hammered into a durable, serviceable instrument by some
very hard knocks.  Knocks that she got from men.  Her
flippant manner often obscures some very sound remarks,
like the one that there'll be no equality between the sexes
until women exploit men as shamelessly as men exploit
women."

"Doesn't the modern woman do this, already?" asked
Robert, with a smile.

"How often does she get the same chance?  It's equality
of chances that I'm aiming for, you know."

"So am I for that matter," said Robert.  "I hope we'll
get your equality of chances before long.  Then we can
work together for decency."

It was close upon midnight when they took a taxi back to
the Boulevard Haussman.

Not a soul was stirring in the Maison Paulette.  Robert
and Janet walked through the corridor on the *rez-de-chausée*
to the rear building, the one used for sleeping
quarters.  For a few minutes they stopped in the vestibule
at the foot of the staircase.

Now, as throughout the evening, their instincts swayed
them one way, their reason another.  Each misunderstood
the motives of the other; and, what with this misunderstanding
and the economic insecurity of their circumstances,
the scales were tipped in favor of discretion.  Besides, Janet
mistrusted her impulses far more than formerly.  True,
Robert mistrusted his far less.  In spite of his better
judgment, he was succumbing to her ensnaring voice and eyes,
was surrendering to an intense longing to tempt her into a
betrayal, an unambiguous betrayal, of her real feelings.

But he proceeded in a manner too inadequate.

"I'm no clearer about your plans than before," he said,
awkwardly.  "You haven't really taken me into your
confidence."

"About Monsieur St. Hilaire?"

"Yes."

A marked pause.  She did not interrupt it.  Discouraged,
he lamely continued: "Still, I'm glad you've changed your
point of view about men and women.  It's something to find
out that marriage, like adversity, has its uses."

"Robert, what I've found out is that marriage, like
honesty, may be the best policy.  I've learned that woman
cannot live by principle alone."

"I protest I never urged it."

"No.  And if it's the least satisfaction to you, I'll admit
that I don't intend to repeat any of my Kips Bay
experiments—free love, outlawry, and so on—you know the sort
of thing.  Why should I?  There are few moments in the
old Lorillard tenement life that I regret; yet there are none
that I'd live over again."

"None?"

"Not one.  Wait.  There is a single moment—it just
occurs to me—it was so like this one—"

"Like this one?"

"Yes, 'when my heart was a free and a fetterless thing,
a wave—'"

The line was completed without words, Robert, swept
away by her enchantment, having seized heir in his arms
and kissed her.

"Don't marry Monsieur St. Hilaire," he said, beseeching
rather than commanding her, "whatever you do."

She disengaged herself almost brutally, and went up the
stairs.  Pausing a few steps up, she turned and, in a tone
supremely dispassionate, said:

"Whatever I do!  Well, whatever I do, I can't marry a
poor man, can I?"





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


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   \I

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Hoping to have a few words alone with Harry Kelly,
Robert went down to breakfast early.  But if he expected to
learn anything further in regard to Janet or M. St. Hilaire,
he was disappointed.  Extracting teeth would have been
easier than pumping Harry who, besides being more taciturn
than ever, had developed a vein of pessimism quite out
of keeping with his material prosperity.

Robert was actually relieved when the appearance of
Mazie Ross at the breakfast table put an end to his efforts
to draw Kelly out.

"Her Ladyship was sweetly singing 'My Rosary' when I
passed her bedroom door," said Mazie, alluding to Cornelia.
"Things'll be humming in the Maison Paulette this
morning, if I know the Indian sign."

Mazie was getting to be very chipper of late.  Whether
from the force of association or not, the presence of Robert
and Janet had given her a chance to recover some of her
old position.

Kelly appeared to agree with Mazie's inference, though
he was not so cheerful about it.  He wished Mark Pryor
were somewhere within reach.  That fellow was a regular
clairvoyant, and could tip you off about the most
astonishing things.  A tip would be handy at this time.

"Something's going to happen," added Harry, gloomily.
"I feel it in my bones."

"I'd feel it in my bones," volunteered Mazie, "if I nearly
killed myself like you do, Harry.  You fairly chew up work.
What's the use?  Let the Empress do some of the worrying."

"She's got enough to worry about, Mazie.  She carries the
whole responsibility for the artistic work of the house, and
you know it."

"You bet I do!  The chief joy of my declining days is to
watch her Ladyship curl up on a cozy sofa in the office and
hug the responsibility while you do the work.  When the
weight is too much for her, she staggers over to the house
switchboard, rings up each department in turn, and interferes
with everybody impartially.  Say, if you could limber
up her knee action a bit—"

At this point, poor Harry, after an ineffectual attempt
to stare Mazie into silence, got up and went out, unable to
listen any longer.

"The goof!" said Mazie, pitying him contemptuously.
"She only married him as a sure salvation from work."

She was so manifestly unjust to Cornelia (who, however
much of a shirker she might have been in Kips Bay, was
now busy enough making her talent for line and color
productive) that Robert refrained from argument.

"What's the matter with Harry?" he said, attempting to
change the subject.  "He was always monosyllabic, but
never as gloomy as this."

"He wants a son and heir."

"Oh!"

"Do you remember how Cornelia used to tell every man
who paid us a call in Number Fifteen that the dearest wish
of her life was to hold a che-ild to her maternal heart?
Every brutal Outlaw that came along would offer to oblige
on the spot.  Except Harry.  He melted right into putty
when she sprang that mother gag; and then she gave the
cue for the wild wedding bells to ring out.  But now she's
married, it's different.  The muffler is on the maternal urge.
On tight!  And she's strong for the birth control propaganda.
She's so strong for it that—"

Here Cornelia entered and Mazie was put to instant
flight.



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   \II

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Cornelia's hour with Robert had come.  She lost no time
in giving him to understand that his arrival in Paris had, to
put it mildly, been inopportune.  Not that it was his fault.
Naturally, he couldn't very well have foreseen the rapidly
approaching crisis in Janet's life.  But there it was!
M. St. Hilaire, a man of parts and of wealth, was anxious to marry
Janet, who had just begun to see that the match was
greatly to her advantage.  Here was Janet's golden
opportunity to redeem the past—

"To redeem the past or to redeem Monsieur St. Hilaire?"

"Don't be flippant, Cato.  You know very well what I mean."

"I'm quite serious.  *Redeem* is a curious word to use in
connection with Janet.  It implies atonement for sin.  Did
you apply this word to your own case after your return
from England to the model tenements?"

She stared at him icily.  Did he intimate that Janet's
affair with Claude Fontaine was spiritually comparable to
her affair with Percival Houghton?  She would show him
the difference.  True, she had believed in free love ("a
hundred years ahead of my time, Cato!") and Janet had
followed suit.  But when she, Cornelia, had taken up the
gauntlet against the irrational knot, she had let herself be
pilloried for her convictions.  Had Janet done as much?
Let his own fairness be his tutor.

Not that she held Janet to blame.  Oh, no.  She would
have Robert know that he and his principles had been the
disturbing influence in Janet's destiny.  This had been the
case in Kips Bay.  She feared it would again be the case
in Paris.

"I the disturbing influence?  Absurd, Cornelia.  When did
I ever demand that you, or Janet, or anybody else live up to
my vaunted principles?"

"Cato, there's something about you, some Satanic magnetism,
that gives you a strange hold upon a woman's soul.
It makes her strive to appear before you always in her
loftier, sublimer flights, to put on her Sabbath character,
so to speak."

"Why do you call this Sabbath magnetism *Satanic*?"

"Because it's unnatural to ask a woman to assume her
Sabbath character seven days a week.  She's bound to come
to grief."

She assured him that this Satanic faculty of his was what
caused him to pique or fascinate women, though it seldom
inspired them with passion.  And, in the long run, it always
threw them out of gear.  As in the case of Janet!  What had
his intoxicating mixture of visionary theories and expedient
compromises done for her in the Claude Fontaine affair?
It had brought her out at the pitifully small end of the horn.

"I may remind you, Robert, that *I* was ready to ruin
myself for Percival Houghton, ready to stand, upright and
reckless, facing the world with him.  *I* didn't go slinking
from one hotel to another, as his pretended *wife*."

Cornelia's heroics would have amused Robert but for the
jibe flung at Janet.  Thank heaven, Janet never declaimed
about having faced a whole world or having ruined herself
for anyone.  After listening to such windy phrases, who
would not be biased towards any course that seemed right
to Janet and wrong to Cornelia?

He hung on her lips with rapt absorption, hoping by this
look of intenseness to mask his thoughts.

In this hope he was deceived.

"Why on earth don't you marry Charlotte Beecher?"
she cross-questioned him abruptly.

"I don't know."

"You don't know!  Do you suppose a girl with position,
wealth and brains turns up every day in the week?  A girl
who really *wants* you!  I'm sure I can't imagine *why* she
does."

"Nor can I."

She repeated her question.  Had he given Charlotte
Beecher up merely because she loved him so much more
than he loved her?

He couldn't very well answer this question in the
affirmative.  So he said:

"Charlotte is a very intellectual girl, the most intellectual
girl I know.  She never met a man whom she regarded as
her equal in point of brains until she met me.  The regard
was mutual.  She mistook her admiration for love.  I might
have made the same mistake—if I hadn't met you."

"You can't blarney me, Cato," she said, highly flattered
none the less.  "It's too late in the day!"

"I mean it, Cornelia.  Meeting you, made me alive to the
full force of the attraction between the sexes."

"It is the one thing needful," said Cornelia, in low siren
tones.  "For without it, love is as the dry stubble."

"I, too, used to think so," replied Robert, turning a cold
douche on this sentiment.  "We've all had that notion
rammed down our throats since childhood.  But can we be
certain that sexual attraction is the only road to love?  The
poets assure us that pity is a famous short-cut.  In the case
of very young people, *all* roads seem to lead to love.  For
older folk, mutual admiration may be as good a road as
any.  Speaking for myself, I'm still considering a proposal
to Charlotte Beecher—"

"Oh, you're still considering her?  And Janet is still
considering M. St. Hilaire.  For ice-cold calculation, give
me a one-hundred per cent enthusiast like you or Janet."

"Are you suggesting that Janet is so well-suited to me
that I ought to propose to her?"

She rose, with a growing sense of contempt for him.  If
he did anything so insane—and he was doubtless capable of
it—the results would be on his own head.  He had already
made a mess of his newspaper career, he had been too proud
to cultivate the Fontaine influence, he had gratuitously
antagonized his only well-to-do relation in California, even
now he could barely make a hand-to-mouth living out of his
connection with the radical press.  And he actually proposed
to lengthen this catalog of disasters!  Well, he'd better
remember one thing.  His friends could pull him out of a
hole, but not out of a bottomless abyss.

Really, did he believe in miracles?  To put it bluntly:
did he suppose that two failures added together made a
success?  Yes, two failures!  He was an impecunious
journalist or a discredited labor propagandist—which was
it?  And Janet!  What had she to offer?  A pirated soul
(this to remind him of Claude Fontaine) and shattered
prospects.

"Really, Cornelia, these phrases belong to the screen
grade of fiction, not to the facts of the twentieth century."

Here Mazie interrupted with an urgent message from the
exhibition room.

"Stay and talk to Robert," said Cornelia with frigid
disdain.  "He's a great salvager of damaged reputations."

Mazie looked inquiringly Robert's way, while Cornelia
swept towards the door.  In a mock-heroic tone, he
explained:

"Cornelia says that Janet *went wrong*; therefore, unless
M. St. Hilaire marries her, she'll be *ruined for life*."

Mazie caught the drift of the situation at once.

"Ruined!" she cried out, in a steaming torrent of slang.
"Say, people in the States won't believe a girl is 'ruined'
nowadays, even when she's committed to the House of the
Good Shepherd.  Ruined!  Who's to ruin her?  Why, the
average American is such a hokey-pokey, near-beer,
Sunday-school man of straw, he wouldn't ruin Cleopatra if she
begged him on her bended knees!  Take it from me.  If
Janet's people at the cemetery end of Brooklyn heard Claude
described as the Duc de la Fontaine, they might give her the
glassy eye.  They might.  They'll believe cruel things about
a foreigner.  But she mustn't let on that he's a gent from the
U.S.A., or they'll think she's stringing them.  Think!
They'll know it.  Why, my brown-eyed cherub, there's only
one way a girl can go wrong in little old New York.  And
that's to have somebody break into her bank account."

Of the latter part of this choicely sustained opinion,
Robert was the exclusive audience, Cornelia having already
closed the door with a bang.



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   \III

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A little later in the morning Janet, glancing through a
copy of *Le Matin* three days old, caught sight of a familiar
name in a telegraphic despatch from New York.  The name
was Fontaine.  According to the brief news report, headed
*C'est fini de rire!* (the fun is over!), Fontaine and Company,
the most noted of the Fifth Avenue dealers in precious
stones, were charged with complicity in a sensational
attempt at smuggling.

Piecing the somewhat disjointed details together, Janet
gathered that secret agents of the Department of Justice
on the lookout for spies had inadvertently found thousands
of dollars' worth of diamonds concealed in the bottom
boards of what purported to be cases of Japanese books.
The cases, which had been opened by the Secret Service
agents shortly after the "Ionic" docked in Hoboken, were
ostensibly consigned to a San Francisco book dealer for
whom one Hutchins Burley, a New York editor and foreign
correspondent, appeared as the representative.

Burley was held, and the newspapers featured him as
the "master mind" of a very clever band.  On examination
he confessed that the book dealer was a mere dummy for
Fontaine and Company, whose stock rooms were the real
destination of the diamonds.  A warrant for the arrest of
Mr. Rene Fontaine, head of the firm, was at once issued.
Officials of the customs house alleged that the operations
of the smugglers, whose ingenuity had baffled detection for
years, reached gigantic proportions, the government's loss
being estimated at many millions.

News so startling had to be told without delay.  Janet
excitedly reported it to Harry Kelly and then descended to
the exhibition room where as a rule Cornelia held sway at
this hour.

Entering the salon somewhat precipitately, she saw the
young Duchess of Keswick seated in great state and
surrounded by deferential minions.  But no Cornelia visible.
Janet beat a swift retreat.  The Duchess reminded her, not
altogether pleasantly, of Marjorie Armstrong at the Mineola
Aerodrome.  The two young ladies had the same fashionable
contours, the same self-conscious pride of position, the same
patricianism of the made-to-order rather than of the inborn
type.

Hastening up a flight of stairs to Cornelia's office, Janet
was brought to a stop outside the door by the sound of
voices, which she recognized at once as those of her friend
and of the Duchess's mother, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome.

It was easy to overhear the conversation.  Mrs. Jerome
announced her departure for London the next day to inspect
an apartment house restricted exclusively to professional
women who, besides being mothers, were the sole supporters
of their children.  She intended to open a similar house
(as a humanitarian, not a charitable undertaking) in New
York.  She had already offered Janet the post of resident
business manager.  Naturally, she would like to take the
young lady with her to England at once, but she wouldn't
insist on this.  If the inconvenience to the Maison Paulette
was too great, Janet could follow later, as soon as she had
wound up her affairs.

Cornelia's reply was couched in a low voice so tense with
emotion that Janet could distinguish only a word or two
here and there.  These words were ample.  *M. St. Hilaire,
woman-with-her-back-to-the-wall, Henriette, redemption,
iron-law-of-retribution*, etc., such proper names and stagey
phrases showed quite clearly that Cornelia was delivering
her customary rigmarole about the sacrifices she was
making to the end that Janet might cover up her past and
glorify her future.

To Janet's ears, this rigmarole was now so stale as no
longer to invite even remonstrance.  But to declaim it to a
comparative outsider!  And to embroider it with all sorts
of sticky innuendoes!  Janet grew hot and cold by turns.
So this was how one's name was buffeted about after an
episode like hers with Claude Fontaine!  If one's best
friends talked this way behind one's back, what might not
less intimate associates say or take for granted?

She had tried to steel herself against inevitable collisions
with public opinion; yet this first impact, though only an
oblique one, had given her a much nastier shock than any
she had anticipated.

*M. St. Hilaire, the Chateau in Normandy, the prestige
that was to cover a multitude of past sins*—Cornelia was
going it again!

Mrs. Jerome replied that these matters were none of her
affair.  She needed Janet and she believed Janet needed her.
Surely, the decision lay with the young woman herself?

While Janet was still debating whether or not she should
walk straight in and interrupt, Cornelia shifted the attack,
her diplomatic allusions to Janet's love affair being replaced
by blunter speech.  She effected the change with a great
show of diffidence and hesitation.  Her sense of loyalty alike
to her friend and to Mrs. Jerome obliged her, etc.—Claude
Fontaine, the *beau ideal* of the Junior smart set, etc.—the
transatlantic honeymoon to which the newspaper troubadours
had given a far-flung notoriety, etc.—But doubtless
Mrs. Jerome recalled these particulars well enough?

Came the tart rejoinder:

"No, I never do read newspaper scandal!  The fact is,
when I'm not gambling in Paulette frocks, I'm a very busy
woman.  If it wasn't for the Duchess, the Magpie Club in
Mayfair would make short work of me.  But the Duchess
reads me some of the necessary tittle-tattle at breakfast so
as to keep me *au fait*.  She's a great newspaper fan, is the
Duchess."

When Janet finally opened the door, walked in, and
electrified the room, Cornelia had just been sweetly remarking:

"But about the managership of this house, a house for
unattached mothers—widows and feminist women I
presume?—about such projects public curiosity is simply
insatiable,' isn't it?  Do you really think that Janet is exactly
the person for such a delicate position—?"

Ignoring Cornelia and her innuendo, Janet spoke directly
to Mrs. Jerome.

"I'm sorry you didn't let me tell you everything last week,
Mrs. Jerome," she said, keeping herself well in hand.  "You
see, all this would have been superfluous then."

"My policy, child, is never to learn more than it's good
for me to know.  But perhaps I was in the wrong this time."

"I had no idea you could overhear us, Janet," said
Cornelia, with as much acerbity as if she were the injured
party.

Janet scorned to reply on the level of this remark.

"I came to show you a piece of news in the Matin," was
all she deigned to say.

Pointing out the place, she handed Cornelia the newspaper.

"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Jerome alone for a few
minutes," she said.  "Would you very much mind?"

"Oh, by no means," replied Cornelia, trying hard to be
superior and authoritative.  "Make any arrangements you
like to suit your own interests.  Never mind the Maison
Paulette.  Don't think that *I* shall stand in your light."

And as she went out, unabashed, she offered the flowery
remark that she had only done her poor best to follow the
impulses of her heart, her sole desire having been to help
both Janet and Mrs. Jerome to a mutual understanding, in
the absence of which any joint project they might embark
on would be only too likely to suffer shipwreck.



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Mrs. Jerome drew Janet down to a place beside her on
the leather settee.

"Now, my dear," she said, "I'd just as soon you didn't
dig up ancient history.  Unless it's going to relieve your
mind.  But I shan't be any the wiser for it when you've
finished, trust me.  Why, if you told me that you were a
new version of the Old Nick himself, one look into your
lovely gray eyes would convince me that it wasn't true."

None the less, Janet, not wishing to sail under false
colors, gave a very short résumé of her life from the time
she went to the Lorillard tenements in Kips Bay to the day
she left M. St. Hilaire.

Throughout this narrative, Mrs. Jerome's round little
face was sphinx-like, becoming animated only at the point
of Janet's separation from Claude.

"He left you in the lurch, then?" she had interposed,
much affected.

"Oh, no, he would have kept on providing for me," said
Janet, evasively, and after a moment's hesitation.

Nobody had really believed the story that she had left
Claude.  Even Robert appeared to take the reverse for
granted.  Perhaps, on the whole, she had better fall into a
view that people would be sure to adopt in any case, and
that she was almost beginning to adopt herself.

"But of course you didn't let him," said Mrs. Jerome.

"No."

"Good.  We mustn't be under any obligation of that sort
to the selfish sex.  Now don't worry about the matter any
more.  You're a plucky girl, my dear.  Keep your pluck,
and your pluck will keep you."

Mrs. Jerome added that she hoped Claude Fontaine had
not behaved any worse than Janet had represented.  She
knew the young man.  Who in New York didn't?  As regards
possible criticism, Janet should be comforted with the
reflection that glass houses made the whole world kin,
human architecture being nowhere complete without them.
Why, most of the girls in the Younger Set had lost their
heads over Claude, which was all they had had a chance to
lose.  She herself, meeting him once at a costume ball of
the Junior League, had been knocked silly by his dashing
airs and Apollo curls, not to mention the best pair of calves
she had ever beheld.

"So you see, my dear, an old woman can be quite as
feeble-minded as a debutante.  Nobody has ever had a
monopoly of making mistakes."

Janet pointed out that the world did not take quite so
liberal a view.  This being so, might she not prove a source
of embarrassment to Mrs. Jerome?  As people looked at it,
running away with a man was—

"Child, for every woman who runs away with a man,
there's a man who runs away with a woman."

This obvious truth had been lost sight of, and the time
had come for its emphatic reassertion.  Did Janet imagine
that Claude had lost any credit?  Well, let her look at the
facts.  Mr. Fontaine, senior, had just got himself into a
very bad mess, one that involved the Fontaine firm in a case
of diamond smuggling.  The Duchess had read her the story
from the papers.  And only last night *Le Temps* had
reported that Mr. Fontaine was believed to have jumped his
bail, leaving his son Claude behind to pull the firm out of
the hole.  And everybody felt so sorry for Claude!  Not that
he had anything to fear.  He could not be held personally
accountable.  Still, there were the court proceedings,
which were reckoned a terrible load for his handsome young
shoulders to bear.  And so bankers and clubmen and
"sealskin" artists were rushing to his aid; matrons from upper
Fifth Avenue were pulling wires; Colonel Armstrong, the
great financier, was on the job behind the scenes; and it
was freely whispered that when the storm had blown over,
Claude and Marjorie Armstrong were to be married in
St. Thomas'.  Here was retribution!  If you judged from the
international tidal wave of sympathy and helpfulness that
was sweeping towards Claude, you might be pardoned for
thinking that he was Galahad, Parsifal, and Lohengrin rolled
into one.

"But men stand by one another," added Mrs. Jerome,
pointing the moral succinctly.

Women would have to take this lesson to heart and stand
by one another just as men did.  If Janet joined the Jerome
forces, she could depend on one thing, and that was her
support through thick and thin.

Janet felt inexcusably ungrateful at not accepting the
managership on the spot, and frankly said so.  She made
no attempt to explain her indecision, her motives at the
time being far from clear to herself.

Mrs. Jerome, blissfully unaware of the existence of
Robert Lloyd as a factor in this hesitation, took it in very
good part.  Janet should make up her mind when she
pleased.  But surely, she wasn't again playing with the
thought of marrying M. St. Hilaire?  After her emphatic
assertion that she didn't love him!

"Yet I don't dislike him, by any means," said Janet.  "I
was very fond of him in Brussels, before he lost his head."

"Fond!  Child, one may marry for money without affection,
or for affection without money, but one shouldn't
marry for either money or affection without a little romance
thrown in."

Saying which, this whimsical little lady laughed, rose, and
put an arm lovingly around her favorite.

"Come back to the States with me, Janet," she continued.
"You'll see what we women can do when we put on steam.
You shall make an independent place for yourself in New
York, besides helping other women to do the same.  And
by and by some suitable countryman of ours will come
along, and we'll have you nicely married off."



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*We'll have you nicely married off*.  Left alone, Janet had
to pull herself together after the shock of these words.
Everybody seemed determined to get her married.  Claude,
Pryor, Cornelia, Robert.  And now Mrs. Jerome, too!

Clearly, even people who were extremely well disposed
towards her, had it at the back of their minds that she had
lost credit with her fellow-men.  And that nothing short of
marriage could restore her to full public esteem!  This was
a situation she would have to reckon with.  But how comical
it was to have marriage urged upon her as though it were
a kind of penance she must do in order to regain her
standing!

Penance!  She was driven to admit that it really would
be something like an act of penance to marry M. St. Hilaire.
Still, would she feel this way if she hadn't met Robert again?
Would she?  Scarcely.  It was Robert's turning up that had
caused M. St. Hilaire to appear in the light of a penitential
infliction.

There were two courses open to her, and staying with
Cornelia was not one of them.  No, she recoiled from
fashionable dressmaking and all its shows, and the atmosphere
of the Maison Paulette with its lurking vapors of parasitism
and prostitution grew more oppressively sickening every day.

True, the big establishment was an amusing novelty at
first, when you saw only the surface glamor.  Nor was it half
bad to help Harry Kelly to train the manikins, so long as
you supposed that this training merely equipped them to
wear expensive frocks in the salon or at the races or at the
opera.  But when you found out that every one of these
dainty girl models expected confidently to become the mistress
of some rich merchant or politician, your zest for the
work oozed away.

Not that you saw much difference between the kept
mistresses who exhibited the Paulette garments and the kept
wives who purchased them.  But you began to look upon
the whole traffic in dresses as a symbol of woman's
enslavement to man and of man's enslavement to the dollar sign.
And you observed how this traffic changed everybody
connected with it for the worse.  (Everybody except poor
Mazie, who had experienced a revulsion of feeling against
the ghost of her Ziegfeld "Follies" self—unluckily too late
to do her any good.)  You watched the crude boyish
cynicism of Harry Kelly turn into a morose pessimism, and in
Cornelia you felt the growth or stiffening of all that was
grasping and cruel.

As Janet saw these metamorphoses, she realized that the
house of Paulette was a house of bondage.  It was not an
institution with which a free-spirited woman would wish
permanently to throw in her lot.

For practical purposes, then, her choice lay between the
managership under Mrs. Jerome and a "marriage of
convenience" with M. St. Hilaire.

Instinct, to be sure, pointed to another alternative in
which the name of Robert figured in capital letters.  But
this was a romantic dream, a dream which her fancy might
embroider but which her courage and common sense had to
dispel.  Thus, when instinct urged, "A little feminine
beguilement will bring him swiftly to your feet," common
sense rejoined, "You may elect life-long poverty for
yourself; dare you inflict it on Robert?"  Instinct could rear
and curvet, it could champ the bit; but it was not in the
saddle.

As between the two available courses, she had vastly
preferred the managership.  She would have jumped at it
when Mrs. Jerome first offered it, but for a tacit
understanding with Henriette.  What a pull on her affections the
little girl exercised!  In a moment of weakness, or rather
of passionate disgust with Paulette's, Janet had given her
former pupil all but an outright promise to become her
second mother.  Yet, though the father's proposal was a
handsome one, full of concessions to Janet's conception of a
modern woman's sphere, it was difficult to ignore the
likelihood of a bitter conflict after the wedding.  A conflict on
the issue of these very concessions.  For between the feudal
traditions of a man like M. St. Hilaire and the equalitarian
assumptions of a woman like herself, there was a great gulf
fixed.  Could it ever be bridged?

Anyhow, Mrs. Jerome's offer had blazed out the real
path of independence for her, and no mistake.  Or so she
had thought.  A dozen times of late she had been on the
point of imparting her final decision to Henriette and facing
Cornelia and M. St. Hilaire with it.  Lack of courage had
not restrained her.  A very different consideration had
given her pause.  Might net her "past" prove a source of
serious embarrassment to Mrs. Jerome's work?  The last
two years had taught her something of the "chemical"
methods of warfare, the "poison gas" attacks which the foes
of progress did not scruple to adopt.  Was it likely that the
enemies of the women's movement would lose the chance
of wrecking Mrs. Jerome's scheme by raising against her
young manager the hue and cry of *immorality*, that cry
with which a handful of knaves had so often brought a
whole nation of fools and cowards to heel?

None the less, good sense had suggested that if Mrs. Jerome
could risk it, so could she.  And she had at last
nerved herself to a conclusive interview with M. St. Hilaire.
It was no more than fair that after so much shilly-shallying,
she should explain at first hand her definitive refusal.

She was awaiting him now.  Had everything gone
smoothly, she could have shown him that her career was
already booked for passage by a different route.  Booked!
But at this critical moment she had struck a snag in the
shape of Mrs. Jerome's intimation that the shortest way
with an awkward past was to "marry it down," so to speak.
Had she been mistaken in Mrs. Jerome?  Was the good
lady so bravely taking a risk only with the quiet resolve
to insure this risk at the earliest opportunity?  Well, if she
had to get married for her sins, one thing was certain.  The
St. Hilaire she did know was better than the St. Hilaire she
didn't.

These reflections were brought to an abrupt close by the
return of Cornelia.

"Monsieur St. Hilaire is below," she announced, stormily.
"It seems to me that you owe an explanation to me as well
as to him."

"If you don't mind," returned Janet in a voice that was
strangely calm, "let me accept him first.  I'll explain to you
afterwards."

Cornelia stared at her.  For some time she had believed
that, despite the disturbing influence of Mrs. Jerome and
Robert, there was a fairly good chance of putting the
St. Hilaire marriage through.  She had cherished this belief
until today.  Then she suddenly learned that Janet had all
along been carrying on an intrigue with Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome,
the upshot of which was that the benevolent Cornelia's
plans were to be set wholly at naught.  And as if
this humiliation were not enough, Janet had entertained the
disloyal scheme of deserting the Maison Paulette at barely
a day's notice.

These distressing facts had transpired scarcely half an
hour ago.  And now Janet was again serenely proposing to
marry M. St. Hilaire!  She had been acting in this erratic
fashion ever since Robert came on the scene.  Had he had
anything to do with this latest change of heart?

"I'll tell M. St. Hilaire to come up," she said tonelessly,
paralyzed by the instability of her friend's decisions.  "The
coast is quite clear.  Mazie is upstairs with Harry, and
Robert has just gone to Fontainebleau for the day."

She omitted to say that she had packed him off on a
factitious errand.

"Yes," she continued, her cadenced speech picking up as
she went on.  "I told him to make the most of his glorious
freedom.  You know, he's as good as betrothed to
Charlotte Beecher."

"How lucky for them both!" said Janet hypocritically.

Cornelia went out, having thus drawn the long bow at a
venture.  And not, she trusted, in vain.



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   \VI

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M. St. Hilaire came in.  Janet had never been tempted
to rave over him as Cornelia lately did.  She thought him a
little too short, but she admitted that his well-poised figure,
ruddy complexion, and auburn beard were a delight to the
eye.  And she liked his courtly and somewhat superior
demeanor.

Yet, at the first intimate touch of his hand, she recoiled
almost with violence.

Her sudden start robbed him of every shred of confidence.
And it astonished Janet herself.  The fascination
of Claude and the voltaic attraction of Robert had put
these two, for her, in a class by themselves.  But she had
met men who were not half so agreeable to talk to or to look
upon as M. St. Hilaire—men whose company was dull or
whose personalities she disapproved of and yet whose
caresses she would not have wished to repel.

It had been this way ever since their first meeting in
Brussels.  M. St. Hilaire had befriended her in a time of
need, he possessed many mental and material advantages,
he was the father of Henriette.  But he lacked some one
thing needful.  When she dreamed her day dreams, she
never pictured him; and when he touched her, she never
thrilled.

True, in his absence, she thought of him (if she thought
of him at all) as precisely the sort of man a girl ought to be
able to love.  But in his presence she was overwhelmed
with the single conviction that to live with him would be
more than she could bear.  The conviction was absurd,
unjust, incomprehensible; yet it was not to be gainsaid.

Sensing her thoughts, M. St. Hilaire was disheartened.

"I hoped I had made amends," he said, in sorrowful allusion
to the cause of their rupture in Brussels.  "But I see
you've never forgiven me."

"Oh, no, no," she cried, with a pang of remorse.  "I've
forgotten all about that.  Please believe me.  It isn't that
at all.  It's—I don't quite know—something tells me that
I simply can't live with you as your wife."

He rose, by main force suppressing caustic and resentful
comments that leapt to the tip of his tongue.  He had one
more card to play.

"And you mean to—to go back on Henriette?" he asked,
in measured tones.

She came to his side and, affectionately taking his hand,
began:

"I'm terribly fond of Henriette—"

The door flew open and in walked Robert!  But stopped
on the instant!  He saw Janet caressing the arm of M. St. Hilaire,
heard the tender words, and felt the whole universe reel.

In the flash of an eye, he pulled himself together.

"Pardon," he said between his teeth.  And, turning
sharply round, flung headlong out.

Janet gazed after him in stupefaction.

She never knew how she finished the interview with
M. St. Hilaire, nor how, with a hardening of her voice, she
made it clear to him that, in a straight conflict between
Henriette's self-interest and her own, it was not the former
that she was bound to consult.

M. St. Hilaire took his dismissal with a good deal of
dignity and self-control, albeit Janet's display of firmness
had excited a deeper emotion than any woman had ever
aroused in him before.  An unconsidered trifle, snatched
away, may become the heart's desire.  And Janet had
ranked far higher than a trifle in M. St. Hilaire's European
scale of values, at least since her departure from Brussels.
Yet, throughout his courtship of this strange, incalculable
American girl, he had never been quite free from an uneasy
fear that the marriage might prove a social indiscretion.  He
now felt certain that his choice had been in keeping with
the very best taste.  And this certainty, while adding
poignancy to his loss, afforded some consolation to his pride.



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   \VII

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As for Janet, she fairly bolted upstairs and threw a
bombshell into the gymnasium by the summary announcement
of her intention to leave for England with Mrs. Jerome
next day.  An unalterable intention.  She was
determined to establish her independence not by marriage
but by hard work.

Mazie listened to her with very mixed feelings; Harry
Kelly looked like one who heard the rumble of an
approaching earthquake; Cornelia stood petrified.

She came to life again with a sinister, arpeggiative laugh.

"So you'll go trapesing to America on Robert's heels,
after all?" she said.  "To dish his whole career!"

"Cornelia, you're a devil!" cried Janet, incandescent with
anger.  "I'd like to know the reason, the real reason for
your anxiety to get me married to M. St. Hilaire.  Not
to do me a good turn, that's one sure thing."

Mazie advanced between them.

"Say, Janet," she called out, pacifico-satirically, "even
the devil sometimes does a pal a good turn—just for a
change."

Cornelia extinguished her with a gesture.

"Why did you ever run away with Claude," she said,
turning to Janet again, "if you were so gone on Robert?"

"How was I to tell the difference between an infatuation
that was bound to perish and a love that had scarcely been
born?" replied Janet, once more her cool, keen self.  "How
was I to tell, until I had tried them out?"

"Tried them out!  Words fail to describe your morals,
Janet.  But go on your own way rejoicing, my dear.  Hang
yourself around Robert's neck, if you like.  You'll make a
charming picture there, I'm sure.  Of course, clinging vines
have gone out of fashion.  But clinging leeches are always
with us."

Janet went out ignoring these insults and mutely denying
Harry Kelly's passionate appeal to her not to mind what
Cornelia was saying in a vertigo of rage.

"For God's sake, Cornelia," said Harry, making a frantic
demonstration, "don't let her leave us like that."

"Hold your tongue, you imbecile!" called out his wife,
turning on him fiercely.  "When I want to play the fool.
I'll ask for your advice."

Her exit, a tempestuous one, left Mazie and Kelly alone
and forlorn.  Poor Harry Kelly collapsed in his swivel
chair, while Mazie hovered around the desk like a gadfly.

"Unless you give her what for," she warned him, "*you'll*
never travel on asphalt."

He looked up and feebly waved her away.

"What can I do?" he said plaintively.  "Just jawing back
won't help matters."

"No," said Mazie scornfully.  "Jawing back won't.  But
how about knocking her down and jumping on her with
both feet?  Gee, if I had your strength for five minutes!
I tell you what, my frazzled Gorilla, if you don't mop up
the floor with her this very minute, she'll make a doormat
of you for the rest of your life."

Her tone was slighting, and there was bark in the dose
she administered.  For a second, he straightened up.  Then
he shook his head at her, slumped again, and buckled
down to the papers on the desk.  Poor Harry!  His muscle
was willing, but his nerve was weak.





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   CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


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   \I

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The blow which Robert got between the eyes when he
saw Janet and St. Hilaire together had left him shunned.
And he was on the train speeding to Fontainebleau before
he began coming to, a painful process of returning sensibility,
beside which the pins and needles of a limb that had
been asleep would have seemed the merest child's play.

The wild nomadic images that chased one another across
the field of his consciousness!  They racked his brain,
his world-reforming brain, and limited his feverish
introspection to one discovery, the startling discovery of how
very much he was in love.

Rather an awkward plight, he told himself, for a young
man who had purposed the moral regeneration of mankind
and in pursuit of this purpose had sworn to spurn fate,
scorn death, and set his hopes above happiness and love.
Especially love!  Didn't all the Dick Dudgeons and Devil's
Disciples begin by renouncing love?  Indeed, didn't they
make this renunciation a cardinal point of honor?

To think that even Cornelia had cautioned him against
making an utter ass of himself about Janet!  Cautioned
him in vain.  And Janet, too, had tried her hardest to warn
him off by jibing at his poverty.  This cruel kindness had
almost worked; almost, but not quite.  The poet, the lunatic,
the lover—they were the embodiments of diseases (Shakespeare
had said it!), diseases that resisted the most
desperate remedies.

Of course she preferred St. Hilaire to himself.  Why not?
According to his own theories, he should be the first to
dub her an imbecile if she didn't.  When she needed sex to
gratify desire, she had taken Claude by preference.  Now
that she needed a position, she would take St. Hilaire.  And
rightly so.

He had nothing to offer her but his brains.

Brains and no money!  And that in the twentieth century,
the triumphant mechanical century, in which any fool
with a little low cunning and a good thick skin could make
money by the bushel.

What on earth had possessed Mark Pryor to start him on
this trail?  Confound it!  It had all grown out of a chance
encounter with Pryor in Charlotte Beecher's studio one fatal
afternoon.  The fellow had taken him aside and poured
out a harrowing story of Janet's miseries coupled with a
picture of her dependence on Cornelia!  But for that
*rencontre*, he wouldn't have gone on this wild-goose chase
from Geneva to Paris to rescue Janet from a gilded cage.

A gilded cage!  No, by heaven!  He might be living in
a gilded cage himself (the gilt being drawn from Charlotte
Beecher's gilt-edged securities), instead of in one-third
of a model tenement flat in Kips Bay.  To think that Pryor,
the transcendently practical Pryor, should have been the
instigator of this fatuous proceeding!  Hang the fellow for
his unwarranted meddling and plausible tongue!

He reached Fontainebleau in a drizzling rain and voted
it a sleek and stupid place.  In the chilly Hotel de Londres
he had ample leisure to reflect on his folly.  Sightseeing!
His business in the world was to create new sights not to
see old ones.  A fat lot he cared for chateaux in which the
greasy Bourbons had entertained their mistresses and in
which streams of tourists would be sure to blink in awe at
vulgarly showy decorations or childishly ornamented bric-a-brac,
not to mention the celebrated, idiotic insipidities
painted by Boucher and David.

Merely to read about these "sights" in the guidebook
made him sick.  Why hadn't he followed his own nose
instead of letting Cornelia map, or rather, Baedeker, his
course for him?

"What dire offence from trivial causes springs," he
silently quoted.  His present plight was the result of putting
Cornelia into a bad temper at the breakfast table that
morning.  Afterwards, he had gone to pacify her, a feat
he had so often accomplished before.  So often, in fact, that
it seemed to him rather a joke to watch Cornelia's stony
heart melt into abject sentimentality.  A double-edged joke,
now he came to think it over, in his present plight.

Well, on this occasion she had *not* been as wax in his
hands.  Nor had she been sentimental.  True, she had
apparently let herself be mollified as of old.  But he was
so absorbed in Janet that he failed to be struck by her
unusual manner.  In retrospect it stood out.  Cornelia had
become playful: it was the playfulness of the panther.

She had begged him to go to Fontainebleau, pointing
out that everybody went at least once in a lifetime, and
that he could oblige her by doing his duty to himself and
performing a service for her at one and the same time.
The service (it would save Harry a journey!) was to give
a commission for a special Paulette design to an artist who
had an open-air studio in the famous Fontainebleau forest.

On his way from Paulette's to the Gare de Lyon he had
wondered whether Janet wouldn't be mightily piqued by
his unannounced absence of two days.  Two days cut
clean out of a visit that was not scheduled to be a long one!
Well, if she was piqued, so much the better.

Yes, but mightn't she suppose him deeply wounded by
her wantonly taunting shot at his impecunious, ineligible
pretentions?  Possibly.  But, as a matter of fact, he had
been deeply wounded.  A taunt from her lips, at such a
moment, and in such a style!  It was horribly unlike the
Janet he had known in Kips Bay.  Had she really become
calculating to her finger tips in accordance with the law of
the evolution of the Lorillardian female?  Did her
rapturous return of his kisses mean nothing to her?

Oh, well, after a tremendous love affair like hers with
Claude, a young lady was probably as much thrilled by a
kiss of rapture now and then, as by an extra slice of toast
at breakfast.

So he had reasoned as he was about to jump on a bus
running to the Lyon station.  He had stopped and retraced
his steps to the Maison Paulette, telling himself that as a
sane and sensible citizen of the world it would be much
better to bid her a brief good-bye.

Here in Fontainebleau his memory retraced these steps
for the fiftieth time.  Cornelia had been in the exhibition
room, thank heaven.  So he had hurried upstairs to the
gymnasium, stopping to glance in at the private office on
his way.  That was how he had come to swing open the
door and burst incontinently upon Janet and St. Hilaire.

Certainly, there was nothing like a smasher in the face
for making you feel things you had been innocent of feeling
before.

"Let the pain do the work!" said Robert, quoting to
himself the oldest and most respected maxim known to the
medical profession.  Then he went to bed.

A sleepless night followed.



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   \II

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The weather next morning was brisk and clear.  Under
its inspiration Robert began to recover from the depression
of the night before and, for a time at least, to drive away
the misgivings that had tormented him.  He yielded to the
beauty of the forest of Fontainebleau, a fact which made
the discharge of his mission for Cornelia much less tedious
than he had dreaded.

During his return through wooded walks to the town,
he so far regained his self-confidence that he was able to
laugh at yesterday's morbid speculations and nightmarish
fancies.  What a bother he had made about a crisis that
ought to have been foreseen, and a sequel that ought to
have been taken for granted!

And, as a pure point of information, could he be absolutely
sure that Janet really did mean to marry St. Hilaire?

This startling query, coming like a whisper from the
void, crystallized a decision towards which he had
unconsciously been groping.  He would return posthaste to Paris
and level the invisible wall that had sprung up between
Janet and himself.  "An invisible wall!"  To suppose that
a figment like that could separate two people endowed
with good will, quick wit, and flexible tongues, was to insult
his intelligence.

Parks, palaces, gardens, and all the other sights of
Fontainebleau could go hang!

He tingled with shame as he reflected that now, more
than at any other moment since the dissolution of the firm
of Barr and Lloyd, Janet might need the friendly counsel
or the sympathetic ear that he had pressed upon her with
unlimited enthusiasm in their Kips Bay workshop.  Yet this
was the moment he had chosen in which to act like the
screen hero who advances his money or his time to the
heroine in amounts arithmetically proportioned to the exact
quantity of amorous response from the lady's side.  True,
this sordid barter was the popular American conception of
the course of true love.  But did he propose to fall in with
this conception?  Was he ready to prostitute his gifts to
the worship of the great Atlantic bitch-goddess, *Success*?

If only he had been in a position to make Janet a
tolerably acceptable offer of marriage!

Still, no need to blink the fact that he was now better
circumstanced than at any time since leaving the *Evening
Chronicle*.  Hadn't the Confederated Press given him this
assignment at Geneva, the most responsible assignment in
its province?  He flattered himself that he had reported
the proceedings of the Labor Congress with a color,
vividness, trenchancy, and fire none too common in American
journalism.  It ought to make people at home sit up and
take notice; it might lead to a much more profitable
commission.  Look where Hutchins Burley's articles on the
Colorado mine strike had carried him, chock-full of
rhetorical clap-trap and maudlin pathos though the beggar's
work had been!

A pity that the Confederated Press served chiefly radical
newspapers with a limited circulation!  It kept your tenure
on quicksand.  He might have to yield to temptation and
falsify his better self by sinking into one of the fat jobs
that the plutocratic press would now be sure to offer him.

For the sake of marrying Janet?  No, no, it wouldn't do
at all.  Not even if she were insane enough to be willing to
take the plunge.  He pictured himself and her together in
the marital state, saw the cramped Harlem flat in which
they'd be boxed up.  Both working of course!  No conveniences,
no facilities for either sociability or solitude, no
children (on less than ten thousand a year birth control
would be imperative), no health.  And the economies they'd
have to practice!  They'd have to deny themselves freedom
of movement, shun social and professional contacts, and
take refuge in an isolation paralyzing to their talents.

Until death did them part—

Thousands of childless couples in every big city existed
thus.  And the lives they led were hell.

In spite of which solemn conclusion Robert had no
sooner reached his hotel than he prepared to desert the
spacious freedom of Fontainebleau.  And he actually took
the first afternoon train back to Paris with the express
purpose of seeking Janet out for a heart-to-heart talk.

The perfection of French "system," so extensively
advertised on paper, is also realized on paper, and there only.
This truth was once more brought home to Robert when,
grimy with soot, he reached the capital long after his train
was due.  He decided to skip the supper at Paulette's,
partly from a desire to avoid Cornelia, partly from a hope
that he might find Janet alone after Harry Kelly and his
wife had left, as they often did, for an evening's
entertainment.

A bus to the American Express Company enabled him
to get his mail just before the office closed.  He kept the
dozen-odd letters in his pocket, intending to read them
whilst taking a snack in a quaint, spotless little dairy
restaurant (the *a toute heure* shop, as he and Janet called it,
in allusion to its boast of never closing) in the Boulevard
Montmartre.

The waitress having taken his order, he rapidly sorted
out his letters, seven or eight of which had official or
commercial headings that at once betrayed the enclosures as
mere announcements or bills.  These he stuffed back unread
into his pocket.  Of the remaining few, the first one proved
to be from the London agent of the Confederated Press.
This was the man under whose orders he worked while in
Europe.  A grudging, carping cuss!  Robert hoped that the
fellow had at last seen the light (of Robert's merit), and
that handsome amends were forthcoming.

The message ordered him home to New York at once!

So much for the recognition and advancement which his
gorgeous accounts of the Labor Congress were to bring him.
Had the ironical shafts, tipped with caustic wit and aimed
at the rancor and obstructiveness of some of the labor
leaders, given mortal offence to his own side?

With a horrible sense of the insecurity of life, and with
a nameless dread more invasive and powerful than any he
had ever known before, he reached the Maison Paulette
about an hour later.  He met one of the principal manikins
at the door.

"Mademoiselle Janet?  Hadn't he heard the tragic news?
*C'est si triste*.  The whole Maison was in mourning.
Mademoiselle had departed that very noon with
Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the great rich lady without a heart.  *Ah,
comme c'est triste*!"



.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   \III

.. vspace:: 2

The "Touraine" had been two days out from Havre in
weather decidedly rough, before Robert got his sea-legs
back again.  Others on board were doubtless still deploring
the pit of instability that lurks beneath the surface of
things.  But as a rule their reflections had an origin that
was strictly physical.  Robert, on his first brisk walk
around the second-class deck, reasoned from premises of
a very different nature.

For he had reached a point where he felt constrained to
take a sort of inventory of himself, a mental stock-listing
of his reverses, his prospects, and his altered outlook on
affairs.

Not that his theories had changed in substance.

From first to last, his mind had been filled with a fierce
impatience of the stupidity of man today and an unquenchable
faith in a sanity to come.  Evil; as he conceived it, was
a by-product of human growth, and not, as Shelley conceived
it, something imposed on man by a malignant external
power on the fall of which the race would at once become
perfect.  In short, he believed that the incessant conflict of
life was largely a struggle between high and low desires,
with money and numbers on the side of Satan, and
high-spirited intelligence on the side of the angels.

In America, to be sure, where achievements not open to
a flat cash interpretation are passed by with a shrug or a
vulgar joke, Robert's view of life had excited as much
interest as a whisper in the wind.  The few who gave his
philosophy a brief attention had hastily dismissed it as
a matter for milksops or imbeciles; on the fool who
preached this philosophy they had bestowed a cynical pity,
and on the failure who practised it, an amused contempt.

The failure who practised it!  Robert knew that, judged
by every standard save his own, he was a failure, a
complete, incurable failure.  He did not try to dodge this
unanimous judgment.  He despised it as much as he exulted
in his own faith.  To be exact, as much as he *had* exulted in
his own faith.

For the blow that had knocked him galley-west in the
office of the Maison Paulette had seriously shaken his
self-confidence.

A review of his recent conduct led him straight to a very
unpalatable verdict.  He had behaved as stupidly towards
Janet as any average man of stone-age instincts.  Because
she had made one risky experiment in the field of sex and
had almost been tempted to make an even riskier experiment
in the field of subsistence, he had displayed in turn
his pique, jealousy, anger and scorn.  The childish
resentment that had mastered him!  And this when he owed Janet
unbounded gratitude for her wisdom in frightening him off
from a suicidal offer of marriage.  In his varied exhibition
of neolithic folly, where was the high-spirited intelligence
he boasted of possessing?

Look how Janet had stuck to *her* guns!  As he might
have foreseen (if he hadn't been a perfect donkey!), she was
going to make a glorious fight of it, on her own.  She had
given to Caesar the things that were Caesar's; and for the
rest, she had kept her integrity intact.

Incidentally, there was a grain of comfort in the fact
that she hadn't accepted M. St. Hilaire after all.  A grain!
Say rather, several tons.

Suspending this train of thought, Robert turned to his
other great problem, his work in the labor movement.  He
asked himself whether he, like Janet, had kept *his* integrity
intact.  Two weeks ago he would have shouted out a
triumphant yes.  But now the thin edge of doubt had
entered his soul.  This incorruptible, critical gift—the gift
above all others that he prized—was he justified in pushing
its exercise to the furthest limit?  He had always rejoiced
in the uncompromising candor with which he had exposed
and flayed the special weaknesses of the radical leaders,
the general deficiencies of his own side.  But when candor
compelled you to smite people in the fifth rib in order to
save their souls, weren't you carrying virtue a little too far?

Well, his employers on the Confederated Press thought
so.  And that they were not alone in their opinion was
evident from his several failures.  He counted them up: the
*Evening Chronicle*, the Guild movement, the attempt to
unionize the mercantile workers, the Labor Party publicity,
and now this latest debacle.  Not to mention his friendships!

He retained the hearty confidence of nobody.

Ought a successful honest man, then, to show as much
discretion in the practice of candor as a successful knave
shows in the practice of deceit?  It would seem so.  Plainly,
he who would change the moral standards of his kind could
not afford to be one thing to all men.  Not a specialist or
an extremist, in short.

How to be an aggressive revolutionist and at the same time
a progressive evolutionist—this was the paradox that every
effective radical had to embody in his own life.

It was clear that he would have to begin again at the
bottom of the ladder.

This being so, the first thing to do was to ascertain his
liabilities, material no less than spiritual.

Here Robert was reminded abruptly of the half dozen
letters—bills, circulars, and the like, as he surmised—which
he had rammed into his coat pocket at the *a toute heure*
restaurant.  The coat in question was in his stateroom and he
would look for the letters when he went below.

Half an hour later he found them.  One of the first
envelopes bore the heading: Simons and Hunt, Attorneys-at-Law,
150 Broadway.  It had two enclosures.  The first
one he opened read:

..vspace:: 2

My Dear Nephew:

.. vspace:: 1

About a year ago you wrote to me suggesting that I do
something handsome by you.  In your own delicate words
you asked me to subsidize your imagination, a quality you
believed of sufficient value to your fellow men to be worth
preserving.  As a proof that you possessed this quality, you
provided me with an outline of your career in all its ups and
downs, chiefly downs.  You were also good enough to favor
me with copies of your several articles on social and
industrial reform.

As I am in receipt of some ten thousand requests for
money every year, it is obviously impossible for me to
comply with them all.  And I am bound to say that I saw
no reason for complying with your request, the more so in
that its tone of mockery and sly derision led me to doubt
whether it was made in entire good faith.  The claim of
kinship which you advanced (somewhat belatedly I thought)
had little weight with me.  You know what family ties
are amongst the Lloyds!  I was but a youngster of fourteen
when my father and my elder brother (*your* father) ripped
up my gilded dreams of a future as an artist and hashed
my romantic plans by a single practical act.  They pitched
me out of the house into the street.  There I remained to
live on my own wits, and this fate I have had little occasion
to complain of.

But to return to your letter.  It did not win me to your
way of thinking.  Nor, to be candid, did your articles on
"the collapse of modern society."  I will admit that your
attacks on land speculators (like myself) were witty, if not
wise.  And when you sailed into the monopoly on land
values, you wrote with astonishing authority; indeed the
only flaw I could find in your otherwise perfect qualifications
for solving the economic problem of land was the
trifling fact that you had never owned a foot of it.

This might have passed.  Not so your observations on
the distribution of the country's wealth and other related
iniquities.  Here you repeated the usual flub-dub with the
usual fine flourish of the man who imagines he has made a
startling discovery.  Thus, you solemnly pointed out that
there are only two kinds of people on earth: those who prey
and those who are preyed upon.  You announced that you
had never seen the profiteer forsaken, nor the preying man
begging his bread.  And you informed the world that the
[Transcriber's note: some text appears to be missing
from the source book]
intensified every year, the sheep being now more securely
muzzled and more efficiently fleeced than ever before.

Now, my dear nephew, there is nothing new in your
"discovery."  Since the days of Plato all prudent men have been
of one opinion respecting the class war, but no prudent man
has ever admitted it.  Conscious of this, I was unmoved
by your ringing call to the sheep that they had nothing to
lose but their muzzles; and your desire to see them organize
for the purpose of destroying the wolves by mass action, left
me cold.  A world of sheep—and nothing but sheep—would
not be to my taste.  For the wolves, whatever else we may
say of them, at least vary the drab monotony here below.
Besides, I suspect that your indignation in the matter of the
muzzles is largely shandygaff.  It is not necessary to muzzle
sheep!

In fine, your credentials did not greatly impress me.
Your writings, it is true, were clever, witty, imaginative.

But what is imagination without matter or money to work
upon?  Like a spark without tinder on a wet day in the
woods.  At all events, I could scarcely overlook the fact
that, whereas *I* had made a fortune by my real estate
speculation, *you* were unable to make so much as a bare
living by your real estate denunciation.

Have patience a little longer with the garrulity of a dying
man.  A few weeks ago, I was taken ill with a fatal
dilatation of the aorta, and the end may come in a day, a month,
a year.  What to do with my investments became an immediately
pressing problem.  The charities I had named in my
last will were administered, as I well knew, by a host of
charity-mongers even more distasteful to me than kith and
kin.

In this painful dilemma I read your letter again, thinking
that my reaction to it, a year ago, had been hasty or
unfair.  Perhaps the wish was father to the thought;
perhaps my infirmity has softened my brain.  Whatever the
cause, one passage in your letter struck me.  My eyes were
opened and I saw, or believed I saw, that you were a chosen
vessel to bear my name and fortune before the American
people.  Accordingly I revoked all charitable bequests and
appointed you as my principal heir and assign.

The passage that took my fancy was the one in which
you declared that it is nobler to spend a fortune than to
make one.  Unhappily, I have never been able to practice
this sentiment in full.  Not that I have failed to try.  I
have spent millions in my time.  Indeed I feel justified in
saying that I have been a constant and deliberate spendthrift
in the most literal sense of the word.  But, like you,
I have an imagination (although, unlike you, I have always
prudently given my imagination the wherewithal to work
upon).  Thus, in the teeth of a free and incessant
expenditure, my mind has always produced far more than my body
could possibly consume or my hands give away.  And so
I come at last to the most tragic moment in a rich man's
life: that in which he arranges for others to spend what he
himself has earned.

But spent it must be.  And when I consider your Lloyd
heredity, your childlike ignorance of the ease with which
money is made, and your crushing innocence of the difficulty
with which it is spent, I feel I can hardly put my
future in better hands than yours.  God bless you, my dear
nephew, and may your efforts at noble disbursement be
attended by success.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   Your affectionate uncle,
        Allan D. Lloyd.

.. vspace:: 2

Robert's feelings beggared expression.

Half dazed, he took out the second enclosure, a brief
communication from Messrs. Simons and Hunt, his uncle's
attorneys.  This notified him of Mr. Lloyd's death, and
confirmed the fact of his designation as the residuary legatee.
After putting an estimate of two million dollars on the
minimum value of the estate, Messrs. Simons and Hunt
placed their services at the disposal of the heir and
announced their readiness to receive his instructions.

Followed a blank in Robert's consciousness.  Slowly, very
slowly, this was replaced by the sound of the steamer
throbbing its way across the Atlantic.



.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   \IV

.. vspace:: 2

The day after landing, Robert paid Messrs. Simons and
Hunt a visit, with the result that, on leaving their offices
in lower Broadway, he was a little less haunted by the
suspicion that the reality was a dream.   A most reassuring
item was tucked away in his pocket in the shape of an
advance of cold cash amounting to two thousand dollars, a
sum far larger than any he had ever been in possession of
before.

On the theory that excess of joy, like excess of sorrow,
had better be skimmed off by a long, brisk walk, Robert
trusted to his two legs to get him back to Kips Bay.  He
had planned no change in his habits as yet; hence he still
shared part of a model flat with the sporting editor of one
of the evening newspapers.

He had just turned from the open court of the Lorillard
tenement block into the rather dark entrance, when what
appeared to be a shadow on the wall assumed solidity and
life, stepped alertly forward, and tapped him on the
shoulder.

"The one man in New York I particularly want to
see," cried Mark Pryor, in his cool, staccato tones.

"The one man in New York I particularly want to
avoid," retorted Robert, not ill-naturedly, but with a lively
remembrance of Pryor as the engineer of his Parisian
misadventures.  "How in thunder did you know I was back?"

"I didn't.  Luck simply drifted my way."

His cordial handshake accelerated Robert's returning
sense of the reality of earthly affairs.  Pryor might be slim
and wiry enough to slip in or out of the most impossible
places.  He might be as elusive as a ghost.  But there was
nothing weak or spirituelle about his grasp of one's hand
or his grip on life.  As for his voice, which had a ring of
decency and good intent always attractive to Robert, it
dispelled fanciful grudges and installed common sense.

They went to lunch together in a favorite restaurant of
Pryor's, a little Austrian place in one of the side streets
east of the Pershing Square district.

"A fine scrape you got me into with your tip about
Paris!" began Robert, as soon as they were served.

"I've never seen you in better spirits," returned Pryor,
cool as a cucumber.  "Are you engaged to marry Janet?"

Robert stared at him.

"No," he said emphatically.

"Then you're not the man I took you for."

"I'm not," said Robert, chuckling.

So Pryor knew nothing of the inheritance!  And if Pryor
knew nothing, who would know?  He had rather supposed
that the news would create something of a stir.  The
Lorillard tenements and Kips Bay generally should, in all
conscience, have been agog with it.  But so far not a word had
been said by anybody he had met.

Clearly, it took a good deal to ripple the pachydermatous
surface of this monster city of New York!

Well, he would volunteer nothing.  It was just as well to
keep one or two cards up your sleeve, especially when you
matched your wits against a clever man like Pryor.

Meanwhile Pryor did the talking.  Did Robert mean to
sit there and tell him that he had missed the opportunity
of a lifetime?  He'd be blessed if he ever threw him a
chance like that again.

"A chance!" interrupted Robert.  "Are you sure it
wasn't a noose?"

"Don't talk through your hat, Lloyd," said Pryor, affecting
indignation.  "Janet's a girl in a million.  Whoever
marries her is a made man."

"You are a cool hand," said Robert, lost in admiration.
"I don't know what in thunder your game is.  Let me say
this, though.  As a man of mystery you may be as superb
a demon as Mark Twain's *Mysterious Stranger*.  But as a
matchmaker you're a hopeless old blunderbuss."

He briefly outlined his recent experiences in Paris,
including the tableau of himself in the act of stumbling upon
Janet and M. St. Hilaire; he also sketched the sequel to
this climax.

Pryor's restless eyes remained singularly still during this
recital.  At its close, he offered one enigmatic remark:

"If Janet's coming to New York, we may yet be able to
pull the chestnuts out of the fire."

In response to further questions, Robert gave a few
intimate word pictures of unpublishable incidents at the
Geneva Labor Congress.  He also touched rather pepperily
on his recall by the Confederated Press.

"Serve you right," said Pryor.  "To a plain man like
me reformers who try to change moral standards, whether
for better or for worse, are a nuisance.  Too many obstacles
cannot be put in their path."

"All I did was to tell the truth about my own side," said
Robert indignantly.

"What!  Peach on your own side?  Why, even the yeggmen
consider that bad form."

Robert smiled in spite of himself.

"Nonsense," he said.  "Facts are facts.  The truth is,
Americans habitually act like feeble-minded weaklings in
the way they receive criticism.  And we radicals share the
national infirmity.  Let the least suggestion of disapproval
be levelled at *Columbia, the gem of the ocean*, and all
America foams at the mouth.  This is a joke to foreigners;
it's a tragedy to us.  I tell you, Pryor, unless Americans
learn to stand up to criticism like men and to tolerate
dissent as the English, the Germans, and even the French do,
they'll stand where they are—at the tail end of the
procession of nations.  Don't you agree with me?"

"Lord, yes!  Have it your own way.  Pull your fellow
radicals to pieces if necessary.  Treat 'em rough.  But don't
slaughter 'em.  Remember they're the only leaven in the
slimy dough."

"For an avowed conservative, Pryor, that's going pretty far."

"Oh, I'll go farther than that.  I'll say that if the
Confederated Press were to come to grief—which Heaven
forbid!—I should have no means of getting at the real
news of the world.  None whatever.  Unless I could sneak
into some private whispering gallery in Washington, D.C.,
or in Wall Street, N.Y."

"You perverse standpatter, what do you mean by sticking
up for *my* side?  It looks fishy to me.  What's your
little game now, I wonder?"

"Lloyd, the time has come to give you a straight answer
to that question.  I'm an agent of the Secret Service; at
present, I'm detailed to help the Department of Justice."

"The deuce you are!"

"My game has been to watch the most dangerous radicals
in New York—some five hundred of them—whose names
are listed in the department's books.  You are one of the
five hundred."

"Really!  I hope I've been a source of ample diversion?
As a friend, I'm always glad to oblige."

"*Dienst ist dienst*, as the Germans say.  While on duty,
I had no friends; I merely had five hundred suspects to
keep track of.  In point of fact, my men have been through
your effects several times.  We found nothing treasonable,
nothing seditious, nothing compromising, except a copy
of the Declaration of Independence with the first eight
lines underscored.  I tried to have your name removed from
the black list.  But the damaging evidence aforesaid was the
ground on which my recommendation was ignored."

"Is this a joke?"

"No, it's the gospel truth.  But you needn't feel as
though you had been singled out for persecution.  Not at
all.  I'm a marked man as much as you.  If the Intelligence
Service of the Government detects an atom of intelligence
in one of its agents, it makes it a special point always
to ignore that agent's recommendations.  Never mind.  I
wrote out my resignation this morning.  Here it is.  It goes
to Washington at once."

"Surely, Pryor, you have other reasons for resigning the
job?"

"Ah, now you're coming to it.  For weeks past, I've been
saturating my mind with radical literature.  Tons of it.
From professional motives solely, of course.  After a
studious and impartial consideration of facts and principles,
I've come to a very curious pass."

"You don't mean to say that you've been converted!"
said Robert, rising excitedly from his chair.

"Yes, I've been converted.  Not to radicalism, mind.
Personally, I'm a firm believer in the aristocratic state as
championed by Plato, Ruskin, and Carlyle, the state in
which the Government is carried on by those whose equipment
best fits them to govern.  We'll reach this state—in
about a thousand years.  Meanwhile, I've been converted
not to radicalism, but to the view that the radicals
are right in theory and the Government wrong in practice;
the former right in demanding a complete restoration of
civil liberty and an enormous grant of industrial liberty,
the latter wrong in thwarting these demands."

After a few moments spent in digesting Pryor's
astonishing admissions, Robert said:

"One good surprise deserves another."

"Fire away."

"I've just inherited two million dollars!"

Pryor was stupefied.

"Where the blue blazes did you get it from?" he cried,
his long neck rising telescopically out of his stand-up collar.

"That's one piece of information that hasn't drifted
your way, at all events," said Robert, taking a malicious
pleasure in Pryor's stupefaction.

A marked pause followed.  Then Pryor, having congratulated
Robert, said abruptly:

"As far as I can see, nothing now stands in the way of
your marriage to Charlotte Beecher."

"What do you mean?"

Searching glances were exchanged.  Each recognized in
the other a man of rare talent and unusual probity, and
trusted him accordingly.  Pryor took the plunge.

He remarked quietly that, during Robert's absence
abroad, he and Charlotte had become very good friends.
He was well aware of her intense attachment to Robert.  She
had, in fact, talked about it freely and frankly to him.  Thus
he knew that she had taken the initiative in proposing
marriage to Robert, a very natural step, inasmuch as she
was in the vastly superior position.  He knew, however
that Robert had refused on the ground of the extreme
inequality of their circumstances.

With the best will in the world, Robert found it difficult
to reply.  Habit and custom were strong against a ventilation
of his refusal and of the real reasons underlying it.

"The truth is," he said, after a second's hesitation,
"Charlotte and I would be very poor partners on a long
dull grind, and this is what modern marriage has become.
We're excellent friends.  We put a fine edge on each other's
faculties.  When we meet, the blue sparks fly.  In fact, they
fly too much."

"Say what you like, she could at least take you to art
galleries and concerts, and count on you as a sympathetic
companion.  That's where I failed her.  I'm such a duffer
in matters of art.  And as for music!  Lord, I hardly know
the difference between Beethoven and a beet."

"Don't let that worry you.  For all that Charlotte and I
pull so well together, our points of agreement are mostly
on the surface.  True, we both get recreation from looking
at pictures or sculpture and listening to music.  But not
from the same pictures or sculpture, nor from the same
music.  She's all for chastity and restraint in art—Hellenism
or aristocracy, you'd call it.  She resents Strauss's
volcanic turbulence; Epstein's rough-hewn symbolism
merely disgusts her; the brutal abandon of Augustus John
drives her mad.  Yet I swear by these artists as she swears
by the Donatellos, Brahmses, and Raphaels whose exhibitions
of technical mastery bore me to extinction.  We
really have nothing in common except our recognition of
honest craftsmanship and our joy in the clash of temperaments,
instincts and opinions."

"These differences that you speak of: how do you know
that they matter?"

"Because they go so deep.  Her hopes are not my hopes,
her dreams are not my dreams, her gods are not my gods.
These things are of the essence of comradeship, and
comradeship is the soul of love."

"Well, I'm as much in love with Charlotte as any
normally sane man can be in love," said Pryor, quizzically.
"But on the points you mention, *I* don't hit it off with her,
either.  Her Brahms and your Strauss are equally Greek
to me, and I'd give up their collective compositions in a
jiffy for half an hour of the "Mikado" or the "Gondoliers."

He supposed he'd have to work backwards and find out
what the essence of comradeship consisted in.  He sincerely
trusted that it was not bound up, in his case, with
Charlotte's money.  As it was, she was terribly suspicious on
that score.  She was quite unshakable in the conviction
that Robert was the only man she had ever known who
was not a fortune hunter.

"You see the devilish harm you've done," said Pryor, in
conclusion, "with your reputation for disinterestedness."

"Quite an undeserved one, too," replied Robert, smiling.
"Like most reputations it was founded on my deficiencies
and not on my accomplishments.  If I had known as much
about money two years ago as I do now, Charlotte might
have a very different opinion of my disinterested motives,
as well as of me."

He assured Pryor that he would do his level best to free
Charlotte from her delusion.  In return, Pryor was to
keep secret the fact of Robert's accession to a fortune.

"I'd like to enjoy the luxury of being a poor man with
plenty of money in my pocket," he said.

Nobody was to be told and, in particular, the news was
to be kept from Janet.  He didn't expect to indulge this
rather childish whim for more than a few days.  All New
York would be talking about his good luck by that time, no
doubt.

"My dear fellow!  A paltry two millions?" said Pryor
with a short laugh.  "A mere pebble on the beach.  Why,
the reigning plutocrats here hand out millions to charity
as I'd give pennies to a beggar."

They settled their bill.

On their way out, Robert said:

"Now tell me how you caught that blackguard Burley
smuggling diamonds for the Fontaines."

"Who told you I caught them?  In the strict etiquette
of the Secret Service, the names of the agents in specific
cases are never made public."

"Oh, the information just drifted my way," said Robert,
bantering him.  "Even without it, though, I should have
put two and two together.  Nobody admires the richness and
variety of your knowledge more than I do, Pryor.  Yet I'm
bound to say that your disguises seem puerile to me.
Among the Outlaws, although we didn't guess the Secret
Service, we spotted you as a Pinkerton, or something of that
sort, almost from the first."

"Precisely what I wanted you to do, my friend.  My
game was to spread the truth broadcast.  People simply
will not believe the truth.  Ask any detective worth his
salt and he'll tell you that being himself is the best of all
possible disguises, one that saves no end of trouble in
'make-up' and character acting.  It causes every suspect to
feel that he and the sleuth are in each other's confidence,
as it were.  And this puts people so much at their ease that
they positively can't help giving themselves away."

"So that's how you double crossed Hutchins Burley?"

"It's a long, amusing story, Lloyd.  I'll keep the details
for another day.  The poor wretch is doing five years in a
Federal prison.  Mr. Rene Fontaine, for whom he was a
mere tool, paid a fine of three million dollars (not your
beggarly two million!) without turning a hair, and then
decamped to England, where he lives in a regal villa
somewhere in Essex.—Lord, it's nearly three!  I must make a
move.  Where are you bound for?"

"Home, now.  California, the day after tomorrow."

"California!"

Robert explained that all his uncle's realty holdings were
on the Pacific Coast.  His mother, too, was there.  What
with one thing and another, his presence out West was
imperative.

"I shall return in two months for a quest of quite another
sort," he added, significantly.

"Walk a few blocks towards the Subway with me," said
Pryor, "and I'll show you one of the high lights of our low
life."

As they drew near the Grand Central Palace, the streets
grew thick with people.  Traffic along Lexington Avenue
was suspended and a cordon of New York's "finest" was
drawn up in front of the Palace, with night sticks polished
to a turn.

Robert and Mark Pryor had just reached the outskirts
of the crowd, when several imposing motor cars drew up in
front of the exhibition building.

"What on earth's the matter now?" said Robert.  "Has
our Anglo-American Prince of Wales returned?"

A very handsome young man with two richly dressed
young ladies alighted from the first car, whilst the moving
picture brigade went into immediate action and the crowds
thundered out cheers.

"It's the first day of the great Allied Armies' Bazaar,"
said Pryor.  "The Duchess of Keswick and Mr. and Mrs. Claude
Fontaine are to open the affair at three o'clock.
There they go now."

"What a match for him!" murmured Robert, setting eyes
for the first time on Marjorie Armstrong's proud beauty.

"More than a match," said Pryor, softly.





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   CHAPTER THIRTY


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   \I

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"You don't love me, Robert!"

"It's false," he said, retreating.  "I do love you.  I've
loved you madly ever since you fled to Paris."

"Then why do you run away?  I don't want you to marry
me.  You're too poor!  But you might at least kiss me.
Come back, Robert, please come back!"

Following him, she put her arms around his neck and
clasped him tight.

"Let me go, Janet.  I won't marry you.  I won't!  I'll
never, *never, NEVER* marry a woman who has had a free
lover!"

Still he receded, and ever so gently tried to unclasp her
hands.

"You needn't marry me, Robert.  Only treat me just as
you'd treat a man.  Don't you remember that you promised
you would?  You promised on the pier in Kips Bay, when
your heart was a free and a fetterless thing."

She concentrated all her magic upon him, upon his pale
thoughtful face and discerning hazel-brown eyes.  But look!
The eyes were not hazel-brown—they were a flashing blue!
And these were not the mobile sensitive features of Robert,
but the bold virile features (somewhat distorted by angry
passion) of Claude.

"What!" he cried.  "Marry you here—here in Brussels—after
all I've suffered on your account?  Serpent!  Shall
I never escape your sting?"

Hovering somewhere in the background, a thin-edged
female with horn-rimmed spectacles took a malignant joy
in fanning the flames of his rage.

Claude wrenched both her hands loose and flung them off,
the violence of the action sending her prone to the floor.



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   \II

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Janet sat up in bed and shook back the tangles of her
nut-brown hair.

What a horrible nightmare!

All on account of the rumpus started last night by the
thin-edged female with the horn-rimmed spectacles.

Not in Brussels, but in New York.  Not in the Grand
Hotel, Boulevard Anspach, but in the Susan B. Anthony
House, Park Avenue, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome's new apartment
house for self-supporting professional women with
children.

Well, this particular rumpus had been settled, and the
attack of officious Pharisaism upon Janet's reputation had
received a black eye.  Janet wondered whether the blow
was to be recorded as a knockout or merely as the end of
the first round.

Time would show.  Meanwhile, she dressed and breakfasted;
then, with all the gravity of her twenty-seven years,
she began to discharge the responsible duties of manager
of the House.

But the memory of the nightmare would not down.  Not
even the excitement she still felt in making the rounds of
her three departments sufficed to dispel it.  In the children's
section, she applauded the new floor games which the
kindergartner had invented for her wards; she became a ready
listener to the woes of the matron in charge of the
household division; on her way through the cuisine, she devoted
her faculties to the task of adjudicating the claims of the
cook against the dietitian in command.  And she sought
distraction in the stupendous thought that these three great
departments of the Susan B. Anthony House were coordinated
in the person of Miss J. Barr, the business manager and
personal representative of Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome.

Yet, although these occupations drove away the haunting
nightmare for minutes at a time, they were impotent to
banish it permanently.

The chief trouble was, of course, that her nerves were
still shaken by the emotional explosion in which the whole
House had been involved the day before.  The explosion
was the cause of the nightmare.  And the nightmare itself,
its several metamorphoses and all, had marched in such a
logical, well arranged order, that she was greatly tempted to
tell it to Lydia Dyson, the novelist, who was a crank on
the subject of Freud and dreams.

Lydia, to be sure, would pronounce it a contemptible
dream, lamentably short of knives, pitchforks, corks,
bottles and other shining symbolic materials.  Contemptible
or not, she would none the less insist that it must be
submitted to a psychoanalyst.

Yes, Lydia Dyson would torment her to be psychoanalyzed.
With a smile she recalled the novelist's visit to the
Susan B. Anthony House a week ago.  Lydia, in search of
material for her new novel, *The Soul Pirates* (expression
derived from Cornelia Covert), had set the members of the
house to narrating their worst dreams.  Then she had
beguiled more than half of them into having themselves
psychoanalyzed by Aristide Cambeau, an amazingly brilliant
speaker whose lectures (at the Ritz—five dollars a
ticket!) were the latest social rage, and whose clinic was
daily besieged by a long queue of fashionable ladies
impatient to have their souls laid bare.

Janet believed she could interpret her dream fully as
well as the fascinating Mr. Cambeau.

Her attempt to do so led her to a review of her own
recent history.

Seven weeks ago she had returned with Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome
to the United States.  Mrs. Jerome had resumed
training her as soon as the Statue of Liberty was sighted.
Thus, the good lady reminded her that they had come from
England (where plenty of explosive insurrectionary material
was lying around) to their own land with its "tendency
to normalcy" as a noted politician expressed it.  That is,
they had come back to the America of the women's vote,
the high cost of living, the housing shortage, the unemployment
menace, the deportation of radicals and Japanese, the
reception of hoards of unhealthy South-European immigrants,
the ouija board, the stock market slump and jazz.
The same old America!  It was reading "Main Street" just
then; and Mrs. Jerome opined that all America was reading
the book, *not* because it gave a memorable picture of the
soul of a nation in all its drab, desolating mediocrity, but
because it gratified the furious national craving to be paid
attention to and talked about, it mattered nothing whether
in terms of praise, disparagement or abuse.

Mrs. Jerome's gloomy view rolled off Janet like water
off a duck's back.  She had youth, enthusiasm, vigor; there
was a great civilizing work to be done.  And though, as
Mark Pryor took pains to assure her, it might take a
thousand years to do it, she threw herself into it heart and
soul, just as if the goal were attainable next year.

Two weeks after their arrival in New York, the Susan
B. Anthony House had been opened, undemonstratively but
successfully.  Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, an omnipresent deity
at first, relinquished the reins of government gradually; all
the reins save one, for it was well understood that she was
to be the power behind the scenes.  Within a week, every
suite in the house was occupied and hundreds of applicants
were turned away.  The rents, though far from low, were
not unreasonable; and, as special provision had been made
for the care of children, and competent experts placed in
control of each department ("quality not quantity" was the
specific motto throughout), the house was a godsend for
precisely the ones it was designed to serve, that is, for
self-supporting professional women with one or two children.

For a time, things had gone swimmingly.  Almost too
swimmingly.  As the news spread, social workers and social
science students began to pay the place a visit.  Before
long the unofficial busybodies followed and, with the
kindliest intentions in the world, did their level best to
disorganize the machinery of the house and subvert the
discipline.

And the reporters took up the scent!  All the magazine
sections of the Sunday newspapers had articles describing
Mrs. Jerome's "latest hobby."  Interviews with
Mrs. Jerome—some real, some alleged—appeared in increasing
numbers and with increasingly pungent specimens of this
lady's sprightly wit.  Writers of special features in the
evening sheets praised or deplored the "communal upbringing"
of the children.  The photogravure supplements took
up the sport and favored their readers with pictures of
every conceivable corner of the house, and also with
tableaux in which the children, looking remarkably happy and
well dressed, were grouped about three adults (from left to
right): the Duchess of Keswick, Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome and
Miss J. Barr.

Finally, the Infamous Players-Smartcraft Company
offered a fabulous sum for the use of the Susan B. Anthony
House as the scene of an "action" (with adagio "close-ups"),
which it insisted on calling (doubtless in irony) a
"moving" picture.

But the marvel of marvels was that, throughout this
period of unbought, unsought advertising, nobody breathed
the suspicion that Miss J. Barr, the calm, collected young
manageress in the neat blouse and trim skirt, might be the
notorious Janet Barr who had eloped two years before with
Claude Fontaine!

Then, one fine day, as she was leaving the Broadway
side of Wanamaker's, a man had leapt out of a magnificent
limousine drawn up at the curb, and had seized her hands.

It was Claude himself!  Handsome and imposing as ever,
with perhaps a dash less of self-confidence.

He had implored her for a meeting later in the day.  No,
no, he wouldn't make love to her, he solemnly swore he
wouldn't!  He wanted to get a load off his conscience.  His
wife?  Oh, he got along well enough with Marjorie,
only—  Well, surely Janet knew *why* he had married her?  There
had simply been no alternative!  If Colonel Armstrong
hadn't stood back of Fontaine and Company at the time of
the smuggling exposure, the firm would have gone to smash.
And so on—

Janet peremptorily refused to meet him.  There was no
sense in a meeting, she urged.  He was importunate.  "What
about my House?" said she.  "What about my state of
mind?" said he.  She had tried hard to be firm.

"Come not between the lion and his wrath or the tigress
and her work," she said, torn this way and that between the
comedy and the tragedy of the situation.

To get rid of him, she had at length made an appointment
for the afternoon.

The appointment was never kept!

The sequel proved that her encounter with Claude had
been observed.  That night the bloodhounds of scandal
were unleashed in the Susan Anthony House.  The
ring-leader was the thin-edged woman with the horn-rimmed
spectacles.

This precious female was the mother of a whining little
boy whose father was authenticated by due process of law.
The law had not sufficed, however, to keep the gentleman
faithful for long to the nuptial vows.  After his disappearance
from New York, his wife was left to support herself
and to wreak vengeance where vengeance was not due.

The first that Janet knew about the coming storm was
when the dietitian took her aside and told her that the house
had been divided into two camps: for and against Janet;
or, as the anti-Janet crowd put it: for and against Morality.

Two days before the nightmare, things had come to a
head.  In the absence of the manager, the anti-Janet faction
had assembled under the chairmanship of the thin-edged
agitator.

This lady had opened the meeting with the bitter
announcement that those present were liberal and fairminded,
but that they had their children to think of.  Their darling
children!  Mothers, *married* mothers, mind you (and she,
for her part, had consented to join the Susan B. Anthony
House *only* on the confident assumption that *all* the
mothers were as *regularly* married as herself)—mothers,
as such, could afford to take no chances!  Unhappily, she
was persuaded that in the other camp there were ladies who
had more than *one good reason* for standing by the
manager.  She surmised that some of these ladies were
*unmarried mothers*!  Scarcely mothers at all (if morals
counted for anything), and certainly no better than they
should be.

After much nursing of self-righteousness, suitable
resolutions were moved, and a deputation was appointed to
present the facts to Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome; also to demand
the discharge of Janet and the vindication of American
morality.

The great impeachment had occurred last night.
Mrs. Jerome had motored into town, and both factions had
turned out for the occasion in the large reception room on
the ground floor.  Mrs. Jerome had refused to start the
proceedings until Janet was seated at her right hand.  This
settled, the thin-edged spokesman had made the formal
charges.

Then the fun had begun—

At this point, a telephone bell jangled across Janet's
reflections.

"Who is it?" she asked the switchboard girl.

"Mr. Pryor."

"Let him come up," said Janet eagerly.



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   \III

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As usual, Mark Pryor's spare form was dressed from
head to foot in materials of one color.  But even Janet
noticed that, for once, the inevitable stand-up collar, with its
two prongs tilting its wearer's chin upwards, had been
replaced by a low-lying collar of creamiest silk.

"Circles under the eyes!" he began severely.  "What's wrong?"

"Nightmares, witches, broomsticks," she replied laughing.

"Out with it!" he commanded.

In her calm, clear tones she gave him a graphic account
of the unpleasantness of the last few days, from its
inception in her chance encounter with Claude Fontaine down
to the demand made upon Mrs. Jerome for her dismissal.

"And how did little Apple Dumpling meet this demand?"
inquired Pryor.

"Like a trump!  Said she'd stand by me to the limit—also
that the Susan B. Anthony House, being designed for
busy people and not for busy*bodies*, Mrs. Farrar (the one
with the horn-rimmed spectacles) would have to vacate at
the end of the week.  Further that, in the future, it is to be
a fixed rule of the house that any mother, married or
unmarried, may become a tenant, and no questions asked
other than those needed to satisfy Mrs. Jerome or her
representative that the applicant is both self-supporting and
self-respecting—"

"Bravo!"

"And, furthermore, she then and there dictated a letter
to be sent to the liberal weeklies in New York, informing
their readers of the adoption of this new rule."

"Hurrah!" cried Pryor.  "The next time anybody queries,
in the words of the immortal William:

   |        "'What king so strong
   |  Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?'

I'll answer: No king; but let me tip you the name of a
*queen*—Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, the magnificent.  *She* can
turn the trick."

"Yes, she's a perfect darling.  Do you know, I didn't
mind the backbiting of those silly women a bit.  But
Mrs. Jerome's unhesitating support made me want to cry."

She added that in a private conversation with the dear
lady she had urged her own resignation as a matter of
practical wisdom.  Wasn't the cause greater than the
individual?—"Rubbish!" Mrs. Jerome had replied with a
considerable show of heat.  No cause was worth the cowardly
abandonment of a comrade!  For two thousand years men
had prated of the holy duties of friend to friend, and had
committed one crime against friendship after another.  And
when these crimes were committed, what did they do?  They
folded their hands, raised pious eyes to heaven, and sang
(through their noses), "Alas for the rarity of Christian
charity!" etc.  Well, women would show them that the
time to be loyal was not when the pack curried favor with
your friend but when it turned to rend him.

"What do you mean to do now?" asked Pryor.

"I shall stick it out.  After all, I'm not looking for social
or official favors.  All I ask is to be allowed to do the best
work of which I'm capable.  Surely, I have that right."

"So you think," said Pryor drily.  "But bear in mind
that for every *bona fide* worker in New York, there are nine
idlers or time wasters, nine breeders of noise, disorder and
disease.  And don't forget that the chief objection to the
idler is not that he neglects his own work, but that he
insists on interrupting or damaging yours.  The doer is the
waster's sworn enemy to all eternity.  And the waster
knows it!  Therefore, he spies out your vulnerable spot:
social, economic, psychic, whatever it be; and the first
moment he catches you off guard, he sends his poisoned
arrow straight to your Achilles' heel."

"I suppose I must take my chance of that.  What else
can I do?"

"You might imitate me."

"Imitate you!  What do you mean?"

"Why, get married!  I'm going to marry Charlotte
Beecher."

"But I thought that Charlotte—"

"Yes, she's very fond of Robert Lloyd.  And I'm only her
second string.  But bless your wayward curls, we're all
second strings on somebody's violin!  What's the
odds—especially after the first string has snapped?  I've been
madly in love myself, twice before.  Once, down south in
Colon, with a dusky Isthmian beauty.  The second time,
with you."

"Don't be silly, Mark, or I shall stop envying Charlotte
her extraordinary good luck."

"Hers *and* mine!  Charlotte was looking for a husband
with enough brains to manage a fortune, and yet with heart
enough not to love her for her fortune alone.  I was
looking for a wife with heart enough to lay her fortune at my
feet, and yet with enough brains to permit me to enjoy her
society.  Are we well matched or not?"

"'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit
impediment,'" quoted Janet, laughing.

"Now you're talking sense as well as poetry, dear girl."

"I didn't say I'd follow your example, though."

"All in good time!  It's human nature for young blood to
rebel against wedlock—and to come around to it in the long
run.  Marriage, as Lydia Dyson says, is the easiest way!"

"Yes, for Lydia, who changes her lover once a season,
while her husband stays at home and keeps the household
in smooth running order.  But my needs don't run in
Lydia's line."

Pryor admitted this.  But he pointed out that marriage
was a human institution.  There it was, for every one of us
to reckon with.  Either you made use of it, or it made use
of you.  Sensible people adopted the former alternative.

"Why, look at me!" he said, waxing strangely eloquent.
"I've knocked about the world a good bit in the last
twenty years.  A born adventurer if ever there was one.  Do
you see me settling down to matrimony like any spirit-broken
married man in the pinchbeck salaried class?  No,
by Jupiter!  I've waited for the right conditions to come
to pass so that I could take up marriage as one more great
adventure."

"Your last one, Mark!" said Janet, bantering him.

More seriously, she asked him whether all his other
adventures had been in the Secret Service.

"Lord no!  I've taken a shot at all sorts of jobs and been
all sorts of things from a West Point cadet to a buccaneer
in the South Seas."

This quiet, self-contained man, spare of frame but
tough as a hickory stick, had he really been a gorgeous
sea-rover?  Looking into his humorously inquisitive gray eyes,
Janet could not doubt his words.  And, like Desdemona
entranced by Othello, she listened whilst he dipped into a
store of reminiscences and, in his own inimitably laconic
style, gave her an outline of his picturesque career.

Pryor as a West Point cadet, as a lieutenant in the
Engineer Corps, in service against the Moros in the
Philippines, on the sanitary staff in the thick of the Panama
Canal construction, again as a civilian on a dare-devil
voyage to Tahiti—these pictures took the romantic side of
Janet by storm.  She made him tell the Tahitian story most
minutely, and hung on his lips with bated breath as he
recounted the capture of his tiny steamer by real pirates
who gave him a Hobson's choice of joining them in their
marauding trips near the Society Islands, or of walking the
plank.

"But I never gave full satisfaction anywhere," he
concluded ruefully.  "Secrets that I had better not have known
were incessantly coming my way and causing me no end
of trouble.  Once, when we unexpectedly sighted a Dutch
merchantman laden with coffee and spices, I ran up the
red flag instead of the black!  My shipmates swore that I
did it on purpose and assured me that, as a pirate, I was a
failure.  It was true.  I *was* a failure!  Almost a dead
failure, in fact, for they left me on what they thought was
a desert island."

When he got back to the United States, the Great War
had begun, but the officials in Washington were extremely
slow to utilize his services.  His record was against him.
He was one of those men with whom two and two didn't
inevitably make four, but sometimes footed up to a sum
that included human as well as mathematical factors.  For
an army man, this was a fatal defect.

Impatient to be of use, he eventually joined the Secret
Service.

"Why?" asked Janet.

"Nothing else was open to me," he replied, with a
twinkle in his roving eyes.  "When a man is a pronounced
failure, there are only three professions that will take him
into their ranks: those of detective, writer and teacher.  I
chose the first as the least degrading of the three.  Also
because it gave me a chance to use my gift as a telepath, an
elemental telepath."

"You can't pretend that you haven't made good at *that*!"

"Oh, I've done so-so."

"So-so!" cried Janet indignantly.  "Look how you caught
Hutchins Burley red-handed!"

"True enough.  I'm bound to confess, however, that I
went to the pier to arrest him for treason.  When his boxes
of Oriental books were opened, it was the smuggled
diamonds that we found and not (as I had predicted) the
evidence of his sale of United States military secrets to the
Japanese.  Later on, we got that evidence too; but that
was Smilo's doing more than mine.  Ah, wait till you hear
Robert's opinion of my sleuthing skill."

"Oh, Robert!" she said, with the faintest quiver of her
lip.  "He hasn't been near me.  I'm not even sure that he's
in America."

"Well, he is!  And I happen to know that urgent business
is keeping him out of New York."

"What can it be?"

"It's a peculiar business.  In a sense, it's the reverse of
what I was engaged upon.  I was in pursuit of rogues;
but rogues are in pursuit of him."

"I must say, you're as enigmatic as ever."

"Only till tomorrow, Janet.  I pledge my word to have
everything explained to your satisfaction if you'll come
tomorrow to Charlotte's studio in Washington Mews.  The
party begins at four."

"The party!"

"Precisely.  An engagement party for Charlotte; a
surprise party for you."

Saying which, and protesting that he had talked her
deaf, dumb and blind, and affirming that he had never felt
so horribly out of character in his life, Mark Pryor gravely
took his leave.



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   \IV

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In fulfillment of her promise, Janet went the following
afternoon to the converted stable in Washington Mews
where Charlotte Beecher cultivated sculpture in an atmosphere
of aristocratic Bohemianism.  It was the same studio
in which, of old, Cornelia Covert had luxuriated whenever
the routine of Outlawry in Kips Bay got on her nerves.

Spring and hope in a young woman's breast usually add
love to their number.  In Janet's case they added thoughts
of Robert.  All morning she had been plagued with a
feeling, amounting to a conviction, that he would be at
Charlotte's party.  But when she reached the Mews, she found
that Pryor and Lydia Dyson were the only other guests at
a gathering which bade fair to be intimate and exclusive.

For a minute or two her spirits were considerably dashed.
She waited for Pryor's advertised surprise to eventuate; but
she waited in the dark, nobody offering so much as a ray
of enlightenment.

While Lydia Dyson stretched herself supine upon the
magnificent tiger rug before the blazing fire, Pryor fetched
wineglasses and poured out champagne.

"Here's to those about to wed!" cried Lydia, raising her
glass, and then quoting:

   | "'Farewell, happy fields where Joy forever dwells,
   | Hail Horrors!'"
   |

"You might give us a more cheerful toast, old girl,"
protested Charlotte.

"An occasion like this conduces to high philosophy rather
than to vulgar good cheer," retorted Lydia, whose
Egyptian beauty—ebony hair against a pale olive skin—had
never been more stunning.  "However, since you wish it,
I'll take another shot: 'Here's to continued failure for all
of us!'"

"Lydia, you *are* a merry soul today," exclaimed Janet,
amidst the general laughter.

"And why not?" inquired Lydia, with a provoking drawl.
"Why not?  When I see my last blood curdler running well
into the two hundred thousands!"

"Lydia is right," said Pryor.  "In the present state of
civilization, all the best people are failures, glorious
failures."

He contrasted the fortunes of Lydia's pornographic
romances with the fate of her one serious experiment in
fiction.  The romances sold like hot cakes.  But the serious
work, a short novel in which, with pitiless Hogarthian
realism, she had developed an episode between a brother
and a sister, had been refused by her publisher on the
ground that "it was too terrible!"  Then there was his own
case!  Had he not failed as a detective because too much
secret information was always breezing his way?

"Don't forget our young feminist over there," cried
Lydia, indicating Janet.  "Don't forget her, or her heroic
gesture against wedlock!"

"A bark is not as good as a bite," retorted Janet.  "But
isn't it better than a tame crawl into the yoke?"

By way of reply, Lydia half raised herself from the tiger
skin and, in measured tones, recited:

"O Dewdrop, thou hast fought the better fight—in vain!
Some women are born to be wedlocked, some achieve
wedlock, and some have wedlock thrust upon them.  Janet
belongs to the first group, Charlotte belongs to the second,
I belong to the third."

"You to the third!" cried Charlotte.  "How do you make
that out?  From all I see, though Charley Morrow is a
perfect dragon of jealousy, you cling to him pretty tightly."

"I have to, Charlotte!  I have to keep him in countenance
(and in pocket money, too!), because I'm afflicted
with what the doctors call 'a floating stomach.'  Now,
Charley is not only the best housekeeper in New York, he's
the best cook, too.  There's simply nobody else whom I can
depend on not to sneak lard instead of butter into my
bread—"

"Or to mix cottonseed oil instead of olive oil with your
salads?" thrust in Pryor.

"Precisely.  Sometimes, when I eat at home I say: How
can I stand Charley another twenty-four hours?  Next day
I eat at a restaurant, and say: I can stand Charley forever!"

They all laughed, and Lydia buried herself in the rug
again.

"All the same," she went on meditatively, "I've never
really got used to marriage.  It's a well of never-ending
surprises."

"What about *my* surprise?" asked Janet, for the fourth time.

The bell rang and Charlotte went to the door a few feet away.

"Here it comes!" announced Pryor, as a man entered.

"Janet!"

"Robert!"

Greetings all round cut their glances short.



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Janet was struck with the fact that he had never looked
better.  Robert, as dynamic as a battery giving out blue
sparks, was familiar enough to her.  But Robert, with a
deepening pink spreading over his pale cheeks, and with a
suit that showed the craftsmanship of a fashionable Fifth
Avenue tailor, was a sight to make one gasp and stare.  Nor
was this all.  In times past, she had often conjured up a
picture of him poised as on a springboard, preparing to leap
upward to join the spirits of the air.  But there was
nothing aerial about the way in which his feet now gripped the
solid ground.

She couldn't get over the change!

When he alluded briefly to a trip to California from
which he had just returned and on which he appeared to
have done some work for the Confederated Press, she had
the sensation of not being in a secret that all the rest
shared.  This was the sort of discourtesy that had hitherto
been taboo in Charlotte's crowd, and she resented being
made a victim of it.

"Then the Confederated Press knew better than to give
you your walking papers?" drawled Lydia.

"They knew nothing," replied Robert.  "I simply paid
them to keep me on and to let me say exactly what I
pleased."

This was more mystifying to Janet than ever.

Presently, Mark Pryor proposed a walk to the Lorillard
model tenements to inspect Number Fifteen, Cornelia's old
flat.  It turned out that Robert had rented it and that
Donald Kyrion, perhaps the youngest and certainly the
most talented interior designer in New York, had decorated
it for him as a labor of love.  Pryor pronounced the result:
"Art that congealed art!"

"Donald Kyrion?" said Lydia.  "If Robert got him to
do anything for nothing he ought to get the Nobel prize
for wonder-working."

"Ahem!" said Pryor, and again he and Robert exchanged
knowing glances.

Charlotte protested with all her soul against being
dragged to Kips Bay.  Now that Robert could earn an
honest living, why didn't he rent a lodging in a decent
locality instead of consorting with the Outlaws who—what with
their talk of wrongs, their love of dirt, and their smell of
tobacco—were tiresome enough to bore Mephistopheles himself.

"The Outlaws parted company with me long ago," replied
Robert, putting up a vigorous defence.  "It is not they who
lure me back."

He said that the Outlaws were, after all, not the whole
of Kips Bay.  They were the most picturesque element in
the population, but they were only a tiny fraction of the
total.  True, they behaved in every respect as though no
other element besides their own existed.  Wasn't this,
however, merely a proof that they were New Yorkers to the
manner born?  It was, in fact, undeniable that there were
plenty of simple, self-respecting toilers in Kips Bay, plenty
of them right in the very citadel of Outlawry, the Lorillard
model tenements themselves.  Nay, candor compelled
the admission that there were even "rich but honest"
toilers in the Kipsian district—to be specific, in the new
"art colonies" planted around Sutton Terrace and Turtle
Bay Gardens.

He had found this out after the dispersal of Cornelia's
set.  Force of circumstances having obliged him to look out
into the Kips Bay that extended beyond the model flats, he
had learned how parochial, in their assumptions about the
district, the Outlaws had been.

"The fact is," he added, "I often think it's a hankering
after the paths of rectitude and respectability that makes
me enjoy a Lorillard flat—for short stretches only, needless
to say.  Anyhow, the older I get and the more I study the
flibbertigibbet Bohemian in *his* lair and the heavy-footed
Bourgeois in his, the more I'm struck with the bond
between them."

"The bond, Robert!" exclaimed Charlotte.  "Call it a
touching point, common ground, but don't call it a bond."

"Well, it's a hidden bond.  For the irregular doings of
the strait-laced people and the comparatively regular doings
of the gypsies show me how Bohemian the Bourgeois is, and
how Bourgeois the Bohemian."

"What Robert says reminds me forcibly of a passage in
*Gulliver's Travels*," interposed Mark Pryor.  "I mean the
passage in which the horses, the noble highborn creatures
that govern, move about stark naked, whilst the Yahoos,
the loathsome human creatures that live like beasts, yearn
to cover their shame with rags and strings of beads."

"For the matter of that," continued Robert, "look at our
little group here.  We've all lived and worked quite
contentedly in the thick of Kips Bay.  Yet there's nothing in
our daily behavior at which a Philistine of the deepest dye
would turn a hair.  Where, in fact, could one find a more
incurably respectable lot of people—always counting out
Lydia who, I believe, is still a member in good standing
among the Outlaws?"

"Look here, old boy!" Lydia called out.  "Are you
attacking or defending me?"

"As the supreme ornament of Charlotte's studio, you can
always count on my homage, Lydia.  But as an Outlaw,
you must expect no quarter.  I've lived among the Outlaws
and weighed them in the balance."

"Meaning what?" said Lydia, groaning for effect.  "That
their honor rooted in dishonor stands?"

"Not a bad way of putting it, Lydia," replied Robert,
smiling.  "Shall I give you the gist of Outlawry?  Well,
it is an excrescence of Radicalism, often a decorative,
sometimes a merely indecorous excrescence.  The purpose of
Radicalism is to remove the obstacles that lie athwart the
course of life, of life aspiring to an estate infinitely
higher than that of man.  What part in this mighty
purpose is played by the mummers of Greenwich Village, the
camp-stool triflers of Washington Square, the picarescos of
Kips Bay, and the other Outlaw aggregations?"

"They stand for insurgency, don't they?" drawled Lydia.

"For insurgency, yes.  But what sort of insurgency?  Your
typical Outlaw 'insurges' against perfectly harmless laws
and conventions: obstacles of no importance.  And at the
very same time, he conforms to ruthlessly strangling laws
and conventions: obstacles that really matter."

"Kips Bay or bust!" announced Lydia, reluctantly abandoning
her tiger skin as the only alternative to a pursuit of
Robert's theme.



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   \VI

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On the walk uptown, Lydia attached herself to Pryor and
Charlotte, while Robert with Janet soon fell far behind.

What a first aid to free speech an independent income is!
Dozens of questions which, in Paris, had stuck on the tip
of Robert's tongue now rolled off as freely as down a
buttered slide.  He was the first to break boldly into the
vicious circle of topics of the day.

"You'd better return my pearls and diamonds!" he began
with a grave smile.  "As for me, I'll send back all your
letters and also the lock of your hair that I've worn next
my heart."

He said that there was only one conclusion to be drawn
from the unbroken silence she had maintained ever since
the end of the partnership of Barr and Lloyd; an end, he
reminded her, not of *his* making.

Well, she liked that!  She had written long letters,
addressed to Cornelia, but expressly intended for the whole
Lorillard circle; and, seeing that several people had
replied, it would seem that her intention had been respected.
In these letters she had more than once fished for a crumb
of sympathy from him.  She might say that, on reaching
the very bottom of the ladder of luck, she had signalled to
him almost as abjectly as Dives had to Lazarus.  But no
Lazarus had responded.

This reproach led, on both sides, to a rapid fire of
questions and answers in the course of which one of their chief
misunderstandings was cleared up.  Janet learned that
Cornelia had never shown her letters to Robert.  What she
had done was to give him subtly to understand that Janet,
in the hope of inducing Claude to legitimate their love
affair, was prudently burning her Kips Bay connections
behind her.

"It was only one of a score of things that Cornelia did to
queer the pitch between us," was Robert's comment.

They were silent for a space, whilst they adjusted their
thoughts to a much clearer interpretation of the curious way
that Cornelia had acted out her part in the triangle of their
relations.

Robert's mind reverted to a bit of news which Pryor had
passed on to him the night before, after the arrival of the
San Francisco Limited at the Pennsylvania Station.  Pryor
had picked up the information in the course of an interview
with Hutchins Burley in the Tombs, where the fallen editor,
garbed as a Federal convict (he had begun to serve his
sentence for smuggling), was being detained to testify
against a former confederate in the Japanese espionage case.
Burley, raging like the bull of Bashan, had lashed out
against all the people who had ever given him offence, and
against some who hadn't.  As a by-product of sheer,
overflowing hatred, he had let slip the item that it was to
Cornelia that he was really indebted for having been able to
get on Janet's track in Brussels.  Cornelia had not known
Janet's precise whereabouts, yet she had shown Burley the
letters, the very letters she had withheld from Robert!
This was a piquant bit of gossip, but Robert decided to
suppress it for the time being.  Until he had finished with
the delicate job he had in hand!

Crossing Astor Place, they proceeded along Bookworm
Lane to Union Square.  Janet stopped halfway and pointed
out a quaint old shop where she had bought at secondhand
many of the text-books used in her Evening Law School.
"You are on the primrose path of dalliance!" exclaimed
Robert, who heard of these studies for the first time.  "Do
you keep your mother posted regarding your wicked ways
or has she closed the front door to you forever, as she
threatened?"

"No, the front door has been left on a crack," said Janet.
And she recounted a visit she had lately paid her home.
The family atmosphere was exactly as she had left it, the
only change being that her father, having retired from
business as the result of a serious accident, had ceased to
be even the titular head of the house.

"The poor old man, a mere ghost of his former handsome
self, was in a state of coma, Robert.  And I fear that,
as his salary days are over, his approaching dissolution is
being firmly and not too gently accelerated.  He sat huddled
up in an invalid's chair, from time to time mumbling that
he hoped I'd be a sensible girl, and stay with them in
Brooklyn now, and learn to appreciate my mother for the
brave and unselfish woman she has always been!  He'll lick
the whip to the very last breath.  The sight of him was
heartrending!"

Otherwise, the atmosphere of the Barr household had not
changed one whit.  The same musty, fusty ideas prevailed,
and the same hollow, stagnant, make-believe existence went
on.  Here, at least, was one spot in America where pre-war
conditions prevailed unchallenged!

"How could I ever have stood it as long as I did!  Mother
pecked at my cheek and, without turning a hair, asked me
was I coming home at last (to be a young lady of the house
I suppose!) or did I mean to go on wasting the Lord's time?
Wasting the Lord's time!  I replied that if she was alluding
to my work and to my legal studies—which together
occupied me from ten to sixteen hours a day—wasting the
Lord's time wasn't the picnic it sounded like.  She muttered
something about the wages of sin being death!  'Oh, no,' I
said, 'I get a very fat salary from Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome.'  I
mentioned the exact figure—the amount quite made
Emily sit up!—and I added that Mrs. Jerome, my friend
as well as my employer, had undertaken to advance my
career.

"Well, it seemed to me that this piece of news stumped
mother a bit, although she closed her eyes in that trance-like,
oblivious way of hers and affected never to have heard
of a Mrs. Jerome.  Perhaps she really hadn't.  Nobody has
ever fathomed the bottomless ignorance of the Barr mind."

"Nobody *could*—not even God!" said Robert.

Janet nodded and went on:

"Don't forget that the Barrs are inordinately vain and
aggressively jealous of the things they don't know.  This is
the fact that makes their ignorance sublime!  Take Emily.
I got her to talk about herself for a while.  She is now one
of the head teachers in a public high school.  Her devotion
to her business is pathetic.  She teaches, eats, sleeps—and
teaches!  Once in a while she shops or sews.  These acts
complete the cycle of her life from day to day, from year
to year.  No books, no concerts, no theatres, no travel, no
meditation, no self-training, no real companionship with
equals or superiors—never one piercing or shattering
experience of novelty—nothing that might make the pulse go fast
or the heart beat high.  'But how can you teach them
anything real, anything about life?' I maliciously asked her."

"'Anything real!' she sneered.  'I suppose you mean
romantic adventures!  Well, teaching is real enough for
me.  I study the science of pedagogy every night of the
week.  And when I want to learn anything more about life,
I read the *Saturday Evening Post*!'

"Yes, Robert; it sounds like a line from *The Old
Homestead*.  But that's exactly what she said."

"I don't doubt it," said Robert.  "I know the Barrs of
Brooklyn.  I've met them in every part of the United
States, and one runs across them even in Europe.  Age
cannot wither nor custom stale their infinite monotony.  As
on creation's day, so they'll remain till the trump of doom."

"Of course, Mother isn't as stupid as Emily, not by
half," said Janet.  "Her behavior at parting convinces me
that she really does have an inkling of who Mrs. Jerome is
and of how my position near this influential lady sends my
stock up in the world of cash realities.  When I left, she
didn't peck at my cheek as at first.  No, she kissed me
almost affectionately and said, in a tone so relenting that
I'm sure Emily was greatly shocked: 'Now that you've
found the way back, my child, come and see us again soon.'  And
I had always believed that Mother's moral and religious
prejudices were incorruptible—absolutely money-proof,
if nothing else in this age was!  It was quite a blow
to me."

"Never mind," rejoined Robert.  "We're all easily taken
in by other people's moral counterfeit.  Haven't you
observed that it's usually a Barr who circulates the Biblical
saying that a man cannot serve both God and Mammon?
Yet, though too modest to acknowledge it, the Barrs
themselves accomplish this miracle daily.  It's precisely the
Barrs who, in their heart of hearts, worship these two
deities as one."

They had now reached the Lorillard tenements.  In the
dimly lit foyer of the middle house they rested on the
settee, quite as in the chummiest days of Barr and Lloyd.

"Speaking of Mammon," he resumed, in the most offhand
way imaginable, "don't you think you ought to marry
a rich man?  Of course I mean your own sort of rich man,
not the St. Hilaire sort."

Janet gave him a puzzled look.

"I should hate a welter of trivial responsibilities," she
said decisively.  "A great big house and a lot of servants
to manage—to say nothing of a husband!—the mere
prospect terrifies me."

"Now I'm doubly sure that we're birds of a feather,
Janet!  Still, aren't you rather difficult to please?  In
Paris you said you wouldn't marry a man if he was poor?
Here you say you won't marry a man if he's rich."

"Does it matter, Robert?  What rich man is likely to
ask me?"

"You're quite wrong.  One is asking you now."

"You!"  Had he suddenly lost his senses?

"I've inherited a couple of millions, Janet!"

He briefly put her in possession of the facts.  Then he
made her a formal offer of marriage, in tones so restrained
that she could hardly guess the immortal longing beneath
them.

"I need a partner to share the rich man's burden!" he
said, with a quizzical smile.  "And I know from experience
that you are the one partner in the world for me."

"No!" she said, her eyes half closed, her cheeks rather
pale.  "I—I'm not sure that I'm ready for marriage."

"Oh, don't let that stop you!  Nobody is ever ready
for birth, marriage, or death.  We're just plunged
in—doubts, hesitations, and all.  You don't suppose any sane
man or woman *wants* to take the plunge, do you?  I know
*I* don't.  But since I've got to marry somebody, I've made
up my mind to marry no one but you."

"At least you're quite frank," she said, with a rather
trembling lip.

"Are you angry?  Heaven knows it would be easier for
me to use the stock phrases on which we were brought up
and fed up.  But you're a woman of the new age!  And
I'm proposing partnership to an equal, to a fellow
worker—not to a goddess-drudge!"

They both rose from the settee.

"Surely," he said, wondering at her silence, "it isn't the
Free Love philosophy that's in the way?"

"No, no!" she said, emphatically.  "I thought I'd told
you that in Paris."

She repeated that she was done with all that!  She
admitted that, for a time, Cornelia had won her over to what
Bernard Shaw called the *Love-Is-All* school of fanatics.
And, so she feared, she had actually believed in her own
readiness to give up *All for Love*!  But the hard knocks
of the last two years had opened her eyes to the inadequacy
as well as to the inexpediency of this philosophy.  When
the Hutchins Burleys, the Cornelia Coverts, the women
with horn-rimmed spectacles, and their like—when these
successively popped up to interfere with her purposes, she
had realized that love, far from being *all* to her, was simply
one of her heart's desires.  She still held to the view that
the love relation between two people should be subject to
no other law than that of their own consciences.  And she
still hoped that society would be converted to this view,
although she no longer had a mind to risk her soul's
welfare in its behalf.

"You see, Robert, how fully I've come round to your
opinion!  If I'm to risk my salvation for anything, it must
be for something bigger than the love chase."

After a pause, she added, with a faintly ironical smile:

"For something bigger, too, than a mere husband, don't
you think?"

"But you won't risk your salvation with me, Janet,"
said Robert, coming close to her side.  "You're in a
position to make your own terms, absolutely—for have you I
must!  Stick to your practical terms but not to your
abstract ideas.  And be generous!  Remember, a man who's
obliged to take care of a fortune, needs a wife to take care
of him."

"Indeed!  But why expect one able-bodied human being
to 'take care of' another human being, equally able-bodied?
Or why ask a woman to become what men gallantly
call a ministering angel, but what ought bluntly to
be called a domestic drudge?"

"I admit it's a very stupid arrangement.  Yet at present
it's the only tolerable arrangement I know of.  Unquestionably,
it's haphazard, wasteful, anarchic!  And no doubt
a later generation of men and women, fired with a collective
purpose, will regulate domestic affairs much better.
But what am I to do?  Wasn't I born and bred on the
understanding that some ministering angel would drudge
my home to rights?  Well, I'm extremely uncomfortable
without one!"

"Selfish wretch.  Do you know what Mrs. Jerome says?"

"No."

"She says that women have been men's cat's-paws long
enough.  It's time for them to abdicate the job.  If we are
to make any headway, the unmarried girls will have to be
strong enough and self-respecting enough to refuse the
empty honors offered as bribes for their servitude.  They
must put a high price on their freedom!"

"Good!  I offer you a million dollars, cash down, for
yours.  It's half my fortune."

Janet turned away, chilled to the soul.

"You're mocking me," she said.

"Not a bit of it," he retorted, following her.  "I don't
propose to live with an economic inferior.  Such a course
would wreck us at the start.  That there can be no genuine
comradeship between people of unequal means is a truth
which every philosopher from Plato to William James has
pointed out."

"Did they point it out, in the midst of a proposal?"

He held both her hands in a firm grip.

"Darling, don't pretend to misunderstand me.  Do you
want me to sink to my knees in this public place and
overwhelm you with ardors and protestations?  It's easy
enough, and I'm quite mad enough now.  Mad with the
enchantment of your touch, that turns my heart to fire;
with the music of your voice, in which I hear all Elfland
calling; with your haunting mystery and lilac fragrance,
at which my senses reel and swim!  I'm ninety-nine parts
drenched with ecstasy!  If you reproach me because one
thin gleam of sanity still remains at the helm I shall be—"

"Arithmetical!"

At the word, he seized her and kissed her and—Time
being Love's fool—they were imparadised in each other's
arms.



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   \VII

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After a while, between endearments, she managed to say:

"So you *do* want me to make a marriage of convenience?"

"No, I want you to make a convenience of marriage.
That's what all sensible people do."

"Splendid!  Then you won't expect me to give up the
Susan B. Anthony House?  I couldn't leave Mrs. Jerome
in the lurch now, you know."

"Of course not!" he said.

She was to go on with her work, he with his.  They
should have living places to be alone in, and living places
to be together in, like the Havelock Ellises.  They'd have
a house together in the mountains or the seashore, remote
from other people—a biggish house, this would perhaps have
to be.  But she need manage it no better (or no worse, he
trusted) than she now managed the Susan B. Anthony
House.

Janet laughed at his incorrigible, man-made outlook on
the future.  Indulgent and happy, she rested her head on
his shoulder.

"Why didn't you take your own advice," she asked,
"and marry some independently rich woman—Charlotte, for
instance?"

"Because there are a good many women that I could
work with, yet never love.  And some few that I could
love, yet never work with.  But there's only one that I
could work with *and* love as well.  At least, I've never met
another."

"That's a very pretty speech, Robert, for you.  We *were*
good comrades, weren't we?  In the days of Barr and Lloyd!"

"From now on, Barr and Lloyd, Inc."

"But it isn't the same Barr nor the same Lloyd that are
to be incorporated again.  Suppose we prove not to be
good comrades, this time?"

"In that case, we shall hie us to some genuinely civilized
country—Sweden or Cape Comorin—where breach of
comradeship is the sole ground for divorce—"

Indignant voices from the staircase penetrated their
mutual absorption.

"Where in the world can they be!"

"So this is your *radical* hospitality!"

"Robert—latest method?—proposing by telepathy—imperfect
communications—vast silences—heavenly harmony—"

"Pooh!  Janet's no fool—nothing like a bee line—marriage
license bureau—bird in the bush, you know—"

Blushing and looking like culprits, they climbed the
stairs and braved the mock indignation meeting which their
three friends were holding in the hall between flats 13 and
15.  (Robert had rented both flats, as a surprise for Janet.)

Lydia went straight to Janet and enfolded her in a copious
embrace, whilst Charlotte stood by, ready for a cordial
handshake.  Mark Pryor, stupefied at this exhibition of
feminine perspicacity, could only stare at Robert and
mutter:

"What!  Already?"

"Was ever woman in this humor won!" drawled Lydia,
as she led the way into Number Thirteen, Kelly's old flat.
"I must say, Janet, I'm not much impressed with Robert's
1921 revision of the Lord of Burleigh stunt.  Like all
modern versions of fine old idylls, it's gingerbread without
the ginger.  Give me the village painter who leads his
sweetheart to a palace!  There's the thrill that comes but
once in a lifetime.  But fancy a millionaire taking his bride
to a Kips Bay model tenement—and Number Thirteen at that!"

"You forget," said Robert, who, with Pryor, had followed
the ladies in.  "You forget that '*leiser Nachhall längst
verklungner Lieder, zieht mit Erinnenings-Schauer durch
die Brust*."

"Which means, I take it," Pryor said:

   |  "'I saw her then, as I see her yet,
   |  With the rose she wore, when first we met.'"
   |

"Pooh!  Male parsimony disguised as Teuton sentiment,"
said Lydia.  "Don't be put upon, Janet, by this *love-in-a-tenement*
stuff.  Let me give you a tip.  Laurence Twickenham,
my publisher, has just put his Long Island home on
the market.  He says that the ruinous royalties he's
compelled to pay me do not permit him to keep up an expensive
establishment.  It's a perfectly gorgeous estate, right next
to mine, and not too far from New York.  Do make Robert
buy it and settle down to a useful life as a country
gentleman."

"What!  Foster his mania for hearth and home?" cried
Janet, laughing.  "Catch me!  Nowadays men are almost
incurably domestic, as it is."

"Well, what *are* you children going to do?"

"Children!" said Robert, coming forward, and lecturing
Lydia with gusto.  "None of your wiseacre airs, Lydia.  Our
program will show you that we know our own minds.  Hear
ye!  We shall be married as soon as Janet can get a day
off.  After the ceremony Janet will return to her job of
running the Susan B. Anthony House; I shall return to
my job of trying to make America safe for those who don't
happen to be grafters, parasites, or profiteers.  During the
better part of the year, our offices will be in the Kips Bay
tenements here, Numbers Thirteen and Fifteen, respectively—we
shall toss up to see who gets which.  No attempt on
the part of either to impose his or her friends, diet, hygiene,
or recreations upon the other without consent, will be
tolerated for a moment.  Each is to be absolute master in what
may jointly be agreed upon to be his own domain, provided
only that Janet is to darn all my socks or buy new pairs as
fast as the big toe protrudes.  At the end of nine months,
we shall both be ready for a trip to—"

"To Sweden," Janet put in softly, going to his side and
caressing his arm.

"To Sweden!" exclaimed Lydia, while Charlotte and
Pryor laughed at her bewilderment.  "To the psychopathic
ward, if you ask *me*!"




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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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   BY FELIX GRENDON

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   WILL HE COME BACK?
       A Play

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   NIXOLA OF WALL STREET
      A Novel

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   FREEDOM IN THE WORKSHOP
      A Study

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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[Transcriber's note: Inconsistent spelling and punctuation has been
preserved as printed.]

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.. pgfooter::