Produced by Al Haines.





                            *THE LOVE CHASE*


                                   BY

                            *FELIX GRENDON*

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



                                 BOSTON
                        SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                            COPYRIGHT, 1922

                      BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
                             (INCORPORATED)



                Printed in the United States of America

                      THE MURRAY PRINTING COMPANY
                            CAMBRIDGE, MASS.




                               *CONTENTS*

PART I.  Rebellion!

PART II.  Love Among the Outlaws

PART III.  Janet on her Own

PART IV.  Nemesis!

PART V.  Hearts and Treasures




                            *THE LOVE CHASE*



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

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




                                *PART I*

                              *REBELLION*


                             *CHAPTER ONE*

                                  *I*


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—



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


"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.




                             *CHAPTER TWO*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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."



                                 *III*


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.




                            *CHAPTER THREE*

                                  *I*


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:


Friday morning.

Dear Araminta:

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

Yours devotedly,
       Cornelia.


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.




                             *CHAPTER FOUR*

                                  *I*


"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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.



                                  *V*


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.



                                  *VI*


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.




                             *CHAPTER FIVE*

                                  *I*


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."



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.




                             *CHAPTER SIX*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.




                               *PART II*

                        *LOVE AMONG THE OUTLAWS*


                            *CHAPTER SEVEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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."




                            *CHAPTER EIGHT*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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."



                                 *III*


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.




                             *CHAPTER NINE*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.




                             *CHAPTER TEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.




                            *CHAPTER ELEVEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.




                            *CHAPTER TWELVE*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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."




                           *CHAPTER THIRTEEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.




                           *CHAPTER FOURTEEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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:


"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.

Cornelia.


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."



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.



                                  *V*


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.




                               *PART III*

                           *JANET ON HER OWN*


                           *CHAPTER FIFTEEN*

                                  *I*


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:


Darling Janet:

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.


Ever your
       Claude.


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.’"



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.




                           *CHAPTER SIXTEEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.




                          *CHAPTER SEVENTEEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.




                           *CHAPTER EIGHTEEN*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.



                                  *V*


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.



                                  *VI*


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.




                           *CHAPTER NINETEEN*

                                  *I*


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:


Dear Janet:

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.

Ever yours,
       Robert.

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.


"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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.



                                  *V*


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.




                               *PART IV*

                               *NEMESIS*


                            *CHAPTER TWENTY*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


Dear Cornelia:

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.


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.


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?


"Huh," exclaimed Cornelia, half aloud, "she got all that from Robert."


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


Your affectionate friend,
       Janet.



                                 *III*


"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.




                          *CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.




                          *CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO*

                                  *I*


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:


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.

Ever your devoted,
       Cornelia.


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.



                                  *II*


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.




                         *CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE*

                                  *I*


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."



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


"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.




                         *CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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."




                                *PART V*

                         *HEARTS AND TREASURES*


                         *CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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."



                                 *III*


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."



                                  *IV*


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.




                          *CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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:


Am leaving Geneva International Labor Conference tonight.  Hope to see
you and Janet in Paris tomorrow.

Robert Lloyd.


"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.



                                 *III*


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?"




                         *CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN*

                                  *I*


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."



                                  *II*


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."



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


"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.



                                  *V*


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.



                                  *VI*


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?"




                         *CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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."



                                  *V*


_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.



                                  *VI*


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.



                                 *VII*


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.




                         *CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE*

                                  *I*


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.



                                  *II*


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_!"



                                 *III*


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:

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.

Your affectionate uncle,
       Allan D. Lloyd.


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.



                                  *IV*


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.




                            *CHAPTER THIRTY*

                                  *I*


"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.



                                  *II*


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.



                                 *III*


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.



                                  *IV*


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.



                                  *V*


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.



                                  *VI*


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.



                                 *VII*


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_!"



           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *



                           *BY FELIX GRENDON*


WILL HE COME BACK?
       A Play

NIXOLA OF WALL STREET
       A Novel

FREEDOM IN THE WORKSHOP
       A Study



           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *



[Transcriber’s note: Inconsistent spelling and punctuation has been
preserved as printed.]