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Title: The Crucible

Author: Mark Lee Luther

Illustrator: Rose Cecil O'Neill

Release date: August 17, 2022 [eBook #68775]

Language: English, Spanish

Original publication: United States: The Macmillan Company, 1907

Credits: Carlos Colon, Mary Meehan, the University of California and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUCIBLE ***





                             THE CRUCIBLE

                          BY MARK LEE LUTHER

               _Author of "The Henchman," "The Mastery,"
                              etc., etc._


                         WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
                          ROSE CECIL O'NEILL


                               New York
                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                 1907

                         _All rights reserved_

                           COPYRIGHT, 1907,
                  BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY.

                           COPYRIGHT, 1907,
                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

           Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1907.

                             Norwood Press
                J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
                        Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.


                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

                      NEW YORK - BOSTON - CHICAGO
                        ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO

                   MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

                LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA - MELBOURNE

              THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

                                TORONTO




                                  To

                               E. M. R.

                              AN OPTIMIST




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


"'A dimple will be a great handicap in my life.'"

"And, among them, Jean."

"'Do you know each other?'"

"Her knight of the forest stood before her."

"She was scoring."

"From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future."




                             THE CRUCIBLE




                                   I


The girl heard the key rasp in the lock and the door open, but she did
not turn.

"When I enter the room, rise," directed an even voice.

The new inmate obeyed disdainfully. The superintendent, a middle-aged
woman of precise bearing and crisp accent, took possession of the one
chair, and flattened a note-book across an angular knee.

"Is Jean Fanshaw your full name?" she began.

"I'm called Jack."

"Jack!" The descending pencil paused disapprovingly in mid-air. "You
were committed to the refuge as Jean."

"Everybody calls me Jack," persisted the girl shortly--"everybody."

"Does your mother?"

Her face clouded. "No," she admitted; "but my father did. He began it,
and I like it. Why isn't it as good as Jean? Both come from John."

"It is not womanly," said Miss Blair, as one having authority. "Women
of refinement don't adopt men's names."

"How about George Eliot?" Jean promptly countered. "And that other
George--the French woman?"

The superintendent battled to mask her astonishment. Case-hardened by a
dozen years' close contact with moral perverts, budding criminals, and
the half-insane, she plumed herself that she was not easily taken off
her guard. But the unexpected had befallen. The newcomer had given her
a sensation, and moreover she knew it. Jean Fanshaw's dark eyes exulted
insolently in her victory.

Miss Blair took formal refuge in her notes. "Birthplace?" she continued.

"Shawnee Springs."

"Age?"

"Seventeen, two months ago--September tenth."

The official jotted "American" under the heading of nationality, and
said,--

"Where were your parents born?"

"Father hailed from the South--from Virginia." Her face lighted
curiously. "His people once owned slaves."

"And your mother?"

The girl's interest in her ancestry flagged. "Pure Shawnee Springs."
She flung off the characterization with scorn. "Pure, unadulterated
Shawnee Springs."

But the superintendent was now on the alert for the unexpected. "I
want plain answers," she admonished. "What has been your religious
training?"

"Mixed. Father was an Episcopalian, I think, but he wasn't much of a
churchgoer; he preferred the woods. Mother's a Baptist."

"And you?"

"I don't know what I am. I guess God isn't interested in my case."

The official retreated upon her final routine question.

"Education?"

"I was in my last year at high school when"--her cheek flamed--"when
this happened."

Miss Blair construed the flush as a hopeful sign. "You may sit down,
Jean," she said, indicating the narrow iron bed. "Let me see your
knitting."

The girl handed over the task work which had made isolation doubly
odious.

The superintendent pursed her thin lips.

"Have you never set up a stocking before?" she asked.

"No."

"Can you sew?"

"No."

"Or cook?"

"No."

"'No, Miss Blair,' would be more courteous. Have you been taught any
form of housework whatsoever?"

Jean looked her fathomless contempt. "We kept help for such drudgery,"
she explained briefly.

"You must learn, then. They are things which every woman should know."

"I don't care to learn the things every woman should know. I hate
women's work. I hate women, too, and their namby-pamby ways. I'd give
ten years of my life to be a man."

Her listener contrasted Jean Fanshaw's person with her ideas. Even
the flesh-mortifying, blue-and-white-check uniform of the refuge
became the girl. Immature in outline, she was opulent in promise. Her
features held no hint of masculinity; the mouth, chin, eyes--above
all, the defiant eyes--were hopelessly feminine. Miss Blair's own pale
glance returned again and again upon those eyes. They made her think
of pools which forest leaves have dyed. The brows were brown, too,
and delicately lined, but the thick rope of hair, which fell quite to
the girl's hips, was fair. The other woman touched the splendid braid
covetously.

"You can't escape your sex," she said. "Don't try."

"But I wasn't meant for a girl. They didn't want one when I was born.
They'd had one girl, my sister Amelia, and they counted on a boy. They
felt sure of it. Why, they'd even picked out his name. It was to be
John, after my father. Then I came."

"Nature knew best."

Jean gave a mirthless laugh. "Nature made a botch," she retorted. "What
business has a boy with the body of a girl?"

The superintendent lost patience. "You must rid yourself of this
nonsense," she declared firmly, and said again, "You can't escape your
sex."

"I will if I can."

"But why?"

"Because this is a man's world. Because I mean to do the things men do."

"For some little time to come you'll occupy yourself with the things
women do."

Jean's long fingers clenched at the reminder. The hot color flooded
back. "Oh, the shame of it!" she cried passionately. "The wicked
injustice of it!"

"You did wrong. This is your punishment."

"My punishment!" flashed the girl. "My punishment! Could they punish me
in no other way than this? Am I a Stella Wilkes, a common creature of
the streets, who--"

The superintendent raised her hand. "Don't go into that," she warned
peremptorily. "If you knew Stella Wilkes in Shawnee Springs--"

"I know her!"

"Don't interrupt me. I repeat, if you know anything of Stella's record,
keep it to yourself. A girl turns over a new leaf when she enters here.
Her past is behind her. And let me caution you personally not to speak
of your life to any one but myself. Remember that. Make confidences to
no one--not even the matrons--to no one except me."

Jean searched the enigmatic face hungrily. "I doubt if you'd care
to listen," she stated simply; "or whether, if you did listen, you'd
believe!"

Something in her tone penetrated Miss Blair's official crust. "My
dear!" she protested.

The girl was silent a moment. Then, point-blank, "Do you think a mother
can hate her child?" she asked.

The superintendent, by virtue of her office, felt constrained to take
up the cudgels for humanity. "Of course not," she responded.

"My mother hates me sometimes."

"Nonsense!"

"At other times it's only dislike," Jean went on impassively. "It's
always been so. Dad got over the fact that I was a girl. He said he
would call me his boy, anyhow. That's where the 'Jack' came from.
But mother--she was different. I dare say if I'd been all girl, like
Amelia, she could have stood me. She was forever holding up Amelia
as a pattern. Amelia would get a hundred per cent. in that quiz you
put me through. Amelia can sew; Amelia can embroider; Amelia can make
tea-biscuit and angel-cake."

"And what were you doing while your sister was improving her
opportunities?"

"Improving mine," came back Jean, with conviction. "Why didn't you ask
me if I could swim, and box, and shoot, and hold my own with a gamy
pickerel or trout?"

"Did your father teach you those things?"

"Some of them."

"And to affect mannish clothes, and smoke cigarettes with your feet on
the table?"

Jean flaunted an unregenerate grin. "You've heard more than you let on,
I guess. But you wouldn't have asked that last question if you'd known
him. He wasn't that sort. I did those things after--after he went. I
didn't really care for the cigarettes; I mainly wanted to shock that
sheep, Amelia. Besides, I only smoked in my own room. I had a bully
room--all posters and foils and guns. That reminds me," she added, with
a quick change of tone. "That woman who comes in here--the matron--took
something of mine. I want it back."

"What was it?"

"A little clay bust my father made."

"Was he a sculptor?"

"No, a druggist; but he could model. You'll make her give it back?"

"Is it the likeness of a man?"

"Yes, of dad."

"The matron was right. We allow no men's pictures in the girls' rooms,
and the rule would apply here."

Incredulity, resentment, impotent anger drove in rapid sequence across
the too mobile face. "But it's dad!" she cried. "Why, he did it for me!
I never had a picture. Don't keep it from me; it's only dad."

The official shook her head in stanch conviction of the sacredness of
red tape. "The rule is for everybody. Furthermore, you must not refer
to men in your letters home. If you make such references, they will be
erased. Nor will they be permitted in any letter you may receive from
your family."

"You'll read my letters?"

"Certainly."

Jean silently digested this fresh indignity. "Then I'll never write,"
she declared.

Miss Blair waived discussion. "Never mind about the rules now, my
girl," she returned, not unkindly. "You will appreciate the reasons for
them in time. Go on with your story. Tell me more of your home life."

"It wasn't a home--at least, not for me. I didn't fit into it anywhere
after dad went. Mother couldn't understand me. She said I took after
the Fanshaws, not her folks, the Tuttles. Thank heaven for that! I
never understood her, it's certain. When she wasn't flint, she was
mush. Her softness was all for Amelia, though. They were hand and glove
in everything, and always lined up together in our family rows. I think
that was at the bottom of half the trouble. If mother'd only let us
girls scrap things out by ourselves, we'd have rubbed along somehow,
and probably been better friends. But she couldn't do it. She had to
take a hand for Saint Amelia, as a matter of course. I can't remember
when it wasn't so, from the days when we fought over our toys till the
last big rumpus of all."

"And that last affair?" prompted her inquisitor. "What led to it?"

"A box social."

"A box social!"

"Never heard of one? You're not country-bred, I guess. Shawnee Springs
pretends to be awfully citified when the summer cottagers are in town,
but it's rural enough the rest of the year. Box socials are all the
rage. You see, the girls all bring boxes, packed with supper for two,
which are auctioned off to the highest bidder. The fellows aren't
supposed to know whose box they're buying. Anyhow, that's the theory.
I thought it ought to be the practice, too, and when I found that
Amelia had fixed things beforehand with Harry Fargo, I planned a little
surprise by changing the wrapper. Harry bid in the box she signalled
him to buy, and drew his own little sister for a partner. The man who
bought Amelia's was a bald-headed old widower she couldn't bear. It
wasn't much of a joke, I dare say, and Amelia couldn't see the point of
it at all. She told me she hated me, right before Harry Fargo himself,
and after we came home she followed me up to my room to say it again."

An unofficial smile tempered Miss Blair's austerity. "But go on," she
said, with an access of formality by way of atonement for her lapse.

Jean's own quick-changing eyes gleamed over the memory of Amelia's
undoing, but it was for an instant only. "It was a dear joke for me,"
she continued soberly. "Amelia was sore. She had a nasty way of saying
things, for all her angel-food, and she hadn't lost her voice that
night, I can assure you. I said I was sorry for playing her the trick,
but she kept harping on it like a phonograph, and one of our regular
shindies followed. It would have ended in talk, like all the rest, if
mother hadn't chimed in, but when they both tuned up with the same old
song about my being a hoiden and a family disgrace, why, I got mad
myself, and told them to clear out. When they didn't budge, I grabbed
a Cuban machete that a Rough Rider friend had given me, and went for
them."

"What did you mean to do?"

"Only frighten them. I never knew till afterward that I'd really pinked
Amelia's arm. Of course, I didn't mean to do anything like that. I
swear it."

"And then?"

"Then mother lost her head completely. She tore shrieking downstairs,
Amelia after her, and both of them took to the street. First I knew,
in came the officer. The rest seems a kind of nightmare to me--the
arrest, the station-house cell, the blundering old fool of a magistrate
who sent me here. He said he'd had his eye on me for a long time, and
that I was incorrigible. Incorrigible! What did he know about it? He
couldn't even pronounce the word! What business has such a man with
power to spoil a girl's life! He was only a seedy failure as a lawyer,
and got his job through politics. That's what sent me here--politics!
Mother never intended matters to go this far. I know she didn't, though
she doesn't admit it. She wanted to frighten me, but things slipped out
of her hands. Think of it! Three years among the Stella Wilkeses for a
joke! My God, I can't believe it! I must be dreaming still."

The superintendent ransacked her stock of homilies for an adequate
response, but nothing suggested itself. Jean Fanshaw's case refused to
fit the routine pigeonholes. She could only remind the girl that it lay
with herself to decide whether she would serve out her full term.

"It is possible to earn your parole in a year and a half, remember,"
she charged, rising. "Bear that constantly in mind."

Jean seemed not to hear. "The shame of it!" she repeated numbly. "The
disgrace of it! I shall never live it down."

She brooded long at her window when her visitor had gone, her wrongs
rankling afresh from their rehearsal. The two weeks' isolation had
begun to tell upon the nerves which she had prided herself were of
stoic fibre. Human companionship she did not want. She had not welcomed
the superintendent's coming, nor the physician's before her; and, if
contempt might slay, the drear files of her fellow-inmates which
traversed the snow-bound paths below would have withered in their
tracks. It was the open she craved, and the daily walks under the close
surveillance of a taciturn matron had but whetted her great desire.

She had conned the desolate prospect till she felt she knew its every
hateful inch. Yonder, at the head of the long quadrangle, was the
administration building, whither Miss Blair had taken her precise
way. Flanking the court, ran the red brick cottages--each a replica
of its unlovely neighbor, offspring all of a single architectural
indiscretion--one of which she supposed incuriously would house her in
the lost years of her durance. Quite at the end, closing the group,
loomed the prison, gaunt, iron-barred, sinister in the gathering dusk.

This last structure had come almost to seem a sensate creature,
a grotesque, sprawling monster, with half-human lineaments which
nightfall blurred and modelled. Now, as she watched, the central door,
that formed its mouth, gaped wide and emitted one of the double files
of erring femininity which were continually passing and repassing. She
knew that there were degrees of badness here, and reasoned that these
from the monster's jaws must be the more refractory, but they appeared
to her no worse than the others. Indeed, as looks went, they were,
on the whole, superior. She felt no pity for them, only measureless
disgust--disgust for the brazen and the dispirited alike; all were
despicable. Her pity was for herself that she must breathe the common
air.

Hitherto she had not separated them one from the other. This time,
however, she passed them in review--the hard, the vicious, the frankly
animal, the merely weak; till, coming last of all upon a brunette
face of garish good looks, she shrank abruptly from the window. For
the first time since her arrival she glimpsed the girl whose name had
been a byword in Shawnee Springs, the being who at once symbolized and
made concrete to Jean the bald, terrible fact of her degradation. Till
now she had gone through all things dry-eyed--manfully, as she would
have chosen to say--but the sight of Stella Wilkes plumbed emotional
deeps in the womanhood she would have forsworn, and she flung herself,
sobbing, upon her bed.




                                  II


So the little secretary found her. Miss Archer was born under a more
benignant star than her superior, and habitually tried in such quiet
ways as a wise grand vizier may to leaven the ruling autocracy with
kindness. She told Jean that she had come to transfer her to the
regular routine, bade her bathe her eyes, and made cheerful talk while
she collected her few possessions. They crossed the quadrangle in the
wintry dusk, turning in at a cottage near the prison just as Jean was
gripped by the fear that the monster itself would engulf her.

At the door-sill she felt a hand slip into hers.

"Be willing, dearie, and seem as cheerful as you can," counseled her
guide. "I'm anxious to have you make a good first impression here in
Cottage No. 6. It's immensely important that you stand well with your
matron. Everything depends upon it."

Jean melted before her friendliness.

"I wish I could be under you," she said impulsively. "This place
wouldn't seem--what it is."

She framed this wish anew when she faced the matron herself in the
bleak cleanliness of the hall. This person was a variant of the
superintendent's impersonal type and a slavish plagiarist of her
mannerisms. A bundle of prejudices, she believed herself dowered
with superhuman impartiality; and now, in muddle-headed pursuit
of this notion, she promptly decided that an offender so plainly
superior to the average ought in the fitness of things to receive less
consideration than the average. Jean accordingly went smarting to her
room.

Happily she was given little time to think about it. The incessant
round which, day in and day out, was to fill her waking hours, caught
her into its mechanism. A querulous bell tapped somewhere, her door,
in common with every one in the corridor, was unlocked, and she merged
with a uniformed file which, without words, shuffled down two flights
of stairs and ranged itself about the tables of a desolate dining-hall.
Whereupon the matron, who had taken her station at a small table laid
for herself and another black-garbed official, raised her thin voice
and repeated,

"The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord!"

An unintelligible mumbling followed, which by dint of strained
listening at many ensuing meals Jean finally translated,

"And Thou givest them their meat in due season."

Thirty odd chairs forthwith scraped the bare floor. Thirty odd
appetites attacked the food heaped in coarse earthenware upon the
oilcloth. Jean fasted. Hash she despised; macaroni stood scarcely
higher in her regard; while tea was an essentially feminine beverage
which of principle she had long eschewed. This eliminated everything
save bread, and it chanced that her share of this staple was of the
maiden baking of a young person whose talents till lately had been
exclusively devoted to picking pockets.

Jean surveyed the room. It shared the naked dreariness of the
corridors; not a picture enlivened its terra-cotta wastes of wall.
Another long table, twin in all respects to her own, occupied with hers
the greater part of the floor space; but there remained room near the
door for two smaller tables, the matron's, which she had remarked on
entering, and one occupied by five favorites of fortune, whose uniform,
though similar to the general in color, resembled a trained nurse's in
its striping, and was further distinguished by white collars and cuffs.
This table, like the matron's, was covered with a white cloth and
boasted a small jardinière of ferns.

The matron's voice was again heard.

"You may talk now, girls," she announced. "Quietly, remember."

A score of tongues were instantly loosed. The newcomer was astounded.
How had they the heart to speak? It was strange table-talk, curiously
limited in range, straying little beyond the narrow confines of the
reformatory world. A girl opposite said: "One year and five months
more!" and set afoot a spirited comparison which crisscrossed the board
from end to end and reached its climax in the enviable lot of her
whose release was due in thirty-seven days. Jean observed that the
head of the first speaker was lop-sided; its neighbor was narrow in
the forehead; a third, two places beyond, had peculiar teeth. Nearly
all, in fact, were stamped with some queerness, either natural or
artificially imposed by an institutional régime wherein the graces of
the toilet had no function.

The gossip took another tack, originating this time in some trivial
happening in the gymnasium. Jean listened closely at a mention of
basket-ball, but lost all interest when the talk veered fitfully to the
sewing-school.

"Ain't you hungry?" said a voice at her side.

Jean rounded upon a girl perhaps a year her senior. Her tones were
gentle, with a certain lisping appeal, and her face, if not strong, was
neither abnormal nor coarse. Outside a refuge uniform she would readily
pass as pretty.

"I couldn't stomach it myself, at the start," she went on, without
waiting for an answer, "but I got used to it. We all do. Why, the days
I work in the laundry I'm half starved."

Jean stared.

"They make you do laundry work!"

"Sure. We all take a turn. Everything on the place is done by the
girls, you know--washing, cooking, tailoring, gardening, and a lot
besides."

Her auditor relapsed into gloomy silence, a new horror added to her
plight. At home, even the factotum they styled the hired girl had been
exempt from washing. A strapping negress had come in Mondays for that.

"I'm next door to you upstairs," pursued the new acquaintance, in her
deprecating way. "My name is Amy Jeffries. What's yours?"

She gave it after a moment's debate. The old beloved "Jack" was at
the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly thought better of it. After
all, "Jean" would answer for this place. She regretted that in lieu
of Fanshaw she could not use Jones, or Smith, or--master stroke of
irony--the abominated Tuttle.

"Jean Fanshaw's a nice name," commented Amy sociably.

Dreading further catechising, Jean struck in with a question of her own.

"Why have those girls over there a better uniform and a table to
themselves?" she demanded.

"They're high grade."

"What does that mean?"

"Six months without a mark." Amy Jeffries cast a look of envy upon the
group at the side table. "I'd like awfully to be high grade. It must
seem like living again to sit down to a tablecloth. I should like the
cuffs and collars, too. I just love dress. When I leave here I think
I'll go into a dressmaking establishment, or a milliner's."

Jean was reminded of something.

"Tell me how I can get out of here in a year and a half," she
requested. "Somebody said it could be done."

Amy smiled wanly.

"I wanted to know, too, when I was green. I could just see the guard
holding the gate open as I sailed off the grounds! It was a beautiful
dream."

"Why couldn't you do it?"

"Marks," said Amy sententiously. "Parole in eighteen months means a
perfect record right from the beginning. I thought I'd try for it, but,
mercy, I've never even made high grade! Once I came within six weeks of
it, but I let a dress go down to the laundry with a pin in it."

"They mark for a little thing like that?"

"My stars, yes! For less than that--buttons off, wrong apron in the
recreation-room, and so on. I got my first mark for wearing my hair
'pomp.' They won't stand for it here. They want to make us as hideous
as they can."

A lull threw the remarks of the girl with peculiar teeth into unsought
prominence.

"Jim was a swell-looker," she was saying, "and a good spender when he
was flush, but I used to tell him--"

"Delia!" The matron was on her feet leveling a rebuking finger at Jim's
biographer. "You know better. Leave the room at once. All talking will
cease."

The culprit scuffed sulkily out, and no further word was uttered till
the end of the meal, when at a signal all rose and the matron observed
in pontifical tones,

"Thou openest Thy hand!"

On this occasion Jean caught the response without difficulty. The
words, "And Thou fillest all things living with plenteousness," seemed
to emanate chiefly from the high-grade table, with a faint echo on the
part of Amy Jeffries, in whom the ambition to eat from a cloth still
persisted. At "plenteousness" one bold spirit snickered.

The file tramped up the two flights by which it had come, and scattered
to its rooms. For twenty minutes Jean sat in darkness and dejection.
Then the fretful bell clamored again, the doors yawned as before,
the silent ranks re-formed, and the march below stairs was repeated.
Their destination proved to be the recreation-room. In a dwelling this
chamber would have been shunned. Here, compared with such other parts
of the cottage as Jean had seen, it seemed blithesome. Potted geraniums
made grateful oases of the window-sills. An innocuous print or two hung
upon the walls.

As the girls found seats, the matron handed Jean a letter.

"You will be allowed to answer it next week," she said. "All
letter-writing is done upon the third Friday of the month."

The girl took the missive with burning face. The envelope was already
slit. The letter itself had undergone inspection, and five whole lines
had been expunged. But her anger at this tampering lost itself in the
unspeakable bitterness which jaundiced her to the soul as she read.
Better that they had blotted every syllable.

    JEAN: I hope this will find you reconciled to your cross,
    and resolved to lead a different life. After talking over this
    great affliction with our pastor, and taking it to the Throne of
    Grace in prayer, I have come to feel that His hand guides us in
    this, as in all things. I cannot understand why I have been so
    chastened, but I bow to the rod. If your father were alive, I
    should consider it a judgment upon him for his lax principles in
    religious matters. I never could comprehend his frivolous
    indifference. I am sure I spared no effort to bring him to a
    realizing sense of his impiety.

    Amelia takes the same view that I do of all that has happened. She
    has not felt like going out, poor sensitive child, but.... (The
    hand of the censor lay heavy here. Jean readily inferred, however,
    that Amelia's retirement had its solace.) The first storm of the
    winter came yesterday. Snow is six inches deep on a level, and eggs
    are high.

                                                   Your devoted mother,

                                                        MARCIA FANSHAW.

The matron was reading aloud from a novel which her audience found
absorbing. Jean could give it no heed. What were the imaginary woes of
Oliver Twist beside her actualities!

The hands of a bland-faced clock crept round to bedtime. The reader
marked her place, and, after a moment's pause, began the first line
of a familiar hymn. Jean hated hymn-singing out of church. It had
depressed her even as a child, while later it evoked choking memories
of her father's funeral. So she set her teeth till they made an end of
it.

Suggestive also of her father and of vesper services to which they
had sometimes gone together, after a Sunday in the fields, were the
words presently repeated by the forlorn figures kneeling about her;
but she heard them with mute lips and in passionate protest against
their personal application. These tawdry creatures might confess that
they had erred and strayed like lost sheep, if they would. She was
not of their flock. The things she had left undone did not prick her
conscience. The things which she ought not to have done were dwarfed to
peccadillos by the vast disproportion of their punishment.




                                  III


Life in a reformatory is an ordeal at its doubtful best. It
approximated its noxious worst under the martinet whom Cottage No. 6
styled "the Holy Terror." The absolutism of the superintendent was at
least founded on a sense of duty; her imitator's was based upon whim.
Jean's chimera of parole after eighteen months was promptly dissipated.
Disciplined at the outset for breaking a rule of which she was not
aware, her obedience became thenceforth a captive's. Scrubwoman,
laundress, seamstress, kitchen-drudge--all rôles in which fate, as
embodied in the matron, cast her--were one in their odiousness. She
slurred their doing where she could, and scorned all such meek spirits
as curried favor by trying their best. At times only the fear of the
prison deterred her from open mutiny.

She learned presently that there was an inferno lower even than the
prison. One day, while clearing paths after a heavy snowfall, she
saw a girl dragged past, handcuffed and struggling, her head muffled
in the brown refuge shawl, but audibly and fluently blasphemous
notwithstanding. Jean recognized Stella Wilkes.

Amy, who was working near, said in furtive undertone:

"I heard she'd cut loose again. She'll get all that's coming to her
this time."

Jean eyed the nearest black-clad watcher before replying.

"But she's in prison, anyhow," she commented, with Amy's trick of the
motionless lips. "She can't get much worse than she has already."

"Can't she, though! It's the guardhouse this trip."

Jean questioned and Amy answered till the matron's approach stopped
communication. It was a lurid saga of the days before the state
abolished corporal punishment, handed down with fresh embellishments
from girl to girl. The air was full of such bizarre folk-lore, she
discovered--tales of superintendents who failed to govern; of matrons,
wise and foolish; of delirious riots and hairbreadth escapes. Amy
Jeffries was always the channel which conveyed these legends to Jean's
willing ears.

From all others Jean held herself aloof. Amy alone seemed a victim of
injustice like herself. Jean invited no confidences, and made none; but
bit by bit, as the winter passed, the story of this pretty moth, whose
world, more than her pleasure-loving self, seemed out of joint, pieced
itself together. It was a common story, too hackneyed to detail, though
it signified the quintessence of tragedy to its narrator. Of itself, it
struck no kindred chord in Jean. Its passions, its temptations, its sin
were without glamour or reason; but she divined that nature, rather
than Amy, had wrought this coil, and that, after the fashion of a
topsy-turvy universe, one was again expiating the lapse of two.

The coming of spring at once brightened and embittered Jean's lot.
Outdoor work was no hardship. She knew the times and seasons of all
growing things; which soil was fattest; when plowshare, harrow, spade,
and hoe should do their appointed parts; when the strawberry-beds
should be stripped of their winter coverlets; when potatoes, shorn of
their pallid cellar sprouts, should be quartered and dropped; when
peas and green corn should be sown; when the drooping tomato plants
should be set out and fostered; and she entered upon this dear toil
with a zest which nothing indoors had inspired. But she knew also--and
here was the pang--precisely what was transpiring out there in the
forest which all but touched the refuge boundary. With a heartache
she visualized the stir of shy life in pond and field and tree-top;
caught in memory the scent of the first arbutus; spied out the earliest
violet; beheld jack-in-the-pulpit unbar his shutter; saw the mandrake
bear its apple, the ferns uncurl, the dogwood bloom.

The call of the woods rang most insistent when she lay in her iron cot
at twilight, for bedtime still came as in the early nights of winter,
at an hour when the play of the outside world had just begun. She
could see the bit of forest from her narrow window, and in fancy made
innumerable forays into its captivating depths with rod or gun. It was
these imaginary outings, ending always behind locks and bars, which
first set her thoughts coursing upon the idea of escape.

There were precedents galore. The undercurrent of reformatory gossip
was rich in these picaresque adventures. But cleverly planned as some
of them had been, daringly executed as were others, all save one ended
in commonplace recapture. The exception enchained Jean's interest. Amy
Jeffries had rehearsed the tale one day when the gardener, concerned
with the ravages of an insect invasion of the distant currant bushes,
left the lettuce-weeding squad to itself.

"I never knew Sophie Powell," Amy prefaced; "she skipped before I came.
But they say she was something on your style--haughty-like and good at
throwing a bluff. I heard that the men down at the gatehouse nicknamed
her the 'Empress-out-of-a-job.' What she was sent here for, I can't
say. She was as close-mouthed as you. Mind you, I'm not criticising.
It's risky business, swapping life histories here. You're the only girl
that's heard my story. If you never feel like telling me yours, all
right. If you do, why, all right, too. I didn't mention names, and you
needn't either. I wonder if _he_ would do as much for me!"

Jean checkmated Amy's maneuver without ceremony.

"I've no man's name to hide," she returned bluntly. "But never mind
that. It's Sophie Powell I want to hear about."

Amy took no offense.

"My," she laughed admiringly; "you _are_ a riddle! Well, as I say,
Sophie had a way with her, and knew how to play her cards. She got high
grade within a year, and worked her matron for special privileges.
The matron let her have the run of her room a good deal, for Sophie
knew to a T just how she liked everything kept; and she wasn't over
particular about locking Sophie's door, which was handy to her own.
One spring night, earlier than this, I guess, for it was still dark
at supper, she played up sick. She timed her spasm for an hour when
the doctor was generally busy at the hospital, and let the matron fuss
round with hot-water bags till the supper bell rang. Then the matron
went downstairs, leaving the door open to give poor Sophie more air. As
soon as she heard the dishes rattle, the invalid got busy. She hopped
in next door, pinched the matron's best black skirt and a swell white
silk shirt-waist she kept for special, grabbed a hat and veil and a
long cloak out of the wardrobe and the big bunch of house-keys from a
hiding-place she'd spotted, tip-toed downstairs and let herself out of
the front door."

Jean drew a long breath.

"But the guards?" she put in.

"She only ran into one--the easy mark at the gate."

"The gate!"

"Sure. Sophie didn't propose to muss her new clothes climbing a
ten-foot fence. She marched over to the gatehouse, bold as brass,
handed in her keys as she'd seen the matrons do, and was out in no
time. Why, the guard even tipped his hat--so he said before they fired
him. That was the most comical thing about it all."

Jean threw a glance over her shoulder. The gardener was still beyond
earshot.

"Go on," she said eagerly. "How did she manage outside? That's the part
I want to hear."

"Then came smoother work still. Sophie hadn't a cent--she missed the
matron's purse in her hurry--but she had her nerve along. She streaked
it over into town, and asked her way to the priest who comes out here
twice a month for confession. She banked on his not remembering her,
for she wasn't one of his girls; and he didn't. His sight was poor,
anyhow. Well, she told him she was a Catholic and a stranger in town,
looking for work, and that she'd just had a telegram from home saying
her mother was dying. She pumped up the tears in good style, and put it
up to him to ante the car fare if he didn't want her heart to break. It
didn't break."

Jean absently fashioned the moist earth beneath her fingers into the
semblance of a priest's face, which she instantly obliterated when it
stirred Amy's interest.

"Why couldn't they trace her?" she asked.

"Because she was too cute to stick to her train. She must have jumped
the express when they slowed up for their first stop."

The fugitive bulked large in Jean's meditations. It occurred to her
that possibly the needless rigor of her own treatment in Cottage No.
6 might originate in her chance resemblance to Sophie Powell. She
wondered how it fared with the girl; whether she had had to make her
way unbefriended; to what she had turned her hand. Was she perhaps
living a blameless life, respected, loved, in all ways another
personality, yet forever hag-ridden with the fear of recapture? She
did not debate whether such freedom were worth its cost, for just
then the pungent invitation of the woods was borne to her across the
lettuce-rows.

A bit of refuse crystallized her resolve. She spied it toward the
end of her day's toil--a large rusty nail half protruding from the
loam--and knew it instantly for the tool which should compass her
release. Her mind acted on its hint with extraordinary lucidity, and
her fingers were scarcely less nimble. Not even Amy at her side saw her
slip the treasure trove into the concealing masses of her hair. From
that moment till the bolts were shot upon her for the night she was
absorbed in her plans.

To duplicate Sophie Powell's exploit was, of course, out of the
question. Her own door was never left unlocked; the Holy Terror's
graceless clothes, for all practical uses, might as well hang in
another planet; while even were these impossibilities surmounted, she
could scarcely hope to hoodwink the men at the gate. She must secure
a disguise somehow, but she cheerfully left that detail to chance. To
escape was the main thing, and if by a rusty nail she might cross that
bridge, surely she need borrow no trouble lest her wits desert her
afterward.

A tedious-toned clock over in the town struck twelve before she dared
begin her attempt. The watchman had just gone beneath her window on
his hourly round, and with the cessation of his slow pace upon the
gravel the peace of midnight overlay everything. For almost two hours
thereafter Jean labored with her rude implement at the staples which
held the woven-wire barrier before her window. The first staple came
hardest, but she had pried it loose by the time the watch repassed. In
a half-hour more she had freed enough of the netting to serve her end,
but she deferred the great moment till the man should again have come
and gone. It was a difficult wait, centuries long, and anxiety began to
cheat and befool her reason. She questioned whether she had not lost
count of time. Suppose she had let him come upon her unheeded! Suppose
he had caught some hint of her employment! Suppose he were even now
lurking, spider-like, in the shadows!

Then the clock struck twice in its deliberative way, the measured
footfall recurred, and her brain cleared. Five minutes later she bent
back the netting and calculated the distance to the ground. She judged
it some sixteen or eighteen feet, all told, or a sheer drop of more
than half that space as she would hang by her finger-tips. There could
be no leaving a telltale rope of bedclothes to dangle. Such folly would
set the telephone wires humming within the hour. She must drop, and
drop with good judgment; since the grass plot, which she counted upon
to break her fall, gave place directly below to an area, grated over to
be sure, but undesirable footing notwithstanding.

She tossed her brown shawl to the ground first, and noted, with some
oddly detached segment of her mind, that it spread itself on the sward
in the shape of a huge bat. A romping girlhood steadying her nerves,
she let herself cautiously over the sill, and for an instant hung
motionless, her eyes below. Then, gathering momentum from a double
swing, she suddenly relaxed her hold, cleared the danger-point, and
alighted, uninjured and almost without sound, upon the springing turf.




                                  IV


For a moment Jean crouched listening where she fell. No sound issuing
from within, she caught up her shawl and stole quickly toward the point
where she planned to scale the high fence which still shut her from
freedom. There was no moon, but the night was luminous with starshine,
and she hugged the shadows of the cottages. These buildings shouldered
one another closely in most part, but she came presently to a gap in
the friendly obscurity where a site awaited a structure for which
the state had vouchsafed no funds. It was bare of any sort of screen
whatever, and lay in full range not only of the quadrangle, which it
broke, but of the gatehouse beyond.

Nor was this all. Drifting round the last sheltering corner came
the reek of a pipe. Jean's heart sank. After all, the trap! Then
second thought told her that a foe in ambush would not smoke, and she
gathered courage to reconnoiter. Across the quadrangle she made out the
motionless figure of the watch. He was plainly without suspicion. He
had completed his circuit and was lounging against a hydrant, his idle
gaze upon the stars.

So for cycling ages he sat. Yet but a quarter of an hour had lapsed
when the man knocked the ashes from his pipe, yawned audibly, and
turned upon his heel. The instant the door of the gatehouse swallowed
him, Jean sped like a phantom across the open ground, skirted the
hospital, the tool-sheds, and the hotbeds, and plunged into the
recesses of the garden. All else was simple. The high fence had no
terrors; her scaling-ladder was a piece of board. The asperities of the
barbed wire she softened with her shawl. When the town clock brought
forth its next languid announcement she heard it without a tremor. She
was resting on a mossy slope a mile or more away.

She made but a brief halt, for the East, toward which she set her
face, was already paling. It was no blind flight. She struck for
the hills deliberately, since behind the hills ran the boundary of
another commonwealth. All fellow-runaways, whose stories she knew,
had foolishly held to the railroad or other main-traveled ways, and,
barring the brilliant Sophie, had for that very reason come early to
disaster. Jean reasoned that they were in all likelihood city girls
whom the woods terrified. Their stupidity was incredible. To fear what
they should love! She took great breaths of the cool fragrance. She
could not get her fill of it.

Nevertheless, it was not yet her purpose to quit the tilled countryside
utterly. She hoped first to compel clothing from it somehow--clothing,
and then food, of which she began to feel the need. The fact that
she must probably come unlawfully by these necessaries gave her
slight compunction. In some rose-colored, prosperous future she could
make anonymous amends. She haunted the outskirts of three several
farmhouses, but without success. At none of them had garments of any
kind been left outdoors over night. Some impossible rags fluttered from
a scarecrow in a field of young corn; that was all. Things edible, too,
were as carefully housed. Near the last place she found a spring with a
tin cup beside it. She drank long, and took the cup away with her.

It was too light now for foraging, and Jean took up her eastward march,
avoiding the highways and resorting to hedgerows, stone walls, or
briers where the woods failed. As the day grew she saw farmhands pass
to their work, and once, in the far distance, she caught the seductive
glitter of a dinner pail. She was ravenous from her long fast, and
nibbled at one or two palatable wild roots which she knew of old. They
seemed savorless to-day, almost sickening in fact; and her fancy dwelt
covetously upon the resources of orchard, garden, and field, that the
next month but one would lavish. Nevertheless, she harbored no regret
that she had taken time somewhat too eagerly by the forelock.

Noon found her beside a lake well up among the hills. She knew the
region by hearsay. People came here in hot weather, she remembered.
Somewhere alongshore should stand log-camps of a species which urban
souls fondly thought pioneer, but which snugly neighbored a summer
hotel where ice, newspapers, scandal, and like benefits of civilization
could be had. These play houses were as yet tenantless, of course--and
foodless; but the chance of finding some cast-off garment, possibly
too antiquated for a departing summer girl, but precious beyond cloth
of gold to a fugitive in blue-and-white check, buoyed Jean's spirits
and lent fresh energy to her muscles. Equipped with another dress,
be its style and color what they might, she felt that she could cope
fearlessly with fate.

She had followed the vagrant shore-line for perhaps a mile when two
things, assailing her senses simultaneously, brought her to an abrupt
halt. One was the smell of frying bacon; the other was a baritone voice
which broke suddenly into the chorus of a rollicking popular air. Jean
wheeled for flight, but, beguiled by the bacon which just then wafted a
fresh appeal, she turned, cautiously parted the undergrowth, and beheld
a young man swaying in a hammock slung between two birch trees. He held
in his lap a book into which he dipped infrequently, singing meanwhile;
and his attention was further divided between the crackling spider
and a fishing-rod propped in a forked stick at the water's edge. Jean
viewed his methods with disapproval. It was neither the way to read,
sing, fry bacon, nor yet fish.

Possibly some such idea suggested itself to this over versatile person,
for he presently rolled out of the hammock and centered his talents
upon the line, which he began to reel in as if the mechanism were an
amusing novelty. The stern critic in the background perceived the hand
of an amateur in the rebaiting, and predicted sorrier bungling still
when he should essay the cast. Her gloomiest forebodings, however, fell
far short of the amazing event. She expected the recklessly whirling
lead to shoot somewhere into the foliage, but nothing prepared her
for its sure descent upon herself. There was no disentangling that
outlandish collection of hooks at short notice, and she did not try.
But neither could she break the line. The bushes separated while she
struggled, and a vast silence befell.

Jean straightened slowly.

"You're a prize angler," she said.

The young fellow's bewilderment gave way to an expansive smile.

"I quite agree with you," he admitted. "I ought to have a blue ribbon,
or a pewter mug, or whatever they give the duffer who lands the biggest
catch. Let me help you with those hooks. I hope they haven't torn your
dress?"

Then the blue-and-white check drew him. The girl's eyes had held him
first; next, her brows; afterward, her contrasting hair. The uniform
compelled his gaze to significant details--the shawl, the coarse shoes,
the fallen cup.

Jean flushed under his scrutiny, and brusquely declined his help.

"No, but let me," he urged, and so humbly that she relented.

"I know more about these things than you do," she said. "Do you know
you're trying several kinds of fishing with one line?"

"Oh, yes," he smiled. "You see I haven't a notion what sort of fish
frequent these waters, and fish vary a lot in their tastes. Some
prefer worms, some have a cannibal appetite for minnows, and some, I
believe, like a little bunch of colored feathers, which can't be very
nourishing, I must say. I couldn't make up my mind which bait to use,
and so I spread a kind of lunch-counter for all comers."

This was too much for Jean's gravity. The fisherman was unruffled by
her laughter. In fact, he laughed with her.

"Is it so preposterous as all that?" he asked. "I didn't know but I'd
hit on something new. This tackle doesn't belong to me; it's the other
fellow's."

Jean's glance shot past him. The man saw and understood.

"We planned to camp together," he explained, "but a telegram
overtook him on the train. It was highly inconsiderate in a mere
great-grandmother to pick out just this time for her funeral. I look
for him to-morrow or the day after."

Jean freed her dress at length and searched for her belongings. The
young man stooped also. He was too late for the shawl, but gravely
restored the tin cup. She thanked him, as gravely, and after a little
pause added:--

"The least you can do is to say nothing."

"About seeing you?"

"Yes."

"You're from the other side of the county?"

"Yes."

"From the--" he hesitated.

"From the House of Refuge," stated Jean, looking him squarely in the
face.

His own gaze was as direct.

"But not that sort," he commented softly, as if thinking aloud--"not
that sort."

Jean, boy-like, offered her hand.

"Thank you," she said simply. "You're quite right. That's exactly why
I'm running away. Good-by."

"Don't go!" He detained her hand, his face full of sympathy and
perplexity. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. It would be hard
lines for a fellow, but when I see a girl"--his eyes added: "And such a
girl!"--"roaming the country like a--a homeless--"

"Hobo?" supplied Jean.

He reddened guiltily.

"Hang it all!" he ended, "I can't stand it. You hit the nail on the
head when you told me that the least I can do is to say nothing. But I
trust that isn't all I can do. I want to help."

The girl's eyes misted.

"You have helped, you believe in me."

"Who wouldn't!" His bearing challenged the world.

"Several people. My family, for instance; most of the officials back
there at the refuge. But never mind that."

"No," agreed her new champion. "Never mind that. Let's face the future,
the practicalities."

Jean complied with despatch.

"Your bacon is burning," she announced.

He led the way to his camp, and together they surveyed the charred ruin
in the spider. Jean could have devoured it as it lay.

"And it's my first warm meal," lamented the camper tragically--"my
first warm meal after five days of canned stuff! The other fellow was
to be cook as well as fisherman."

Jean promptly mastered the situation.

"Clean that spider while I slice more bacon," she directed, rolling up
her sleeves. "If you have potatoes, wash about a dozen."

The victim of a canned diet flung himself blithely into the work, but
halted suddenly, halfway to the water, and brandished the spider in air.

"Not a mouthful unless you'll eat too?" he stipulated.

Jean gave a happy laugh.

"Perhaps I can be pressed," she conceded.

With a facility which would have amazed the refuge, and with a secret
pride in her new knowledge which she had little dreamed she could come
to feel, Jean set the bacon and potatoes frying, evolved a plate of
sandwiches from soda crackers and a tin of sardines, discovered a jar
of olives which their owner had forgotten, and arranged the whole upon
a box-cover laid with a napkin. Nor was this the sum of the miracle.
She even garnished the meat with a handful of watercress which she
spied and bade her admiring host gather in a neighboring brook.

They said little during the meal, for both were famished; but while
they washed the dishes together by the shore Jean, under questioning,
sketched the story of her flight. Her listener's ejaculations gained
steadily in vigor, till ultimately, moved by a startling thought, he
dropped the plate he was polishing.

"Look here!" he cried. "Have you had a wink of sleep?"

"I got in an hour about the middle of the forenoon."

"One hour out of thirty!"

"It was enough."

"I'll sling the hammock anywhere you say."

"I was never more wide awake. There are too many things to think out
and plan."

"Take the hammock, anyhow," he urged. "You can plan and rest, too."

She let herself be so far persuaded, and he brought pillows from the
tent. As she let herself relax, she first realized how weary she had
become, and closed her eyes that she might taste the full luxury of
rest. The rhythmic chuckle of the little brook where the watercress
grew was ineffably soothing. It seemed almost articulate, an elfish
voice to which the small waves, lapping the shore, played a delicate
accompaniment. She dreamily fitted words to its chant, and presently,
still smiling at the conceit, strayed quite into the delectable land
where water-sprites are real, and beautiful impossibilities matter of
fact.

The shadows had lengthened when she woke. Her companion sat with his
back to a tree trunk as before, but she perceived that he had stretched
a bit of canvas to screen her from the slanting sun.

"It was best all round," he said, as she sprang up reproachfully. "It
did you good and gave me leisure to think. I felt sorrier than ever
while you lay there, smiling and dimpling in your sleep, like a child."

"I despise that dimple," avowed Jean, disgustedly.

"You despise it!"

"It's so--so feminine."

"Of course it is; that is no reason for abusing it."

"I think it's a mighty good reason. A dimple will be a great handicap
in my life."

[Illustration: "A dimple will be a great handicap in my life."]

"Great Jupiter!" said the young man softly. "Why, some girls I know
would give--But we can't discuss dimples, just now, can we? What I
began to say, before you took my breath away, was that I think I've
solved the clothes problem. You know there's a town about ten miles
to the north--the county seat--and it occurs to me that if I set out
to-night, I can be back here early in the morning with everything
you'll need. I don't believe they'll suspect me, even if they have
happened to read that a refuge girl has escaped. I can buy the skirt
in one store, the hat in another, and so on, pretending they're for my
sister--or my wife."

Jean's refractory dimple deepened.

"Make it your mother," she advised. "Wives and sisters prefer to do
their own shopping."

"Very well, then. If you will jot down the measurements and other
technicalities, I'll manage it somehow. As for money," he added,
perceiving her falter, "I will take care of that, too, if you'll allow
me. You will naturally need a loan."

Jean swallowed a lump.

"You're a brick," she said huskily. "I'll pay you back with the first
money I earn."

The brick received her praise with a change of color appropriate to his
title.

"Any fellow would be--be glad to help, you know," he stammered. "And
you needn't feel that you must hurry to pay up, either. Wait until
you're well settled among your friends."

"My friends! I have none."

"No friends!" He stared blankly. "Of course I realized that you could
hardly go back home, but I took it for granted that there must be some
place--somebody--"

"There isn't."

He sat down abruptly, bewildered with the complexities which beset an
apparently simple situation. Jean herself began to entertain some
misgiving. For the moment his opinion epitomized the world's.

"Where do you mean to go?" he asked.

"Across the state line first; then to New York."

"New York!"

"Yes; to find work. Why do you stare as if I'd said Timbuctoo?"

"I'm from New York."

"Are you?" She brightened wonderfully. "Then you can tell me where to
find work. I'm willing to do anything at the start, but by and by I
want to get into some good business. Women are succeeding in business
on all sides nowadays. Why do you look so hopeless? Don't you think I
can get on?"

"How can I answer you! If there were only some woman to whom I might
take you. I've a sister, but--"

"But she wouldn't understand?"

"No, she wouldn't understand. Neither do you understand," he went on
anxiously. "To be a stranger in New York, homeless, friendless, without
work, the shadow of that place over there dogging your steps; with you
what you are--trustful, unsuspicious, open as sunlight--Oh, I daren't
advise you. I don't dare."

Jean was awed, but not downcast.

"I'll risk it," she replied stoutly.

Twice he opened his lips to speak, but rose instead and paced among the
trees. Finally he confronted her.

"Why not go back?" he asked.

Jean widened her eyes upon him.

"Go back! Go back to the refuge?"

"Yes. Why not go back and see it through? No, no," he entreated, as her
lip curled. "Don't think I'm trying to squirm out of my offer. That
stands. It's you I'm considering. Remember that no matter how much you
may make of yourself those people over there will have the power to
take it from you. Should you marry--"

"I shall never marry."

"Should you marry--ah! you will--they can shame you and the man whose
name you bear. Could you stand that? After all, isn't the other way
better? Wouldn't a clean slate be worth its price?"

She shook her head.

"You don't realize what you ask. I can't go back. I can't. You don't
know."

"I suppose I don't," he admitted.

"I'd rather run the risk--the risk of their finding me, the risk,
whatever it is, of New York. As for friends--" she smiled upon him
radiantly--"well, I'll have you."

"Yes," he promised. "You'll have me."

He accepted her decision, and at once made ready for his tramp across
the hills. At parting he reminded her that to him she was still
nameless.

"I'm not sure myself," she laughed. "I'll need a new name in New York!"

"But now?"

"Well, then--Jack."

"To offset the dimple, I suppose. Is it short for Jacqueline?"

"No; just Jack."

Jean's knight errant looked back once before the tree-boles shut her
wholly away. She had dropped upon a log and was facing the blue reach
of the lake. This was about six o'clock in the evening. At nine she had
not shifted her position. It was perhaps an hour later when she sprang
up abruptly, lit a candle which he had shown her in arranging for the
night, and hunting out a pencil and paper, wrote a hurried note which
she pinned to the tent-flap.

There were but two lines in all. The first thanked him. The second
ran:--

"I've gone back to see it through."




                                   V


The refuge, considered officially, was impressed. That any fugitive,
let alone one who had outwitted pursuit, should freely present herself
at the gatehouse, spiced its drab annals with originality. Jean
Fanshaw, no less than Sophie Powell, had achieved distinction. The
refuge dissembled its emotion, however. An escape was an escape, with
draconic penalties no more to be stayed than the march of a glacier or
the changes of the moon.

But even the refuge--from the vantage-point of a supposed ventilator
reached by a secret stair--discerned that the prisoner of the
guardhouse was unaccountably not the rebel of Cottage No. 6. The girl
who dropped from the window would have found this duress maddening.
Four brick walls were its horizon; its furnishing was a mattress
thrust through a grudging door at night and withdrawn when the dim
glow, filtering through a ground-glass disk in the ceiling, heralded
the return of another day. It was always twilight within, for the
occupations of a guardhouse require little light. Text-books, no other
print, were sometimes permitted, but even these arid pastimes were not
for Jean; the school taught nothing she had not mastered. Her resources
were two: she might knit or she might think. She usually chose the
latter.

Another thing puzzled the refuge--still considered officially. It was
no novelty for a song to rise to the pseudo-ventilator (inmates so
punished often sang out of bravado when first confined), but it was
quite unprecedented for a girl with no couch but the floor, no outlook
save the walls, no employment except knitting, companioned solely by
her thoughts, to croon the words of a rollicking popular air as if she
were content.

Jean, too, wondered unceasingly. Why had her old ideas of life
cheapened? Save one chance stranger, men had met her on the footing
of boyish good-fellowship which she required of them: why should this
no longer seem wholly desirable? Why had she relished a chivalrous
insistence on her sex? Why had she taken pride in the practice of a
menial feminine art? Why had all things womanly shifted value? Why,
above all, did she feel no regret that these things should be? Yet
content was scarcely the word for her frame of mind. Her thoughts were
a yeasty ferment out of which the unknown youth of the forest, whose
very name was a mystery, began presently to emerge as an ideal figure.
And this ideal man had on his part a conception of ideal womanhood!
Here was the germinal truth at last.

While she pondered, two solitary weeks which by popular account should
have been unspeakable, slipped magically away. She dreaded their end,
for she knew that in the adamantine scheme of things six months of
prison life, at very least, awaited her. Even to the average refuge
girl the prison signified degradation; to Jean it also spelled Stella
Wilkes. The abhorred contact did not begin at once, however, since
it fell out that in runaway cases the powers were wont to decree
yet another fortnight of isolation following the transfer from the
guardhouse. But isolation in the prison was a relative term. The
building's sights could be shut away; its sounds penetrated every
cranny.

Such sounds! One of them broke Jean's light slumber her first night
under the prison roof. It was a strand in the woof of her dreams at
first, a monotonous, tuneless plaint, strangely exotic, like nothing
earthly except the wailing of savage women who mourn their dead. She
lay half awake for an interval, the weird chant clutching at her heart.
Then, as it rose, waxing shriller with each repetition, she sat bolt
upright with hair prickling and flesh acreep. It was a menace to the
living, not a requiem; a virulent explicit curse.

"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"

The prison stirred.

"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"

Here a woman laughed; there one began softly to echo the cry; cell
warily hailed cell.

"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"

The pulsing hate of it now filled the corridors. A door opened
somewhere, and a metallic footfall began to echo briskly from iron
stairs.

"Is it mesilf ye're wantin', darlin'?" called a fat-throated voice.
"I'll not keep ye waitin'. With ye in a jiffy!"

There was a sound of shooting bolts, a brief scuffle, the click of
handcuffs, and a ragged retreat. Presently a door slammed, and the
matron's steps alone retraced the lower corridors. Far in the distance,
muffled by intervening walls, its two emphatic words only audible,
the eerie defiance still rose and untiringly persisted until it again
entered the fabric of Jean Fanshaw's dreams.

That cry somehow struck the dominant note of the prison. Its
bitterness, its mental squalor, its agonizing repression, its
smouldering revolt, all focussed in that hysterical out-burst against
constituted authority. Jean heard it again and again in the ensuing
months, and in each instance it broke the stillness of night. The
second time it startled, but did not frighten. The third she thrilled
to its message, knowing it at last for her own fiery heartache made
articulate. But this was afterward.

In the beginning Stella Wilkes overshadowed their background. She
and Jean had had a grammar-school acquaintance in the days before
respectability and the Wilkes girl--as Shawnee Springs knew her--parted
company; and it was to this period of democratic equality and relative
innocence to which Stella chose sentimentally to revert when she first
found a chance to speak.

"Can't say I feel a day older than I did then," she went on, sociably.
"Do I look it?"

Jean made some answer. Stella indeed seemed no different; looking a
mature woman at sixteen, she had simply marked time since. A mole,
oddly placed near one corner of her mouth where another girl would
dimple, still fascinated by its unexpectedness. Stella noticed this and
laughed.

"Remember how all you little kids used to rubber at my mole?" she
said. "It made me mad. I don't care now when people stare, but I wish
it was on my neck. 'Moles on the neck, money by the peck,' you know.
Queer, ain't it, that two of us from the old West Street school should
strike this joint together? It's just the same as if we'd gone away to
college--I don't think! Any Shawnee Springs news to tell?"

"No," Jean answered, stonily.

Stella saw that her advances were unwelcome, and her mood veered.

"That's your game, is it?" She thrust her hard face closer. "So I ain't
in your class, my lady--you that was so keen for the boys! You give
me a pain. As if near the whole kit of us wasn't pinched for the same
reason. Go tell the marines you're any better than the rest!"

It was Jean's first sharp conception of the brutal truth that the
stigma of the reformatory was all-embracing. The world presently
emphasized the stern lesson. True to her word on learning of the
censorship, she had never written home; but her mother's letters,
formal and mutilated as they were, had nevertheless meant more to
her than she realized until her degradation to the prison lopped
this privilege too away. The cumulative effect of Mrs. Fanshaw's
correspondence, when finally read, was not tonic. Despite the censor,
Jean gathered that Shawnee Springs now linked her name with Stella
Wilkes's. A refuge girl was a refuge girl; degrees and shadings of
misconduct lost themselves in the murky sameness of the stain. Her
grateful wonder grew that her champion of the forest had had the
insight to distinguish. His quixotic young faith and a heartening word
now and then from Miss Archer, when some infrequent errand brought the
little secretary near, between them redeemed humanity.

A torrid summer dragged into an autumn scarcely less enervating. The
kitchen-gardens were arid; the grass-plots sere; the scant wisps of
ivy wherewith Miss Archer, unsanctioned by the state, had attempted to
soften the more glaring shortcomings of the architect, hung dead beyond
all hope of resurrection; and the endless reaches of brick wall, soaked
in sunshine by day, reeked like huge ovens the live-long night. The
officials' tempers grew short, their decisions arbitrary beyond common;
obedience became daily more difficult; riot, full-charged, awaited only
its galvanizing spark.

This the prison contributed. Conditions were always hardest here, and
the rage they fostered had gathered itself into an ominous hatred
of the matron. Nor was this wholly due to her chance embodiment of
law. That carried weight, of course, but the prime factor in her
unpopularity was a stolid cynicism implanted by some years' prior
service in a metropolitan police station. Joined to a temperament like
the superintendent's, this could have been endured, though detested;
but the former matron of a "sunrise court" mixed her doubt with a
lumbering joviality against which sincerity beat itself in vain. Her
smile was a goad; her laugh a stinging blow.

The revolt turned upon an old grievance. Breakfast was a scant meal in
the prison, and the laundry squad, upon which the severest toil fell,
had for months clamored for a mid-forenoon luncheon. This request was
reasonable, but an intricate knot of red tape, understood clearly by
nobody, had balked its granting, and the matron accordingly reaped a
whirlwind which others had sown. All the week it threatened. On Monday
perhaps half the workers in the laundry, headed by Stella Wilkes,
repeated the old demand, and were sent about their business with heavy
sarcasm.

"Lunch, is it!" drawled the matron, with her maddening grin. "Sure
it's Vassar College, or Bryn Mawr maybe, these swells think they're
attendin'! How triggynomtry, an' dead languidges, an' the pianoforty do
tire the brain! Wouldn't you find a club sandwich tasty, young ladies?
Or a paddy-de-foy-grass, now? Back to your tubs!"

Jean took no part in the demonstration, and as the Wilkes girl returned
to her work she cursed her for a chicken-hearted coward. Since the day
of her rebuff she had worn her enmity like a chip upon her shoulder.
Jean met this, as she now met everything, with apathy. Stella, her
unlovely associates bending over the steaming tubs, the nagging
matron--one and all had their being in an unreal world, a nightmare
country, which must be stoically endured until the awakening. The
tomboy had become a mystic.

With this detachment she incuriously watched the rising storm. From
Tuesday to Thursday the unrest spent itself in note-writing, a
diversion, following Rabelaisian models in style, which was, of course,
forbidden. The contraband pencils found ingenious hiding-places,
however, and the notes themselves a lively circulation. One of these
missives, written by Stella and mailed with a scuttleful of fresh coal
in the laundry stove, fell under Jean's eye Thursday afternoon. It was
intended for another, but some delay had bungled its delivery, and the
flames unfolded it and betrayed its secret. Stella saw and pressed
close.

"If you blab, I'll kill you," she threatened hoarsely. "That's
straight."

Jean shrugged her away. She attached no weight to the scrawl's
ungrammatical hints of violence. Such vaporings were as common as
they were idle. Nor was she moved when, on Friday, during recreation,
the matron's alertness checked, though it failed truly to appraise,
a catlike dart of Stella's to the rear. She did not escape, however,
a certain sympathetic share in the tension which set the last day
of the week apart from other days. The nerves of a reformatory are
high-pitched. To be always dumb unless bidden to speak, forever aware
of a spying eye, eternally the slave of Yea and Nay--such is the
common lot. Double the feeling of repression, and you get the prison
and hysteria. From the rising-bell, Saturday, till she slept again,
Jean's senses were played upon by vague malign influences. All felt
them. If sleeve brushed sleeve, a scowl followed; muttered curses sped
the passing of every dish at meals; and in the stifling night some one
raised the heart-clutching chant against the matron. This was the time
Jean hailed it for her own.

Sunday brought no relief. The piping heat held unabated; hard work,
the week-day safety-valve, was lacking. Only the matron could muster
a smile. That smile! The prison file, passing, chapel bound, in
Sunday review, felt the heat hotter and life more bitter because of
it. The eyes of one girl blinked nervously; the fingers of a second
spread clawlike, then clenched; the jaws of another set. If that woman
laughed! The quadrangle peopled rapidly. Every building spun its
blue-gray thread into the paths. The earliest comers were quite at
the chapel steps when the prison girls, issuing from their frowning
archway last, swung reluctantly into the treeless glare. Their smiling
matron stood just within the shadow, looking exasperatingly cool in
her white linen, and outrageously at peace with herself and her smug,
well-ordered world. Then, abruptly, some trifle--perhaps a missing
button, possibly a curl where should be puritanic simplicity, nothing
more significant--loosed her sarcasm, her laugh and revolt.

A cry, different from the midnight defiance, yet as terrible, burst
from one of the prison girls. Shrill, bird-like, prolonged, it was
such a sound as the tortured captive at the stake may have heard from
the encircling squaws. It was well known in the refuge; decade had
bequeathed it to decade; and it was always the signal of mutiny. As
throat after throat took it up, the commands of the matrons became
mere angry pantomime. Rank upon rank melted in confusion, and the mob,
lusting for violence, awaited only its directing fury.

A leader rose. Stella had secretly fomented this outbreak; it was her
storm to ride openly if she dared. Yet it was scarcely a question of
daring. This was her supreme hour, hers by right of might; and had
another seized the lead she would have crushed her. With black locks
tumbled, eyes kindled, cheeks afire, wanting only the scarlet gear of
anarchy to cap her likeness to those women of other speech who braved
barricades like men, she rallied disorder about her as the fiercer
flame draws the less. Her following flocked from every quarter of the
quadrangle--high-grade girls, girls but just clear of the guardhouse;
the mature in years, the tender; the froward, the meek; spawn of the
tenements, wayward from the farm; beggars, vagrants, drunkards, felons,
wantons, thieves. Hysteria answering to hysteria, madness to madness,
like filings to the magnet they came, and, among them, Jean.

[Illustration: And, among them, Jean.]




                                  VI


Stella hailed the recruit with shrill satisfaction, clutched her by the
arm lest her allegiance falter, and beckoned on her amazons.

"Smash the prison first," she screamed. "We'll show 'em."

Back into the grim archway they swept, a frenzied, yelling horde,
and flung themselves into a fury of destruction. The window-panes
crashed first; then followed fusillades of crockery from dining-room
and kitchen. Nothing breakable survived; where glass failed, they
demolished furniture; lacking wood, they fell upon the plumbing.

Treading close in Stella's vandal wake, Jean laid waste right and
left with hands which she hazily perceived were but mere automata
under another unknown self's control. She was a dual being, thinking
one thing, doing its opposite. The active personality disquieted yet
fascinated the critical real self, and she realized, half dismayed,
that if Stella Wilkes should waver in her leadership, the mad, alien
Jean Fanshaw would in all likelihood leap to replace her.

But Stella harbored no thought of abdication. Her reign had just begun.
What was the too brief interval which had sufficed to wreck the hated
prison! There was as good pillage in the cottages, she reminded them;
better still in the administration buildings and the chapel. The chapel
now! What splendid atrocities they could wreak upon the big organ! And
after the chapel, why not storm the gatehouse? What were a handful of
guards! The gatehouse and liberty! Fired with this dream of conquest,
the mob armed itself with scraps of wreckage and trooped back to the
entrance to confront a thorough surprise. Bolted doors blocked their
triumphal progress--bolted doors and the matron, calm, resolute,
unarmed, and absolutely alone.

The quadrangle, too, had had its happenings. With the superintendent
absent, her assistant ill, and the few male guards at the gatehouse
but mere creatures of routine, wholly incapable of the generalship
which the crisis demanded, the outbreak could scarcely have been more
effectively timed; yet order somehow issued from confusion. Officials
acting separately bundled such of their charges as had not yielded to
hysteria into the cottages, and hurried back to cope with the open
mutiny. With this the prison matron demanded the right to deal. It
had flamed out in her special province; it was hers to quench if her
authority was to mean anything thereafter; and she stubbornly declined
aid. Not even the guards might enter with her; she would meet the
situation single-handed.

The rioters faced the lonely figure stupidly. Their clamor sank to
whispers, then silence. Their eyes blinked and shifted under the cold
survey which passed deliberately from girl to girl, missing none,
condemning all.

Suddenly the matron levelled a finger at a weak-jawed offender in the
van.

"Drop that stick!" she commanded.

The culprit sheepishly complied.

"You too!" She indicated the next, and was again obeyed. In the rear
some one whispered.

"Stella Wilkes, come here."

Habit swayed the girl a step forward before she realized that she was
tamely submitting, but she caught herself up with an oath, and returned
stare for stare.

The matron's voice sharpened.

"Stella," she repeated, "come here."

The rebel's grip upon her cudgel tightened.

"Come yourself," she retorted. "Come if you dast!"

The matron dared. Force rather than psychology had ruled the police
station of her schooling, and with the loss of her temper she reverted
instinctively to its crude argument. A rush, a glint of handcuffs
hitherto concealed, a violent brief struggle, a blow, a heavy
fall--such were the kaleidoscopic details of a battle whose whole
nobody saw perfectly, but from which Stella, the mob incarnate, emerged
unmistakably a victor. Moblike, she was also merciless, and continued
to rain blows which the half-stunned woman at her feet had power
neither to return nor fend. One of them drew blood, a scarlet thread,
which by fantastic approaches and doublings traversed the matron's now
pallid cheek and stained the whiteness of her dress.

It was then Jean woke. She was no longer among the foremost. Separated
from Stella in the sack of the upper floors, she had fallen late upon a
mirror of the matron's, miraculously preserved till her coming, and had
busied herself with its joyous ruin till the others had surged below
and the rencounter at the door had begun. With her first idle moment
apart from the common folly she experienced reaction; one glimpse of
the scene below effected a cure. She loved the vanquished as little as
the victor, but her every instinct for fair play and decency cried out
against the wanton blows, and drove her hotly through the press to the
dazed woman's side.

The surprise of the attack, more than its strength, disconcerted
Stella, and Jean had pulled the matron to her feet before retaliation
was possible. Nimble wits likewise counted most in the immediate
sequel. Quite in the moment of her charge Jean spied a coil of
fire-hose, which, used not half an hour ago for the sake of coolness,
lay still connected with its hydrant, and its possibilities flashed
instantly upon her. Before the ringleader's slow brain could divine her
purpose she had thrust the nozzle into the matron's fingers and sprung
to release the flood. Stella saw the advantages of this neglected
weapon now, and plunged to capture it, but a stream as thick as a
man's wrist took her squarely in the face with the pent energy of a
long descent from the hills, and brought her gasping to her knees.
Before she fairly caught her breath she was handcuffed and helpless,
and the matron, all bustle and resource with the turning of the tide,
was issuing crisp orders to as drenched, frightened, and abjectly
obedient a band of rebels as ever made unconditional surrender.

To her real conqueror Stella at least made full and volcanic
acknowledgment. The guardhouse alone stemmed the sulphurous eruption
which she poured out upon Jean's past, present, and future; and the
girls who heard shivered thankfully that another than themselves must
drag out existence under the blighting fear of such a requital. The
official attitude was more dispassionate. Barring now and again a
puzzled glance, as at some insoluble riddle, the matron in no wise
singled her preserver from the common run of mutineers to whom she
meted out added rigors and penalties for their offence. Far from
hastening her return to cottage life by her service in the cause of
law and order, Jean learned that she had narrowly escaped doubling
her prison term, and that the fact that the good in her conduct had
been allowed to weigh over against the evil was deemed a piece of
extraordinary clemency.

Yet even if that brief reign of unreason had added a half-year of
prison to the six months which a brief interval would round, its lesson
would not have been dear-bought; for, as she had returned richer by
a new conception of her womanhood from the flight of which the prison
was the price, so now she wrung sanity from her yielding to madness.
It terrified her that she could for one moment have become like these
weak pawns in an incomprehensible game, and the recoil intrenched her
in a fastness of self-control such as her girlhood had never conceived.
Happily there came also at this time another influence no less
wholesome and far-reaching.

One morning of early winter she quitted the prison in charge of a clerk
from the superintendent's office, who led the way to Cottage No. 6.
Jean's heart sank as they crossed the threshold. In the optimism born
of new resolutions she had hoped for a different lot. What availed new
resolutions here! But she was no sooner within than she was conscious
of a changed atmosphere. Bare as they were, the corridors seemed less
institutional; the recreation hall, glimpsed in passing, smiled an
almost animate greeting; while the room in which she was told to await
the cottage matron's leisure resembled the room it had been in nothing
save its four walls. Amy Jeffries, dusting the window-seat as if she
enjoyed it, was actually humming.

"Howdy!" she called. "Welcome home."

Jean lifted a warning finger.

"Somebody will hear," she cautioned. "Where will be your high grade
then?"

Amy grinned broadly.

"Noticed it, did you?" She pivoted complacently before a mirror. "Don't
I look for all the world like a trained nurse? Can't you just see me
doing the wedding march with the grateful millionaire I've pulled
through typhoid! Glory, but I am tickled to get out of checks!"

Jean was vexed at her folly.

"You'll get into them again mighty quick if she hears," she whispered.
"Don't be a fool."

"She!" Amy turned to stare. "Well, if you're not in from the backwoods!
You don't mean to say you haven't heard that the Holy Terror is gone?"

"Gone? You mean--"

"I mean g-o-n-e, gone--cleared out, skipped, skedaddled. Can't you
understand plain English? I thought everybody knew. She left a week ago
to be married."

"Married!"

"Ain't it the limit? Fancy _that_ with a husband!"

Jean tried, but failed. Stupendous as it was, this marvel paled in
interest beside the fact that Cottage No. 6 had lost its martinet.
Small wonder the house beamed.

"And the new matron is different?" she said.

"Different! Dif--" Amy became incoherent with amusement. "Say, but you
folks in the jug have been exclusive since the riot! You shouldn't be,
really you shouldn't. You miss so many things, you know. There was the
Astor ball, and the Vanderbilt dinner, and the swellest little supper
at Sherry's I've gone to this seas--"

All Amy's members were pinchable. Jean nipped the nearest.

"Has something happened, or hasn't there?" she demanded.

"Would I be talking here like a human being, not a jailbird, if
something corking hadn't happened?" She had a table between them now.
"Why, I wouldn't be high grade at all. There's been a new deal in No.
6 with a vengeance. You couldn't guess who's matron if I gave you all
day."

Jean's face went suddenly radiant.

"Not Miss Archer!"

"You smart thing," said Amy, crestfallen.

"Then it's true! It's really true?" The news was too wonderful for
credence. "I can't make it out."

"Neither can I. Why, she's even come over here at a smaller salary.
Ain't that a puzzler? I know because I heard her talking it over with
the Supe--the Terror had chased me up to the offices on an errand; and
you can bet I listened when I caught on that there was something coming
for No. 6. As near as I can figure it out, the riot's at the bottom of
it, but just why that should make Miss Archer throw up a better job and
better pay to camp down here beats little Amy. I'm no rapping medium."

Where Amy failed, Jean, with the clairvoyance of a finer nature,
presently divined the truth. It flashed upon her at the end of an hour
alone with the little matron, a wonderful, inspiring hour which she
came to look back upon as crucial--a forking of the ways where to have
chosen wrongly would have meant to miss life's best. Yet she could
never take it apart; its texture was gossamer. It helped nothing to
recall that the talk had sprung first from one or another of the room's
inanimate objects--some cast, book, picture, or bit of pottery--whose
sum mirrored Miss Archer's personality; yet one of them had surely been
the key to a Garden of the Spirit where common things underwent magical
transformations. The vague longings and aspirations which the forest
meeting had sown, seemed rank, uncertain growths no longer; precious,
rather, and infinitely desirable.

Jean drew a long breath when they separated.

"At first I could not understand why you came," she said; "but it's
plain now. It was to help--to help girls like me."




                                  VII


It was during the second spring that Mrs. Fanshaw came. Because of the
little matron Jean had finally broken her resolve to write no letters
home, whereupon her mother accepted the change as a sign of repentance
which, after a seemly interval, she decided to encourage with her
presence. Jean was keenly expectant of the promised visit. With the
shifting of her whole point of view she now blamed herself for many of
the things, so petty taken one by one, so serious in gross, which had
made her home life what it was; and out of the reaction there welled
an unguessed tenderness for her mother, shy of written expression, but
eager to confess itself in deed.

The official who brought Jean to the waiting-room and remained near
during the interview need not have turned a tactful back upon their
meeting for Mrs. Fanshaw's sake. That lady was as composed as the
best usage of Shawnee Springs's truly genteel could dictate under
circumstances so untoward. Her features reflected the most decorous
blend of pious resignation and parental compassion when the slender
blue-and-white figure flung itself from the doorway into her arms, and
she permitted the penitent to remain upon the bosom of her best alpaca
for an appreciable space of time with full knowledge that a waterfall
of lace, divers silken bows, and a long gold chain were lamentably
crushed by the impact.

"Concentrate, child," she admonished firmly. "How often I've told you
to aim at self-control at all times!"

Jean clung to her in a passion of homesickness, hearing nothing.

"Mother! Mother!" she repeated.

Mrs. Fanshaw detached herself, repaired the ravages, and turned a
critical eye upon her daughter.

"What a fright they've made of you!" she sighed. "The color of that
dress is becoming enough, but the pattern! What _have_ you been doing
to your hair?"

"My hair?" Jean fingered her braid vaguely. "Oh! You mean at the front?
It must be plain, you know."

"And your hands! You never kept them like Amelia's, but now--why, they
might be a day-laborer's."

"They are," said Jean.

But Mrs. Fanshaw's interest had fluttered elsewhere.

"I can't be too thankful that I spared Amelia this ordeal," she went
on. "Amelia was anxious to come. She said she felt it was her duty, but
I refused. She is so sensitive she could not have borne it. To see her
own sister in such clothes and in such surroundings would have made an
indelible impression."

Jean now had herself only too well in hand.

"I dare say the refuge might tarnish Amelia's girlish bloom," she
retorted dryly. "I hope you'll feel no bad effects yourself, mother."

"I'm positive I shall," replied Mrs. Fanshaw, seriously. "My nerves
are in a state already. But let that pass. Whatever the cost, I should
have come long ago if your behavior had been always what it should.
I could not come while you hardened your heart against God's will.
Your stubbornness in the beginning--they wrote me fully, Jean; your
unwomanly attempt to run away; that shocking riot, all showed--"

"That's past, mother."

"Past, yes; but not forgotten. Shawnee Springs never forgets anything.
Your escape was in the papers. I wrote you all that."

"They never let me know. Not in the home papers, the county papers?"

"No." Mrs. Fanshaw drew herself up. "Consideration for me prevented
that outrage. The editors preserved the same delicate silence that they
kept when you were arrested. But you don't seem to remember that city
dailies are read in Shawnee Springs. One vile sheet even printed your
picture."

The girl's face crimsoned painfully.

"Oh!" she cried sharply. "How could they! Where could they get it?"

Her mother hesitated.

"Amelia was in a way responsible," she admitted. "She was naturally
anxious at your disappearance, and when a nice-mannered young man
called and said that if he had your description he could help in the
search, the dear girl received him with open arms. How could _she_ know
he was a reporter!"

"She gave that man my picture!"

"Like a trusting child. Amelia has felt all our trouble so keenly. For
weeks after you were sent away she could scarcely look one of her set
in the face. She said she felt like a refuge girl herself. I had to
appeal to our pastor to make her see that neither of us was to blame.
She shrank from the world even then, but the world came to her."

"Meaning Harry Fargo?" queried Jean, emerging suddenly from the gloom
induced by Amelia's imbecility.

"Harry was particularly sweet," admitted Mrs. Fanshaw, archly. "In
fact, he has become a son to me in everything but name. If Amelia would
only--but I mustn't gossip."

Jean smiled without mirth.

"I think she'll land him," she encouraged.

Her mother frowned.

"What a common expression!" she rebuked. "I thought at first I noticed
an improvement in your language. Your voice is certainly better--much
lower. It's the prison discipline, I presume. But speaking of Harry, I
really think we may regard it as, well, reasonably sure. I must say I'm
pleased. Harry is so eligible."

Jean silently reviewed young Mr. Fargo's points; athlete second
to none in the gymnasium of the local Y.M.C.A.; gifted with a
tenor voice particularly effective at church festivals in ballads of
tee-total sentiment; heir presumptive to a mineral spring, a retail
coal business, and a seat in the directorate of the First National
Bank; clearly destined, in fine, to bloom one of the solid men of his
community. Joined to these virtues, present and prospective, he seemed
sincerely, if not ardently, fond of Amelia, and Jean with her whole
heart wished her sister's long-drawn-out wooing godspeed.

Perhaps she couched this less happily than she might. At all events,
Mrs. Fanshaw took warm-offence at some allusion to the suitor's
leisured siege.

"Under the circumstances," she remarked severely, "it's a wonder his
attentions have continued at all. No eligible young man in Shawnee
Springs can be expected to want a sister-in-law whose name everybody
mentions in the same breath with Stella Wilkes's, and you know the
Fargo family is as proud as Lucifer. I don't see that they have any
call to set themselves up as they do--the Tuttles were landowners in
the county twenty years before a Fargo was heard of; but there is
certainly some excuse for their standing off about Amelia. You don't
seem to appreciate how painful her situation has been. People were
only just pitching on something else to talk about after you went,
when you stirred the scandal up again by running away. That nearly
spoiled everything. I had it on the best of authority--Mrs. Fargo's
dressmaker is mine now--that Harry and his father actually came to
words. Then, to cap the climax, we'd no sooner settled down in peace
than the vulgar riot happened. Nobody knew positively whether you
were implicated, but they naturally judged you were, and of course I
couldn't conscientiously deny it when they asked me point-blank. It has
been terrible--terrible."

Jean was swept away upon the flood of egotism. She forgot that she too
had a point of view. Their wrongs were the great wrongs.

"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "It's true I didn't realize. I don't want
to stand in Amelia's way. You won't have reason to complain again while
I am here."

"I don't expect I shall. I can't conceive of another thing you could
be up to, even if your disposition to consider _our_ feelings a little
should change. If they'll only marry before your term expires!"

Jean's lips tightened.

"There's almost a year and a half yet," she said grimly. "Surely that's
time enough."

"It would be for anybody but a Fargo," sighed her mother. "They're slow
at everything. We can only hope and wait. It's been very hard."

"I'll try not to make it more so afterward," Jean returned. "I suppose
I must go back to the Springs at first. When a girl goes out they take
her--home. But I'll not stay. I'll go away at once."

"Go away! There are none of the relatives you can visit. The Tuttles
all feel the disgrace as if it were their own. As for your father's
folks--"

"I don't mean to visit. I mean to work--to live."

Mrs. Fanshaw focussed her parochial mind upon this outlandish
suggestion, assuming, as was her habit with novel impressions, an air
of truculent disapproval.

"Perhaps you still think you can gallivant about the country like a
man?" she remarked.

"No. I've got over that. I shall find some woman's work."

"You mean you'll cook, scrub, do the servant's drudgery you've learned
here? That would be a nice tale to go the rounds of the Springs!"

"I would cook or scrub if I had to, but I've been taught other
things. One of the girls who's leaving this fall--her name is Amy
Jeffries--knew no more about earning a living than I when she came
here, but she has an eight-dollar-a-week place waiting for her in New
York. She's going with a ready-made cloak firm. It was Miss Archer who
got her the place, and she says when the time comes she can probably do
as well by me."

"New York!" Mrs. Fanshaw shied with rural timidity from the fascinating
name. "You in New York! I must get Amelia's opinion. What if it should
prove a way out!"

During the remainder of the call the talk strayed mainly in a maze of
Shawnee Springs gossip which Jean followed in a lethargy beneath which
throbbed an ache. She had grown to value her home, not for what it had
been, but for what it might be, and to realize that it was beyond doubt
the more a home without her, cut deep. Mrs. Fanshaw had amputated an
ideal.

It in no way eased the smart to feel that her mother intended no
downright brutality. Indeed, as Jean did her the justice to perceive,
she tried in her clumsy way to be kind. She reverted again to the
agreeable change in the girl's voice, approved her quieter manner,
and, looking closer, even discerned a neatness in general upon which
she bestowed measured praise. It was in the midst of these final
note-takings that she detected her daughter in a vain attempt to
conceal some object in the folds of a pocketless dress.

"What are you doing?" she demanded in abrupt suspicion. "What are you
hiding from me?"

The girl started.

"Nothing," she said evasively.

"Nothing! You were always truthful at least."

"I mean nothing important."

Mrs. Fanshaw laid a firm grasp upon the shrinking hand, and dragged its
secret to light.

"Embroidery!" she exclaimed.

Jean's cheeks were poppies.

"Yes," she faltered.

"Whose is it?"

"Mine."

The reluctant monosyllables whipped Mrs. Fanshaw's curiosity wide awake.

"No more nonsense," she charged. "Tell me at once who gave you this."

"Nobody," confessed Jean faintly. "I--I made it."

"You!" A pair of glasses, black-rimmed and formidable, bore instantly
upon the marvel and searched it stitch by stitch.

Jean waited breathless. Wrought with infinite labor not of the hands
alone, the little piece of needlework was absurdly freighted with
meaning. In the old days she had loathed such employment as ardently as
her sister loved it, but of late she had set herself doggedly to learn
the art, since it seemed to her that this more than anything else would
typify her new outlook, her return to sex. As such a symbol she had
brought her handiwork into the visitors' room. As such, before their
meeting, she had hoped her mother might interpret it. Even now, bereft
of illusions as she was, she still hoped something, she knew not what.

In fairness to Mrs. Fanshaw it should be recorded that she apparently
grasped some hint of this. Relatively speaking, her smile was
encouraging. Viewed from her own standpoint, she all but scaled the top
note of praise when, extending the embroidery at last, she said,--

"It is almost as good as Amelia's."

The new Jean was still no candidate for sainthood. White to the lips
with anger, she caught the emblem of her regeneration from Mrs.
Fanshaw's profaning hand and tore it to little strips.




                                 VIII


Thenceforward Jean dreaded nothing so much as any return to Shawnee
Springs whatsoever. Here, for once, she found herself in perfect accord
with her mother, for, as the time of her release drew near, young
Mr. Fargo's sauntering courtship took a sudden spurt, not clearly
explicable to himself, whose prime and bewildering result was the
fixing of his wedding day.

Dear Amelia naturally longed for her sister's presence at the
culmination of her happiness (so Mrs. Fanshaw put it), but there were
the Fargos to consider--they were not cordial, by the way--and if the
refuge authorities made no objection, would it not perhaps be better if
she met the official having Jean in charge at some intermediate point,
from which she could proceed at once to her new calling? Jean, she was
convinced, would understand.

Jean understood very well, but was thankful. She would rather serve
another month in the refuge than be an unwelcome guest at Amelia's
marriage. In truth, had she been put to a choice, she would have
elected further confinement to her mother's roof in any case. She
thought of the reformatory, not Shawnee Springs, as home, and this in a
sense which embraced more than Miss Archer and the transformed Cottage
No. 6. She loathed the life no less than in the beginning, but time
had knit her to its every phase. The cowed, drab ranks had long since
ceased to seem alien. Their deprivations, their meager privileges,
their rights, their wrongs, their sorrows, their spectral gayeties, all
were hers. She had thought to dart from the gatehouse like a wild thing
from a trap. In reality she paused to look back with a lump in her
throat.

Yet it was a blithe world outside, the fog and gloom of a November
rain notwithstanding. Even the wet glisten of the mire seemed
cheery. A hundred trivialities, unheeded by her companion, absorbed
her unjaded eyes. The red and green liquids of a druggist's window
lured her as in childhood; then the glitter of a toy-shop enticed,
or the ruddy invitation of a forge. Station and train were each a
mine of entertainment. The ticket-buying was an event of the first
magnitude; the slot-machines, the time-tables, the news-stands, the
advertisements, all the prosaic human spectacle had the freshness of
novelty. She noted that women's sleeves had a fullness of which the
little tailor-shop in the refuge was but dimly aware; that men's hats
curled closer at the brim; that the trainmen wore a different uniform;
that one rural depot or another had received a coat of paint.

Mrs. Fanshaw was in waiting.

"There's a train back to the Springs in twenty minutes," she announced
briskly, after a preoccupied dab at Jean's cheek, "and under the
circumstances"--she was always under circumstances--"I know you won't
mind if I take it instead of waiting till your own goes out. What
with presents arriving, the dressmaker, and the snobbish behavior of
Harry's family, I expect as it is to find Amelia on the edge of nervous
prostration. Every minute is precious, we're so rushed. In fact, I
could not find time to pack a single stitch for you to take to New
York. Anyhow, I understood from your last letter that the refuge would
fit you out with the necessaries, which is certainly a help at this
time when I'm paying out right and left for Amelia. Why," she wound up
suddenly, "your suit is actually tailor-made!"

"Yes," said Jean.

"Excellent material, too," commented Mrs. Fanshaw, fingering the
texture. "Does every girl fare as well?"

"The low-grade girls get no jackets, only capes; and their material
isn't so good."

"Then you're high grade! You never wrote me."

"I did not think it would interest Shawnee Springs."

Mrs. Fanshaw looked aggrieved.

"You are a strange child," she complained; "so secretive, so
self-centered. I suppose your suit was made in the refuge?"

"Yes."

"By one of the inmates?"

"By one of the inmates--myself."

"Strange child!" said her mother again. "Strange child!"

Linked by nothing save a distasteful past, they sat together for an
interval in constrained silence. Even at their friendliest, mother
and daughter had lacked conversational small change. Presently Mrs.
Fanshaw's roving eye encountered the dial of a train-indicator and
brightened.

"The Shawnee Springs accommodation is on time for once," she announced.

Jean responded with sincerity that she was glad. That her own train
was as plainly registered an hour late, with the equally obvious
consequence that she must arrive after nightfall in a strange city, was
unimportant.

Mrs. Fanshaw opened her hand-bag.

"Here is the price of your ticket to New York," she said, counting out
the exact fare. "You had better buy it at once."

Jean did so. When she returned from the ticket-office her mother was
smoothing the creases from a bank-note.

"Did they supply you with any money?" she asked cautiously.

"With two dollars."

"Is that all?"

"They paid my fare here."

"How niggardly in a great state! I can spare you so little myself. But
you will begin work at once?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Then ten dollars ought to answer until you draw your first earnings,
if you are not extravagant."

"I shan't stop at the Waldorf," promised Jean, grimly. She took the
bill, as she had taken the money for the ticket, without thanks, saying
only, "I will pay it back."

Another blank silence fell. Mrs. Fanshaw stirred restively.

"I hope that Jeffries girl can be depended on to meet you," she
presently remarked.

"I think she can."

"It's certainly a convenience to know somebody at the start, but I
don't feel that she is a very desirable associate, whatever Miss Archer
thinks. You can drop her later, of course, whenever it seems best."

"Drop her!"

Mrs. Fanshaw jumped at the vehemence of the exclamation.

"How abrupt you are! What I mean to say is that you will hardly want to
keep up these reformatory acquaintances. If I were you I should make
it a rule to recognize none of them you can by hook or crook avoid.
Possibly this girl is superior to most of her class. I don't think you
ever mentioned just why she was sent to the refuge?"

Jean's eyes discharged an angry spark.

"You're quite right," she retorted. "I never have."

Mrs. Fanshaw was still waiting in becoming patience for Jean to repair
this omission when her train was announced. They rose and faced each
other awkwardly.

"Well, good-by," said the elder woman, presenting her cheek.

"Well, good-by," said Jean.

She watched her mother into a car, and through successive windows
traced her bustling progress to a seat. Mrs. Fanshaw found no leisure
for a last glance outward, and Jean, by aid of certain sharply etched
memories, divined that she was absorbed in repelling seat-mates. So
occupied, she vanished. Jean could have cried with ease, but sternly
denied herself the luxury. She yet retained something of her old
boy-like intolerance of the tear-duct, though the refuge, acquainting
her with nerves, had dulled the confident edge of her scorn. Tears, she
now perceived, like tea, had uses for women other than purely physical.

Happily life's common things still wore a bloom of surpassing freshness
for her cloistered eye. This second station, like yet unlike the first;
the tardy train, thundering importantly in at last; the stirring flight
into the unknown, each served its diverting turn. As dusk settled,
the landscape became increasingly littered with signs trumpeting the
virtues of breakfast foods, women's wear, or plays current in the
metropolitan theatres; while the villages grew smarter in pavement and
lighting till she mistook one or two for near suburbs of the great city
itself. Then the open spaces grew rare. Did the semblance of a field
survive, it was gridironed by streets of the future or sprawled upon by
huge factories, formless leviathans of a thousand gleaming eyes. Town
linked itself to town.

When they had run for a long time within what she knew must be the
limits of the city itself, a brakeman mouthed some unintelligible
remark from the door, and the train came to a stop. Jean caught up her
bag, but observing that a drummer of flirtatious propensities, who for
an hour past had shared her seat, made no move, was left in doubt.

"Isn't this New York?" she asked.

Her seatmate surveyed her facetiously.

"Some of it," he said. "Want any particular part of the village?"

"The main station," blushed the provincial.

"You mean the Grand Central. Sit tight then. This is only a
Hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street--Harlem, you know, where the goat joke
flourishes. Never saw a billy there myself, and I boarded a year on
Lenox Avenue, too."

Jean turned from a disquisition on boarding-houses to the car-window.
In its night-time glitter of electricity the street which he dismissed
with a careless numeral quite fulfilled her rural notion of Broadway.
If these were but the outposts, what was the thing itself!

They shot a tunnel presently, which the drummer berated in terms
long since made familiar by the newspapers, threaded a maze of
block-signals and switch-lights, and halted at last in an enormous
cavern of a place which she needed no hint from her now too friendly
neighbor to assure her was truly New York.

The drummer urged his escort, but she eluded him in leaving the car and
hurried on in the press. Nearing the gate, however, her pace slackened.
The bigness of the train-shed confused her, and she was daunted by the
clamor of hackmen and street-cars which penetrated from without. Amy
had written that she would meet her if she could leave her work, but
Jean could spy her nowhere in the waiting crowd banked in the white
glare of the arc-lights beyond the barrier. They were unfamiliar to the
last pallid urban face.

She had gone slowly down the human aisle and was wavering on the
outskirts, uncertain whether to wait longer or adventure for herself,
when the drummer reappeared at her elbow.

"Didn't your party show up?" he said. "I call that a mean trick. You
had better let me help you out, after all. You look like a girl with
sand. What say we give 'em a lesson? We can have supper at a nice,
quiet little place I know up the street, take in a show afterward, and
then when we're good and ready hunt up your slow-coach friends. Is it a
go?"

She looked every way but toward him, saw a policeman, and aimed
forthwith for the shelter of his uniform. Halfway she felt her hand
seized, turned hotly, expecting the drummer, and plumped joyfully into
the arms of a young person of fashion who greeted her with an ecstatic
hug.

"Amy! I was never so glad to see you!"

The girl emerged from the embrace, panting.

"I really think you are," she said. "Sorry to keep you waiting. There
was a block on the 'L.' What was that fellow saying to you?"

When Jean had told her she peered eagerly into the crowd.

"I find blond hair lets you in for a lot of that," she commented. "He
was a traveling man, you say?"

"I think so."

"Sort of sandy, with a reddish mustache? I could only see his back."

"Sandy? I'm not sure. I avoided looking at him."

Amy was silent while they passed to the street, and continued to scan
the faces about her. When they had wormed into a street-car packed with
standing women and seated men she spoke again of Jean's adventure.

"Did he say what line of goods he was carrying?" she asked.

"No," Jean answered indifferently. The spectacle of the pavement
without had already ousted the drummer from her thoughts.

"Or where he lived?"

"Where he lived?" She turned now and saw that the girl's eyes were
very bright. "He mentioned that he had boarded here somewhere--Harlem,
was it?"

"Harlem!" Amy's pink cheeks turned rose-red. "And did he have a scar, a
little white scar, near his eyebrow?"

"I didn't notice."

"I wish you had."

Jean eyed her narrowly.

"I wish I had, too, if it matters so much," she returned.

Amy donned a mask of transparent indifference.

"Of course it doesn't matter," she said. "At first I thought it might
be somebody I used to know."




                                  IX


They alighted at a kind of wooded island, girt by trolley lines and
crisscrossed by many paths, along one of which they struck. Although it
was November, the benches by the way frequently held slouching forms,
sodden men or unkempt women, at whom none glanced save a fat policeman.
Neighboring electric signs lit the lower end of the little park
brilliantly, and here, cheek by jowl with restaurant, vaudeville, and
saloon, Jean suddenly spied an august figure with which school-history
woodcuts had made her familiar from pinafores.

"Why, this is Union Square!" she cried triumphantly. "I know it by
Washington's statue over there. And this street we're coming to must be
Broadway."

"You're not so slow," said Amy, halting at the curb. "Here's another
chance to show your speed. Mind you step lively when I see a chance."
In the same breath she dragged her charge into a narrowing gap between
two street-cars, dodged a truck, circled a push-cart, and issued
miraculously, safe and sound, upon the farther side.

They traversed now a street of entrancing shop-windows over which Jean
exclaimed, but which Amy in her sophistication dismissed with the
brief comment that the real thing was elsewhere. With the same careless
unconcern she dropped, "This is Fifth Avenue," at their next crossing;
but she immediately discounted Jean's awe by adding, "Not the swell
section, you know," and hurried from its unworthy precincts toward an
avenue which the elevated railroad bestrode. This, too, was wonderfully
curious, with its countless little shops and stalls, but Amy allowed
her a mere taste of it only and whipped round a corner into a dimly lit
street of dwellings, each with a scrap of a dooryard tucked behind an
iron fence.

As they mounted the high steps of one of these houses, Jean remarked
with due respect that it was unmistakably a brownstone front--a species
of metropolitan grandeur upon which untravelled Shawnee Springs often
speculated vaguely; though its dilapidation, obvious even by night,
helped to put her at her ease. A placard inscribed, "Furnished Rooms
and Board," held a prominent station in one of the basement windows,
which was further adorned with a strange symbol upon red pasteboard,
explained by Amy, while they waited, as a mute appeal to a certain
haughty city official whose business was the collection of garbage.

"The landlady's name is St. Aubyn," Amy further imparted; "or at any
rate that's what she goes by. She's the grass-widow of an actor. Some
people say her real name is Haggerty, but that needn't bother us. We
can't afford to be finicky, or at least I can't."

"Nor I," agreed Jean.

Mrs. St. Aubyn, who at this juncture opened the door in person, looked
a weary-eyed woman of fifty-odd, in whose face still lingered some
melancholy vestiges of charm. She greeted, without enthusiasm, Amy's
buoyant announcement that she had brought her a new boarder, saying
that, although she had no complaint to make of Miss Jeffries and
supposed she should get on equally well with her friend, on the whole
she preferred men.

"They all do," cried Amy, in mock dudgeon. "Every blessed
boarding-house in New York prefers men."

The actor's grass-widow did not question this sweeping statement,
evidently deeming it a truism which needed neither explanation nor
defence, but went on to say that inasmuch as Miss Jeffries already
knew the rooms and prices, and since she herself was dog-tired, and
the turnips were burning, and the cream-puffs had not come, and one
could not trust the best of servants beyond one's nose, she would leave
them to themselves, all of which she delivered with dwindling breath,
backing meanwhile toward the basement stair, till voice and speaker
vanished together.

"Don't mind her little ways," consoled Amy, leading the way upward.
"She is really tickled to death to see you. The elevator's out of
order," she added facetiously, "but I'm on the first floor--counting
from the roof down. A good place it is, too, on hot summer nights when
breezes are scarce."

She showed the narrow rear hall-bedroom she now occupied; a rather
bigger cell, deriving its ventilation solely from a skylight, which
Jean might have at the same price; and, finally, in enviable contrast,
a really spacious chamber at the front, possessing no less than three
windows,--dormers, it was true, yet windows,--a generous closet, and
a steam-radiator, all within their united means did they care to room
together. Amy tried to state the case dispassionately, but she could
not weigh the advantages of three dormers, a full-grown closet, and a
steam-radiator with perfect calm, and after one glance, not at these
persuasive features, but Amy's, Jean promptly voted for the joint
arrangement.

Amy hugged her rapturously.

"If you only knew how I've wanted it!" she exclaimed. "You can't
possibly do better for your money than here. Take my word for it, I've
tramped everywhere to see. It has a lot of good points. For one thing,
you'll be within walking distance of a warm lunch that won't cost
extra, and that's a big item, I can tell you. Besides, you'll meet nice
people. A dentist has the second floor front who's a regular swell, but
real sociable, and in the hall-bedroom, third floor back, there's an
old man who works in the Astor Library. He knows so much, I'm almost
afraid to talk to him. Why, they say he had a college education!
Then, there's a girl who typewrites for a law firm down in Nassau
Street--she's on our floor; another who's a manicure; and a quiet old
couple that used to have money, but lost it in Wall Street. All those
are permanents. There are two others, a man and his wife, who may go
any time because they belong to the profession."

"Which?" asked Jean, innocently.

"Why, the stage. Mrs. St. Aubyn always calls it 'the profession.' She
gets actors off and on who are waiting for engagements. She must have
known a stack of them once."

Jean shrank from the thought of dining with this array of fashion,
learning, and talent, particularly when she discovered that one long
table held them all; but nothing could have been less formal than
the meal. The prodigy of learning from the Astor, who, by virtue of
intellect or seniority, sat at the head of the board in pleasing
domestic balance to Mrs. St. Aubyn at the foot, chatted amiably
with Jean and Amy, quite like a person of ordinary attainments. The
stenographer exchanged ideas upon winter styles with the wife of the
shorn lamb of Wall Street, who, on his part, forgot his losses in a
four-sided discussion, with the manicure and the professional birds of
passage, of the President's latest speech, a document which it tardily
developed none of them had read.

Mrs. St. Aubyn's conversation dealt mainly with the food, and was
aimed at the maid, whose blunders were apparently legion, but even she
found leisure, as did every person in the room, for a quip with the
jocund ruling spirit of the feast, Dr. Paul Bartlett. Coming last, the
dentist instantly leavened the whole lump. He drew gems of dramatic
criticism from the players, got the bookworm's opinion of a popular
novel, inquired the day's happenings on 'Change' from the shorn lamb,
discussed a murder trial with the legal stenographer, the outrageous
rise in price of coal with Mrs. St. Aubyn, and the growing extravagance
of women's sleeves with Amy and the manicure, all between the soup and
fish. In fine, as Mrs. St. Aubyn loudly whispered to Jean in leaving
the dining room, he was the life of the occasion. Whether he heard this
or not, Doctor Bartlett redoubled his efforts, if they were efforts,
when after eddying uncertainly about the newel post of the main hall
the company finally drifted into the drawing-room.

This was not a blithesome apartment. It ran extraordinarily to
length and height, Jean thought, rather to the scamping of its third
dimension, and was decorated after the dreary fashion of the decade
immediately succeeding the Civil War. Its woodwork was black walnut,
its chandelier a writhing mass of tortured metal, its mantelpiece
a marble sepulchre. A bedizened family Bible of some thirty pounds
avoirdupois, lying upon a stand ill designed to bear its weight,
blocked one window, while a Rogers group, similarly supported, filled
the other. The pictures were sadly allegorical save one, a large
engraving entitled "The Trial of Effie Deans." Yet, despite these
handicaps, the dentist contrived to give the room an air of cheer.
Spying a deck of cards upon the entablature of the mausoleum, he
performed a mystifying trick, which he followed with fortunes, told
as cleverly as a gypsy's, and with feats of sleight of hand. Then,
dropping to the piano-stool, he coaxed from the venerable instrument
a two-step which set everybody's feet beating time; passed from this
to a "coon song" one could easily imagine was sung by a negro; and,
finally, chief marvel of all, he succeeded in luring everybody except
Jean into joining the chorus of the latest popular air. In the midst
of all these things he narrated most amusing little stories, mainly of
dentists' offices, punctuated with dental oaths and imprecations like
"Holy Molars" and "Suffering Bicuspid," which sounded comically profane
without being so.

The girls discussed him animatedly from their pillows in the wonderful
room of three dormers.

"Didn't I tell you he was sociable?" Amy demanded. "Can't he sing
simply dandy? And isn't he good-looking?"

Jean gave a general assent. She liked the young fellow's breeziness.
She liked his cleanliness, too, and remarked upon it.

"I noticed it first of all," she said.

"Yes, and what's better," added Amy, "you'll never see him look any
different. He says soap and water mean dollars in his business. That's
one reason why he's so run after at the parlors. None of the other
dentists there seem to care."

"Then he hasn't an office of his own?"

"Not yet. He works in a Painless Dental Parlor over on Sixth Avenue.
You'll know the place by a tall darky in uniform they keep at the foot
of the stairs to hand out circulars."

"Do you suppose he thought it strange that I didn't sing with the
rest?" Jean asked anxiously. "He looked round twice."

"I shouldn't wonder. He couldn't guess, naturally, that you've had a
steady diet of hymns for three years. Still, that song is only just
out, and half of us didn't know the words."

"Did I do anything else queer?"

"Well, you tried hard to pass dishes down the line, instead of letting
the maid do it, and you looked sideways a good deal without turning
your head. I don't think of anything else just now unless it's that
you're as nervous as a cat. Miss Archer did her best to make us girls
act like other human beings, but she didn't run the whole refuge,
more's the pity. I've got a stack of things to thank her for. Do you
notice I don't say 'ain't' any more?"

"Yes."

"She broke me of that. She said I'd find it paid to speak good English,
and I have. Already it's meant dollars to me, just like the doctor's
soap and water."

Jean wondered how grammatical accuracy could further the making of
cloaks, but Amy had suddenly become too drowsy to explain. Rest came
less easily to the newcomer. The muffled roar of the elevated railroad,
heeded by the urban ear no more than the beat of surf, teased her
excited senses to insomnia. Oblivion came abruptly when she despaired
of sleep at all, and then, as quickly, morning, with Amy shaking
her awake. The light from the three dormers was still uncertain and
the air chill, for though the prized radiator clanked and whistled
prodigiously, it emitted no warmth.

Jean sprang up hurriedly.

"Am I late?"

"No; early. I thought you'd better get down to Meyer & Schwarzschild's
a little before time the first day. You'll have to wear your
street-suit there, of course, but you need another skirt and a big
apron for work. Just use these I've laid out as long as you like."

"But you'll need them yourself."

Amy smiled mysteriously.

"No, I shan't," she returned, shaking down a smart black skirt over a
petticoat which gave forth the unmistakable rustle of silk. "In fact,
this is my work-dress--or one of them." She revolved slowly before the
glass a moment, relishing Jean's astonishment, then went on: "I'll have
to own up now. The cat was almost out of the bag last night. I didn't
want to tell you till this morning. I thought it might discourage you.
I'm not with Meyer & Schwarzschild any more."

"You've left the cloak firm!" Jean was taken aback, but tried to hide
her disappointment. "I'm glad you've done better," glancing again at
Amy's magnificence; "it's easy to see you have."

"Well, I guess! I'm a cloak-model in one of the biggest department
stores in the United States."

"A cloak-model!" The term suggested only a wax-faced dummy to Jean.
"What do you do?"

"Walk up and down before the millionaires' wives, and make the pudgy
old things think they'll look as well as I do if they buy the garment.
But they never do look as well. I got the place through a buyer who
came to Meyer & Schwarzschild's once in a while. He saw that I have
style and a good figure, and don't say 'ain't'--he really mentioned
that!--and told the cloak department that I was the girl they were
looking for. Sounds easy, doesn't it?"

It sounded anything but easy to Jean.

"And you like it?" she said. "But I needn't ask you that."

"Don't I! Maybe it doesn't give you thrills to parade up and down
with a three-hundred-dollar evening wrap on your back! But cheer up,"
she added quickly, reading Jean's face. "I'm going down to Meyer &
Schwarzschild's with you this morning and give you a rousing send-off."




                                   X


The section of Broadway to which Amy piloted Jean, showing her all the
short cuts which would save precious time at lunch hour, seemed wholly
given over to wholesale establishments with signs bearing Hebrew names.

"Yes; this is Main Street of the New Jerusalem, all right," she
assented to Jean's comment; "but you'll find there are Jews and Jews in
the clothing trade. I'd hate to work for some of the chosen people I've
seen, but you'd have to hunt a long time to find a more well-meaning
man than old Mr. Meyer. I only hope he'll be down this morning."

Other workers, chiefly women and girls, crowded into the rough freight
elevator by which they ascended, and one or two who got off with them
at Meyer & Schwarzschild's loft greeted Amy by name. They inventoried
her finery minutely, Jean saw, and nudging one another, arched
significant brows when her back was turned. On her part, Amy took
little notice of them, and, without introducing Jean, swept by toward
the flimsy partition of wood and ground glass which shut the workrooms
from the counting-room, brushed aside an office boy, who demanded her
business, and knocked at a half-open door lettered, "Jacob Meyer, Sr."

The head of the firm, who bade them enter, was a very old man with
a patriarchal beard. He smiled benignantly, recognized Amy after a
moment's hesitation, asked about her new position, and patted her on
the shoulder when she told him he must be as good to Miss Fanshaw as he
had been to her. Turning to Jean, he said that Miss Archer had never
sent them a poor worker.

"I have the highest opinion of Miss Archer," he added, with the air of
a presiding officer who relished the taste of his own periods. "Her
charity knows neither Jew nor Gentile. I met her first here in New York
when some of us were trying a philanthropic experiment in the so-called
Ghetto. It presented grave difficulties, very grave difficulties,
and it is hardly too much to say,--in fact, I have no hesitation in
saying,--that Miss Archer saved the day. I recall one most signal
instance of her tact--"

He would have rambled on willingly, but Amy cut in with the statement
that she must be off, squeezed Jean's hand encouragingly, and whisked
out forthwith. Her abrupt exit seemed to disorder the deliberate
clockwork of old Mr. Meyer's thoughts, for he sat some little time
staring at a letter-file with his mouth ajar, till, recollecting
himself at last, he brought forth, "As I was saying, my dear, I trust
you'll like our ways,"--which Jean was certain he had not said at
all,--and thereupon led her to the door of one of the workrooms and
turned her over to its forewoman, a stout Jewess with oily black hair
combed low to disguise her too prominent ears.

Work had begun, and the place was deafening with the whir of some
thirty-odd close-ranked machines which, their ends almost touching,
filled all the floor save the narrowest of aisles, where stood the
chairs of the operators. To one of these sewing-machines and a
huge pile of unstitched sleeves Jean was assigned. The task itself
was simple, after the sound training of the refuge school, but the
conditions under which she worked told heavily against her efficiency.
The din was incessant, the light poor, the low-ceiled room crowded
beyond its air-space, and the floor none too clean. As the morning drew
on, the atmosphere became steadily worse. Now and then the forewoman
would open a window,--she stood mainly by a door herself, turning and
turning a showy ring upon her fat index finger,--but the relatively
purer air thus admitted reached only the girls who worked nearest, of
whom Jean was not one, and these soon shivered and complained of drafts.

By the time the hands of a dingy clock marked ten, her head was
throbbing violently and her spine seemed one prolonged ache. Her
neighbors, except a thin-cheeked woman who stopped now and again to
cough, turned off their stints with the regularity of long habit,
straightening only to seize fresh supplies for their insatiable
machines. At twelve o'clock, when whistles blew from all quarters
and the other employees, dropping work as it stood, scrambled for
lunch-boxes or wraps, Jean relaxed in her chair, too jaded to rise.
Food was out of the question,--even the look of the pickle-scented
luncheons which some of the cloak-makers opened made her ill,--but
she presently dragged herself outdoors, and striking down a cross
street, at whose farther end she could see trees, came to a little park
distinguished by a marble arch, where she wandered aimlessly till she
judged it time to return.

The streets she retraced were now thronged with masculine wage-earners
lounging and smoking in the doorways of their various places of
employment. All paid her the tribute of a stare, and some made audible
comments on her hair or eyes, or what they termed her shape. Her own
doorway was also crowded. These idlers were, for the most part, girls
from the many garment-manufactories of one sort and another which the
great building housed; but a man stood here and there, either the
leader or the butt of some horse-play. One of the young women who had
scrutinized Amy in the elevator nodded to her and seemed about to
speak, but Jean felt too heart-sick for words, and returned at once
to her appointed corner in the hive, where, although it still lacked
something of one o'clock, she again sat down to her machine. The air
was better, for the windows had been thrown open during the noon-hour,
but the room was in consequence very chill, and her fellow-workers,
now drifting back in twos and threes, grumbled as they came. Among
them was the girl who had greeted her below, and looking at her with
more interest Jean read kindness in her freckled face. Their eyes met
again, with a half-smile, and the girl edged down the narrow lane for a
moment's gossip.

"You'll find it better to take a bite of lunch, even if you don't
hanker for it," she observed.

"How do you know I haven't?" Jean asked.

"That's easy. For one reason, I seen you walkin' in Washington Square.
For another, a green hand here don't never want lunch. Not used to this
kind of thing, are you?"

"To the work, yes; not the noise, the bad air."

"Where'd you work last?"

"In a small town," she eluded.

"That's different. You don't have the sweat-shop in the country, I
guess."

"Sweat-shop!" Jean had heard that sinister term before. "Is that what
they call Meyer & Schwarzschild's?"

The girl laughed at her simplicity.

"I call it one," she rejoined, "even if it is on Broadway. Don't low
wages and dirt and bad air and disease make a sweat-shop?"

"Disease! What do you mean?"

"Well, consumption, for instance. It isn't bronchitis, as she thinks,
that ails the woman next machine to you. I could tell you other things,
but what's the use! You won't stop here any longer than I will, and
that's just long enough to find a better job."

The afternoon lapsed somehow. Once, a youngish, overdressed man with
blustering manners and thick, bright-red lips came into their workroom
and told the forewoman that a certain order must be rushed. He idled
near Jean's machine for an interval, under pretence of examining her
work, but he mainly looked her in the face. As he passed down the
aisles, he touched this girl and that familiarly. Those so favored
were without exception pretty, and they usually simpered under his
attentions, though one or two grimaced afterward. When he had gone,
Jean's thin-cheeked neighbor told her between coughs that this was the
younger Meyer.

She met him again when she passed the offices in leaving for the night,
and he again stared fixedly, wearing his repulsive, scarlet smile. She
jumped at the conclusion that old Mr. Meyer had mentioned that she
came from a reformatory, and hurried by with burning cheeks. The night
air refreshed her a little, but the way home seemed endless, and the
three flights from Mrs. St. Aubyn's door to the dormered bedroom were
appalling in prospect. She entered faint with hunger and fagged with
a thoroughness she had not known since the earlier days in the refuge
laundry.

Amy sprang up from a novel.

"Don't say a word," she charged. "I suspicioned how it would be when
you didn't show up for lunch. Not that I expected you, though. I'd have
bet a pound of chocolates you wouldn't come."

Jean was content to say nothing and let herself be mothered. Amy showed
no trace of fatigue. She had changed her black blouse for a white one
of some soft fabric, and looked as fresh and pink-cheeked as if she had
idled the live-long day.

"Now for the pick-me-up," she said briskly, after making Jean snug
among the pillows; and what with a tiny kettle and a spirit-lamp, some
sugar which she rummaged from a bureau drawer, and a little milk from
the natural refrigerator of the window-sill, she concocted in no time a
really savory cup of tea.

Then, only, Jean found voice.

"Did you know all the time," she demanded, "that Meyer &
Schwarzschild's is no better than a sweat-shop?"

"I worked there a year," Amy returned sententiously. "I'm not saying it
was as bad all along as now. It was as decent as any at first, and I
hear that even now the room where the cutters work is pretty fair."

"Does Miss Archer know? But that's impossible."

"Of course she doesn't. And, though you mayn't believe it, old Mr.
Meyer doesn't know either. You saw what he is! It's only hospitals and
orphan asylums he thinks about. He totters down to business for about
an hour a week, and if he ever pokes his dear old nose into one of the
workrooms, it's early in the morning before the air gets so thick you
could slice it."

"But his partner--Schwarzschild? Where is he?"

"Dead. They keep the name because the firm is an old one. It's all
Meyer now, and that doesn't mean Jacob Meyer, Sr., but Jake. You
probably saw Jake. He has tomato-colored lips and an affectionate
disposition."

Jean shivered.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"How could I? Everything was settled before I knew you were going
there. Anyhow, it's a living while you are hunting something better.
I'm in hopes to get you in where I am. I spoke to a floor-walker I know
to-day. My department is full, but they'll probably need more help
downstairs for the Christmas rush."

"That would be merely temporary."

"Most every place is temporary till they size you up. If you're what
they want, they'll keep you on after the holidays, never fear. You may
have to take less money to begin with than you get now, but it will be
easier earned. Any old thing is better than Jake Meyer's joint, _I_
think."

This hope carried Jean through the three ensuing days. The conditions
at the cloak-factory were at no time better--in fact, once or twice,
when it rained and the girls came with damp clothing, they were worse;
but she omitted no more meals, and after the second day accustomed
herself to the steady treadmill of the machine.

At luncheon, Friday, Amy had news.

"Come up to the store after you stop work to-night," she directed.
"Beginning to-day, we keep open longer. Take the elevator to the fourth
floor."

"There's a place for me?"

"I'm not saying that. I spoke to my friend, the floor-walker,
again--he's in the toy department--and he told me to bring you round."

Jean found the vast establishment easily. The difficulty would have
been to miss it. Pushing her way through the holiday shoppers crowding
the immense ground-floor, she wormed into an elevator, got out as Amy
bade, and, after devious wanderings in a wonderful garden of millinery,
came finally upon her friend's special province and Amy herself.

Or was it Amy? She looked twice before deciding. It was not so much
the costly garment, a thing of silks, embroideries, and laces, which
effected the transformation,--Jean expected something of the kind,--as
it was the actress in Amy herself, which impelled her to play the part
the costume implied. With eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed, shoulders
erect, she was not Amy Jeffries, cloak-model, but a child of luxury
apparelled for the opera or the ball.

"Did she buy it?" Jean asked, when, free at last, Amy perceived her
waiting and came to her.

Amy sighed dolefully.

"Yes; it's gone," she said. "You can't imagine how I hate to lose it.
It had come to seem like my very own."

Jean could not conceive Amy in an occupation more congenial, and
wished heartily that as enviable a fortune might fall to her.

"It seems easy work," she said. "What do they require of a cloak-model?"

"A thirty-six inch bust, at least, for a starter. Did I ever tell you
that they call us by our bust measures? We never hear our own names.
I'm Thirty-six; that big girl with the red hair is Thirty-eight; and so
it goes. Then you must have good proportions and a stylish carriage,
and be attractive generally," she added, naïvely regarding her trim
reflection in the nearest pier-glass.

At this point "Thirty-eight" approached, and Amy introduced her,
saying:--

"My friend here thinks she'd like to be a cloak-model. 'Tisn't all
roses, is it?"

The red-haired girl gave the indulgent smile of experience.

"Wholesale or retail, it's harder than it looks," she declared. "I
don't mean displaying gowns so much as the side issues. Why, the amount
of dieting, lacing, and French heels some models put up with to keep in
form is something awful. Give me the retail trade, though. I'd rather
deal with shopping cranks than buyers."

"I suppose some of the buyers are fresh," Amy demurely remarked.

"_Some!_ Better say one out of every two," retorted Thirty-eight,
tersely. "I know what I'm talking about. I was a display model in
wholesale houses for three years--showing evening costumes, too! Oh, I
know buyers! A decent girl simply has to make herself a dummy, that's
all. She can't afford to have eyes and ears and feelings."

It was now quite the closing hour, and Amy conducted Jean to a lower
floor which looked like Kriss Kringle's own kingdom. They came upon
the floor-walker, frowning portentously at an atom of a cash-girl
who had stopped to play with a toy which she should have had wrapped
immediately for a suburban customer; but he smoothed his wrinkled front
at sight of Amy, with whom he seemed on excellent terms. Jean looked
for a rigid inquiry into her qualifications, but after some mention
of a reference, which Amy forestalled by glibly offering her own, Mr.
Rose merely told her to report for trial Monday, at six dollars a week,
remarking in the same breath that she had a heart-breaking pair of eyes.

Jean was puzzled.

"Do they take on everybody with no more ceremony than that?" she asked,
as they made their way out. "It seems a slack way of doing things."

Amy laughed gayly.

"Not much! In some stores--most, I guess--the superintendent does the
hiring. I had to face the manager of my department. You would have had
to see the manager down here, probably, if he wasn't sick. I knew this
when I struck Rosey-posy for the place. He took you as a personal favor
to me, or that's what he said, for he's rushing me a bit. For my part,
I think your heart-breaking eyes did it. You don't seem to realize it,
but you're a mighty handsome girl. I didn't half appreciate it when
you wore the refuge uniform. Don't blush! You'll get used to it. Trust
the men to tell you. Anyhow, you've got your chance and can snap your
fingers at Meyer & Schwarzschild."

"I'll tell them to-morrow morning."

"Better wait till to-morrow night after you've drawn your pay,"
counselled Amy, sagely. "Then you needn't listen to any more back talk
than you please."

Jean followed this advice, giving the forewoman notice only when she
turned from the cashier's window with her hard-earned wage safe in her
grasp.

The Jewess bridled, her fat shoulders quivering.

"Place not good enough?" she queried tartly.

"I've a better one."

"With another cloak firm?"

"No; with a department store."

The forewoman smiled sarcastically.

"Don't you fool yourself that you'll be better off. Mr. Meyer! Mr.
Meyer!" she called, raising her voice as the son of the house made
his appearance in a doorway. "Here's another girl what's got the
department-store fever."

Jean shrank from further explanations, particularly with young Meyer,
but he bustled up at once and put the same questions as the forewoman.

"Which store is it?" he continued.

She told him, and wondered why he smirked.

"Does Amy Jeffries work there still?" he said.

"Yes."

"Seems to be prospering? Wears good clothes?"

"Yes."

Young Meyer leered again.

"Come round when you're sick of it," he invited. "Tell Amy, too. You're
both good cloak-makers."

She turned from his satyr-face, vaguely disquieted. His whole manner
was an evil innuendo. The girl with the freckles, who had called the
place a sweat-shop, went down with her in the freight-elevator and
walked beside her for a block, when they gained the street.

"I heard Jake chewin' the rag up there," she said. "Why didn't you cuff
his ears? Anybody'd know to look at you that no buyer got you _your_
position."

"What are you talking about?"

"You didn't catch on to what he was hintin'?"

"No."

The girl gave an incredulous exclamation.

"And maybe you don't know either how Amy Jeffries got her place?" she
added.

"She said a buyer for the firm saw her at Meyer & Schwarzschild's and
liked her looks."

"That's straight," grinned the sceptic.

Jean shook her impatiently by the arm.

"What _isn't_ straight?" she demanded. "You are the one hinting now.
What do you mean? Out with it!"

But the girl squirmed out of her grasp and darted laughing away.

"Ask Amy," she called.




                                  XI


Jean meant to probe the mystery at the first possible moment, but her
resolve weakened in Amy's presence. If the girl's light-heartedness
did not of itself quiet suspicion, it at least disarmed it, while
her unselfish joy at Jean's release from the thraldom of Meyer &
Schwarzschild alone made the questions Jean had thought to put seem
churlish and ungrateful. Moreover, Amy was full of a plan for the
evening.

"I knew it was coming," she exulted. "Anybody with a pair of eyes could
see by the way he's picked you out to talk to every night that you've
got him going. He came to me first to ask if I thought you'd come, and
when I accepted for both, he hustled right out to get the tickets."

"What tickets?" She did not ask who was the purchaser; she, too, had
eyes.

"Tickets for the theatre--a vaudeville show."

Jean's face lit.

"Vaudeville! I've often wondered what it was like."

"You're not telling me you've never seen a vaudeville show?"

"Never. Nothing worth seeing ever came to Shawnee Springs. Ought we to
go?"

"Do you mean, is it respectable? Sure! One of the best in the city."

"I don't mean that. Ought we to go in this way? I don't know him."

"Well, I do," rejoined Amy, decisively; "and if there's a nicer fellow
between High Bridge and the Battery, I'll miss my guess. Of course,
if you want to scare up a headache and back out, why, you can. I'm
going, anyway, and I reckon the extra ticket won't go a-begging. The
stenographer or the manicure would jump at the chance."

"Would he be offended?"

"Awfully. Why, he only asked me because he wanted you! Next time it
will be you alone."

Jean needed little coaxing. She wanted exceedingly to see a New
York theater, and she really liked the breezy young dentist. It had
surprised her in their evening talks to find how much they had in
common. He, too, had spent his youth in a country town, and, though
he had migrated first to a smaller city to study for his profession,
his early impressions of New York coincided very closely with her own.
She later discovered the same community of interest with nearly every
one so reared, but it now chanced that none other of Mrs. St. Aubyn's
boarders--or, as she preferred to call them, guests--were country-bred,
and Paul Bartlett got the credit of a readier sympathy accordingly.
Thus, to-night, he did not share Amy's rather too frequently expressed
wonder that Jean had never witnessed a vaudeville performance.

"Never saw anything nearer to it than a minstrel show myself, up to the
time I went away to dental college," he confessed frankly, as they set
out. "We only got 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and 'East Lynne' troupes in our
burg. Say, but they were a rocky aggregation! I could see that even
then."

This also struck Jean as a notable coincidence.

"It seems as if you were describing the Springs," she said. "But we did
get a circus or two."

"Then your town beat mine," Paul laughed. "We had to jog over to the
county seat for Barnum's. Otherwise they seem to have been cut off the
same piece of homespun. I'll bet you even had box socials?"

Jean's face suddenly lost its animation.

"Yes," she answered.

"Just about the limit, weren't they? I wonder Newport doesn't take 'em
up. They're foolish enough. Yet I thought they were great sport once.
I used to try to change the boxes when I suspected that some love-sick
pair were scheming to beat the game. Maybe you've done that, too?"

"Yes," Jean assented again unsteadily.

She was infuriated with herself for her involuntary change of manner
and burning face, neither of which, she feared, had escaped his quick
eye. It galled her thoroughgoing honesty to be forever on her guard
against disclosing her refuge history, yet there seemed no help for
it. Unjust though it was, the stigma was as actual for her as for the
guiltiest, and cloak it she must.

If the dentist noticed anything amiss, he was tactful and launched into
an exchange of nonsense with Amy which lasted quite to the theater's
garish door. Once within, Jean forgot that she had a past which might
not be fearlessly bared for any eye. Amy squeezed her arm happily as
they passed directly into the body of the house instead of mounting
the stairs familiar to her feet when she paid her own way; and to the
squeeze she added a look of transport and awe when, following the
usher, they skirted the orchestra and entered a narrow passage near the
stage.

"We've got _box_ seats!" she whispered huskily. "They couldn't have
cost him less than a dollar apiece!"

Jean had a moment of timidity begotten of a vivid recollection of
two cramped pigeon-roosts, always untenanted, which flanked the
advertisement-littered drop-curtain of the Shawnee Springs Grand Opera
House, but was speedily reassured to find that she need endure no such
lonely distinction here. These boxes were many, and they held many,
their own being shared by half a dozen persons besides themselves,
while the hangings were so disposed that she could be as secluded as
she pleased, yet miss nothing of the play.

The play! It was a series of plays, with endless other wonderful
things, too. Nothing that she had conceived resembled this
ever-shifting spectacle of laughter and tears. For there were
tears--real ones! Jean had often jeered at girls who cried over
novels, while those whom a play, or at least the Shawnee Springs brand
of drama, could move to tears, were even less comprehensible; yet
to-night, when a simple little piece dealing merely with an unhappy man
and wife who, resolved to go their separate ways, callously divided
their poor belongings until they reached a dead baby's shoes, ran its
course, she found her breath short and her cheeks wet. She was at
first rather ashamed of this weakness, attributing it to her refuge
nerves, but she presently heard Amy sob, and, looking round, perceived
handkerchiefs fluttering throughout the darkened house. Paul, on her
other side, hemmed once or twice, and she supposed him disgusted with
all this ado over a baby who never existed, but when the lights went up
suddenly she discovered that his eyes were moist, too.

She liked this trait in Paul. She was glad, furthermore, that he
did not scoff afterward, as did some men whom the acting had moved.
It seemed to her a wholesome sign that he had the courage of his
sympathies; one could probably rely upon that type of man. His mental
alertness also impressed her anew. For him none of the quips of the
Irish or German comedians were recondite, and he could explain in a
nutshell the most bewildering feats of the Japanese adepts at sleight
of hand. She wondered not a little at this special knowledge, and when
they left the theatre he told her that it had been his chief boyish
ambition to become a magician.

"I drummed up subscriptions, collected bones, old iron, and rubber
for the tinman, peddled anything under the canopy that folks would
buy, all for the sake of a little cash to get books and apparatus," he
confessed. "Once, when I was about smart sixteen, I gave an exhibition,
part magic lantern, part magic tommyrot. I hired the village hall, mind
you. What cheek I had those days!"

Jean was keenly interested. This, too, reminded her of the Springs and
her own irrevocable playtime.

"Did people turn out?" she asked.

"Did they! I cleared twelve dollars."

"My!" jeered Amy. "I suppose you bought an automobile?"

"No; they hadn't been invented yet." He turned again to Jean. "Guess
what I did buy!"

"More apparatus."

"Just as quick as I could get a money-order," he laughed. "You're
something of a wizard yourself. You must have been a boy once upon a
time."

"Yes," said Jean; "I was."

When they reached the street Paul suggested oysters, and after a faint
demurrer from Jean, which a secret pinch from Amy abruptly quenched, he
led the way to a restaurant. The establishment he chose had a German
name, and was fitted up in a manner which Jean took to be German also.
The chairs and tables were of a heavy medieval design, and matched
the high paneling which surrounded the room and terminated in a shelf
bearing a curious array of mugs and flagons. From a small dais in one
corner an orchestra, made up of a zither, two mandolins, and a guitar,
discoursed a wiry yet not unpleasant music which seemed, on the whole,
less Teuton than American, of a most unclassical bounce and joyousness.
Paul apologized for this flaw in an otherwise harmonious scheme,
explaining that the American patrons outnumbered the German, but Amy
patriotically declared that ragtime was better than foreign music any
day, and pronounced the entire place as cute as it could be, which
really left nothing else to be said.

Everybody was drinking beer with his food, or, speaking more
accurately, eating a little food with his beer, and Paul ordered two or
three bottles of the exceedingly dark variety most in vogue, which he
and Amy consumed. Amy rallied Jean upon her abstinence, and asked if
she had signed the pledge; but Paul seemed to respect her scruples.

"Felt the same way myself once," he said. "Whenever the good old
scandal specialists up our way saw a fellow slide into the hotel on a
hot day for a glass of lager, they thought he was piking straight for
the eternal bonfire. Naturally the boys punished a lot of stuff they
didn't want, just to live up to their reputations. It's some different
down here."

"I should say so," agreed Amy, boisterously. "Why, my stepfather began
to send me out for beer almost as soon as I could walk. The idea of its
hurting anybody! I don't believe I'd feel it if I drank a keg."

Paul did not seem as impressed by this statement as were an
after-theater party at an adjoining table, and embraced a quiet
opportunity to move an unfinished bottle out of her enthusiastic
reach. Jean glowed under the scrutiny of the supper-party opposite,
and, exchanging a look with Paul, rose presently to go. Amy objected
eloquently, pointing out that it still wanted half an hour of midnight
and that department stores did no business Sundays, together with
sundry arguments as trenchant, which plainly carried weight with the
attentive tables roundabout, but failed to convince her companions.
Near the door she fell in with an unexpected ally in the person of Mr.
Rose, who listened to her protests quite as sympathetically as if they
had not already reached him across the room, and promptly invited them
all to what he termed a nightcap with himself. Jean declined civilly,
and Amy, though sore tempted, followed her example. Once outside,
however, she asserted her perfect independence by walking off with Mr.
Rose on his remarking easily that he would stroll their way.

"Aching incisors!" ejaculated the dentist, grimly watching them forge
ahead. "Where did I get the foolish idea that I was her escort? Who is
that flower, anyhow?"

"An employee in our store."

"Oh!" said Paul. "Clerk?"

"No; a floor-walker."

"Oh!" he said again, with a change of intonation which Jean detected.
"In her department?"

"No; in mine."

"Oh!"

Amy's laugh came back shrilly through the now sparsely frequented
street.

"I shouldn't have ordered so much beer," admitted the man. "It was too
heavy for her, even if her stepfather--but let's cut that out!"

Jean herself thought that this passage from the Jeffries family history
might better be left undiscussed. She quickened their pace till they
were close upon Amy's too buoyant heels, and so continued to their door.

Amy was full of regrets that she could not at this hour with propriety
ask Mr. Rose into Mrs. St. Aubyn's drawing-room, and as Paul
inhospitably neglected to offer his quarters, the floor-walker, with
unflagging cordiality and self-possession, took himself off.

"I don't cotton to Mr. Rose," said the dentist, in a voice too low for
Amy, who was already mounting the stairs. "I hope you don't."

"I don't know him."

"You don't want to know him, take my word for it. This isn't sour
grapes because he butted in, mind you. If you knew the city, I wouldn't
say a word."

Jean bent a frank gaze upon him under the dim hall light. Paul met it
to her satisfaction.

"Thank you for to-night," she said, giving him her hand. "Thank you for
all of it; for the theater and the supper and for--this."

Explanations with Amy were impossible now, but the following morning,
which the girls spent luxuriously in bed, proved auspicious. Amy's
waking mood was contrite. She owned of her own engaging accord that
she had made a goose of herself in the restaurant, suggesting by way
of defence that her stepfather must have favored quite another kind of
beer. She as frankly conceded that the Rose episode was indefensible,
and promised ample apologies to the dentist.

"He'll understand how it was," she said. "Paul's not a Jake Meyer."

"Will Mr. Rose understand?" asked Jean, pointedly.

Amy shot her a sidelong glance.

"Why not?"

"He's not--well, a Paul Bartlett."

"He isn't a Jake Meyer, either, if that's what you mean," retorted Amy,
rising on her elbow. "I like Rosey and make no bones of telling you.
What have you got at the back of your big brown eyes there? Somebody
has been stuffing you, I guess. Was it some kind friend at Meyer &
Schwarzschild's? What did they say about Rosey and me?"

"Nothing," answered Jean, suspicious of her warmth; but now told her
plainly whom and what they had mentioned.

Amy listened without surprise.

"There was bound to be some gossip," she commented, at length. "I
counted on it."

"You counted on it!"

"Certainly. Jake knew the buyer's record from A to Z, and there were
others."

Jean had a moment's giddiness, and shrank from her explorations.

"Did you?" she faltered.

"Of course. Do you suppose I couldn't read him like a book after all
I've been through?"

"Yet you went just the same! You--"

"I trusted to luck, and for once luck was with me. He had a big offer
from a Chicago firm, and left town the very day I went into the cloak
department. Oh, you needn't stare," she added, with a touch of passion.
"The world hasn't been any too kind to me, and I'm learning to beat it
at its own selfish game. Don't let it worry you."

"I can't help it."

"Then you're silly. I'm not as soft as I look. Besides, you'll find
yourself pretty busy paddling your own canoe."

Jean fell into a brooding silence. The new life was incredibly complex.
It held possibilities before which imagination flinched. A picture,
recalled again and again with extraordinary vividness, flashed once
more before her. She saw a camp among birches bordering a pellucid
lake; a boyish, pacing figure; a straightforward, troubled face
confronting her own. She evoked a voice, "To be a stranger in New
York, homeless, friendless, without work, the shadow of that place
over there dogging your steps...." Every syllable, every intonation,
was ineffaceable. Where was he now, that flawless young knight of the
enchanted forest, who had stayed her folly and changed the current of
her life? He had promised to befriend her when, against his counsel,
she had thought to dare this unknown world. Would he still have faith,
should they meet?

Amy's laugh caught her back to the room of three dormers.

"You looked a million miles away," she said. "If you were another sort
of girl, I'd say you were dreaming of your best fellow. What! Blushes!
Then you were? Was it Paul?"

"Paul!" Jean repelled the suggestion with a pillow. "Take that!"

They said no more of the buyer--he was luckily out of the reckoning;
and although Jean deemed the dentist a wiser judge of men in general,
and of floor-walkers in particular, than Amy, she decided for the
present to side with neither, but try to weigh Mr. Rose for herself. If
Amy was skimming thin ice, she was at least a practiced skater, with
the chastening memory of a serious splash. Moreover, to recur to Amy's
metaphor, she had a canoe of her own to paddle, as she was roughly
reminded that same afternoon.




                                  XII


It happened at dusk while they were returning from Central Park, which
Amy had selected as a primary lesson in Jean's civic education. They
were homing by way of Broadway, and were well back into the theatrical
section, when Jean's guide gripped her abruptly by the arm, dragged
her into the nearest doorway, and hurried her half up the dark flight
of stairs to which it led. Even here she enjoined silence, pointing
for explanation to the square of pavement framed by the doorway, into
which an instant later loitered the bedizened key to the riddle--Stella
Wilkes.

There was no mistaking her. For an interminable interval she lingered,
watchful of the street, so distinct under the electrics that they could
even make out her mole. Then, aimlessly as she had come, she drifted
out again and away.

"Thank my stars I saw her first that time!" gasped Amy, still fearfully
intent upon the lighted square.

"You knew she was in New York?"

"Yes. I've seen her before. She came up to me one night looking even
worse than now. She was more painted, and her eyes were like burned
holes. She said she was broke, but had the promise of a place. It was
to sing in some gin-mill, I think. She _can_ sing, you know. Remember
how she'd let her voice go in chapel, just to show off? I loaned her
a dollar to get rid of her. I was afraid somebody I knew might see us
together. I think she saw I was afraid."

"You shouldn't have let her see; it gives her a hold on you. I shan't
dodge."

Jean began consistently to descend, but Amy caught her back.

"Wait," she pleaded. "Do wait a little longer. Wait for my sake, if you
don't care yourself. But you'd better fight shy of her, too, I can tell
you. She hasn't forgotten the prison riot. She mentioned it the night I
saw her, and said she'd get plenty square with you yet."

Tricked by her uncertain nerves, Jean came under the sway of Amy's
panic. They lurked cowering in the hallway till sure of a clear coast;
then, darting forth, hurried round the first corner to a quieter
thoroughfare which Stella would be less apt to haunt. Here, too, they
continually saw her in imagination, and sought other doorways and
rounded other corners for safety. Fear tracked them home, plucked at
them in their own street, mounted their own steps, entered their own
door, and abode with them thereafter.

Nor, for one of them at least, did the crowded weeks next following
bring forgetfulness or reassurance. Jean was ever expecting the
dreaded face to leer at her from the blurred horde which swam daily
by the little island in the toy department, where she sold children's
games. While she elucidated the mysteries of parchesi or dissected
maps to some distraught mother of six, another part of the restless
mechanism of her brain was painting Stella to the life. She pictured
the outcast's vindictive joy at running her down, heard her mouth the
unspeakable for all who would lend an ear. And who would not! She
quailed in fancy before the gaping audience--the curious shoppers, the
round-eyed cash-girls, the smirking clerks, Mr. Rose, the floor-walker.

Once, issuing from such a dream, she found herself face to face with
Mr. Rose, who had come unnoticed to her counter, and so clear-cut was
the vision, she merged the unreal with the real and blenched at his
voice.

"Not taking morphine lunches, are you?" he asked, leaning solicitously
over the counter.

She stared hazily till he repeated his question.

"Morphine lunches! What are they?"

The man enacted the pantomime of applying a hypodermic syringe to his
arm.

"So," he said. "Some of the girls who can't lunch at home get into the
way of it. Bad thing--very."

"Why should you suspect me of such a thing?" demanded Jean,
indignantly. "Do I look like a morphine-fiend?"

"No offence intended. Noticed a queer look in your eyes, that's all.
Stunning eyes! I'd hate to see 'em full of dope. Perfectly friendly
interest, understand."

She welcomed the fretful interruption of a customer, but the woman was
only returning some article, not buying, and the transaction required
the floor-walker's sanction. When the shopper had gone her way, he
leaned to Jean again.

"If it's worry about holding your place after the holidays," he said,
"why, you can't quit it too soon. We've watched your work, and it's
all right. The forelady says you've learned the stock quicker than any
green clerk she's had in a dog's age, and you know she's particular.
Whoever else goes, you stick."

Jean gave a long breath of thankfulness, but she was not too happy to
be practical.

"And the pay?" she asked.

"The same for the present. You're still a beginner, you know."

"It is very little. The girl who had my place left because she could
not live on it, I hear."

Mr. Rose tapped his prominent teeth with a pencil.

"She said something of the kind to me," he admitted. "She was
unreasonable--very. What could she expect of six dollars?"

The handsome saleswoman at the dolls' furniture counter was intoning,
"Oh, Mr. Rose! Oh, Mr. Rose!" with increasing petulance, and the
floor-walker sped to her, leaving his cryptic utterance unexplained.
Jean asked a fellow-clerk more about her predecessor, and learned that
as she lived somewhere in the Bronx, both carfare and lunches had been
serious items. These, fortunately, she herself need not consider. It
was half the battle to feel permanent. She could shift somehow on her
present wage till promotion came.

There was, moreover, a certain compensation in feeling herself a
factor in this great establishment which everybody knew who had heard
of New York at all. It was a show place of the metropolis, one of the
seventy times seven wonders of the New World. Its floor space was
reckoned in acres, its roof housed a whole city block, its capital
represented millions, its wares the habitable globe. Nothing essential
to human life seemed to be lacking. There were scales for your exalted
babyship's earthly advent; patent foods, healing drugs, mechanical
playthings for your childish wants or ills; text-books for your growing
mind; fine feathers for your expanding social wings; the trousseau
for your marriage; furnishings from cellar to attic for your first
housekeeping; a bank for your savings; fittings for your office; the
postal service, the telegraph, the telephone, lest business suffer
while you shop; bronzes, carvings, automobiles, steam yachts, old
wines, old books, old masters for your topping prosperity; comforts
innumerable--oculists, dentists, discreet photographers, what not--for
your lean and slippered decline; and, yes, even the sad few vanities
you may take with you to your quiet grave.

It drew rich and poor alike these days, and sooner or later the toy
department gathered them in. Though Stella came not, there were many
of familiar aspect who did. Hardly a day passed without its greeting
from some one Jean knew. Mrs. St. Aubyn came shopping on account of
an incredible grandchild she must remember; the bookworm for the
cogent reason that a cherubic niece brought him; the birds of passage
to celebrate an engagement obtained at last; the shorn lambs of Wall
Street to revive fading memories of a full pocketbook; the stenographer
and the manicure since they were women; the dentist because of Jean.

It was impossible to mistake Paul's reason. Her fellow-clerks hinted
it, Mr. Rose reënforced their opinion with his own, Amy added
embroidered comment, and finally Paul told her explicitly himself. On
the first evening, when he appeared at her counter near the closing
hour, he bought a game. At his second call, a week later, he examined
at length, but did not purchase. The third time he said that he had
happened by; the fourth he cast subterfuge to the winds and avowed
frankly that he came to walk home with her.

"Fact is, I'm lonesome," he explained, when they reached the street.
"Till you came I never got a chance to talk to the right sort of girl
except in the operating-chair, and that didn't cut much ice, for it
was always about teeth. Hope you don't mind my dropping round for you
once in a while after office hours? It will keep these street-corner
mashers away from you and do a lot toward civilizing me."

Jean accepted his companionship as frankly as it was tendered. There
was nothing loverlike about Paul's attitude. He was precisely the same
whether they walked alone or whether, as frequently happened, Amy came
down with her to the employees' entrance, where Jean had suggested that
they meet. His escort was doubly welcome during the last week before
Christmas when the great store kept open evenings, and the shopping
quarter held its nightly jam. Then, perhaps a fortnight after the
holidays, she overheard a conversation.

It was not about herself, nor among girls she knew, nor indeed in her
department; merely a scrap of waspish dispute between two young persons
of free speech who supposed themselves in sole possession of the
cloak-room. Black Eyes remarked that she knew very well what Blue Eyes
was. She didn't belong there; her place was the East Side. Whereupon
Blue Eyes elegantly retorted that unless Black Eyes shut her mouth, she
would smash her ugly face in. This was evidently purely rhetorical, for
when Black Eyes waxed yet more personal, pointing out the inconsistent
relation of fifteen-dollar picture hats to six dollars a week, with
pertinent reference to a bald floor-walker from the carpet department
who waited for Blue Eyes every night, the only act of violence was the
slamming of a door which covered Blue Eyes's swift retreat.

That evening Jean told the dentist he must come no more.

"Suffering bicuspid!" he gasped. "What have _I_ done?" This despite her
tactful best to assure him that he had done nothing at all.

It seemed enormously difficult of explanation at first, but when she
suggested that she found the department store not unlike a small town
for gossip, he comprehended instantly.

"Who has been talking?" he demanded. "If it was that pup of a
floor-walker--"

"It wasn't. So far as I know, not a soul has mentioned my name. It's
because they mustn't talk, that I've spoken."

Paul squared a by no means puny pair of shoulders.

"Let me catch 'em at it!" he said.

She was more watchful of her fellow-clerks thereafter. A few girls
she doubted, but striking an average, they seemed as a class honest,
hard-working, and monotonously commonplace, with their loftiest
ambitions centered upon tawdry and impracticable clothes. If a girl
dressed better than her wage warranted, as many did, it usually
developed that she lived with her parents or with other relations who
gave her cheap board. These lucky beings had also a social existence
denied to the wholly self-supporting, of which Jean obtained a perhaps
typical glimpse through a vivacious little rattlepate at the adjoining
mechanical-toy counter, with whom friendly overtures between customers
led to the discovery that they were neighbors, and to a call at the
three dormers. This courtesy Jean in due course returned one evening,
at the paternal flat over an Eighth Avenue grocery, where "Flo," as
she petitioned to be called, rejoiced in the exclusive possession of a
small bedroom ventilated, though scarcely illumined, by an air-shaft.

"Mother gave me this room to myself when I began to bring in money,"
she explained. "I only have to hand over two dollars a week. What's
left I spend just as I please. Father says I buy more clothes than the
rest of the family put together, and he nearly threw a fit once when I
paid twelve dollars for a lace hat trimmed with imported flowers; but
all the same he doesn't like to see any of the girls I go with look
better than I do. Our crowd is great for dress. How do you like my cozy
corner? I think these wire racks for photographs are sweet, don't you?
I have such a stack of fellows' pictures! I wonder if you know any of
them. The man in the dress suit is Willy Larkin--he's in the gents'
furnishing department. I put him next to Dan Evans--you know Dan, don't
you?--because they're so tearing jealous of each other. If Dan takes
me to a Sousa concert one night, Willy can't rest till he has spread
himself on vaudeville or some exciting play. They almost came to blows
over a two-step I promised both of them at the subscription hop our
dancing club gave New Year's. That tintype you're looking at is one
Charlie Simmons and I had taken at Glen Island last year. Goodness!
Don't hold _my_ face to the light. I'm a fright in a bathing-suit. I
do love bathing, though, but I think salt water is packs more fun. Last
summer I had enough saved for a whole week at a dandy beach near Far
Rock-away. There was a grand dancing pavilion, and sometimes you could
hear the waves above the band. I just love the sea!"

Jean was not envious, but the girl's chatter made her own existence
outside the store seem humdrum. Mrs. St. Aubyn's circle was more
narrow than had at first appeared. After a few dinners, it was obvious
that the landlady's talk was nearly always confined to the food and
servants, as the librarian's was limited to the weather, the shorn
lambs' to things financial, and the stenographer's, the manicure's, and
Amy's to feminine styles, while the birds of passage, whose side-lights
upon the Profession had been diverting, were now lamentably displaced
by an insurance agent who dwelt overmuch upon the uncertainty of human
life. It had to be admitted, also, that Paul himself talked shop with
frequency. His stories, like his droll ejaculations, were apt to smack
of the office; and he had a habit of carrying gold crowns or specimens
of bridgework in his pockets, which, though no doubt works of art of
their kind, were yet often disconcerting when shown in mixed company.
At such times especially, Jean would evoke that knightlier figure, who
shone so faultless in perspective, and in fancy put him in Paul's place.

She perceived the dentist's foibles, however, without liking the
essential man one whit the less, and, in the absence of the Ideal,
frequently took Sunday trolley trips with him in lieu of the tabooed
walks from the store; but the fear of meeting Stella made her decline
his invitations to the theater and kept her from the streets at night.
Paul took these self-denials for maiden scruples beyond his masculine
comprehension, and was edified rather than offended; but he was at
first puzzled and then hurt, when, as spring drew on, the outings also
ceased. Jean was evasive when questioned, while Amy looked knowing, but
was too loyal to explain. The stenographer or the manicure or, for that
matter, any normal woman could, if asked, have told him that Jean was
merely ashamed of her clothes.

It was largely because Paul misunderstood that Jean resolved no
longer to wait passively for promotion. Six dollars a week had their
limitations, since five went always to Mrs. St. Aubyn for board.
Yet, out of that scant margin of a sixth, she had somehow scraped
together enough to replace what she had used of Mrs. Fanshaw's grudging
contribution, the whole of which she despatched to Shawnee Springs
in a glow of wrathful satisfaction that cheered her for many days.
Nevertheless, the want of it pinched her shrewdly. Those ten dollars
would have helped spare the refuge suit, which, fortunately black,
did duty seven days in the week and looked it, too, now that the mild
days began to outnumber the raw, and other girls bloomed in premature
spring finery. Many of the bargains which the great store was forever
advertising would have aided in little ways, but the management was
opposed to its employees' profiting by these chances.

During the continued ill health of the department manager, Mr. Rose
still wielded an extended authority, and to him, accordingly, Jean
made her appeal, overtaking him on his way to the offices one evening
when the immense staff was everywhere hurrying from the building. The
carpet and upholstery department, where they talked, was ever a place
of muffled quiet, even with business at high tide, and, save for an
occasional night-watchman, they seemed isolated now. Rose heard her
out, lounging with feline complacency upon a soft-hued heap of Oriental
rugs, while his eyes roamed her eager face with candid approval.

Jean saw with anger that he no longer attended.

"You are not listening," she reproached. "Can't you appreciate what
this means to me? Look at my shoes! They're all I have. Look at this
suit! It's my only one. I've saved no money to buy other clothes--it's
impossible. You say I'm efficient--pay me living wages, then. I can't
live on what you give me. I've tried and I've failed--failed like the
girl before me."

The floor-walker slid smiling from the rug pile.

"She was inconceivably plain," he said; "but you--" He spread his white
hands in futile search of adjectives.

"Never mind my looks, Mr. Rose," Jean struck in curtly. "I am talking
business."

"So am I, my dear. I'm pointing out your resources."

She did not take his meaning fully, his leer notwithstanding, and he
drew his own interpretation of her silence.

"You know we don't lack for applicants here," he continued. "There are
a dozen girls waiting to jump into your shoes. We expect our low-paid
girls to have additional means of support. Some of them have families;
others--but you're no fool. There are plenty of men who'd be glad to
help you out. Why don't you arrange things with that young dentist?
Or"--his smile grew more saccharine--"if that affair is off, perhaps
I--"

Then something transpired which he never clearly understood. It was
plain enough to Jean. In the twinkling of an eye she was again an
athletic boxing tomboy, answering to the name of Jack, before whose
scientific "right" Mr. Rose dropped with crumpled petals to the floor.




                                 XIII


Jean stood over him an instant, her anger still at white heat, but
the floor-walker had had enough of argument and only groveled cursing
where he fell. Leaving him without a word, she swept by a grinning
night-watchman and turned in at the adjacent offices, whither Rose
himself was bound. She had learned the ways of the place sufficiently
by now to know that members of the firm often lingered here after the
army which served them had gone, and she was determined that her own
story should reach them first. But the office of the head of the firm
was dark, and the consequential voice which answered her knock at the
door of a junior partner, where a light still shone, proved to be that
of a belated stenographer.

As she turned uncertainly away, Rose, nursing a swelling eye, again
confronted her.

"Thought you'd take it to headquarters, did you?" he said. "I advise
you to drop it right here."

He recoiled as she advanced, and warded an imaginary blow, but she only
passed him by contemptuously.

"Are you going to drop it?" he asked, following to the stairs. "I
don't want to see you get into trouble, for all your nasty temper. I'm
willing to overlook your striking me."

His persistence only fixed her resolution to expose him, and she
hurried on without reply.

"Two can play at that game," he warned over the rail.

In the street she paused irresolutely. The man would, of course,
protect himself if he could, and her own story should reach some member
of the firm to-night. If she waited till morning, Rose could easily
forestall her. Yet she had become too sophisticated not to shrink
from the idea of trying to take her grievance into one of those men's
homes. Only the other day she had picked up a trashy paper containing a
shop-girl story, warmly praised by Amy, which narrated an incident of
the kind. The son and heir of a merchant prince--so the author styled
him--had cruelly wronged the beautiful shop-girl, who, after harrowing
sorrows, took her courage in her hands and braved the ancestral
hall. She gained an entrance somehow (details were scanty here) and
confronted the base son and heir at the climax of a grand ball at which
the upper ten and other numerals were assembled to do honor to his
chosen bride. Jean had seen the absurdity of the picture as Amy could
not. Things did not fall out this wise in real life. The beautiful
shop-girl would never have gotten by the merchant prince's presumably
well-trained servants, even if she had eluded the specially detailed
policeman at the awning, and Jean judged that her own chances would be
as slender.

Nevertheless, there seemed to be nothing left her but to try. She
consulted a directory in the next drugstore and copied out the home
addresses of the several members of the firm. One of the junior
partners seemed to live nearest, though not within walking distance,
and at this address she finally arrived at an hour when, judging Fifth
Avenue by Mrs. St. Aubyn's, she feared she would find her employer at
dinner. She recognized the house as one which Amy had pointed out with
an air of proprietorship on their first Sunday walk, and she reflected
with misgiving that it was a really plausible setting for the drama of
the beautiful shop-girl, did such things exist.

An elderly butler convinced her that this was her own drama. He was not
unbearably haughty, a vast quantity of polite fiction to the contrary;
and if he scorned her clothes, he did not let the fact appear. His
manner even suggested decorous regret that the master of the house
was not at home. Jean went down the steps, wondering whether this
were an artistic lie, but, happily for the servant's reputation, an
electric cab at this moment drew up at the curb and dropped the man she
sought. She recognized him at once, for of all the firm he had the most
striking presence, looking very like the more jovial portraits of Henry
VIII. Unlike the Tudor king, however, he was said to be happily married
and of domestic tastes. He paused, giving her a keen look, when he
perceived that she meant to accost him.

"I just asked for you." Jean said. "I wanted to speak to you about
something at the store."

"You are one of our employees?"

"Yes. I am a sales girl in the toy department. I wish to make a serious
complaint."

"A complaint? Your own department is the proper channel for that."

"I cannot ask the man to judge himself," returned Jean, simply.

He gave her another sharp look.

"Oh," he said, with a change of tone. "Come in." Then, to the elderly
butler, who during this interval had held the door ajar with an air of
not listening, "The Study."

Jean seemed to recall that the beautiful shop-girl had encountered
a "study," which could have been no more luxurious than this. She
queried, while she waited, what the library and more pretentious
apartments could be like. The room seemed to her of regal splendor.
It was paneled and cross-beamed, and a fireplace in keeping with
the architecture well-nigh filled one end wall. The light fell from
a wonderful affair of opalescent glass which gave new tones to the
oriental fabrics underfoot and added richness to the lavishly employed
mahogany. No other wood had been permitted here. It glowed dully from
beam, panel, and cornice; from the mantel, the bookshelves, the carved
cabinet concealing a safe; from the massive griffin-legged desk at
which the owner of it all, as florid as his taste, presently took his
seat.

"Now, then," he said, "tell me explicitly what you charge."

She omitted nothing. Her listener followed her closely and once,
when she gave Rose's version of the firm's policy, he shook his head
dissentingly, but whether in disbelief of herself or in condemnation of
the floor-walker, she could not guess.

"This is a grave accusation," he said, when she had done. "It
involves not only Mr. Rose,--who, let me say, has always been most
efficient,--but the good name of the whole establishment."

"That is one reason why I came."

"Of the whole establishment," repeated the junior partner, as if she
had not spoken. "Was there a third party present?"

"There was a watchman near by, but he couldn't have heard what was
said."

"You are quite sure you did not misunderstand Mr. Rose?"

"Quite."

"And were not prejudiced against him in advance? Floor-walkers as a
class have often been maligned."

Jean reflected carefully.

"I can't say no to that," she owned frankly. "A friend had a poor
opinion of him and said so before I began work, but I tried not to let
that influence me."

"But it did?"

"A little, perhaps. I admit I've never liked him."

For a time the big man under the drop-light trifled absently with a
paper-knife.

"We'll take this matter up, of course," he said presently. "If we need
a housecleaning, we'll have it; but I can't believe that things are
radically at fault. No department store in the city is more considerate
of its people. We were among the first to close Saturday afternoons
in midsummer; we offer liberal inducements for special energy during
the holidays; we have provided exceedingly attractive lunch-rooms; we
even hope, when trade conditions permit, to introduce a form of profit
sharing. What more can we do?"

Jean supposed his rhetorical query personal.

"You might pay better wages," she suggested. "Then things like this
wouldn't happen."

For the fraction of a second King Henry wore one of his less amiable
expressions. It suggested beheading or long confinement in the Tower.
Then, immediately, it was glossed by modernity.

"There you trench upon economic grounds," he rejoined heavily. "I wish
we might inaugurate a lecture course for our employees, to elucidate
the principles which govern a great business. The law of supply and
demand, the press of competition, the necessity for costly advertising,
these and countless other considerations, which we at the helm
appreciate, never enter the shop-girl's head."

Jean was overborne by these impressive phrases. They had never entered
her head, certainly, and she was not altogether sure why they should.

"We only ask a living," she said.

"But you shouldn't. We want the girl who asks pin-money, the girl who
lives with her family. Have you no family yourself, by the way?"

"My mother is living."

"Is she dependent upon you in any way?"

"No."

"Is she able to provide for you?"

"Perfectly."

"Then why doesn't she?"

Jean's eyes snapped.

"Because I won't let her."

Her listener shrugged.

"The modern woman!" he lamented. "But this is beside the question. We
pay as others pay. If a girl thinks it insufficient, let her find other
work. So far, I uphold Mr. Rose. His further advice--as you report
it--is another matter. As I have said, we will take it up."

He touched a bell and rose, and Jean followed the elderly servant to
the door. The impetus which had brought her here had subsided into
great weariness of body and spirit, but she went down the avenue not
ill satisfied. She had had her hearing. She had spoken, not for herself
alone, but in a measure for others. Moreover, the man's bluff candor
seemed an earnest that justice would be done. Precisely what form
justice would take, she did not speculate.

Near her own door she met Paul on anxious lookout for her.

"I was beginning to imagine a fine bunch of horrors," he said. "Amy
hadn't a ghost of a notion what was up."

"I did not tell Amy I should be late," Jean replied. She offered no
explanations, but Paul's concern was grateful after what she had
undergone, and she added, "I'm sorry you worried."

He eyed her narrowly, pausing an instant at the steps.

"Any need for a man of my build?" he inquired.

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because I think you're in trouble. If I can help--"

"No, no," she returned hastily. "But thank you."

"Something has happened?"

"Yes; at the store. I can't very well explain it."

"Oh," said Paul, as if explanations were needless. "I'm not so sure I
couldn't be useful."

She felt that he divined something of what had transpired, his
knowledge of the floor-walker being perhaps fuller than her own, but he
said no more. Jean was singularly comforted by his attitude, especially
since Amy's, as presently defined, left much to be desired. She seemed
less amazed at Rose's behavior than at Jean's active resentment.

"I wouldn't have struck him," she said.

"What would you have done?"

"I--I don't know. At any rate, not that. A girl has to put up with a
lot."

"I presume you wouldn't have reported him, either?" Jean flung out
bitterly.

"No; I didn't--I mean I wouldn't."

Jean started.

"I think you meant just what you said first, Amy," she cried. "Has he
told you the same thing?"

Amy writhed.

"N-no," she began; "that is--"

"Almost, then?"

"Yes."

"And you did nothing?"

"I didn't dare do anything. I don't see how you dared. It's too big a
risk."

"I would have risked more in keeping quiet. I simply had to take it
higher up."

"But you said Mr. Rose offered to let it drop," Amy timidly reminded.
"You could have done that."

"That!" She had no words to voice her scorn.

They went to bed and rose again in an atmosphere of constraint, and
Jean walked to her day's work alone. She dreaded meeting Rose, and
apprehended another interview with the junior partner, an ordeal
which wore a more forbidding aspect by day. But neither happened. The
floor-walker did not appear in the toy department at all, though some
one had seen him enter the building. It was rumored that he was ill.

Toward the end of the afternoon Jean noticed that she had become an
object of some interest to the forewoman, and wondered hopefully
if this influential personage had marked her for promotion. Her
pay-envelope, for it was Saturday, shortly furnished a clew to the
mystery in the shape of a neat slip informing her that her services
were no longer required.

"I'm to answer questions if you have any," the forewoman told her,
shortly; "but I guess you understand."

The girl turned a chalky face upon her.

"But I don't--"

"Then you're slower than I thought. The firm has looked you up, that's
all."

Jean realized the monstrous injustice of it but slowly.

"I don't see," she faltered.

"Bosh!" cut in the woman, impatiently. "Don't try to flimflam me. Lord
knows what kind of game you were working, but you had more nerve than
sense. You might have guessed when you tried to put your bare word
against Mr. Rose's that they'd make it their business to find out just
what your word was worth. Your last employer told them."

"Told them what?" blazed Jean.

"What do you suppose? That you'd done time in a reformatory, of
course."




                                  XIV


In her dark hour came Paul.

"I know," he said, hunting her out in the corner of the melancholy
drawing-room where she sat Sunday afternoon with absent eyes upon
"The Trial of Effie Deans." "Some of it I guessed, and a little more
filtered from Amy _via_ Mrs. St. Aubyn, but I got the finishing touch
from a man in the store."

"The store!" Jean had a moment of acute dismay; she would fain leave
Paul his illusions. "What man?"

"A chap in the drug department I do work for now and then. He turned up
at the parlors this morning. We're open Sundays from 'leven to one, you
know."

Then, the refuge spectre had followed here! She could not look him in
the face. But Paul's next words reassured.

"He didn't mention names, but I put two and two together quick enough
when he told me that one of their new girls knocked out a fresh
floor-walker the other night. I was proud I knew you."

"Did he know of my--my discharge?"

"No."

"You didn't mention it yourself?" Jean faltered. "Or my name?"

Paul's look was sad.

"That's a shade lower down than I think I've got," he observed loftily.
"A man who'd lug in a lady friend's name under such circumstances
wouldn't stop at the few trifles that still faze me. He--why, he'd even
gold-crown an anterior tooth!"

She hastened to mollify him, relieved beyond measure that his chance
informant knew nothing of the real reason for her dismissal. Amy could
be trusted to conceal it for her own sake. Then Paul stirred her
anxiety afresh with a request.

"I want to polish off Mr. Rose," he said, doubling his fist
suggestively. "You made a good beginning, but the pup needs a thorough
job. I know where he boards--he told me that night he butted in; and if
you'll just let me call round as a friend of yours--"

"No, no. Promise me you won't!"

"But he needs it," argued the dentist, plaintively. "I'd also like, if
it could be managed, to say a few things to the head of the firm."

"Indeed you mustn't," cried Jean. "Promise me you'll say nothing about
it in any way!"

"Can't I even _tell_ Rose what I think?"

"Never. I've got to accept this thing and make a new start. I must
forget it, not brood over it. You mustn't thrash him, you mustn't tell
him what you think--above all, you mustn't go to the firm. Promise me
you won't!"

"All right," he assented, manifestly puzzled. "A girl looks at things
differently. I've got another proposition, though, which I hope you
won't veto. Any prejudice against dentists, present company excepted?"

"No," smiled Jean.

"Some folks have, you know. Can't understand it myself. Why isn't it
as high-toned to doctor teeth as it is to specialize an inch higher
up, say, on the nose? Yet socially the nose-specialist gets the glad
hand in places where the dentist couldn't break in with a Krupp gun. It
makes me hot. But enough said along that line just now. What I started
in to tell you is that there's an opening at the parlors."

"For me--a girl?"

"For a girl?" Paul pretended to weigh this handicap gravely. "Of
course, a lady assistant is generally a man, but still--"

Jean was unfamiliar with this adjunct of modern dentistry.

"What must she do?" she asked.

"Be a lady and assist. That sums it all up. Some old fogies would
specify thirty summers and a homely face, but I believe in a cheery
office straight through. We've been looking round for the right party
lately--the girl who has the berth now is going to be married; but it
never occurred to me to offer it to you until to-day. It would mean
eight dollars a week right at the start, and a raise just as soon as
they appreciate what an air you give the whole place. There'd be more
still in it if you liked the work well enough to branch out."

"Branch out? In what way?"

"Operating-room. At first you'll act as secretary and cashier, receive
patients, and see that the hulk of a janitor keeps the parlors neat.
Then, if you get on as I think you will, you'll very likely have an
assistant yourself, and put in most of your time elsewhere. A clever
girl can be no end of help in the operating-room. Say, for instance,
I'm doing a contour filling, which, let me tell you, needs an eagle-eye
and the patience of a mule. Well, while I pack and figure how to do an
artistic job, you anneal gold and pass it to me in the cavity. See what
I mean? One bright little woman we had for a while drew thirty-five a
week, but she was a trained nurse, too."

Jean had doubts of her usefulness amid these technicalities, but the
office work sounded simple, and she caught thankfully at the chance.

The dentist waved aside her gratitude.

"I'm simply doing a good stroke of business for the Acme Painless
Dental Company," he said. "I'll tell Grimes in the morning that I've
located the right party,--Grimes is the company, by the way, the whole
painless ranch,--and you can drop in later and cinch the deal."

Jean's thoughts took a leap ahead to ways and means, and she drew a
worn shoe farther beneath her skirt.

"You're sure I'll do?" she hesitated.

"You! I only wish you could see some of the procession who've answered
our ad." Then, almost as if he read her mind, he added with unwonted
bashfulness: "If I were in your place, I'd borrow Amy's black feather
boa for your first call. It suits you right down to the ground."

She took the hint laughingly. There were more things than the boa to
be borrowed for the conquest of Grimes. She was touched by Paul's
transparent diplomacy, and glad that in his slow man's way he had at
last perceived why their outings had ceased. So, by grace of Paul and
Amy, it fell out before another week elapsed that the affianced lady
assistant of the Acme Painless Dental Company left to prepare for her
bridal, and Jean reigned in her stead.

The company's outworks on Sixth Avenue were a resplendent negro and
a monumental show-case, both filled with glittering specimens of the
painless marvels accomplished within. The African wore a uniform of
green and gold, and all day forced advertisements into the unwilling
hands of passers-by, chanting meanwhile the full style and title of
the establishment in a voice which soared easily above the roar of
the elevated trains overhead. Passing this personage, you mounted
a staircase whose every step besought you to remember the precise
whereabouts of the parlors, while yet other placards of like import
made clear the way at the top and throughout the unmistakable corridor
leading to the true and only Acme Painless Dental Company's door.

Entering here to the trill of an electric bell, you came full upon
the central office, or, as the leaflets read, the elegant parlor,
from which the operating-rooms led on every hand. In character
this apartment was broadly eclectic. Jean's special nook, with its
telephone, cash-register, and smart roll-top desk, was contemporary to
the minute; yet in the corner diagonally opposed, a suit of stage armor
jauntily bade the waiting patient think upon knights, jousts, and the
swashbuckling Middle Ages. In still another quarter a languorous slave
girl of scanty raiment, but abundant bangles, postured upon a teak-wood
tabouret, backed by way of further realism with Bagdad hangings and a
palm of the convenient species which no frost blights and an occasional
whisk of the duster always rejuvenates. The chairs were frankly Grand
Rapids and built for wear, though the proprietor's avowed taste ran
to a style he called "Lewis Quince"; and the gilt he might not employ
here he lavished upon the frames of his pictures, which, nearly without
exception, were night-scenes wherein shimmering castle windows or the
gibbous moon were cunningly inlaid in mother-of-pearl. In the midst
of all this, now pacifying the waiting with vain promises of speedy
relief, now pottering off into this room or that in as futile attempts
to make each of several sufferers believe his blundering services
exclusive--big, easy-going, slovenly, yet popular--moved Grimes.

Of the operating-rooms, which by no means approached the splendor of
the parlor, the next best to Grimes's own was Paul Bartlett's, for Paul
was a person of importance here. Of the four assistant dentists, he was
at once the best equipped and the best paid, receiving a commission
over and above his regular thirty-five dollars a week. The more
discriminating of the place's queer constituency coolly passed Grimes
by in Paul's favor, but the elder man was not offended. A month or so
after Jean's coming he even offered his clever helper a partnership,
which Paul unhesitatingly declined. He was ambitious for an office of
his own, when his capital should permit, and he planned it along lines
which would have fatigued his slipshod employer to conceive.

"It's all too beastly bad," he told Jean, in answer to her query why
he did not accept Grimes's offer and insist on reform. "You'd simply
have to burn the shop from laboratory to door-mat. To advertise as he
does is against the code of dental ethics, and his practice ought to
be jumped on by the board of health. Look at this junk!" he added,
shaking an indignant fist under the nose of the slave girl. "Lord
knows how many good dollars it cost, and yet we haven't got more than
one decent set of instruments in the whole shebang. I reach for a
spatula or a plugger that I've laid down two minutes before, and I find
it's been packed off by old Grimes to use on another patient. As for
sterilizing--faugh! You could catch _anything_ here. How he's shaved
through so far without a damage suit euchres me."

"Yet I like him," said Jean.

"So do I. So does everybody. And he's getting rich on the strength of
it."

"I'm getting rich on the strength of it, too," Jean laughed. "Next week
I shall really be able to put money in the bank."

Better paid, better dressed, with easy work and not infrequent leisure
to read, she felt that at last she had begun to live. Her position long
retained a flavor of novelty, for the dental company's patrons were
infinitely various and furnished endless topics of interest to herself
and Paul. They usually went to and from Mrs. St. Aubyn's together, and
as the summer excursion season drew on, their Sunday pleasurings began
to flourish afresh. Sometimes Amy joined them, but more often she made
labored excuses, and they went alone. Jean thought her more secretive
and reserved than of old, and Paul, too, remarked a change.

"How did you two get chummy?" he asked abruptly, after one of Amy's
declinations. "You're not at all alike."

"Chums are usually different, aren't they?" Jean said, her skin
beginning to prickle.

"Not so much as you two. You're a lady and she--well, she isn't. Known
her some time?"

"Yes."

"Where did you meet? You were certainly green to the city when you
struck our house. Amy's an East Sider Simon-pure."

"It was in the country. Amy stayed in the country once."

"Shawnee Springs?"

"No, no. Another place."

"Was that where you knew Miss Archer?"

Jean turned a sick face upon him, but Paul's own countenance was
without guile.

"I've overheard you and Amy mention her once or twice," he explained.

"Yes," she stammered. "We both knew her there."

"Out of breath?" he said, still too observant. "I thought we were
taking our usual gait."

She blamed the heat and led him to speak of other things, but the
day was spoiled. She debated seriously whether it were not wise to
make a clean breast of her refuge history, but Paul's belief in her
unworldliness had its sweetness, and the fit chance to dispel his
illusion somehow had not come when Stella, for weeks almost forgotten,
so involved the coil that frankness was impossible.




                                  XV


Motley as were the dental company's patrons, Jean never entertained the
possibility of Stella's crossing the threshold, till her coming was an
accomplished fact. Luckily she happened to be elsewhere in the office
when the bell warned her that some one had entered, and she was able,
accordingly, to sight the caller with her admiring gaze fixed upon the
slave girl. Her own retreat was instant and blind, and by a spiteful
chance took her full tilt into the arms of Paul.

"What's up?" he demanded, holding her fast. "What's happened to you?"

She was dumb before his questions. He noticed her pallor and helped her
into the nearest operating-chair.

"There is a patient waiting," she got out at last.

"You're the first patient," he said; and brought smelling-salts,
which he administered with a liberal hand. "You girls eat a roll for
breakfast and a chocolate caramel for lunch, and then wonder why you
faint."

She finally persuaded him to leave her on her promising that she would
not stir till his return, and he went in her stead to receive Stella,
whom he brought to a room so near that almost every word was audible.
Stella had evidently visited the parlors before. She addressed Paul
familiarly as "Doc," spoke of other work he had done for her, and
lingered to make conversation after he had fixed an appointment. The
dentist's responses were cool and perfunctory, and in leaving she
chaffed him on having lost his old-time sociability.

He returned with a red face to find Jean outwardly herself.

"Better?" he said awkwardly.

"Much better."

Paul fidgeted with the mechanism of the chair.

"As long as you're O.K. now," he went on, "I'm not sorry you missed
that party. That's the worst of Grimes. He caters to all sorts. You
heard her talk, I suppose?"

"Yes."

He furtively studied her face. "I hope you don't think we're as
friendly as she made out?"

"Oh, no."

Paul looked greatly relieved.

"I bank a lot on what you think," he said. "You're the kind of girl who
makes a fellow want to toe the mark."

"Don't," she entreated, writhing under his praise. "You rate me too
high."

"Too high!" He laughed excitedly and caught her hand when she moved to
go. "You didn't mind my telling you?" Then, without awaiting a reply,
he blurted: "There's a heap more to say. I want to take you out of all
this--away from such riffraff as the girl you didn't see; I want--I
want you, Jean."

She tried to speak, but he read refusal in her troubled eyes and cut
her short.

"Don't answer now," he begged. "I didn't expect to tell you this so
soon. I don't expect you to say yes straight off. I'm not good enough
for you, Lord knows, but nobody could care more. Promise me you'll
think it over. Promise me that, anyhow."

She would have promised anything to escape. Again at her desk, she
strove to think things out, but from the whirl of her thoughts only
one fixed purpose emerged: she must know the day and hour of Stella's
intended return, for this detail had escaped her. Making some excuse,
therefore, when Paul came for her at closing time, she watched him
to the street and then hurried to search his operating-room for the
little red-covered book in which his personal appointments were kept.
It was not in its usual place, however, nor in his office-coat behind
the door, nor in any possible drawer of the cabinet. He had evidently
slipped it into some pocket of the suit he wore.

She dragged home in miserable anxiety, pinning all her hopes on
obtaining a glance at the book while the dentist was at dinner; but
this plan failed her, too, since that night, contrary to his custom,
Paul made no change in his dress. The book was in his possession. Of
this she was certain, for a corner of its red binding gleamed evilly
at her from beneath his coat. Once, in an after-dinner comparison of
biceps, which the insurance agent inaugurated in the hall, the thing
actually fell to the floor at her feet, only to be noted by a watchful
chorus before she might even think of advancing a casual ruffle. She
devised a score of pretexts for asking Paul to let her see it, any one
of which would have passed muster before his enamored eyes, but she
dismissed each as too flimsy and open to suspicion; and so, before a
safe course suggested itself, the evening was gone, and she climbed her
three flights to spend hours in horrid wakefulness succeeded by even
more merciless dreams.

Fate was kinder on the morrow. Paul laid the appointment-book upon
an open shelf of his cabinet in the course of the forenoon, and she
seized a moment when he was scouring the establishment for one of his
ever-vagrant instruments, to wrest its secret at last. She found the
record easily. It was among the engagements for that very day: "Miss
Wilkes, 11-11.30." The little clock on the cabinet indicated ten
minutes of eleven now!

She evaded Paul, who was returning, caught up her hat, and telling
Grimes that she was too ill to work that day--which the big incompetent
sympathetically assured her he could see for himself--fled in panic
to the stairs only to behold Stella's nodding plumes already rounding
the sample show-case below. Fortunately she was mounting with head
down, and it took Jean but an instant to dart for the staircase to the
floor above, from whose landing, breathless, lax-muscled, yet safe, she
followed Stella's rustling progress to the dental company's door. When
she cautiously descended, the hall reeked with a musky perfume from
which she recoiled as from a physical nearness to the woman herself.

Luncheon brought Paul and questions which she answered, as she could,
from behind her closed door. He had no suspicion of the real cause
of her sudden leaving, ascribing her indisposition, as yesterday,
to insufficient nourishment, and joined his imagination to Mrs. St.
Aubyn's, and that of the proprietor of a neighboring delicatessen shop,
in the heaping of a tray whose every mouthful choked. It tortured her
to brazen out this deception, but unaided she could see no other way,
and advisers there were none. She might have confided in Amy, had the
need arisen earlier; but Amy was become a creature of strange reserves
and silences.

She left her room at evening and braved the galling solicitude of
the dining room. Mrs. St. Aubyn was for extracting her precise
symptoms, and led a discussion of favorite remedies, to which nearly
all contributed some special lore, from the librarian, who swore
by a newspaper cholera mixture, to the bankrupt, whose panacea was
Adirondack air. Paul refrained from the talk, perceiving that Jean
wished nothing so much as to be let alone. He was more silent than
she had ever known him at table, and she twice surprised him in a
brown study, of which Amy was seemingly the subject. Dinner over, he
brought about a tête-à-tête in an upper hall, a meeting made easy by
the boarders' summer custom of blocking the front steps in a domestic
group, of which Mrs. St. Aubyn, watchful of other clusters obviously
less presentable, was the complacent apex.

"I didn't trot out a remedy downstairs," he said, "but I've got one all
the same. It's a vacation."

"But--" Jean began.

"No 'buts' in order. I've got the floor. It's a vacation you need, and
it's a vacation you'll have. Grimes has arranged everything. You're to
have a week off, beginning to-morrow, and your pay will go on same as
ever."

"This is your doing."

"No," he disclaimed; "it's Grimes's. I only told him it would do you
more good now than in August. It was due you anyhow."

"But I'm not sick," she protested. "I can't let you think I am. It's
not right to deceive--"

"The question now before the house," Paul calmly interposed, "is, Where
do you want to spend it? How about Shawnee Springs?"

"No."

"Thought not. You never mention the Springs as though you pined to get
back. Ever try Ocean Grove, where the Methodists round up?"

"No."

"Then why don't you? There's more fun in the place than you'd think.
They can't spoil the ocean, and Asbury Park is just a stone's throw
away whenever the hymns get on your nerves. I mention Ocean Grove,
because Mrs. St. Aubyn's sister has a boarding-house there--Marlborough
Villa, she calls it--where she'll take you cheap, coming now before the
rush. I'll run down Sunday and see how you're making out."

He had an answer for every objection, and in the end Jean let herself
be persuaded, although to yield here seemed to imply a tacit assent
to other things she was wofully unready to meet. The future stretched
away, a jungle of complexity. Perhaps the sea, the real sea she had
never beheld, for Coney Island did not count, would help her think it
out.

Early the following morning the dentist saw her aboard the boat.

"You'll not mind if I come down?" he asked.

She smiled "No" a little wanly, but he went away content. Sunday would
be crucial, she foresaw. He would press for his answer then, and
she----Perhaps the salt breeze would shred these mists.

But neither the breeze, full of the odor of sanctity, which cooled
encamped Methodism, nor the secular, yet not flagrantly sinful,
atmosphere of the twin watering-place, had aided much when the week-end
brought Paul to solve the riddle for himself.

Many things allied in his favor. In the first place, Jean was
unfeignedly glad to see him, as the agitated veranda rockers of
Marlborough Villa bore witness. In a world which she had too often
found callous, Paul Bartlett, for one, had proved himself a practical
friend. She felt a distinct pride in him, too, as he withstood the
brunt of the veranda fire; a pardonable elation that, in a social
scheme overwhelmingly feminine, she led captive so presentable a male.

Again, Paul was tactful in following up his welcome. His only concern
Saturday evening, and throughout Sunday till almost the end, was
seemingly to give her pleasure. Sometimes she played the cicerone to
her own discoveries: now a model of Jerusalem, its Lilliputian streets
littered with the peanut shucks of appreciative childhood; the pavilion
where free concerts were best; the bathing-beach where the discreetly
clothed crowd was most diverting; or a little lake, remote from the
merry-go-rounds and catch-penny shows, which she secretly preferred
to all. Or Paul would display the results of his past researches. He
knew an alley in one of the great hotels, where she had from him her
first lesson in the ancient game of bowls; a catering establishment
whose list of creams and ices exceeded imagination; and a drive--Sunday
morning this--past opulent dwellings, whose tenants they commiserated,
to an old riverside tavern overhung by noble trees.

Sundown found them watching the trampling surf from the ramparts of
their own sand-castle, which Paul, guided by her superior knowledge
of things mediæval, had reared. The transition from sandcastles to
air-castles was easy, and presently the man was mapping his future.

"Grimes wants me to renew our contract," he said. "It runs out October
first, you know. But I think it's up to me to be my own boss. I've got
what I needed from the dental company--practical experience. If I stay
on, I may pick up some things I don't need, just as the other fellows
finally drop into old Grimey's shiftless ways. I don't want to take
any of his smudge into _my_ office. He can keep his gilt gimcracks
and his slave girl and his bogus armor. A plain reception-room, but
cheerful, I say; and an operating-room that's brighter still. Canary
or two, maybe; plants--real plants--and fittings strictly up to date.
Electricity everywhere, chair best in the market, instruments the
finest money will buy, but _out of sight_. No chamber of horrors for
me! As for location, give me Harlem. I know a stack of folks there, and
I like Harlem ways. I've even looked up offices, and I know one on a
'Hundred-and-twenty-fifth Street that just fills the bill. Well, that's
part of the programme."

Jean was roused from visions of her own.

"I know you'll succeed," she said.

"That's part of the programme," he repeated; then, less confidently:
"The other part includes a snug little flat just round the corner,
where a fellow can easily run in for lunch. I don't mean a bachelor's
hall. I mean a _bona-fide_ home, with a wife in it--a wife named Jean!"

He was a likable figure--clean-cut, earnest, manly--as he waited in
the dusk, and the home he offered had its appeal. Marriage would
solve many problems. She would be free of the grinding struggle for a
livelihood, which the stigma of the refuge made dangerous. She would be
free of the fear of such vengeance as Stella could wreak. If the need
arose, it would be a simple matter, once they were married, to tell
Paul the truth of things. His love would make light of it. As for her
love----But what was love? Where in life did one meet the rose-colored
dream of fiction? Love was intensified liking, and Paul, as has been
recorded, was a likable figure--clean-cut, earnest, manly--as he waited
in the dusk.

Yet, even then, recurred a still undimmed picture wherein, against
a background of forest birches, there shone an indubitable hero of
romance.




                                  XVI


Jean shrank from the congratulations of the boarding-house and the
office, and they decided at the outset to keep their engagement to
themselves.

"Not barring your mother, of course," Paul amended. "To play strictly
according to Hoyle, I expect I ought to drop her a line. What do you
think?"

"It won't be necessary," Jean said.

The dentist sighed thankfully.

"Glad to hear it. The chances are she'd say no, straight off the bat,
if I did. Letter-writing isn't my long suit. What will you say about a
proposition like me, anyhow?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Least said the better, eh?"

"I mean I'm not going to write."

"Not at all?"

"Not till we are married. I will write home then."

Paul whistled meditatively.

"Mind telling why?" he queried. "Can't say that this play seems
according to Hoyle, either."

Jean's real reason was rooted in a fear that Mrs. Fanshaw's erratic
conscience might be capable of a motherly epistle to Paul, setting
forth the refuge history. So she answered that she and her family were
not in sympathy, and was overjoyed to find that Paul thought her excuse
valid.

"I know just how you feel," he said. "My governor and I could never
hit it off. But about writing your mother: we'll need her consent, you
know. You're still under twenty-one."

"I come of age September tenth."

"But we want to be married the third week in August."

"We can't," said Jean; and that was the end of it.

This postponement notwithstanding, it seemed to her that she fairly
tobogganed toward her marriage. Even before her return to work, Paul
notified Grimes of his intention to shift for himself after October
and leased the office of which he had told her. With the same energy,
of which he gratefully assured her she was the dynamo, he promptly had
her hunting Harlem for the little flat, just around the corner, of his
imaginings. For so modest a thing, this proved singularly elusive, and
it took a month of Sundays, besides unreckoned week-day explorations,
before they lit finally upon what they wanted, in a building so new
that the plumbers and paper-hangers still overran its upper floors.

The "Lorna Doone" was an apartment house. The prospectus said so; the
elevator and the hall service proved it. Mere flats have stairs and
ghostly front doors which unseen hands unlock. Mere flats have also at
times an old-fashioned roominess which apartments usually lack; but
as Paul, out of a now ripe experience with agents and janitors, justly
remarked, they have no tone. This essential attribute--the agents and
janitors agreed that it was essential--seemed to him to exhale from
the Lorna Doone with a certainty not evident in many higher-priced
buildings whose entrances boasted far less onyx paneling and mosaic.
Besides tone or, more correctly perhaps, as a constituent of tone, this
edifice had location, which Jean was surprised to learn was a thing to
be considered even in this happily unfashionable section.

There was Harlem and Harlem, it appeared; and taught partly by Paul,
partly by the real-estate brokers, she became adept in the subtle
distinctions between streets which seemingly differed only in their
numerals. For example, there was a quarter, _the_ quarter to be
accurate, once called Harlem Heights, which now in the full-blown pride
of its cathedral, its university, and its hero's mausoleum, haughtily
declared itself not Harlem at all. They had scaled this favored region
in their quest, admired its parks, watched the Hudson from its airy
windows, and hoped vainly to find some nook their purse might command;
but they had to turn their steps from it at last. This glimpse of the
unattainable was a strong, if not controlling, factor in their final
choice.

"We can't be hermits and live in a hole," Paul argued. "I know a big
bunch of people here already, and we'll soon know more. We've got to
hold up our end. Nice name we'd get in our club if we didn't entertain
once in a while like the rest."

"Our club!" she echoed. "We're to join a club?"

"Sure. Bowling club, I mean. Everybody bowls in Harlem. We must think
about the office, too. It's the women who make or break a dentist's
practice, and sooner or later they find out how he lives and the kind
of company he keeps."

After a reflective silence he frightened her by asking abruptly whether
she remembered a loud girl who had come to the dental parlors for an
appointment the day of her first illness.

"The chatty party who thought I wasn't sociable," he particularized.
"Her name's Wilkes."

Jean remembered.

"Well, she came back," pursued the dentist, slowly. "I filled a tooth
for her the next morning. She had a good deal to say."

She brought herself to look at him. If the past must be faced now, she
would meet it like the honest girl she was. But Paul's manner was not
accusing, and when he spoke again, it was of neither Stella nor herself.

"How much does Amy get a week?" he asked.

She told him, and he nodded as over a point proved.

"Would it surprise you to hear that she draws five dollars less? That
does surprise you, doesn't it?"

"How do you know?"

"My drug-department patient told me long ago. I didn't think much
about it at the time, for some girls dress well on mighty little; but
when--well, the long and short of it is, that Wilkes woman knows Amy!"

Jean pulled herself together somehow. Amy's defense was for the moment
her own.

"Need that condemn Amy?" she said.

"Of course not," returned Paul judiciously. "It might happen to you, or
anybody. Perhaps she says she knows me. It's the way she came to know
her that counts. The Wilkes girl got very confidential when I left her
mouth free. She had tanked up with firewater for the occasion, and it
oiled her tongue. I didn't pay much attention until Amy Jeffries's name
slipped out, but I listened after that. I thought it was due you."

"And she said--?"

"She said a lot I won't rehash, but it all boils down to the fact that
they both graduated from the same reformatory."

She must tell him now! White-faced, miserable, she nerved herself to
speak.

"Paul!" she appealed.

He was instantly all concern for her distress.

"Don't take it so hard," he begged. "She isn't worth it."

"You don't understand. I--I knew."

"You knew what?"

"About the--reformatory. I once told you I met Amy in the country."

"I remember."

"Well," the confession came haltingly, "it was the refuge I meant. I
met her at the refuge."

She waited with eyes averted for the question which should bare all.
Instead, she suddenly felt Paul's caress and faced him to meet a smile.

"You _are_ a trump!" he ejaculated. "To know all the while and never
give her away!"

He had not understood! Trembling like a reprieved criminal, she heard
him go on to complete his self-deception.

"I was going to ask you to let Amy slide after we were married," he
said, "but if you believe in her this much, I reckon she's worth
helping. I don't suppose all refuge girls are of the Wilkes stripe."

The crisis past, she half regretted that she could not have screwed
her courage to the point of a full confession, but this feeling was
transitory. Paul rested content with his own explanations and talked
of little else than their flat, and she, too, presently found their
home-building absorbing.

A more minute inspection of the Lorna Doone, after the signing of the
lease, revealed that the outer splendor had its inner penalties.

"Looks like a case of rob Paul to pay Peter, this trip," said the
dentist. "Peter is the owner's first name, you know. The woodwork is
cheap, the bathtubs are seconds, and the closets, as you say, aren't
worth mentioning. I'll gamble the building laws have been dodged from
subcellar to cornice. I hear he has run up a dozen like it, and every
blessed one on spec. That's why we're getting six weeks' rent free.
It's anything to fill the house and hook some sucker who hankers for an
investment and never suspects the leases don't amount to shucks."

"Don't they?"

"Ours doesn't. Why, the man as much as told me to clear out when the
building changes hands, if I like."

Jean looked round the bright little toy of a kitchen where they stood.

"I shan't want to leave," she said. "It already seems like home."

It seemed more and more a home as their preparations went forward. They
were not supposed to enter into formal possession till late in August,
but the complaisant owner gave Paul a key some weeks before and made
no objection to their moving in anything they pleased. So it fell out
that their modest six-rooms-and-bath in the Lorna Doone became in a
way a sanctuary to which they went evenings when they could, and made
beautiful according to their light.

It was a precious experience. Such wise planning it involved! Such
ardent scanning of advertisements, such sweet toil of shopping, such
rich rewards in midsummer bargains! They did not appreciate the
magnitude of their needs till an out-of-the-way store, which fashion
never patronized, put them concretely before their eyes in a window
display. In successive show-windows, each as large as any of their
rooms at the Lorna Doone, this enterprising firm had deployed a whole
furnished flat. Furthermore, they had peopled it. In the parlor, which
one saw first, a waxen lady in a yellow tea-gown sat embroidering by
the gas-log, while over against her lounged a waxen gentleman in velvet
smoking-jacket and slippers--a most inviting domestic picture, even
though its atmosphere was somewhat cluttered with price-marks.

"That's you and me," said Paul, tenderly ungrammatical.

Jean was less romantically preoccupied.

"I'd quite forgotten curtains," she mused. "They'll take a pretty
penny."

Thereupon the dentist discovered things which he had overlooked.

"We must have a bookcase," he said. "That combination case and desk
certainly looks swell. What say to one like it?"

"Have you any books?"

"I should smile. I've got together the best little dental library you
can buy."

"Then you'll keep it at your office," decided Jean, promptly. "When we
have a library about something besides teeth, we'll think about a case."

The shopkeeper's imaginative realism extended also to the other rooms.
Real fruit adorned the dining-room buffet; the neat kitchen was
tenanted by a maid in uniform, whom they dubbed "Marie" and agreed
that they could do without; while in one of the bedrooms they came upon
a crib whose occupant they studiously refrained to classify.

"But for kitchenware," said Paul, abruptly, "the five-and-ten-cent
stores have this place beaten to a pulp."

With this, then, as a working model, to which Paul was ever returning
for inspiration, they made their purchases. It was, of course, his
money in the main which they expended, but Jean also drew generously
on her small hoard. They vied with each other in planning little
surprises. Now the dentist would open some drawer and chance upon a kit
of tools for the household carpentering, in which his mechanical genius
reveled; or Jean would find her kitchen the richer for some new-fangled
ice-cream freezer, coffee-machine, or dish-washer which, in Paul's
unvarying phrase, "practically ran itself." They derived infinite
amusement also from the placing and replacing of their belongings--a
far knottier problem than any one save the initiate may conceive, since
the wall spaces of flats, as all flat-dwellers know, are ingeniously
designed to fit nothing which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker
produce. Luckily they discovered this profound law early in their
buying, though not before Paul, adventuring alone among the "antique"
shops of Fourth Avenue, fell victim to an irresistible bargain in the
shape of a colonial sideboard which, joining forces with an equally
ponderous bargain of a table, blockaded their little dining room
almost to the exclusion of chairs.

Half the zest of all this lay in its secrecy; for although the
boarding-house suspected a love affair,--and broadly hinted its
suspicions,--it innocently supposed their frequent evenings out were
spent at the theaters. Quite another theory prevailed at the Lorna
Doone, however, as Jean learned to her dismay one Sunday when she was
addressed as "Mrs. Bartlett" by the portly owner, whom they passed in
the entrance hall.

"Oh, they've all along taken it for granted we're married," said Paul,
carelessly. "I thought it was too good a joke to spoil."

Jean did not see its humor.

"We must explain," she said.

"And be grinned at for a bride and groom! What's the use? It will be
true enough two weeks from now."

She privily decided that she would undeceive the owner at the first
opportunity, but the chance to speak had not presented itself when far
graver happenings brushed it from her thoughts as utterly as if it had
never been.




                                 XVII


Amy had, in fairness, to be told as August waned. To Jean's suggestion
that very likely either the stenographer or the manicure would be glad
to share the room of the three dormers, she replied that she could
easily afford to keep it on by herself while she remained.

"It won't be for long," she vouchsafed airily. "In fact, I'm going to
be married myself."

Jean's arms went round her instantly, the restraint of months forgotten.

"And you've never breathed a word!" she reproached.

"No more have you," retorted Amy, glacial under endearments.

"I know, I know. But you have seemed so different. You have kept to
yourself, and I thought--"

"You thought I wasn't straight," Amy took her up bitterly as Jean
hesitated. "I knew mighty well what was in your mind every time I got a
new shirt-waist or a hat."

"You weren't frank with me."

"I couldn't be."

"I don't see why."

"Because," she wavered, melted now, "because you are you, so
strait-laced and--and strong. I've always been afraid to tell you just
how things stood."

"Afraid, Amy? Afraid of me!" Jean felt keenly self-reproachful. "I am
horribly sorry. Heaven knows I haven't meant to be unkind. I've found
my own way too hard to want to make things worse for anybody else, you
above all. You believe me, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then be your old self, the Amy who made friends with me in Cottage No.
6. Who is he? Any one I know?"

"You've met him."

"I have! Where?"

Amy's color rose.

"Remember the night you struck New York?"

"Perfectly."

"And the traveling man who jollied you?"

"Yes."

"Well," she faltered, "he's the one. His name is Chapman."

Jean was too staggered for a prompt response, but Amy was still toiling
among her explanations.

"You mustn't think anything of his nonsense that night," she went on.
"It was only Fred's way. He's a born flirt. You couldn't help liking
him, Jean, if you knew him."

Jean met her wistful appeal for sympathy, woman-wise. Words were
impossible at first. By and by, when she could trust herself to speak,
she wished her happiness.

"Does he--know?" she added.

Amy's fair skin went a shade rosier.

"My record, you mean? Nobody knows it better. Don't you--don't you
catch on, Jean? He was the--the man!"

"He! You've taken up with him again! The man who saw your stepfather
send you to the refuge and never lifted a finger--"

"Don't!"

"Who let his child--"

"Stop, I tell you!" She barred Jean's lips passionately. "You see! Is
it any wonder I couldn't bear to tell you? I wish to God I'd never said
a word."

Jean stared blankly at this lamb turned lioness.

"Forgive me," she begged. "Perhaps I don't understand."

"Understand! You!" She laughed hysterically, "Yet you're going to be
married! If you loved Paul Bartlett, you'd understand."

"You must not say that."

"Then don't say things that hurt me. Understand! If you did, you
would know that it would make no difference if he was rotten clear
through. But he's not. Fred never knew about the baby. He cried when
he heard--cross my heart, he did. He said if he'd known--but what's
the use of digging up the past! He is trying to make up for it now.
He's been trying ever since we ran across each other again. It was in
the cloak department he caught sight of me," she digressed with a
pale smile. "I was wearing a white broadcloth, sable-trimmed evening
wrap, and maybe he didn't stare! He couldn't do enough for me. That's
where the new clothes came from. I could have had money if I'd wanted
it--money to burn, for he makes a lot; but I wouldn't touch it. It
would have looked--oh, you see for yourself I could not take money.
You don't sell love, real love, and God knows mine is real! I've never
stopped loving him. I never can."

She, too, it appeared when she grew more calm, aspired to be mistress
of a flat.

"Though not at the start," she continued. "Fred wants to board at
first. He says I've had work enough for one while. I said I shouldn't
mind that kind of work, but he is dead set on boarding, till I've had a
good long rest. Fred can be terrible firm. But by and by we're to keep
house, and you'll be able to tell me just what to do and buy. You will,
won't you, Jean?" she ended anxiously. "You'll stick by me?"

"Yes," Jean promised.

"And you'll come to see me--afterward? Say you'll come."

"Yes, I'll come."

"And you won't let Fred suspect that you've heard about--about
everything? I want him to see that I know a girl like you. I've talked
to him about you, but I've never let on that you're a refuge girl
yourself. Promise me you will be nice to him!"

"I'll try."

Amy kissed her fervently.

"This makes me awful happy," she sighed. "I think a heap of you, Jean.
Honest, I do. You come next to Fred."

As a proof of her affection she presently bought a wedding gift of a
pair of silver candelabra which she could ill afford, and which Jean
accepted only because she must. These went to flank Grimes's gift--for
he was party to the secret now--a glittering timepiece for their
mantel, densely infested with writhing yet cheerful Cupids, after
the reputed manner of his admired "Lewis Quince." Mrs. St. Aubyn's
contribution was a framed galaxy of American poets: Bryant, Emerson,
Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Walt Whitman, the last
looking rakishly jocular at the Brahminical company in which he found
himself thus canonized.

Everything was finally in place at the Lorna Doone, and with the actual
beginning of their lease-hold Paul moved his personal chattels from
Mrs. St. Aubyn's to the flat, and slept there nights. This was the
twenty-fifth of August. A week later Jean climbed the Acme Painless
Dental Company's sign-littered stairway for her last day's service.
She was a little late, owing to a fire which had impeded traffic in a
near-by block, and the morning's activity at the parlors was already
under way. She busied herself first, as usual, at her desk, sorting
the mail which the postman had just left. In addition to the office
mail there were personal letters for Grimes and the various members of
the staff, which she presently began to distribute, reaching Paul's
operating-room last of all.

The dentist was at work, but he glanced up when she entered and sent
her a loverlike look over his patient's head. No creature with eyes
and a reasoning brain could have misread it, and the occupant of the
chair, who had both, squirmed to view its object; but Paul threw in a
strategic "Wider, please," and held the unwilling head firmly to the
front.

"Chuck them anywhere, Jean," he directed, his glance dropping to her
hand.

Her obedience was literal; the next instant the letters strewed the
rug at his feet. With the enunciation of the name, the patient twisted
suddenly from Paul's grasp, and Jean found herself staring full into
the malignant eyes of Stella Wilkes.

Paul first found voice.

"We'll go on, Miss Wilkes," he said, his gaze still intent upon the
tragic mask, which was Jean.

Stella waved him aside.

"Hold your horses, Doc," she rejoined coolly. "I've met an old friend."

"Do you know each other?" It was to Jean he put the question.

[Illustration: "Do you know each other?"]

Stella answered for her.

"Do I know Jean Fanshaw!" Sure of how matters stood between these two,
sure also of her own rôle in the drama, she sprang from the chair
and bestowed a Judas kiss upon Jean's frozen cheek. "Do I know her! Why
we're regular old pals!"

Freed somehow from that loathsome touch, Jean stumbled to her desk.
Patients came and went, the routine of the office ran its course; her
share in the mechanism got itself mechanically performed; yet, whether
she sped or welcomed, plied the cash-register, receipted bills, or
soothed a nervous child, some spiteful goblin at the back of her brain
was ever whispering the shameful tale which Stella was pouring out in
that inner room. Those lies would be past Paul's forgetting, perhaps
even past his forgiving, say what she might in defense. His look at
Stella's kiss had been ghastly. What was he thinking now!

Then, when her agony of suspense seemed bearable no longer, came
Stella, her pretense of friendship abandoned, her real vengeful self to
the fore.

"I guess we're square," she bent to whisper, her face almost touching
Jean's. "I guess we're square."

She vanished like the creature of nightmare she was, but the nightmare
remained. Paul would demand his reckoning now. He would come and stand
over her with his accusing face and ask her what this horror meant.
She could not go to him, she felt, or at least unless he sent. But
throughout that endless forenoon the dentist kept to his office, though
twice there were intervals when she knew him to be alone. Her lunch
hour--and his--came at last. She lingered, but still Paul delayed. At
last, driven by an imperative craving to be done with it, she hurried
to his room and found it empty. Grimes told her that he had seen Paul
leave the place by a side door. The news was a dagger-thrust in her
pride. Of a surety, now, he must seek her.

Between five o'clock and six, a dull hour, he came, woebegone and
conciliatory.

"For God's sake, clear this up," he begged. "Haven't you anything to
say?"

"A great deal, Paul. But first tell me what that woman said about me."

"You heard."

"But what else?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing!" The thing was incredible.

"Only that you'd probably be glad to explain things yourself."

At that half her burden fell. Stella's cunning had overreached itself.
She had thought to rack her victim most by forcing her to betray
herself, but she had reasoned from the false premise that Jean had a
truly shameful past to conceal.

"Glad," she repeated. "Yes, I am glad. I should have told you some day,
Paul. It's a long story."

The door opened to admit a caller with a swollen jowl.

"To-night, then?" said the dentist, hurriedly.

"Yes," she assented. "I will tell you to-night."

"At the flat?"

"Yes; at the flat."

Spurred on by her unrest, she reached the Lorna Doone before Paul had
returned from his evening meal, and found the flat in darkness. She was
relieved that this was so. It would give her a quiet interval in which
to turn over what she meant to say. She entered the little parlor and
seated herself in an open window where a shy midsummer-night's breeze,
astray from river or sound, stole gently in and out and fingered
her hair. It was wonderfully peaceful for a city. The sounds from
below--the footsteps on the pavement, the cries of children at play
under the young elms lining the avenue, the jests of the cigar-store
loungers, the chatter of the girls thronging the soda-fountain at the
corner druggist's, the jingle of bicycle bells, the beat of hoofs,
the honk of occasional automobiles, even the strains of a hurdy-gurdy
out-Heroding Sousa--one and all ascended, mellowed by distance to
something not unmusical and cheerily human. She realized, as she
listened, that the city, not the country, this city, this very corner,
this hearth which she and Paul had prepared, was at last and truly home.

Presently she heard Paul's latch-key in the lock and his step in the
dark corridor.

"You here?" he called tonelessly. "Better have a light, hadn't we?"

"It is cooler without," she answered. Even though her explanations need
not fear the light, she thought obscurity might ease their telling.

With no other greeting, the dentist passed to the window opposite
hers, slouched wearily into a chair, and waited in silence for her to
begin.

Jean told her story in its fullness: her tomboy girlhood, the hateful
family jars, the last quarrel with Amelia, her sentence to the
refuge, her escape, return, riot-madness, and release, and the inner
significance of her late struggle for a living against too heavy odds.
She told it so honestly, so plainly, that she thought no sane being
could misunderstand; yet, vaguely at first, with fatal clearness as,
ending, she strained her eyes toward the dour shadowy figure opposite,
she perceived that she had to deal with doubt.

"Do you think I am holding something back?" she faltered, after a long
silence. "Must I swear that I've told you the whole truth?"

The man stirred in his place at last.

"I guess an affidavit won't be necessary," he returned grimly.

She endured another silence impatiently, then rose proudly to her feet.

"I'll say it for you," she flashed. "This frees you of any promises
to me, Paul. You are as free as if you had never made them. Go your
own way: I'll go mine. It--it can't be harder than the one I've come.
Good-by."

He roused himself as she made to leave.

"Hold on, Jean," he said, coming closer. "I guess we can compromise
this thing somehow."

"Compromise! I have nothing to compromise."

"Haven't you?" He laughed harshly. "I should say--but let that pass.
Of course, after what's turned up, you can't expect a fellow to be so
keen to marry--"

"I've told you that you are free," she interrupted.

"But I don't want to be free--altogether. We could be pretty snug here,
Jean. The parson's rigmarole doesn't cut much ice with me, and I don't
see that it need with you. They think downstairs we're married. That
part's dead easy. As for Grimes and the rest--"

She had no impulse to strike him as she had the floor-walker. Waiting
in his folly for an answer, the man heard only her stumbling flight
along the corridor and the jar of a closing door.




                                 XVIII


Yet, an hour later, Paul came seeking her at Mrs. St. Aubyn's, and,
failing, returned in the morning before she breakfasted. Unsuccessful
a second time, and then a third, he wrote twice, imploring her not to
judge him by a moment's madness.

Jean made no reply. Moved by the eloquent memory of Paul's many
kindnesses and with the charity she hoped of others for herself, she
did him the justice to believe him better than his lowest impulse. But
while she was willing to grant that the Paul who, in the first shock of
her revelation, thought all the world rotten, was not the real Paul,
she would not have been the woman she was, had his offense failed
to bar him from her life. Her decision was instinctive and instant,
requiring no travail of spirit, though she could not escape subsequent
heart-searchings whether she had unwittingly laid herself open to
humiliation and a scorching shame that the dentist, or any man, could
even for a moment have held her so cheap.

Necessity turned her thoughts outward. The marriage plans had all
but devoured her savings, and while she was clothed better than ever
before, she lacked ready money for even a fortnight's board. Immediate
employment was essential, yet, when canvassed, the things to which she
might turn her hand were alarmingly few. After her experience with
Meyer & Schwarzschild, she was loath to go back to her refuge-taught
trade except as a last resort, while department-store life, as she had
found it, seemed scarcely less repellent. At the outset it was her hope
to secure somewhere a position like her last, but the advertisements
yielded the name of only one dentist in need of an assistant, and this
man had filled his vacancy before she applied. Thereafter she roamed
the high seas of "Help Wanted: Female" without chart or compass.

The newspapers teemed with offers of work for women's hands. The
caption "Domestic Service" of course removed a host of them from
consideration, and the demand for stenographers, manicures, and like
specialized wage-earners disposed of many others; but, these aside,
opportunity still seemed to beckon from infinite directions. Thus, the
paper-box industry clamored for girls to seam, strip, glue, turn in,
top-label, close, and tie; the milliners wanted trimmers, improvers,
frame-makers, and workers in plumage and artificial flowers; the
manufacturers of shirt-waists and infants' wear called for feminine
fingers to hemstitch, shirr, tuck, and press; deft needles might turn
their skill toward every conceivable object from theatrical spangles to
gas-mantles; nimble hands might dip chocolates, stamp decorated tin,
gold-lay books, sort corks, tip silk umbrellas, curl ostrich feathers,
fold circulars, and pack everything from Bibles to Turkish cigarettes.

But this prodigious demand, at first sight so promising, proved on
close inspection to be limited. Beginners were either not wanted at
all or, if taken on trial, were expected to subsist on charity or
air. Experience was the great requisite. Day after day Jean toiled up
murky staircases to confront this stumbling-block; day after day her
resources dwindled.

Amy was keenly sympathetic and pored over the eye-straining
advertisement columns as persistently as Jean herself.

"How's this?" she inquired, glancing up hopefully from one of these
quests. "'Wanted: Girl or woman to interest herself in caring for the
feeble-minded.'"

"I tried that yesterday."

"No good?"

"They only offered a home."

"And with idiots! They must be dotty themselves."

Then Jean, ranging another column, thought that she detected a glimmer
of hope.

"Listen," she said. "'Wanted: Girl to pose for society illustrations.'
Do you think there is anything in this?"

"Too much," returned Amy, sententiously. "Don't answer model ads. It
isn't models those fellows want any more than they are artists. Real
artists don't need to advertise. They can get all the models they want
without it. I never thought to mention posing. Why don't you try it?
You have got the looks, and it's perfectly respectable."

"Is it?" rejoined Jean, dubiously. "I thought this advertisement
sounded all right because it says 'society illustrations.'"

"It's just as proper to pose nude, if that's what you're thinking
about. I know the nicest kind of a girl who does. Her mother is
paralyzed. But that's only one branch of the business, and it's all
respectable. Why, you'll find art students themselves doing it to help
along with their expenses. I know what I'm talking about, because I've
posed."

"You!"

"Just a little. It was for an artist who boarded here a while before
you came. He moved uptown when he began to get on, and now you see his
pictures in all the magazines. I was a senator's daughter in one set
of drawings and a golf-girl in a poster. It's easy work as soon as
your muscles get broken in, and it stands you in fifty cents an hour
at least. The girl I told you of sometimes makes twenty-five or thirty
dollars a week, but she poses for life classes; they're in the schools,
you know. I made up my mind to go into it once."

"Why didn't you?"

Amy laid a derisive finger on her tip-tilted nose.

"Here's why," she laughed. "It was this way: The artist who used to
board here told me of another man who paid three or four models regular
salaries. He did pictures about Greeks and Romans, and all those
girls had to do, I heard, was to loaf round in pretty clothes, and
once in awhile be painted. I went up there one day and it certainly
was a lovely place, just like a house in a novel I'd read called 'The
Last Days of Pompey-eye.' A girl was posing when I came, and, if
you'll believe me, that man had rigged up a wind-machine that blew her
clothes about just as though she was running a race. Well, I didn't
stay long. The artist--he was seventy-five or eighty, I should say,
and grumpy--turned me sideways, took one look at my nose, and said I
was too old, nineteen hundred years too old! He thought he was funny.
Somebody told me afterward that he was a has-been and couldn't sell his
pictures any more."

With the idea that posing might answer as a stop-gap until she found
some other means of support, Jean forthwith visited an agency whose
address Amy furnished. She found the proprietor of this enterprise a
jerky little man with a disquieting pair of black eyes which thoroughly
inventoried her every feature, movement, and detail of dress.

"Chorus, front row, show-girl, or church choir?" he demanded briskly.

"I thought this was a model agency," Jean said; "I wish to try posing
if--"

"Right shop. What line, please?"

"In costume."

"You don't follow me. Fashion-plate, illustrating, lithography, or
commercial photography."

"I'm not sure," she hesitated, bewildered by this unexpected broadening
of the field. "What can I earn?"

The little man waved his arms spasmodically.

"Might as well ask me what the weather'll be next Fourth of July," he
sputtered. "See that horse there?" pointing out of his window at a
much-blanketed thoroughbred on its way to the smith's. "How fast can
he trot? You don't know! Of course you don't. How much can you earn?
I don't know. Of course I don't. You see my point? Same case exactly.
Illustrators pay all the way from half a dollar to a dollar and a half
an hour. Camera-models make from one dollar to three. And there you
are."

"I've had no experience."

"That's plain enough. Sticks out like a sore thumb. But you don't need
any. Fact, you don't. That's the beauty of the business. Appearance and
gumption, they're the cards to hold. You've got appearance. A girl has
to have the looks, or I don't touch her fee. Fair all round, you see.
If a girl's face or get-up is against her, I've no business taking her
money. If an illustrator says, 'Send me up a model who looks so and
so,' that's just the article he gets. First-class models, first-class
illustrators, there's my system."

"I need work at once," Jean stated. "What is my chance?"

"Prime. You ought to fill the bill for a man who 'phoned not two
minutes before you walked through the door. High-class artist, known
everywhere, liberal pay. There needn't have been any delay whatever, if
you'd thought to bring your father or mother along."

Jean's rising spirits dropped dismally at this remark.

"My father is dead," she explained. "My mother lives in the country."

"Then get her consent in writing. Means time, of course, and time's
money, but it can't be helped."

"Is it absolutely necessary?"

"You'll have to have it to do business with me," replied the agent,
beginning to shuffle among his papers.

"But my mother knows I am trying to earn a living," she argued.
"Besides, I'm nearly of age. I shall be twenty-one next week."

"Drop in when you get your letter," directed the little man,
inflexibly. "Minor or not, I make it a rule to have parents' consent.
Troubles enough in my line without papa and mamma. Good day."

Outside the door Jean decided upon independent action. This last
resource was at once too attractive and too near to be relinquished
lightly. The idea of obtaining Mrs. Fanshaw's consent was preposterous,
even if she could bring herself to ask it--the term "artist's model"
conveyed only scandalous suggestions to Shawnee Springs; but there
was nothing to prevent her hunting employment from studio to studio.
Amy had mentioned the address of the illustrator whom success had
translated from Mrs. St. Aubyn's world, and to him Jean determined to
apply first.

Her errand brought her to one of the innumerable streets from which
wealth and fashion are ever in retreat before a vanguard of the
crafts of which wealth and fashion are the legitimate quarry, and
to a commercialized brownstone dwelling with a modiste established
in its basement, a picture-dealer tenanting its drawing-room, and a
mixed population of artists, architects, and musicians tucked away
elsewhere between first story and roof. She found the studio of Amy's
acquaintance readily, and obeying a muffled call, which answered her
knock, pushed open the door of an antechamber that had obviously once
done service as a hall-bedroom. Here she hesitated. The one door other
than that by which she entered led apparently into the intimacies of
the artist's domestic life, for the counterpane of a white iron bed,
distinctly visible from her station, outlined a woman's recumbent form.

"In here, please," called the voice. "I'm trying to finish while the
light holds."

On the threshold Jean had to smile at her own unsophistication. The
supposed bedroom was a detail of the studio proper, the supposed wife a
model impersonating a hospital patient who held the centre of interest
in a gouache drawing, to which the illustrator was adding a few last
touches by way of accent.

"I see you don't need a model," Jean said, with a smile inclusive of
the girl in the bed.

He scrutinized her impersonally, transferred a brush from mouth to
hand, and caught up a bundle of galley-proofs.

"No," he decided, more to himself than Jean. "It's another petite
heroine, drat her! But I'd be glad to have you leave your name and
address," he added, indicating a paint-smeared memorandum book which
lay amidst the brushes, ink-saucers, and color-tubes littering a small
table at elbow. "I may need your type any day."

Jean complied, thanked him, and turned to go.

"Try MacGregor, top floor--Malcolm MacGregor," he suggested. "Tell him
I said to have a look at your eyes."

Much encouraged, she mounted two more flights, knocked, and, as before,
let herself in at an unceremonious hail. This time, however, she
passed directly from hall to studio, coming at once into an atmosphere
startling in its contrast to the life she left behind. MacGregor's
Oasis, one of the illustrator's friends called it, and the phrase
fitted happily. The rack of wonderfully chased small arms and long Arab
flintlocks; the bright spot of color made upon the neutral background
of the wall by some strange musical instrument or Tripolitan fan; the
curious jugs, gourds, and leathern buckets of caravan housekeeping; the
careless heaps of oriental stuffs and garments from which, among the
soberer folds of a barracan or camel's-hair jellaba, one caught the
red gleam of a fez or the yellow glow of a vest wrought with intricate
embroideries; the tropical sun-helmet,--MacGregor's own,--its green
lining bleached by the reflected light of Sahara sand; the antelope
antlers above the lintel; the Soudanese leopard skins under foot--these
and their like, in bewildering number and variety, recalled the charm
and mystery of the African desert which this man knew, loved, and
painted superlatively.

MacGregor himself, whom she found at his easel, was, despite his
name, not Scotch, but American, with seven generations of New England
ancestors behind him. Tall, thin-featured, alert, and apparently in his
late thirties, he had the quizzical, shrewdly humorous eye which passes
for and possibly does express the Connecticut Yankee's outlook upon
life. In nothing did he suggest the artist.

"I'll be through here in no time, if you'll take a chair," he said,
when Jean had repeated the other artist's message.

Her wait was fruitful, for it emphasized most graphically the dictum
of the agent that gumption was fundamental in the successful model's
equipment. The man now posing for MacGregor in the character of an
aged Arab leading a caravan down a rocky defile, was mounted upon
nothing more spirited than an ingenious arrangement of packing-cases,
but he bestrode his saddle as if he rode in truth the barb which
the canvas depicted. He dismounted presently and disappeared in an
adjacent alcove from which he shortly issued a commonplace young man
in commonplace occidental garb, who pocketed his day's wage and went
whistling down the stairs.

MacGregor turned to Jean.

"I do want a model," he said. "I want one bad. By rights I should be
painting over yonder,"--his gesture broadly signified Africa,--"but
my market, the devil take it! is here. So I'm hunting a model. I have
had plenty come who look the part (which you don't) even Arabs from a
Wild West show; but I've yet to strike one who has any more imagination
than a rabbit. I tell you this frankly because it's easy to see you're
not the average model. That is why I asked you to wait. The model I'm
looking for must work under certain of the Arab woman's restrictions.
Out there"--his hand again swept the Dark Continent--"you never see
her face, as you probably know. You glimpse her eyes, if they're not
veiled; you try to read their story. If even the eyes are hidden,
you find yourself attempting to read the draperies. Do you grasp my
difficulty? I want some one who can express emotions not only with the
eyes, but without them. Now you," he ended, with a note of enthusiasm,
"you have the eyes. Don't tell me you haven't the rest."

Jean laughed.

"I won't if I can help it," she assured him.

He caught up a costume which lay upon a low divan, and ransacked a
heap of unframed canvases that leaned backs outward against the wall.

"This sketch will give you a notion how the dress goes," he said, and
carried his armful into the alcove.

When she reëntered the studio, MacGregor was arranging a screen of a
pattern Jean had never seen.

"It was made from an old lattice," he explained, placing a chair for
her behind it. "I picked it up in Kairwan. This little door swings in
its original position. You are looking now from a window--a little more
than ajar, so--from which generations of women, dressed as you are
dressed, have watched an Arab street."

He passed round to the front of the screen and studied her intently.

"Eyes about there," he said, indicating a rose-water jar upon a low
shelf. "Expression," he paused thoughtfully. "How shall I tell you what
I want you to suggest from the lattice? Don't think of those women of
the Orient. You can't truly conceive their life. Think of something
nearer home. Imagine yourself in a convent--no, that won't do at all.
Imagine yourself a prisoner, an innocent prisoner, peering through your
grating at the world, longing--"

"Wait," said Jean.

She threw herself into his conception, closed her mental vision
upon the studio and its trophies, erased the bustling city from her
thoughts. She was again a resentful inmate of Cottage No. 6, lying in
her cell-like room at twilight, while the woods called to her with a
hundred tongues. There were flowers in the sheltered places; arbutus,
violets--

"You've got it!" MacGregor's exultant voice brought her back. "You've
got it! We'll go to work to-morrow at nine."

"No admission, Mac?" asked a man's voice from the doorway. "I gave the
regulation knock, but you seemed--" He stopped and gazed hard into the
eyes which met his with answering wonder from the lattice.

"I've found her, Atwood," MacGregor hailed him jubilantly. "I've found
her at last."

The newcomer took an uncertain step forward, halted again, then strode
suddenly toward the screen.

"I think I have, too," he said, at the little window now. "It's Jack,
isn't it?"




                                  XIX


And Jean?

It was as if she still dwelt in fancy in that unforgettable past. She
had burst her bars; she had come, a fugitive, to the birch-edged shore
of a lonely lake; her knight of the forest stood before her.

[Illustration: Her knight of the forest stood before her.]

The astonished MacGregor, having waited a decent interval for some
rational clew to the situation, recalled his own existence by the
simple expedient of folding the screen.

"Step inside, won't you?" he invited with a dry grin. "You may take
cold at the window."

Atwood turned an illumined face.

"It's been years since we met," he explained. "I was not sure at
first--the costume, the place."

MacGregor's eye lingered upon him in humorous meditation.

"Perhaps you'll see your way in time to introduce me," he suggested.
"This has been a business session, so far. We hadn't come to names."

The younger man floundered, glowing healthily, but Jean retained her
wits.

"Miss Fanshaw," she supplied promptly. "I should have mentioned it
before."

She vanished into the alcove, questioned her unfamiliar image in the
little mirror, and began to resume her street-dress with fingers
not under perfect control. There came an indistinct murmur of talk
from the studio in which MacGregor's incisive tones predominated. His
companion's responses were few and low. When she reëntered, Atwood
stood waiting by the outer door.

"At nine, then," reminded MacGregor. "So-long, Craig, if you must go."

"So-long," answered the other, absently.

On the stair they faced each other with the wonder of their meeting
still upon them.

"You are not a professional model," he said; "I should have come across
you before, if you were."

"You have seen me get my first engagement."

"And with MacGregor! Was it chance?"

"Just chance."

"Jove!" he ejaculated. "It might have been myself. Yet it's strange
enough as it is. MacGregor in there was the chap I was to camp with,
you remember? The man whose grandmother--"

"Great-grandmother, wasn't it?" she smiled.

"You do remember!"

A silence fell upon them for a little moment and they assayed each
other shyly, he keenly aware of the fuller curves which had made a
woman of her, she searching rather for reminders of the youth whose
image had gone back with her through the gatehouse into bondage. He was
more grave, as became a man now looking back upon his golden twenties,
with thoughtful lines about the eyes, and a clearer demarcation of
the jaw, which was, as of old, shaven, and pale with the pallor of a
dweller in cities. The mouth was the mouth of the youth, sensitive,
unspoiled; and the direct eyes had lost nothing of their friendliness,
though she divined that he weighed her, questioning what manner of
woman she had become.

"You went back," he broke the pause, "you went back to that inferno
because of what I said. You saw it through. Plucky Jack!"

"Jean," she corrected.

"Why?"

"Jack was another girl, a girl I hope I've outgrown."

"Don't say that," he protested. "I knew her. But this Jean of the
staircase--"

"Well?" she challenged, avid for his mature opinion.

"Makes me wonder," he completed, "whether I've not been outgrown, too."

It was not a satisfying answer. She remembered that growth may be other
than benign.

"You!" she said.

"Why not? I was young, preposterously young. Had I been older, I should
never have dared meddle with your life."

"Meddle!" she repeated, his self-reproach rang so true; "you gave
me the wisest advice such a girl could receive. That girl could not
appreciate how wise it was, but this one does and thanks you from the
bottom of her heart."

Atwood drew a long breath.

"You can say that!" he exclaimed. "You knew what it meant to return;
I did not. Since I have realized the truth, the thought of my folly
has given me no peace. I imagined--God knows what I haven't imagined!
To see you here, as you are; to have you thank me, when I thought I
deserved your undying hate, is like a reprieve."

Jean's face went radiant. "Yet you say you knew her!"

Their eyes met an instant; then they laughed together happily.

"You're right," he acknowledged. "It seems I don't know either of you.
But we can't talk here, can we? We need--" He paused, then, "Give me
this day," he entreated. "We're not strangers. Say you will!"

As they issued upon the pavement, the driver of a passing cab raised
an interrogative whip. Atwood nodded, and a moment afterward they
had edged into the traffic of one of the avenues and were rolling
northward. To Jean, reveling silently in her first hansom, it seemed
that they had scarcely started before they turned in at one of the
entrances of Central Park, and for a time followed perforce the
flashing afternoon parade before striking into a less frequented
roadway, where they dismounted. Atwood, too, had said nothing amidst
the jingling ostentation of the avenue and main-traveled drives, and
he was silent now as they forsook the asphalt walks for quiet paths,
where their feet trod the good earth, and the odor of leaf mold rose
pungently.

Presently he halted.

"Will you shut your eyes for a little way?" he asked. "It's my whim."

She assented, and they went forward slowly, her hand upon his sleeve.
She felt the path drop, by gentle slopes at first, then with sharp
turns past jutting rocks, where there seemed no path at all. Her sense
of direction failed her, and with it went her recollection of the
city's nearness. The immediate sounds were all sylvan. She heard the
call of a cat-bird, the bark of a squirrel, the laughing whimper of
a brook among stones, which she guessed, if her ear had not lost its
woodcraft, merged its peevish identity in some neighboring lake or pool.

"Now," said her guide, pausing.

She looked, started, and rounded swiftly upon Atwood to find him
beaming at her instant comprehension.

"It might be the very same!" she exclaimed.

"Mightn't it? The birches, the shore-line--"

"And the stream, even the little stream! Could I find watercress
_there_, I wonder?"

The man laughed.

"Ah, it is real to you! I, too, forgot New York when I first stumbled
on it. I even _looked_ for watercress. But it knows no such purity,
poor little brook! I've had to pretend with it, as I've pretended with
the lake. The landscape-gardener was a clever fellow. He makes you
believe there are distances out there--winding channels, unplumbed
depths; he cheats you into thinking you have a forest at your back.
Sometimes he has almost persuaded me to cast a clumsy line into that
thicket yonder."

Jean's look returned to him quickly. He was smiling, but with an
undercurrent of gravity.

"You know it well," she said.

"I ought. It was here, the summer after we met, that I came to realize
something of what I had asked you to do. I began to study refuges. I
went to such as I could, boys' places, mainly; I even tried to get
sight or word of you. Somehow, though, I never came at the right
official, and it seemed that men weren't welcome. I learned a few
things, however. I grubbed among reports; I found out what your daily
life was like, what your companions must be, and once I saw a newspaper
account of a riot. But of you I heard nothing. How could I? I did not
even know your name--I, your judge!"

The girl moved toward the border of the lake and for a space stood
looking dreamily into its tranquil counterfeit of changing foliage and
September sky. To the miracle of their meeting was added the revelation
that even as he had filled her thoughts in the dark days, so had she
possessed his.

"Will you sit here?" he asked, again beside her. "I want to hear the
whole story--the story which began back among the other birches."

"It began farther back than there."

"Not for me."

"But it should. If you thought about me at all, you must have wondered
how I came to be in a refuge uniform."

"I wondered, yes; but I never really cared. I could see with my own
eyes what you were."

She searched his face with the skepticism which the world had taught,
then, with a swift intake of breath, looked believing away.

"We must begin at the beginning," she said.

She told him her story as she had told it to the dentist that hideous
night of explanations at the Lorna Doone, but where Paul's black
silence had stifled her, lamed her speech, made her almost doubt
herself, this listener's faith leaped before her words, bridged the
difficult places where she faltered, spread the cloak of chivalry in
the miry way. Yet, with all his sympathy, it hurt her, so senseless
always seemed the reckoning for her follies, so poignant were her
regrets, and once, when she began to speak of Stella and the riot, he
stopped her.

"Don't go on," he begged. "I see what it costs you."

"I'd rather you heard it all," she replied. "It's your due."

Nevertheless, she did not tell him all. She could speak of Stella,
of Amy, of young Meyer, of the floor-walker, but no word of Paul
passed her lips. She let Atwood infer that the stigma of the refuge
had driven her from Grimes's employ, as it had thrust her from the
department store. The whole chain of circumstances which the dentist's
name connoted had become suddenly as inexplicable to herself as to this
transcendent hero of a perfect day.

The sun was low when she made an end, and the long-drawn shadows of the
birches in the lake turned their thoughts again to that other sundown.

"You were a lonely little figure as I looked back," he said. "I took
that picture with me through the hills, and it remained my sharpest
memory. It was a sad memory, a mute reproach, like the poor things I
bought for you to wear."

"Then you did get them!" she cried, her dress instinct astir. "What
were they like?"

"I will show them to you some day."

"You've kept them? I must pay my debt."

He shook his head. "They're not for sale. You shall see them when you
come to my studio."

"You are an artist, too?"

"I paint," he replied simply. "When you are not busy with MacGregor,
you will find work with me. We'll arrange that among us. Old Mac little
dreams our secret."

"It is a secret?"

"With me, at any rate. I've never told. You see"--he looked away with a
sudden diffidence almost boyish; then back again with a temerity that
was boyish, too--"you see, I was jealous of my memories. I wanted to
keep them wholly to myself. Our meeting was--how shall I say it?--a
kind of idyl. And you--have you told?"

"Never."

"Was it partly for my reason?"

"Yes," she answered; "partly for your reason."

"But those clothes," he said, after a moment, "you'll smile when you
see them. I've tried many a time to imagine you wearing them, braving
the world as you planned so stoutly. Perhaps it would have been no
harder than the other way. Perhaps--but that's over with, thank heaven!
You've earned your freedom and have a brighter lot than a fugitive's
to face. I don't mean a model's life. That will be temporary. There's
something in you, something fine that only needs its chance. I can't
tell you how I know this any more than I can tell you what it is, but
I believe in it as I believe in my own existence. I know it's true, as
true as the fact that we stand here face to face."

By some necromancy of the mind he mirrored back her own vague hopes.

"But I am a woman," she said, eager for more.

"So much the better. You live in woman's day. But don't forget that you
have given me a part of it," he added, as she rose. "My own particular
solar day isn't ended yet. When we first met, you had me to luncheon,
or was it breakfast? I'm going to return the courtesy."

"But--"

"You couldn't be more appropriately dressed for a park restaurant," he
cut in, pursuing her glance. "They'll serve us under an arbor where the
wistaria blooms in May. We'll have to pretend about the wistaria, but
it ought to be easy. The great pretense has come true."




                                  XX


She learned from MacGregor what Atwood's modest "I paint" signified.

"He is an illustrator who illustrates," he told her their first
day, while they worked. "I mean--left arm a trifle higher, please;
you've shifted the pose--I mean he gets into the skin of a writer's
characters, when they have any. If they're mere abstractions, he
creates blood, bones, and epidermis for them outright. Rarer thing
than you imagine, I dare say, in spite of the newspaper jokes. You can
count the men on one hand who do it here in New York, and to my mind
Craig deserves the index finger. He'd find a soul for a rag doll. But
I'm only telling you what any top-notch magazine you pick up says more
forcibly."

Jean cloaked her ignorance in silence and put her trust in MacGregor's
enthusiasm for further light. After an industrious interval it came.

"But that isn't all," he added, tilting back to study his canvas
through half-shut eyes. "The public doesn't know Atwood's true
_metier_. He's bigger than they think. I'll show you something in a
minute. It's time for rest."

He lingered for a brush stroke, which at one sweep filled a languid
fold of drapery with action, and then crossed the studio to the stack
of unfinished work beside the wall.

"Wait," he warned, placing a canvas in the trial frame and wheeling an
easel tentatively. "It's in the rough, but we can give it light and a
setting. Now look. That's what I call portraiture."

Even her unschooled eye perceived its strength. It was MacGregor who
looked out at her, MacGregor as she herself had twice seen him that day
with his working fit upon him, New York forgotten, Africa filling every
thought.

"And Mr. Atwood did it?"

"Nobody else. He sat over there in that corner, while I worked in mine,
and painted what he saw."

"It's a wonderful likeness."

"Likeness!" MacGregor shook the poor word contemptuously. "Likeness!
Child, it's divination!"

He dismissed her early in the afternoon, for it was raining fitfully
and the light was uncertain, and on leaving she turned her steps
toward the Astor Library, intent on a purpose inspired by MacGregor's
talk. She had some acquaintance with the lending libraries, but none
with this sedate edifice whose size and gloom oppressed her as she
looked vainly about for her elderly fellow-boarder who spent his life
somewhere amidst its dinginess. In this quandary, she was spied by a
mannered attendant whose young face, framed in obsolete side-whiskers,
reminded her of certain middle-Victorian bucks of Thackeray's whom she
had come to know during spare moments at the dental parlors. This guide
led her into a large reading-room where he assured her ladies were
welcome, despite the frowns of the predominant sex whose peace they
ruffled, and found her the two or three illustrated periodicals she
named.

Without exception these contained Atwood's work, a fact which impressed
her tremendously; and without exception they bore testimony to his
superiority as emphatically as MacGregor. She pored over these drawings
one by one, weighing them much as she weighed his spoken thought,
and judging them, no less than his speech, most candid mirrors of
his personality. In what this personality's appeal consisted, she
had neither the detachment nor the wish to define; she could only
uncritically feel its sincerity, its romance, and its power.

She craved a fuller knowledge, however, than these mute witnesses could
give, and the desire presently drew her back into the high-vaulted
chamber where the library's activities seemed to focus; and here,
bewildered by the riches of the card catalogue, she was luckily seen by
the quiet old man who lent his dignity to the head of Mrs. St. Aubyn's
table. He smiled gently upon her over his spectacles, pondering the
motive behind her request as he had speculated about the motives of
thousands before her, and instantly, out of a head whose store she
felt that she had scantily appreciated, produced half a dozen likely
references which he straightway bade a precocious small boy to track
to their fastnesses in some mysterious region he called the stacks;
himself, meanwhile, with a faded gallantry, escorting her to a desk in
a scholarly retreat where only feminine glances questioned her coming.

So ensconced, she came upon the facts she sought in a bound volume
of a journal devoted chiefly to the fine arts. She learned here that
her knight errant's full name was Francis Craig Atwood, that New York
claimed the honor of his birthplace, and that he was a trifle less than
ten years older than herself. There followed a list of his schools,
which ended with Julien's Academy in Paris, where it appeared he had
gone the autumn after their meeting, and had exhibited canvases at the
Salons of two successive years. His return to America and his instant
recognition coincided closely with her own coming to New York. The
concluding analysis of his work bristled with technicalities, but she
read into it the qualities which she perceived or imagined in the man,
and, staring into the dusty alcove over against her seat, lost herself
in a brown study of what such success as this probably meant to him.
Newspaper paragraphs about his comings and goings, she supposed, many
sketches like this under her hand, social opportunities of course, the
flattery of women, friendships with the clever and the rich. It rather
daunted her to find him a celebrity, and at this pass nothing could
have so routed her self-possession as to discover that a man, of whose
nearness at an adjacent bookcase she had been vaguely aware, was no
other than Atwood himself.

"Thank you," he laughed, with a wave of the hand toward the telltale
page. "But there's better reading in the library."

Jean clapped to the offending volume and blushed her guiltiest.

"You must think me very silly," she stammered. "Mr. MacGregor praised
your work, showed me the portrait--"

"Of course he did. You have discovered Mac's weakness and his dangerous
charm. He believes all his friends are geniuses. You'll grow as
conceited as the rest of us in time."

"And have the other conceited friends done work like yours and said
nothing about it?" she asked.

"A thousand times better. You've no idea what a clever lot of men and
women Mac knows." He rapidly instanced several artists, sculptors,
and writers of prominence, adding: "But you will see them all at The
Oasis sooner or later. You've probably noticed that Mac is one of those
rareties who can talk while they work. What would hinder most people,
only stimulates him. And it stimulates the other fellow, too. I always
drop in on him for a tonic when my own stuff lags. I was there this
afternoon, in fact, though for another reason. I wanted to see you. It
must have been telepathy that brought me down here; I thought it was
'The Gadzooks'!"

"'The Gadzooks,'" she puzzled.

"Merely my slang for the Revolutionary romance," he explained. "I'm
illustrating still another one, and ran in here to resolve my doubts
about bag-wigs. My novelist seems to have invented a new variety. But
about you: if you don't mind the weather, and have nothing better to
do, I should like to take you over to a Fifth Avenue picture dealer's
to see a so-called Velasquez that's come into the market."

Jean absorbed more than the true rank and value of Velasquez's
portraiture. Wet or dry, the weather was irreproachable. Did it rain,
there were yet other picture dealers' secluded galleries where one
might loiter luxuriously; while for the intervals of sunshine the
no less fascinating shop-windows awaited, each a glimpse into the
wonderland of Europe, which her guide seemed to know so well. They
even discussed going on to the Metropolitan to look in at a Frans Hals
and a Rembrandt, which the talk of Velasquez suggested, but Atwood's
absurd watch, corroborated by several equally ridiculous clocks of the
neighborhood, said plainly that it was well past closing time at the
museum and indeed quite the day's end here among the shops.

He was loath to let her go.

"It's been like a too short trip abroad," he said. "I hate to book for
home just yet. Why can't we dine as we did last night?"

She shook her head.

"Yesterday was an occasion."

"Say Italy?" he persisted. "We've skimmed England, France, the Low
Countries; why not Italy? I know a little place that's as Italian as
Naples. You would never guess its existence. It looks like every other
brownstone horror outside, with not a hint of its real business, for
they say old Gaetano Sanfratello has no license. He looks you over
through the basement grating, and, if you're found worthy, leads you
through a tunnel of a hallway into the most wonderful kitchen you ever
saw. It's as clean as clean and is a regular treasure-house of shining
copper. Then you'll find yourself out in what prosaic New York calls
a back yard, but which, in fact, is a trattoria in the kingdom of
Victor Emmanuel, whose lithograph you will see above the door. There
are clusters of ripening grapes in the trellis overhead, and Chianti
or Capri antico--real Capri--on the cloth below; and they'll serve
you such artichoke soups, cheese soufflés, and reincarnations of the
chestnut, as the gods eat! And Gaetano's pretty daughter will wait upon
us and sing 'Bella Napoli,' and perhaps, if we're in great luck, she'll
let us have a peep at her bambino which she keeps swaddled precisely
like the one in that copy of Luca della Robbia you are staring at this
minute. Aren't you tempted?"

She was, but resisted successfully; and when he saw that she was
inflexible, he walked with her to her own street, planning other
holidays of a future which should know no shadows.

"You must forget that gray time you've left behind you," he declared.
"Call this your real beginning--your rebirth, your renaissance."

So in truth it was. The weeks following were weeks of rapid growth
and ripening, which, Atwood's influence admitted, yet found their
compelling force in the girl's own will. The ambition to do her utmost
for MacGregor, to learn what books could teach of the life he knew by
living, took her back repeatedly to the library; then other suggestions
of the studio, which, even at its narrowest, was a school of curious
knowledge about common things that few, save the artist, seemed to
see as they were. Who but he, for instance, stopped to consider that
sunlight filtering through leaves fell in circles; that shadows were
violet, not black; that tobacco smoke from the mouth was of another
color than the graceful spiral which rose from the tip of a cigarette?
But this field opened into innumerable others in the wide domain where
her two friends plied their differing talents; while these, in turn,
marched with the boundaries of others still, whose only limits were
Humanity's. Life itself set the true horizon to MacGregor's Oasis.

Among MacGregor's intimates who shared the secret of a knock which
admitted them at all hours, but who, busy men themselves, came oftenest
after the north light failed, was a sculptor named Karl Richter. This
man's specialty was the American Indian, but he also had known the
Arab at first-hand, and Africa in one or another of its myriad phases
was ever the topic when he and MacGregor foregathered. Listening to
their talk, Jean came to visualize the bronze-skinned folk, the vivid
market-places, the wild music of hautboys and tom-toms, the gardens
of fig and olive and orange and palm, the waysides thicketed with
bamboo, tamarisk, or scarlet geranium, and the desert,--above all, the
mysterious, terrible, beautiful desert,--as things which her own senses
had known. It chanced one day that they spoke of camels and, as often,
began to argue; and that Richter, to prove his point, whipped from his
pocket a lump of modeling wax, which, under his wonderful fingers,
became in a twinkling a striking counterfeit of the beast itself. It
could not have been more than an inch in height, but it was a very
camel, stubborn, complaining, alive. MacGregor confuted, the sculptor
annihilated the little animal with a careless pinch, tossed the wax
aside, and soon after went his way.

Dissatisfied with his work, MacGregor presently caught his canvas from
the easel, and, laying it prone upon the floor, began by shifting
strips of card-board to hunt the truer composition. Jean, left to
herself, took up the discarded wax, tried vainly to coax back the
vanished camel, and then amused herself with a conception of her own.
So absorbed did she become that MacGregor finished his experiments
unheeded, and, receiving no answer to a question, still unregarded came
and peered over her shoulder.

"Great Jupiter Pluvius!" he exclaimed.

Jean whirled about.

"How you startled me!" she said.

"It's nothing to the way you've startled me. Where did you see that
head you've modeled?"

"Oh, this?" She tried to put the wax away. "It's nothing--only a baby
in our block."

MacGregor pounced upon the model and bore it to the light.

"Nothing! Merely a study from life, that's all! Just a trifle thrown
off in your odd moments!" He turned the little head round and round,
showering exclamations. "Who taught you?" he demanded, striding back.
"Somebody had a finger in it besides you. There are lines here that
can't be purely intuitive."

"I used to watch my father."

"Was he a sculptor?"

"He might have been, if he'd had the chance. But he had to work at
other things, and he married--"

"I know, I know," MacGregor groaned. "Love in a cottage and to hell
with art! But he couldn't keep his thoughts or his hands from it. He
modeled when he could?"

Jean nodded dreamily.

"Sundays, mainly," she answered. "We used to go into the country
together. He found a bed of good clay near a creek where the mint grew.
I can never smell mint without remembering. I couldn't go back there
after he died."

MacGregor gave her a sidelong glance, hemmed, made an unnecessary trip
across the studio, and kicked a fallen burnous violently.

"But you went on modeling?" he asked, returning.

"Yes--by and by. Then, later, I stopped."

"Why?"

"I--I hadn't the clay?" she evaded.

MacGregor brooded over her handiwork a moment longer, then squared his
jaw.

"You'll have the 'clay' hereafter," he said.




                                  XXI


At the outset she was rather skeptical of his faith in her. Had not
Atwood said that MacGregor saw genius in all his friends? But the
younger man now hailed him a most discerning judge.

"It's the something I divined," he declared jubilantly, "the
gold-bearing vein I believed in, but hadn't the luck to unearth. Now to
develop it! What does Mac advise?"

"One of the art schools," said Jean. "I can go evenings, it seems."

"And work days! It's a stiff programme you plan."

"But the school won't mean work," she declared. "Then, too, the posing
comes far easier than it did. Mr. MacGregor says my muscles are almost
as steady as a professional's."

"So he tells me. I'm going to insist on sharing your time. He has
monopolized you long enough."

MacGregor's monopoly did not cease at once, however. His first step on
discovering Jean's talent was to enlist Richter's expert criticism and
counsel with the practical outcome that the sculptor's door swung open
to her in the daylight hours when MacGregor worked with male models.
The clay-modeling-room at the art school was a wonderful place. Its
casts, its tools, its methods, were a revelation after the crude
shifts with which her father had had to content himself; but Richter's
studio transcended it as a university transcends a kindergarten. Here
were conceived ideas which found perpetuity in bronze!

Studio and sculptor were each unique. A little man of crippled frame,
Karl Richter delighted in the muscular and the colossal and walked a
pigmy amidst his own creations. Michael Angelo was his god; but his
manner was his own, and the Indians and cow-boys he loved best to
express were remote enough from the great Florentine's subjects to
acquit him of imitation. His frail physique notwithstanding, he had
been at pains to see for himself the primitive life he adored, and
the idler who coined "The Oasis" dubbed the sculptor's place "The
Wigwam," and spread a facetious tale that Richter went about his work
in blanket and moccasins, and habitually smoked a calumet which had
once belonged to Sitting Bull. Richter never denied this myth, which by
now had received the sanction of print, and took huge satisfaction in
the crestfallen glances unknown callers gave his conventional dress.
However, the studio itself, a transformed stable, was sufficiently
picturesque. It overflowed with spoils from ranch and tepee, and,
thanks to the Wild West show which furnished MacGregor occasional
Arabs, sometimes sheltered genuine, if sophisticated, red men.

About this time Jean left Mrs. St. Aubyn's, whose neighborhood Paul,
after dejected silence, had again begun to haunt. She had thus far
eluded him, but meet they must, she felt, if she remained; and with
Amy's abrupt departure, which now came to pass, she changed to a
boarding-house of Atwood's recommending in Irving Place.

"There are no signs of the trade about it, fashionable or
unfashionable," he said. "It's just a homelike place, neither too
large nor too small, where you will see mainly art students. Many of
them, like you, are making their own way, and all of them are dead in
earnest. All the illustrators know Mrs. Saunders. Half of us have lived
under her roof some time or other."

"You, too!"

He smiled at her tone.

"I wasn't born with a golden spoon, you know. Some New Yorkers aren't.
I inherited a little money, but I'm not a plutocrat yet, even if
editors do smile upon me. Julie and I thoroughly mastered the gentle
art of scrimping at one time. Have I ever mentioned my sister, Mrs. Van
Ostade?"

"You spoke of her the day I saw you first."

"At the birches?" he returned, surprised.

"You said she would not understand."

His eyes sobered.

"I remember," he said. "And it was true. Neither would she understand
now, I fear. She has been both wedded and widowed since. You'll see
her at the studio yet, if MacGregor ever lets us begin work together.
She surprises me there when she thinks I am neglecting my duties as a
social being. Julie has all the zeal of a proselyte in her missionary
labors for society," he added laughingly. "She married into one of the
old Dutch families."

Jean found that a tradition of Mrs. Van Ostade's residence in Irving
Place still lingered there. She was spoken of as Craig Atwood's sister,
the clever girl who had jockied for position, on nothing a year, by
cultivating fashionable charities. Settlement work, it appeared, had
been the fulcrum for her lever. No one here, however, had known her
personally, save Mrs. Saunders, who was a paragon of reticence when
gossip was afield. Indeed, a dearth of gossip, in the invidious sense
of the word, was a negative virtue to which her whole establishment
might lay claim. Mainly art students, as Atwood had predicted, the
sharpest personalities of Jean's new acquaintances dealt with the
vagaries of masters whom they furtively admired and not seldom aped.
Thus the life-class girl would furrow her pretty forehead over the
drawing of a beginner at antique with the precise "Ha!" and "Not half
bad!" of the distinguished artist and critic who twice a week set her
own heart palpitating with his crisp condemnation or praise.

Illustrating, painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative design,
whatever their individual choice, life for each had its center in the
particular school of his or her adhesion. Art--always Art--was the
beginning and end of their table-talk, and even the two young men who
had other interests, a lawyer and a playwright, both embryonic, spoke
the language of the studios. To this community of interest was added
the discovery that all derived from country stock. Half a dozen states
had their nominal allegiance, and not even Mrs. Saunders, who seemed as
metropolitan as the City Hall, could boast New York as her birthplace.
They brimmed with a fine youthful confidence in their ability to wrest
success from this alien land of promise, which charged their atmosphere
electrically and spurred Jean's already abundant energy to tireless
endeavor. Her days were all too short, and Atwood, whose invitations
she repeatedly refused for her art's sake, began to caution her against
overwork.

"Philosophic frivolity, as my sister calls it, has its uses," he said.
"I usually agree with her social preachments, even if I don't observe
them very faithfully. You must know Julie. I'll ask her to call."

Whether he did so or not, Jean was unaware. At all events, Mrs. Van
Ostade did not renew her acquaintance with Irving Place, nor did Atwood
broach the subject again. If the social columns might be believed,
the lady was amply preoccupied with philosophic frivolity. MacGregor
presently turned a searching light upon her personality.

"Notice that bit of impertinent detail, the unnecessary jewel?" he
queried, stabbing with his pipe-stem at one of Atwood's drawings which
a premature Christmas magazine had reproduced in color. "Craig never
did it."

"Then who did?" Jean asked.

"His sister."

"Does she draw?"

"By proxy. I mean she suggested this as she has suggested every false,
vitiating note that's crept into his work. Left to himself, Craig never
paints the lily. But he defers to her as a younger brother often will
to a sister who has mothered or stepmothered him. It was probably a
good thing once--I admit she has brains and push; but now it's time
the coddling stopped. It did let up for a while when she went over to
the Dutch--she was too busy to bother with him; but with her husband
underground and Craig coming on, it has begun again. Artistically she's
his evil genius. Of course he can't see it, or won't. I've done my
level best to beat it into him."

"You have told him!"

"Certainly; and her too. I have known them both for years. What are you
grinning at?"

"Your candor. What did he say?"

MacGregor scowled.

"Same old rot I'm always hearing," he grumbled. "Called me a
woman-hater. What do you think?" challenging her abruptly. "You've seen
me at close quarters for some time. Do I strike you as that sort of
man? I want your unvarnished opinion."

Jean answered him with his own frankness.

"A woman-hater?" she repeated. "Never. I think you are"--she searched
for the word--"a woman-idolater."

MacGregor grimly assured himself that no sarcasm was intended.

"Expound," he directed.

"I mean it seems to me you rate Woman so high that mere women can't
realize your ideal."

"Humph!" he commented ungraciously. "Where did you learn to turn cheap
epigrams? Probably it's an echo of something you've read."

He addressed her variously as Miss Epigrams, Lady Blessington, and
Madame de Staël as the work went forward, always with profound gravity,
until finally, when he saw her color rise to his teasing, he gave his
full-lunged laugh and confessed.

"All the same, you're right, Miss Epigrams. That's one reason why I'm
still unattached. It's also why I haven't cared to see Craig take the
only sure cure. A wife would teach his sister her place, if she had the
right metal." He chuckled at the vision his words conjured. "But it
would be a battle royal."

It was spring before Jean herself saw Mrs. Van Ostade. She had posed
for Atwood frequently after Christmas, but had chanced always to be
either with MacGregor or Richter when his sister visited the studio,
until the April afternoon when Julie's knock interrupted an overdue
illustration which Atwood was toiling mightily to finish. He frowned
at the summons and answered it without putting down the maul-stick,
palette, and brushes with which his hands were cumbered; but his "You,
Julie!" at the door hinted no impatience, nor his returning step aught
but infinite leisure as he issued with his dark-eyed, dark-haired,
dark-skinned caller from behind the screen.

"Those stairs!" sighed the lady. Then, observing Jean, she subjected
her to a drastic ordeal by lorgnon, which, raking her from face to
gown,--where the inquisition lingered,--returned with added intensity
upon her face.

Hot plowshares could have been no more fiery for poor Jean, who,
sufficiently aglow with the knowledge that the dress upon her back was
a piece of Mrs. Van Ostade's evening finery abandoned to the uses of
the studio, found herself tormented by the certainty that somewhere
in her vulnerable past she and this sister of Craig Atwood's had met
before.

A sympathetic reflection of her embarrassment lit the man's face.

"This is Miss Fanshaw," he interposed, "herself an artist. You have
heard me speak of her, Julie."

The lorgnon dropped and the two women exchanged a bow perceptible to
the naked eye.

"I know the face," stated Mrs. Van Ostade, with an impersonal air of
classifying scientific phenomena. "Where did I see it?"

Jean now recalled this elusive detail most vividly, but she kept her
head.

"Probably in Mr. Atwood's work," she suggested coldly.

"Of course," seconded Atwood, keen to end the incident. "You will find
Miss Fanshaw in half my recent stuff."

"The living face has no pictorial associations whatever," retorted his
sister, with decision. "I shall remember in time. But go on with your
work, Craig. I did not come to disturb you--merely to bring a piece of
news which I'll tell you as soon as I get my breath."

Atwood placed a chair and, returning to his easel, made a show of
work which Jean's trained eye knew for his usual polite pretense with
visitors who assumed themselves no hindrance; while Mrs. Van Ostade,
throwing back her furs, relegated the model to the ranks of the
inanimate studio properties, of which her leisured survey now took
stock.

"Those stairs!" she said again, pursuing her breath by the unique
method of lavishing more. "Really, Craig, you couldn't have pitched on
a more inconvenient rookery."

"We thought it a miracle for the money once," he reminded. "I dare
say I could find a more convenient workshop in one of the new
office-buildings, but then I shouldn't have my open fire."

"You could have it at the Copley Studios, and modern comforts, too."

"Up there!" he scoffed. "I don't belong in the pink-tea circle, Julie."

Mrs. Van Ostade refused to smile with him.

"The location counts," she insisted.

"With some people."

"With the helpful people. I've thought it over carefully; I've used
my eyes and ears. The studio unquestionably carries weight. It ought
to be something more than a workshop, as you call it. It should have
atmosphere. Even our friend down the street has achieved that. Barbaric
as it is, MacGregor's studio has a distinct artistic unity."

"Mac's place reflects his work. So does mine."

"Yours! It's a jumble of everything, a junk-shop."

"Of course it is," he laughed. "I've ransacked two-thirds of these
treasures from the Ghetto. But even junk-shops have atmosphere--a musty
one--and so, it logically follows, must my studio."

She indulged his trifling with a divine patience.

"Could you receive Mrs. Joyce-Reeves in such a place?" she queried
sweetly.

"Certainly; if any possible errand could bring that high and mighty
personage over the door-sill."

"There is a possible reason."

Her tone drew him round. Jean, forgotten by both, discerned that he
also attached a significance to the hypothetical visit. She was at a
loss to account for this, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's prominence in the social
world of New York notwithstanding.

"Is this your news, Julie?" he demanded.

His sister savored his quickened interest a moment.

"Part of it," she replied. "She saw your dry-point of me at Mrs.
Quentin Van Ostade's the other day."

"The dry-point!" he deprecated. "It was only an experiment."

"So I told her. She asked if you do anything in the way of portraiture
in oil, and of course I answered yes."

"I say!"

"Well, haven't you?"

"Trash, yes; cart-loads of it."

"Perhaps you call your portrait of Malcolm MacGregor trash? Mrs.
Joyce-Reeves did not."

"She saw it!"

"I dropped casually that it had been hung with the Fifth Avenue
exhibition of MacGregor's African studies, and she took the address.
That was day before yesterday. This afternoon I met her again--met her
leaving the gallery."

"Well?" jogged Atwood, impatiently.

"She told me she had bought two of MacGregor's things," continued Mrs.
Van Ostade, not to be hurried. "She took a desert nocturne and that
queer veiled woman at a window--you remember?"

"Do I!" He spun about. "You heard that, Jean? Mrs. Joyce-Reeves has
bought 'The Lattice'! Miss Fanshaw posed for it, Julie."

"Indeed!" The lorgnon, again unsheathed at the intimate "Jean," once
more took cognizance of that young person's existence. "I don't care
for it. But, what is more important, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves mentioned your
portrait."

"Yes?"

"And this time asked for your address."

"Jove! You think--"

"I'm positive she'll give you a commission."

"Jove!" he exclaimed again, "what a chance!" and paced the studio. "Yet
she may. It's her whim to pose as a discoverer. What a chance! What
a colossal chance! It would mean--what wouldn't it mean?" He stopped
excitedly before the escritoire where Jean sat waiting to resume her
interrupted impersonation of a note-writing débutante. "It would take
nerve, no end of it. She's been painted by Sargent, Chartran, Zorn--all
the big guns. A fellow would have to find a phase they'd missed. But if
he could! You can't conceive her influence, Jean. If she buys a man's
pictures, all the little fish in her pond tumble over one another to
buy them, too. That's not the main issue, however, though I don't blink
its importance. The opportunity to paint _her_, to search out the woman
behind--that's the big thing. I have a theory. I met her once--she'd
bought an original of mine, thanks again to Julie--and something she
let fall makes me think--but I'm talking as if I had the commission in
my hands."

Jean scarcely heard. Sympathize with him as she might, Julie Van
Ostade's face, from the moment Atwood's talk ceased to be hers
exclusively, absorbed her more.

"Craig," broke in his sister, crisply, "my furs."

He touched earth blankly.

"Not going, Julie?"

"My furs," she repeated.

"But I haven't begun to thank you," he said, obeying.

"Is not that also premature?" She rustled majestically toward the door,
which he sprang before her to open. The girl was but a lay figure in
her path.

Then the door closed and Atwood, wearing a look of bewilderment,
came slowly up the studio to meet still another problem in feminine
psychology in the now thoroughly outraged Jean.

"Why did you introduce me?" she demanded bitterly. "Why couldn't
you let me remain a common model to her? I am a common model in her
eyes--common in every sense. I remember well enough where she saw me,
and she'll remember, too, never fear."

"Jean! Jean!" He came to her in distress.

"It was a drinking-place, and the girl with me had drunk too much.
We amused your sister's theater-party immensely. They were probably
slumming--seeing low life!"

He drew a calmer account from her presently.

"I know the place," he said. "It had rather a vogue before people
found out that it was only sham-German, after all. It's a perfectly
respectable rathskeller. You went with some gentleman, of course?"

Jean's passion for confession flagged.

"With a friend of Amy's from the boarding-house," she answered briefly.

Atwood gave a relieved laugh.

"You have made a mountain of a mole-hill," he told her; "but I'm
glad you mentioned the circumstances. I'll explain to Julie, if she
ever thinks of it again. Don't misjudge her, Jean. I admit she's
unsympathetic at first sight, even brusque; but there's another side,
believe me. You saw how devoted she is to my interests."

She had indeed seen, and the knowledge rankled.

"You should not have introduced me, made me share your talk," she said.
"You meant a kindness, but it was no kindness; it was a humiliation,
a--" Then the tension snapped and her head went down between her arms.

"Kindness!" He swept her stormily to himself. "Kindness, Jean! Can't
you see why I wanted you to share it with me? Can't you see that I want
you to share everything? I love you, Jean."

For a long moment she yielded; the next she had slipped from him and
the escritoire was between them.

"Don't," she forbade. "You must not say these things to me."

"Must not?"

"I can't marry you."

"Can't! Yet a moment ago--"

"I can't marry you," she repeated breathlessly.

"But your kiss--"

"Was a lie--pity--what you like. I was unstrung. I--I don't love you."

He searched her face for a perplexed instant.

"Jean," he commanded; "look at me!"

She faced him.

"Now tell me that again--straight in the eyes."

"Don't," she entreated.

"Say it!"

"You heard me."

"I want to hear it again--on your honor!" He waited.

"I--I refuse."

He strode toward her in triumph.

"You can't," he cried. "The kiss was no lie. It was the truth, the
sacred truth! What unselfish madness made you try to deceive me?"

"Remember your career," she protested; "your sister's world, which is
your world, too."

But the time for reasoning was past.




                                 XXII


What passed forthwith between brother and sister Jean neither heard
nor particularly conjectured. Ways, means, and motives were for the
time being eclipsed by the tremendous fact that Julie called. That
she acquitted herself of this formality at an hour when the slightest
possible knowledge of the girl's habits would argue her absence from
Irving Place, roused in Jean only a vast relief. The mute pasteboard
was itself sufficiently formidable.

She was even more relieved that through some mischance, for which
Atwood, who went with her, taxed himself, her return call found Julie
out. Visiting-cards she had none, their urgent need having hitherto
never presented itself; but Atwood helped her pretend before the rather
overpowering servant that she had forgotten them, and, scribbling her
name upon one of his own, bore her off for an evening at the play.

Here, for the space of a week, matters rested, only to hatch a fresh
embarrassment in the end, beside which calls were trivialities.
This was no less than an invitation to dine, and to dine, not with
Mrs. Van Ostade and Atwood merely, but as one of a more or less
formal company--so Craig enlightened her--of the clever or socially
significant.

Jean heard these depressing explanations with a sick face.

"I can't go," she protested quickly. "Don't ask me."

"Can't!" he repeated. "Why not?"

"You know why. They're different, these people--as different from me as
if I were Chinese."

"What rubbish!"

"It's the truth. Perhaps later, when I've studied more, seen more, I
can meet them and not shame you--"

"Shame me, Jean! If you realized how proud I am--"

"Then don't put me in a position where you may feel anything but proud.
Don't make me go."

He reasoned with her laughingly, but without real understanding of her
reluctance.

"Besides," he concluded, "you can't decline. The dinner is really for
you."

Her cup of misery brimmed over.

"For me!"

"In a way, it's in honor of our engagement, even though it isn't known."

"Your sister wrote nothing of this."

"But she told me. She said she wanted you to meet some of our friends.
Don't be afraid of them, Jean. You're as clever as any of them, while
in looks not a woman Julie knows can hold a candle to you."

"But their clothes! Don't you see it's impossible? I've absolutely
nothing to wear."

The man flicked this thistle-down airily away.

"Dowds, half of 'em, Julie's crowd," he declared. "You don't need
anything elaborate. Just wear some simple gown that doesn't hide your
neck. Simple things tell."

"And cost," she added, smiling ruefully at his nebulous solution. "I
have never owned a dinner-gown in my life."

Atwood had an inspiration.

"Why, the studio is full of them," he cried.

"Your sister's--every one. Could I wear one of her dresses to her
dinner?"

"Hardly. What inferior intellects men have! But is there any objection
to your wearing one of _my_ gowns? None of the properties fit the
scheme of illustrations I've planned for that last novel, and I've
decided to have one or two things made. Now, if you'll choose the
material and bother with the fittings--"

Jean's laugh riddled this improvisation.

"I'll go if I must," she promised, "but I'll wear my own clothes. After
all, I know something about dressmaking."

Nevertheless, the dress problem was serious when she came to marshal
her resources, and she still vacillated in a choice of evils, when Amy
happened in with a fresh point of view and an authoritative knowledge
of the latest mode, which cleared the muddle magically.

"Put those away," she ordered, dismissing with a glance the
alternatives arrayed despairingly on the bed. "Wear white or a color,
and you'll have every old cat there rubbering to see how it's made.
Where's your black net?"

"Here," said Jean, producing it without enthusiasm. "It's hopeless."

"It is a sight by daylight," agreed Amy, candidly. "That cheap
quality always gets brown and rusty. But under gas it will never
show. Cut those sleeves off at the elbow and edge them with lace. The
forty-nine-cent kind will do, and you'll only need two yards."

Jean's spirits rebounded under this practical encouragement.

"I might turn in the neck about so much," she suggested, indicating an
angle by no means extravagant.

Amy snatched the garment away.

"Scissors!" she commanded decisively. "This yoke is coming out
altogether. Can't you see, Jean Fanshaw, that if you give your
shoulders a chance, people won't think twice about your dress? I'd
just give millions for your shoulders. The black will set them off as
nothing else could. If you want a dash of color, I don't know anything
smarter than a spray of pink-satin roses. Fred thinks I twist them up
almost like real."

Jean evaded the artificial flowers with tact, but otherwise let herself
be guided by Amy, under whose fingers the transformation of the black
net went forward rapidly.

"It's a treat to have something to do," Amy avowed, declining aid. "I
get awful lonesome over at our boarding-place. You never have time
any more to run in, and, excepting Saturday afternoon and Sunday, I
don't see anything of Fred. This is his busiest time, he says. Fred's
a crackerjack salesman. Last month he sent in more orders than any man
the firm ever put on the road. He just seems to hypnotize customers,
same as he did me. I know you would like him, too, Jean, if you would
ever come over while he's home. He spoke about that very thing the
other day. He said it looked as if you were trying to dodge him. He
wanted me to ask you to go down to the Coney Island opening last
Saturday, but I was afraid you'd say no and hurt his feelings, so I
told him you were sure to be at your art school. I was glad afterward
you didn't come, for we met Stella Wilkes."

The name failed to stir Jean as of old.

"I don't fear Stella now," she said.

"I do," Amy rejoined. "It gives me the creeps to be anywhere near her.
Fred says he can't see why. Men are queer that way. She came up to us
on the Iron Pier, where we were having beer and sandwiches, and in
spite of all my hints, he asked her to have something, too. She told
us she was singing in one of the music-halls down there, and nothing
would do Fred but we must go that night and see what her voice was
like. She spotted us down in the crowd and waved her hand at us as bold
as you please. I was so mad! Fred didn't care. He thought she had a
bully voice. It did sound first-rate in 'coon songs,' and I really had
to laugh myself at some of her antics when she danced a cake-walk.
Wouldn't it be a queer thing if she got to be well known? Fred says
there's no reason why she shouldn't earn big money, and he's a dandy
judge of acting. You ought to hear him spout some of the speeches from
'Monte Cristo.' We always go to a show Saturday nights, when he's
home, and generally Sundays to sacred concerts and actors' benefits. I
wouldn't go Sundays if the rest of the week wasn't so dull. If I only
had a flat, it would help pass the time away. I tease Fred for one all
the time. Maybe I can pretty soon. He's to have Long Island and North
Jersey for his territory, and that will bring him home oftener nights.
Haven't you a better drop-skirt than this?"

"Drop-skirt?" The transition caught Jean daydreaming over a contrast
between Amy's drummer and an illustrator not unknown to fame.

"This one is so scant it spoils the whole dress," explained the critic.
"I always said so."

"I know; but it's the best I have. Does it matter so much?"

"Matter!" Amy mourned over the offending detail with artistic concern.
"There's nothing I'm so particular about. A drop-skirt like this would
spoil a Paquin gown, or a Redfern, let alone a--a--"

"Rusty black net?" Jean prompted. "Aren't you forgetting my wonderful
shoulders? Nobody is to look at anything else, you know!"

Amy ignored the implication.

"It won't be so funny if they do," she reproved. "I do wish I had
something to lend you, but since I left the store, I never wear black.
Fred likes lively colors. Isn't there anything at the studio you could
borrow?"

There was, though Jean forbore to mention it. As certain as her need,
was the knowledge that from the third right-hand hook of the studio
wardrobe depended its easy satisfaction. She had told Atwood with
almost rebuking emphasis that she must wear her own clothes, but in
the befogging nervousness which the bugaboo of the dinner wrought,
the temptation to make use of at least this discarded trifle of Mrs.
Van Ostade's plenty assailed her with waxing strength, till success
or failure seemed to hang on her decision. The garment had its
individuality, like most things belonging to Julie, who, Atwood said,
had her own notions of design; but Jean told herself that it need not
be flaunted.

To assure herself whether, after all, she might not be overrating its
importance, she wore the silken lure home under her street-dress the
evening of the dinner. This candid course was most efficacious. In the
light of the miracle it worked, consistency troubled her no more than
Amy. Its influence transcended the material; it fortified her courage;
and when at last the admiring maid brought word that a gentleman
waited below, she gave a final glance mirrorward, which was almost
optimistic, and went down for Craig's verdict with starry eyes.

No faintest premonition prepared her to confront in the dim-lit room,
not Craig, but Paul.

The dentist took an uncertain step toward her.

"I had to come, Jean," he said defensively. "There hasn't been a
more miserable cuss in the city. I--" Then, seeing her clearly under
the flare of the gas-burner nearest the door, which her hand sought
instantly, he stood a moment, wide-eyed and mute, in fascinated survey
of her unwonted garb. No tribute to its effectiveness could be more
sincere. As if it spoke for her like a symbol, answering a question
he could no longer put, he made a simple gesture of renunciation, the
pathos and dignity of which sounded the very well-springs of her pity.
"Excuse me for butting in," he added. "I can see now it was no use."

Jean put out her hand. The mystery of her dead affection--she could not
call it love--for this man was never more baffling. The woman she was
seemed as far removed from her who pledged herself to Paul, as that
girl in turn was remote from the mutinous rebel of Cottage No. 6; but
the dentist's gesture, his words, his shabbiness--so different from the
half-dandified neatness of old--touched her where a direct appeal to
their common past would have found her flint.

"It was no use in the way you mean, Paul," she said gently. "But sit
down. I am sorry if you have been unhappy."

Whereupon an inconceivably subdued Paul Bartlett sat down beside her
and with a gush of mingled self-pity and remorse poured the tale
of his manifold sorrows into an absorbed and--her wrongs, her sex
considered--sympathetic ear. Life had fared ill with the dentist. He
had not been able, he said, to swing the enterprise of the new office
quite as he had hoped. The location was all right, the equipment was
all right, but for some reason, perhaps the election-time flurry,
perhaps because he himself may not have pushed things as he did
when feeling quite up to par, patients had not flocked his way. The
hell he had been through! To know there wasn't a more up-to-date
office in Harlem, not one that paid a stiffer rent, and yet, for a
month, six weeks, two months, to see almost nobody drift in except
"shoppers"--Jean would remember their sort!--who haggled over dinkey
little jobs such as amalgam fillings, or beat him down on a cheap plate
to a figure that hardly paid a man to fire up his vulcanizer--well,
he'd sooner handle a pick and shovel than go through that again.

"But it's better now?" she asked.

"Shouldn't have showed my face here if it wasn't," Paul retorted,
with a flicker of his old spirit. "The luck changed just when I'd
about decided to go back to Grimes. Yes, I'm doing so-so. Nothing
record-breaking, but I'm out of debt."

"I'm very glad."

"Thanks," he said gratefully. "You've no call to be, God knows! When
I think--but what's the good? I've thought till I'm half crazy. Just
to look into the little place at the Lorna Doone queers a whole week
for me. It stands about as it did, Jean. All the time the pinch was
hardest, I had to carry the flat, too--empty. I couldn't live there,
and nobody else wanted it. I missed my chance to clear out when the
building changed hands--I tumbled just too late, not being on the spot.
The new owners would make trouble, and I've had trouble enough. I just
_can't_ sell the things--leastways some of them--and I thought perhaps
you--they're really yours, you know--perhaps you--No? Well, I don't
blame you. If folks were only living there, I guess I'd feel different.
I would sublet for a song."

Amy's consuming desire flashed into Jean's mind to relieve a situation
too tense for long endurance, and Paul thankfully made note of the
drummer's address. This mechanical act seemed to put a period to
their meeting and both rose; but although they shook hands again, and
exchanged commonplaces concerning neither knew what, the man continued
to imprison her fingers in an awkward solemnity which, more sharply
than words, conveyed his sense of a bitter, yet just, finality.

So occupied, Atwood's hurried entrance found them.

"I'm late, very late," he said from the hall, at first seeing only
Jean; "but the cab-horse looks promising, and the driver says--I beg
your pardon!"

Acutely conscious of a burning flush, which Paul's red-hot confusion
answered like an afterglow, Jean made the presentation.

"Bartlett--not Barclay," Paul corrected Atwood's murmured greeting,
with the footless particularity of the embarrassed.

"I beg your pardon," said Atwood again.

"Often mixed, those two names, Bartlett and Barclay," babbled the
dentist, with desperate stage laughter. "Half the people who come to my
office call me Barclay. Feel sometimes as if it must be Barclay after
all. Dare say Barclay is as good a name--that is--"

Jean stilled the parrot cry with an apology for running off, and the
trio passed down the steps together. Atwood glanced back curiously as
they whipped away.

"Who is Mr. Bartlett--not Barclay?" he smiled.

"A dentist I knew when I worked for the Acme Company," she answered,
and then, with a generous impulse added, "He was very kind to me once
when I needed kindness."

"So?" Atwood's interest livened. "Then I have double reason not to
forget his name. I don't dare picture what Julie's thinking," he went
on, peering at a jeweller's street-clock. "We're undeniably late. But I
have the best excuse in the world. Guess!"

Jean tried, but found her wits distraught between the scene just past
and the trial to come.

"No; tell me," she entreated.

He drew a full exultant breath.

"It's the Joyce-Reeves commission," he said. "I received the order
to-night."




                                 XXIII


They were not unpardonably late, yet were tardy enough to render their
coming conspicuous to what seemed to Jean an ultramodish company which
peopled not only Mrs. Van Ostade's drawing-room, but the connecting
music-room and library as well.

Julie, her dark good looks set off by yellow, met them with observant
eyes, nodded "Yes, Craig; I know" to Atwood's great news, murmured a
conventional word of regret to Jean that both their calls should have
been fruitless, made two or three introductions to those who chanced
nearest, and with the lift of an eyelid set in motion the mechanism of
a statuesque butler; whereupon Jean found herself hazily translated
to her place at table between a blond giant, who took her in, and
a shadowy-eyed person with a pointed beard, who languidly quoted
something resembling poetry about what he called the tinted symphony of
Mrs. Van Ostade's candle-light.

"How clever!" said Jean, at a venture, and welcomed the voice of her
less ethereal neighbor.

"Corking race," remarked the giant, beaming at her over the rim of his
cocktail.

This was concrete, if indefinite.

"You mean--"

"Yesterday--France. Wonderful! Gummiest kind of course--two days' hard
rainfall, you know. I've been saying 'I told you so' all day. Didn't
surprise me in the least. I knew her, d'ye see, I knew her."

Jean looked as intelligent as she could, and hoped for a clew. The big
man checked his elliptical remarks altogether, however, and, still
beaming, awaited her profound response.

"Is she French?" she hazarded, jumping at an inference.

"But it was a man won. The sporting duchess, you mean, drew out."

"I'm speaking of the horse," Jean struggled.

"Horse! What horse?" ejaculated the giant. "I'm talking automobiles."

She judged frankness best.

"There is nothing for it but to confess," she said. "I know nothing
about automobiles. I never set foot in one in my life."

Her companion wagged a large reproachful finger.

"Don't string me," he begged. "Didn't Julie Van Ostade put you up to
this? I know I'm auto-mad and an easy mark, but--Jove! I believe you're
serious. Why, it's--it's incredible! Just think a bit. You must have
been in one of those piffling little runabouts?"

"Never."

"Well, then, a cab--an electric cab?"

"Not even a 'bus."

He shook his head solemnly and besought the attention of the petite
guest in mauve on his left.

"What do you think?" Jean heard him begin. "Miss Fanshaw here--"

Then the shadowy-eyed seized his chance.

"I hail a kindred spirit," he confided softly. "To me the automobile
is the most hideous, blatant fact of a prosaic age. Its coarsening
pleasures are for the few; its brutal sins against life's meager poetry
touch the unprivileged millions."

"Rot!" cut in the giant, whose hearing was excellent. "The motor
is everybody's servant. As for poetry, man alive! you would never
talk such drool again if you could see a road-race as the man in
the car sees it. Poetry! It's an epic!" Wherewith he launched into
terse description, jerky like the voice of his machine and bestrewn
with weird technicalities, but stirring and roughly eloquent of a
full-blooded joy in life.

While the battle raged over her--for the man with the pointed beard
showed unexpected mettle--Jean evolved a working theory as to the
uses of unfamiliar forks and crystal, and took stock of her other
fellow-guests. It was now, with a start of pleasure, that she first
met the eye of MacGregor, whom she had overlooked in the hurry of
their late arrival. His smile was encouraging, as if he divined her
difficulties, and she took a comfort in his presence, which Atwood's,
for once, failed to inspire.

Craig seemed vastly remote. He was in high spirits and talking eagerly
to an odd-looking girl with a remarkable pallor that brought out the
vivid scarlet of her little mouth and the no less striking luster of
her raven hair, which she wore low over the ears after a fashion Jean
associated with something literary or theatrical. She caught a word or
two of their conversation, and it overshot her head, though the talk at
MacGregor's Oasis had acquainted her with certain labels for uncertain
quantities known as Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw. She perceived
a sophisticated corner of Atwood's mind, hitherto unsuspected, so
deceptive was his boyish manner; and the anæmic girl, juggling the
Superman with offhand ease, became clothed with piquant interest. She
wondered who she was, what Atwood saw in her, and whether they knew
each other well.

Of his own accord her neighbor with the beard enlightened her.

"Pictorial, isn't she?" he said. "Pre-Raphaelite, almost, as to
features; hair Cleo de Merode. I hope Mrs. Van Ostade pulls the match
off. They're so well suited; clever, both of them, and in different
ways. Then, her money. That is a consideration."

"Is it?" groped Jean.

"Rather! Wealthy in her own name, you know, and virtually sure of
her uncle's fortune. They're very soundly invested, the Hepworth
millions. But it's the psychological phase of it that interests me. I'm
curious to see what effect she'll have upon his work. For the artistic
temperament marriage is twice a lottery. I've never dared risk it
myself."

His tone offered confidences, but Jean found his celibacy of slight
interest beside Miss Hepworth's. She was conscious that he was
permitting her glimpses into the lone sanctities of what he termed
his priesthood, as she was aware of a whir and rush of motor-maniacal
anecdote on her other side, and of a ceaseless coming and going of
courses amidst the generally pervasive fog of conversation. She made
the automatic responses which seemed all her immediate fellow-guests
required of her, and masked her face with a smile, into which she threw
more spontaneity after the bearded one said it suggested Mona Lisa's
and belied her glorious youth.

"For she is 'older than the rocks among which she sits,'" he quoted.
"You remember Pater's famous interpretation?"

Jean knew neither quotation nor writer, but she was familiar with
Leonardo's picture and turned the personality with a neutral question,
which served the man as a spring-board for fresh verbal acrobatics,
amusing to him and restful for her. He was shrewder than she had
thought. In truth, she felt both young and old; young, if this dismal
futility could be the flower of much living; old, if by chance it
should be, as she questioned, merely puerile.

She sighed for the dinner's end, but when it came and the women,
following a custom she had read about without dreaming she should yet
encounter it, left the men behind, she sighed to be back with her
loquacious seat-mates, talk what jargon they would. Her sex imposed no
conversational burden upon any one here. She fitted naturally into none
of the little clusters into which the rustling file dissolved; and,
after some aimless coasting among these groups where women to whom she
had been presented smiled upon her vaguely and chattered of intimacies
and happenings peculiarly their own, she cut adrift altogether and
grounded with feigned absorption by a cabinet of Chinese lacquer. If
Julie meant her kindness, she told a remarkable golden dragon, this
was the time to show it, but her hostess remained invisible, and the
dragon's gaze, though sympathetic, seemed presently to suggest that the
social possibilities of lacquer had their limits. In this crisis, she
made a lucky find of a portfolio of Craig's sketches, none of which she
had ever seen.

While turning these drawings, she was approached by some one, and,
looking up with the expectation of seeing Mrs. Van Ostade, met instead
the gaze of a very old and excessively wrinkled lady, who, without
tedious formalities, calmly possessed herself of the sketch Jean had in
hand.

"They're amazingly deft," she said, after a moment. "Even the academic
things have their charm. Take this charcoal, for instance," she went
on, selecting another drawing. "It's not the stereotyped Julien study
in the least. They couldn't extinguish the boy's individuality.
Somewhere here there is another still better."

"You mean this, don't you?" Jean asked, delving into the portfolio for
a bold rendering of a human back.

"Ha!" said the old lady, staring. "Of course I do. But what made you
think so?"

"It was the only one of the Julien studies you could mean," returned
Jean, promptly. "He did not draw like this till the year he exhibited."

The explosive "Ha!" was repeated, and the girl felt herself thoroughly
assayed by the shrewd old eyes.

"You are a close student of Mr. Atwood, my dear," came dryly. "Perhaps
you are a critic of contemporary art?"

Jean reddened, but, surprising the twinkle behind the sarcasm, laughed.

"Is it probable?" she asked.

"It's possible. Half the celebrities I meet seem young enough to be my
grandchildren. But you are telling me nothing. Are you one of Julie Van
Ostade's discoveries? She collects geniuses, you know. What is your
name?"

Jean told her.

"It means nothing, you see," she smiled. "I am only a student."

"Of painting?"

"No; sculpture."

"Are you! But you look original. Where are you at work? I hope you
don't mind my questions? I'm an inquisitive old person."

Jean named her school and mentioned Richter.

"But I have accomplished nothing yet," she added.

"Ha!" said the old lady. "Then it's time you did. I shall ask Richter
about it. If I forget your name, I'll describe your eyes. There is
something singularly familiar about your eyes."

The men and Mrs. Van Ostade made a simultaneous entrance, and the
latter at once bore down on Jean's catechist.

"Peroni will sing," she announced with a note of triumph. "He
volunteered as a mark of respect to you."

"Really!" The octogenarian's smile was extraordinarily expressive. "Yet
they call him mercenary."

The opening bar of an accompaniment issued from the music-room, and
Jean joined the drift toward the piano. She wondered who this sprightly
personage might be for whom the spoiled tenor volunteered, and then, in
the magic of his voice, forgot to wonder.

In the babel following the hush, MacGregor leaned over her chair.

"So the irrepressible conflict is on?" he greeted her.

Jean's welcome was whole-hearted.

"Craig has told you?" she said softly.

"Yesterday. I wish you both all the usual things. I ought to have
seen it from the first, I suppose, but as a matter of fact I did not.
Certainly I never figured you in the lists when I spoke of the battle
royal. Any war news?"

"We have exchanged calls without meeting."

"Preliminary skirmishes."

"Next came the dinner-invitation. Not exactly a war measure, should you
say?"

"Knowing Julie, yes. I should call it the first engagement."

Jean perceived his military metaphor was but a thin disguise for a
serious opinion.

"And the victor?" she said.

"Apparently yourself."

"I don't feel especially victorious," she said, a little wistfully.
"What makes you think the battle is on? Oh, but we must not talk this
way here," she immediately added. "We've eaten her salt."

"What if the salt is an ambush?" queried MacGregor. "Besides, I never
pretended to be a gentleman. Look over this menagerie carefully,
guileless child! Do you suppose Julie usually selects her dinner-guests
after this grab-bag fashion? Not to my knowledge. She loathes big
dinners, so she has told me. It's her study and pride to bring together
people of like tastes. The seating of a dinner-party is to her like
a nice problem at chess. Do you think it a mere chance shuffle that
settled your destiny at table? Do you know one automobile from another?"

"No."

"Of course not. And half the time you hadn't a glimmer of a notion what
the decadent poet with the Vandyck beard was driving at?"

"More than half."

"Neither should I. A steady diet of the hash he serves up to women's
clubs would land me in a padded cell. But perhaps the general talk
amused you?"

"I could not make much of it," she admitted.

"Sensible girl! Neither could most of the talkers. But--here was where
you scored a point--you looked as if you did. The minor poet and the
motor-maniac couldn't wait their turns to bore you. Then, point number
two, your gown. Logically, it's point number one, and a big point, too.
I happened to be watching Julie when you arrived. Yes; you scored."

Jean caught gratefully at the tribute. She remembered that Craig had
been too preoccupied with the Joyce-Reeves commission to notice her
dress, and wondered whether the pictorial girl's æsthetic draperies had
drawn his praise. She was shy of mentioning Miss Hepworth to MacGregor;
he might think her jealous. Nor did he speak her name, though Craig
and his dinner-partner, again in animated converse, were in plain view
from their own station. Jean guessed that he trusted her instinct to
light readily on the significance of this factor in Mrs. Van Ostade's
strategy.

"Lastly," he enumerated, "you bagged Mrs. Joyce-Reeves."

"What! The woman who talked to me about Craig?"

"You're surprised to find her here? So was Julie. She invited herself.
Julie met her somewhere this afternoon and mentioned that she was
giving a dinner. Mrs. Joyce-Reeves asked questions--you discovered
that trait of hers, probably--and said she'd be punctual. Quite royal,
isn't she? She is strong enough to be as eccentric as she pleases. So
Craig was your topic? Then she had your secret out of you, mark my
word. How did you fall in with her?"

"She came to me while I was turning over some of Craig's sketches."

"Pretending to enjoy yourself, but really feeling as lonesome as
Robinson Crusoe?"

"Almost."

"That is very likely why she spoke to you. She does that sort of
thing, they say. It's one of her curious eccentricities. I think your
motor-maniac is edging this way," he added. "Yes, and your poet, too.
Can it be that you are going to score again!"

With the three men grouped about her chair, Jean had an intoxicating
suspicion that she was scoring, provided MacGregor's embattled theory
held; and when Mrs. Van Ostade herself entered the scene just as the
blond giant, under fire from the Vandyck beard, was begging her to
set a day for her initiation into the joys of motoring, a certain
rigidity in Julie's smile convinced her that MacGregor was right.
Atwood's opportune arrival in his sister's wake charged the situation,
she felt, with the last requisite of drama. But Mrs. Van Ostade's
eye was restless, however staccato her smile, and Jean, conscious,
though no longer unhappy under its regard, reflected that even without
its terrible lorgnon it had its power. Then, even as she framed the
thought, she beheld its sudden concentration, tracked its cause,
and caught its glittering rebound from the nether edge of her too
tempestuous petticoat. For an instant the brown eyes braved the black,
then struck their colors, conquered.

[Illustration: She was scoring.]

Without a word Julie Van Ostade had shouted, "Cast-off clothes!" louder
than the raucous dealers of the curb.

Luckily, the ghastly business was not prolonged. The leave-takings
began at once, and Jean passed out among the first. Some hitch in the
carriage arrangements delayed her a moment in the vestibule, however,
and MacGregor came by.

"Did something happen back there?" he asked bluntly. "I don't think the
others noticed anything; I didn't grasp anything tangible myself; but
still--are the honors doubtful, after all?"

Jean shook her head.

"No," she answered grimly; "not doubtful in the least. She won."

Then Craig put her in the coupé, and asked if it had not been a jolly
evening.

"It was a mixed crowd for Julie," he said, "but it seems she wanted to
show you all sorts. You see how absurd it was to dread coming. Every
time I laid eyes on you, you were holding your own. Virginia Hepworth
asked who you were. Did you notice her? I want you to know her. You
mightn't think it at first blush, but she's very stimulating; at least
I always find her so. We had a famous powwow. I should like to paint
her sometime against a sumptuous background. What did you think of her
hair?"

Jean's response was incoherent. Then an illuminated turning brought her
face sharply from the shadows.

"Jean!" he cried. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Myself. We had best face it--face it now; better now than later. I
am only a drag upon you, a handicap--not the kind of woman you should
marry. You must marry a stim--stim--stimulus."

Atwood drew her into his arms.

"And so I shall," he answered, "so I shall the first minute she'll let
me. To-night even! Do you understand me, Jean? Why shouldn't it be
to-night? What do you say?"

Jean said nothing. What folly she had uttered! Give him up! His mere
touch exorcised that madness. All the primitive woman in her revolted
from the sacrifice. He was hers--_hers_! Could that pale creature love
him as she loved him? Could Julie love him as she loved him? Julie! A
gust of passion shook her; part anger with herself for the weakness to
which she had stooped, part hot resentment against this superior being
who set traps for her inexperience. For it was a trap, that dinner!
MacGregor was wholly right. There was war between them; the night had
witnessed a battle. What was it all but a manœuvre to humble her before
her lover, prove her unfitness, alienate his love?

Then Craig's words took on a meaning.

"I'm in earnest," he was saying. "It isn't a spur-of-the-moment idea.
These three days I've had it in mind to ask you to slip off with me
quietly and without fuss. We've never been conventional, you and I. Why
should we begin now? Nothing could be simpler. It is early yet--little
more than ten o'clock. I'll drop you in Irving Place long enough for
you to change your dress and pack a bag. Meanwhile I can pick up my
own and make sure of the clergyman. That part is easy, too. I'll ask a
friend of mine who lives not five blocks off. His wife and sister will
be our witnesses. Then the midnight train for Boston and a honeymoon in
some coast village."

"But the portrait?" she wavered.

"The best of reasons. The sensible thing is to marry before I begin
work. Don't hunt for reasons against it, dear. None of them count.
It's our wedding, not Mrs. Grundy's. We'll let her know by one of the
morning papers, if there's time to give notice on our way to the train.
Julie I'll wire."

A blithe vision of Julie digesting her telegram flitted across Jean's
imagination with an irresistible appeal.

"I'll need half an hour, Craig," she said, as the carriage halted.




                                 XXIV


Julie's congratulations reached them three days later at the decayed
seaport, an hour's run out of Boston, which they had chosen at laughing
haphazard in their flight. It was a skillful piece of literature.
Ostensibly for both, its real message was for the errant Craig. There
were delicate allusions to their close companionship of years, so
precious to her. To him, a man, it had of course meant less. A woman's
devotion--but she would not weary him with protestations. What she had
been, she would always be. She bore him no unkindness for shutting her
out at the momentous hour; she knew marriage would raise no future
barrier. That was all.

"Dear old Julie!" said Atwood. "It did cut her." He smoked for a
pensive interval, gazing out from their balcony over the rotting hulks
of a vanished trade. "She's been my right hand almost," he went on
presently. "Not many endearments between us--surface tendernesses. Some
people think her hard, but she's as stanch as stanch. Did I tell you
how she nursed me through typhoid?"

"Yes."

"That showed! Or take our Irving Place days. Many a play or concert she
gave up for me--and gowns! She believed in me from the first. I can't
forget that. What nonsense to talk of marriage shutting her out! We
must not let her feel that way, Jean."

"No," said the wife; for to such charity toward the beaten enemy had
she already come.

Indeed, her happiness had softened her to a point where she questioned
whether MacGregor did Julie complete justice. He was a man of strong
prejudices, set, dogmatic; even, she suspected, a man with a grievance,
for Craig now told her that something in the nature of an engagement
had once existed between his sister and his friend. Might not Atwood's
insight be the truer? She began to put herself in Julie's place,
and then, without much difficulty, saw herself acting Julie's part.
Ambitious for Craig, scheming for him always, self-sacrificing if need
arose, why should she not resent his marriage to a nobody whom she knew
only as a model?

This flooding charity likewise embraced Mrs. Fanshaw. Her mother's
chronicles of the small beer of Shawnee Springs had continued with
the punctuality of tides. The weekly letter seemed to present itself
to her mind as an imperative duty, like the Wednesday prayer-meeting,
Saturday's cleaning, or church-going Sunday. Duty bulked less
prominently in Jean's view of it, but she had answered, desultorily
at first, and then by habit, almost with her mother's regularity. Yet
she had told little of her life. The changes from cloak-factory to
department store, from store to the Acme Company, and from the dental
office to the studio had been briefly announced, but despite questions,
never lengthily explained. Now she felt the need for confidence.
Feelings quickened in her which she supposed atrophied, and under their
impulsion she wrote her mother for the first time the true history of
her flight from the refuge and traced the romance there begun to its
miraculous flower.

A second note from Mrs. Van Ostade, received two days later, voiced in
the friendliest way her acceptance of things as they were. She wondered
whether they had formulated any plans for living? Craig's bachelor
quarters, she pointed out, were scarcely adaptable for housekeeping,
and surely they would not care for hotel life or furnished apartments?
What they did want, she assumed, was an apartment of their own; that
is, eventually. But, again, did they at this time of such critical
importance in Craig's work, want the exhausting labor of house-hunting?
Her suggestion--she was diffident, but oh, not lukewarm, in broaching
it--was that for the time being they make the freest use of her much
too spacious home. Craig knew how burdensome the East Fifty-third
Street place had seemed to her since Mr. Van Ostade's death; he would
remember how often she had urged his sharing it. Well, why not now?
It need be only temporary, if they wished; merely for the critical
present. It could easily be arranged from a financial point of view.
When had he and she ever quarreled over money! And the domestic
problem was as simple. Wouldn't they consider it? She meant literally
_consider_, not decide. They could decide on the spot, for come to her
they must on their return. She claimed that of them at least. They
should be her guests first; then--but no more of that now.

They read the letter shoulder to shoulder; and so, without speaking,
sat for a long moment after they reached the end.

"Well?" he said at last, with a vain reading of the still face.

"Well, Craig?"

"Bully of her, isn't it?"

She assented.

"And practical," he added; "more practical than our air-castles, I dare
say."

A quick fear caught at her throat.

"Could you give them up, Craig?"

"Give them up!" he exclaimed. "Give up the air-castles that we've
planned while drifting in the bay, roaming the fields, watching the
sunset from this dear window? Never! We'll have our own home yet. But
it does mean time, as Julie says, and this is a critical period in my
affairs. I feel it strongly."

"And I."

"It would be practical," he said again thoughtfully. "We must admit
it, Jean. How Julie seems to set her heart upon it! We owe her some
reparation, I suppose. We might--at least, till the portrait is under
way? Oh, but you must decide this point."

"No," she answered. "Your work must decide. But need we worry over it
_now_?"

"Indeed, we'll not," he declared. "When we reach town will be soon
enough, as Julie says. Come out for a row."

The end of the honeymoon came sooner than they thought. A third missive
from Julie, laid before them at breakfast, asked when she might look
for them, and added that Mrs. Joyce-Reeves also wished enlightenment,
as she should soon be leaving town. Jean herself had urged a prompt
return for the portrait's sake, but it seemingly needed his sister's
spur to prick Craig to action. Time-tables immediately absorbed him.
Noon saw them in Boston and the evening in New York, where a week to
a day, almost to an hour, from the fateful dinner, they passed again
through Mrs. Van Ostade's door.

Throughout the homeward journey Jean had shrunk from this moment, and,
though he said nothing, she divined that Craig himself dreaded facing
Julie. But the actual meeting held no terrors. Mrs. Van Ostade greeted
them cordially and at once led the way to the suite of rooms set apart
for their use.

"This is your particular corner," she said at the threshold, "but the
whole house, remember, is yours."

"My books!" exclaimed Atwood, bringing up in the little living-room,
the charm of which won Jean instantly. "My old French prints! Have you
moved me bag and baggage, Julie?"

"I did send to your rooms for a few things to make you comfortable.
I think you'll find the essentials. Had I dared," she added, turning
smilingly on Jean, "I should have laid hands on your belongings, too."

They came upon discovery after discovery as they traversed the
successive rooms. Julie's deft touch showed itself everywhere. Flowers
met them on every hand, and a great bowl of bride's roses lavished its
fragrance from Jean's own dressing-table. Her face went down among
their petals.

"You don't mind?" murmured Julie at her side. "I wanted to do
something, belated as it seems."

Atwood caught up one of the dainty trifles with which the
dressing-table was strewn.

"See, Jean!" he called. "They're yours. This is your monogram."

The remorseful lump in the girl's throat stifled speech.

"You don't mind?" Julie repeated.

Jean's response was mute, but convincing. Atwood went out precipitately
and closed the door upon his retreat.

Nor did Mrs. Van Ostade's thoughtfulness stop at their welcome, or yet
at the almost imperceptible point where, the portrait deciding, their
status as guests changed to a relation less transient. It concerned
itself with the revision of Jean's wardrobe, with the more effective
dressing of her hair, with the minutiæ of calls and social usages,
intricate beyond her previous conception, but not lacking rime and
reason in her altered life.

Jean had no galling sense of pupilage--the thing was too delicately
done. Often Julie's lessons took the sugar-coated form of a gentle
conspiracy against Craig, who, his sister confided, had in some
respects lapsed into a bohemianism which needed its corrective. A
portrait-painter, she reasoned, must defer to society more than
other artists. It was an essential part of his work to acquaint
himself sympathetically with the ways of the leisured class who made
his profession commercially possible. Mrs. Joyce-Reeves furnished
a concrete illustration. Even if the studio stairs had not proved
too great an obstacle for her years, how enormously more to Craig's
advantage it was that he could paint her here! Coming to this house,
his sitter entered no alien environment. She retained her atmosphere.

"I make it a point to serve tea at their afternoon sittings," she
added. "And I try to chat with her whenever I can. It draws her out,
lets Craig see her as she really is, makes up for his lack of knowledge
of her individuality."

Plastic as she was under coaching, Jean nursed a healthy doubt of the
wisdom of Mrs. Van Ostade's constant presence in the billiard-room over
the extension, which Atwood had chosen for the work because of its
excellent north light. When had he so changed that the chatter of a
third person helped him to paint?

Moreover, Craig was openly dissatisfied.

"I'm only marking time," he fretted, as he and Jean sat together
before the canvas after Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's third sitting. "All my
preconceived notions were merely blind scents. I'm not getting at the
woman behind."

"Yet it's wonderfully like her," she encouraged, studying the strong,
mocking old face.

"So are her photographs! Is that portraiture? Look at their stuff," he
cried, catching a handful of unmounted prints from a drawer. "See what
Huntington did with her girlhood! See Millais's woman of thirty! Look
at Zorn's great portrait! Take Sargent's!"

"But none of them have painted her old age," she reminded. "You have
that advantage."

"And what have I got out of it? Wrinkles!"

Crossing Madison Square a day or two later, Jean met MacGregor. He had
congratulated them promptly by letter and sent them one of his desert
studies which he knew for a favorite; but she had not come face to
face with him since her marriage. She wanted to speak to him, for an
unfulfilled penance hung over her, and almost her first word was a
confession of her feeling that she had done Julie an injustice.

He listened with a caustic stare.

"Buried the hatchet?" he remarked.

"If there ever was a hatchet. I'm not so sure there was. I think we
both misjudged her."

"Both, eh!" snorted MacGregor, huffily. "I dare say. After all, I'm a
raw young thing with no experience."

"No; seriously," Jean laughed.

He changed the topic.

"Is the portrait coming on?" he asked.

"Craig is despondent."

"Good thing!" he ejaculated. "Stimulates the gray matter." His face
went awry, however, when she mentioned Julie's theory and practice. "So
it's the tea-drinking Mrs. Joyce-Reeves our mighty painter thinks most
important," he broke out acidly, after violent bottling of comment more
pungent. "Fine! What insight! What originality!"

Jean's eyes snapped loyally.

"Don't be disagreeable," she retorted. "You know Craig doesn't think
anything of the kind."

They separated with scant courtesy, but she had not quitted the park
before MacGregor's tall figure again towered over her.

"Enlighten the brute a little further," he said with elaborate
meekness. "What is to become of your work? Richter says you haven't
darkened his door since your marriage."

"Four whole weeks!"

"Oh, jeer away," he grumbled. "Honeymoon or not, it's too long."

"I must think of Craig's interests first."

MacGregor lifted his hat.

"Your father also dabbled in clay--and matrimony, I believe," he said,
and left her definitely to herself.

She admitted the justice of his reminder when her cheek cooled, and,
turning into a cross-town street, set a straight course for Richter's.
The swathed model of a colossal group called "Agriculture," which he
had in hand for a Western exposition, hid the sculptor as she pushed
open the door of the big studio, and when she finally came upon the
little man it was to discover Mrs. Joyce-Reeves beside him in close
examination of an uncovered bit of foreground where a child tumbled in
joyous, intimate communion with the soil.

They broke out laughing at sight of Jean.

"I told you I should ask Richter," declared the old lady, briskly. "His
answer was to show me this."

Jean flushed at this indirect praise from the master.

"Mr. Richter let me have a hand in it," she said.

"A hand! He told me he should have had to leave the figure out
altogether if you had not experimented with the janitor's baby."

The sculptor was now blushing, too.

"He did not tell me," Jean laughed.

"Why didn't you?" demanded Mrs. Joyce-Reeves, abruptly. "Why didn't you
encourage the girl?"

"I think praise should be handled gingerly," he explained.

"Is it such moral dynamite? I don't believe it."

She beamed her approval of Jean's physical endowments as well,
lingering in particular upon her eyes. Suddenly she gave a little cluck
of surprise, whipped out a handkerchief, and laid it unceremoniously
across the girl's lower face.

"Do you know Malcolm MacGregor?" she demanded. "Yes? Then I'm the owner
of your portrait. It's called 'The Lattice.' Atwood's wife, MacGregor's
inspiration, Richter's collaborator--my dear, you are very wonderful.
Shall I take you home? I've promised your husband a sitting."

Jean said she must remain and work. She had thought only to run in and
appease Richter, but between his grudging praise and MacGregor's goad,
she found her fingers itching for the neglected tools; and she was into
her comprehensive studio-apron before Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's electric
brougham had purred halfway down the block. The sculptor squandered
no more compliments that day, however. Indeed, he swerved heavily
to the opposite extreme, but Jean dreamed audacious dreams over the
penitential copying of a battered antique, and the afternoon was far
gone when she reluctantly stopped work.

Leaving Richter's door, she beheld her husband swinging gayly down the
street. He waved to her boyishly and quickened his step.

"Good news?" she queried.

"The very best," he said, seizing both her hands, to the lively
edification of two nursemaids, a policeman, and the driver of a passing
dray. "I've got my interpretation, Jean! Got it at last! And it came
through you!"

For some reason, he told her, Mrs. Joyce-Reeves had arrived earlier
than her appointment. Julie was out, but luckily she caught him, and
so an hour of vast significance tamely began. By and by his sitter
mentioned Jean, her work, and Richter's opinions, and plied him with
kindly inquisitive questions about their love affair and elopement,
till--all in a lightning flash--it came to him that here, peeping
from behind the worldly old mask which everybody knew, was another,
unguessed Mrs. Joyce-Reeves with a schoolgirl's appetite for romance.

"And that is what I want to paint," he declared. "Cynic on the surface,
romanticist at heart."

The way home was too ridiculously short, and they pieced it out with
park and shop-window saunterings. The future was big with promise. Both
should wear the bays.

"For something she dropped set me thinking," Atwood said. "She sees,
like all of us, that children are your forte, and she thinks that in
this day of child study, your talent can't fail to make its mark. The
janitor's baby seems to have swept her off her feet. She said the
janitors, proud race though they be, must not be allowed to monopolize
your time. Then she spoke of her great-grandchild, and I think there's
something in the wind."

Jean trifled with the intoxicating possibilities for a dozen paces.

"Oh," she said finally, as if shaking herself awake, "Richter would
never consent to my trying such things yet."

They composed their frivolous faces under the solemn regard of Julie's
butler, who told Jean that a caller awaited her in the library.

"A lady from out of town," he added.

Jean wondered, "Why the library?" and, then, advancing, wondered again
as a silvery tinkle reached her ears; but the chief marvel of all was
the spectacle of Julie Van Ostade and Mrs. Fanshaw in amicable, even
intimate, converse over afternoon tea.




                                  XXV


Surprise held her at the threshold an instant, whereupon a rare,
beaming, even effusive, Mrs. Fanshaw, whom Jean's memories linked with
calls from the minister, bore down on her, two steps to her one, and
engulfed her in a prolonged embrace. Then, holding her daughter at
arm's length in swift appraisement of her dress and urban air,--

"Death brought me," she explained.

"Death!"

"Your great-aunt Martha Tuttle died last Friday at brother Andrew's
in Paterson," she announced in lugubrious tones with which her blithe
visage could not instantly be brought in harmony. "I am on my way home
from the funeral."

"I've been trying to persuade your mother to break her journey here for
a few days," Julie contributed, with a fugitive smile; "but she says
she must hurry away."

"Amelia expects her little stranger any time now," murmured Mrs.
Fanshaw, chastely. "But I will stop overnight, perhaps part of
to-morrow, thanking you kindly, Mrs. Van Ostade."

"Pray don't," deprecated Julie, moving toward the door. "This is
Jean's home, you know. Unfortunately, I'm dining out this evening."

Jean learned of Mrs. Fanshaw's haste and Julie's engagement with equal
relief. She felt no snobbish shame for her mother's rusticity, but she
did fear her babbling tongue, and her first word on Julie's withdrawal
was one of caution.

"Not a syllable about the refuge here," she charged. "Neither Craig nor
I wish Mrs. Van Ostade to know. Remember, mother."

The visitor's eyes widened.

"Oh," she observed slowly, "I don't see--"

"We see," Jean cut her short. "You must respect my wishes in this."

"All right," assented Mrs. Fanshaw, with amazing meekness. "Is your
husband on the premises?"

"You will meet him soon," she replied, thinking it expedient that Julie
or herself should first give Atwood some hint of what lay in store.

"He is really quite well known, isn't he? I've taken more notice of
magazine pictures since I heard I had another son-in-law. I hope he's
not wild. They tell of such goings-on among artists and models. I seem
to recollect, though, they were French."

"Craig is a gentleman."

"I'm bound to say his sister is a lady," Mrs. Fanshaw replied to this
laconic statement. "Is she any connection of that Mrs. Quentin Van
Ostade the papers mention so much?"

"Julie is her daughter-in-law."

"You don't tell me!" She was impressed to the verge of awe. "Why, that
makes you sister-in-law to Mrs. Quentin Van Ostade's son!"

"He is dead."

"Dead!" Her face paid the late Mr. Van Ostade the fleeting tribute of a
shadow. "What a pity! But I presume his mother still sees something of
his widow?"

"Oh, yes."

"And comes here sometimes?"

"Frequently."

Mrs. Fanshaw resurveyed her surroundings as if they had taken on
historic interest.

"You've seen her?"

"Yes."

"I mean, really met her--been introduced?"

"Yes," Jean admitted, without humility.

Her mother eyed her with respectful interest.

"I hope you'll keep your head, Jean," she admonished solemnly. "This is
a great come-up in the world for you."

An impish impulse took shape in Jean's brain, and, under cover of
showing the house, she guided Mrs. Fanshaw by edifying stages to
Craig's temporary studio and the great work.

"A portrait he's doing!" she dropped carelessly.

Her mother as carelessly bestowed a brief glance upon the canvas.

"What a wrinkled old woman," she commented, turning away. "But I
suppose it is the money your husband is thinking of?"

"Partly."

"What will he get for it?"

Jean pondered demurely.

"It is hard to say. Perhaps a thousand, perhaps two thousand dollars."

"What!" She wheeled upon the portrait. "Why, who is the woman?"

"Mrs. Joyce-Reeves."

The effect was as dramatic as Jean's unfilial fancy had hoped.

"The Mrs. Joyce-Reeves of Fifth Avenue and Newport?"

"And of Lenox, Aiken, and Ormond--yes."

Mrs. Fanshaw's attitude toward the portrait became reverential. Here
was hallowed ground!

"Have you met _her_, too?" she asked finally, with the realization that
even her child might share the sacerdotal mysteries.

"Yes."

"You have _talked_ with her?"

"Only this afternoon."

"Here?"

"She was here to-day, for a sitting, but I ran across her at Mr.
Richter's studio."

"That is where you go to--"

"To model; yes." Then, with great calm, "Mrs. Joyce-Reeves admires my
work."

A chastened, pensive, almost deferential, being, who from time to time
stole puzzled glances at her ugly duckling turned swan, let herself be
shown to her room and smartened for dinner, to which she descended at
what seemed to her robust appetite an unconscionably late hour. Here
the fame of her son-in-law and the even more disconcerting attentions
of the butler combined to make her subjugation complete.

Sweet as was her victory, however, Jean had no wish to see her mother
ill at ease, and she rejoiced when Craig exerted himself to entertain
this visitor whose subdued, almost shy, manner was so bewilderingly
at variance with the forbidding image his fancy had set up. Moreover,
he succeeded. If Mrs. Fanshaw's parochial outlook dulled the edge of
his choicer quips and anecdotes, his boyish charm, at least, required
no footnotes; and before the dinner ended she was bearing her gustful
share in the conversation with such largess of detail that a far less
imaginative listener than he might reconstruct therefrom the whole
social and economic fabric of Shawnee Springs.

To Jean, who in dark moments had longed to forget it utterly, the
narrow little town recurred with sharp, unlovely lines. Forget it! She
could as easily forget that this was her mother. Flout it as she would,
it yet stood closer to her than any spot on earth. Its censure and its
respect were neither despicable; her rehabilitation in its purblind
eyes was a thing desirable above all other ambitions. Then, presently,
in this hour when she craved such justification deepest, its
possibility, even its certainty, came to her. She had slipped away to
answer one of the more imperative letters which Craig's detestation of
affairs left to her, and as she mused a moment over her finished task,
the drift of Mrs. Fanshaw's monologue in the room beyond penetrated her
revery.

She was talking, as Jean had heard her talk times innumerable, with
endless variations upon a single theme. But the burden of her laud was
no longer Amelia! Now it was Jean--her childish spirit, her school-time
precocity, her early love of shaping things in clay, her promise,
her beauty, her future--Jean, always Jean! And as the girl at the
desk drank it in thirstily, she foresaw the end. Signs there had been
already that Amelia was wavering on her pedestal--her husband and her
husband's family, the proud Fargos, had impaired her sainthood; and now
in the tireless, fatuous, sweet refrain, Jean read her own elevation to
the vacant niche. Hot tears blinded her. It might not be her noblest
compensation; but it was the dearest.

If Mrs. Fanshaw's coming marked the dawn of another day in Jean's
spirit, its effect on her external welfare was less happy. Her
relations with Julie were beyond question altered, though precisely
where the difference lay was not easy to detect. Intuition, rather than
any overt act or word of Mrs. Van Ostade's, told her this, for their
surface intercourse went on much as before; but, elusive and volatile
as this changed atmosphere was, she nevertheless knew it for something
real, alert, and vaguely hostile. Yet this aloofness, if aloofness it
could be called, was so bound up in Julie's propaganda on behalf of
Craig's career that Jean took it for a not unnatural jealousy.

Atwood fed the flame with repeated acknowledgments of his wife's share
in solving his riddle, the fervor of which leaped from bud to bloom
with tropic extravagance as the portrait went rapidly forward and the
judgment of MacGregor and other experts assured him of its strength.
His sister, Jean noted, always took these outbursts in silence. The
portrait expressed a Mrs. Joyce-Reeves with whom she was unfamiliar,
either over the tea-cups or elsewhere, but she had the breadth to
recognize its bigness and set her restless energy to work to exploit it
with all her might.

Of her methods Jean perhaps saw more than Mrs. Van Ostade supposed. For
a fortnight Atwood let the nearly finished portrait cool, as he said,
and busied himself at his regular studio with such illustrative work as
he was still under contract to deliver. This was Julie's opportunity.
That Atwood was painting Mrs. Joyce-Reeves was no secret--a discreet
paragraph or two had sown the seed of publicity in fertile ground;
and Julie furthermore let it leak out among those it might interest
that the sittings took place beneath her roof. Skillful playing of
influential callers who rose eagerly to allusions to the opinions of
the critics--Mr. Malcolm MacGregor, for example--would lead usually,
in strictest confidence, to a stolen view of the masterpiece. By such
devices--and others--it came to pass that Atwood, happily ignorant
of the wire-pulling which loosed the falling manna, found himself
commissioned to paint three more persons of consequence so soon as his
engagements to Mrs. Joyce-Reeves and the publishers would permit.

Craig ascribed it all to society's proneness to follow its bell-wethers.

"But I never gauged Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's true power, the magic of her
mere name," he said repeatedly. "Three orders on the bare gossip that
she has given me sittings!"

Julie begged Jean not to undeceive him.

"At least not yet," she qualified. "He is quixotic enough to throw his
chance away, if he thought I used a little business common sense to
make his art pay. I've never dared let him know the labor it cost to
interest Mrs. Joyce-Reeves. Not that it was illegitimate or in any way
underhanded. All this is as legitimate as the social pressure a clever
architect brings to bear, and nobody thinks of censuring. But illusions
are precious to Craig; they feed his inspiration. So I say, let him
enjoy them while he can. Let him think commissions drop from the skies."

Jean doubted the truth of this estimate of Craig, but she did full
justice to Mrs. Van Ostade's motives and to the signal success of
her campaign which, for all she knew of such matters, might be, as
Julie said, legitimate, and at this time even vitally important. The
necessity for a change of studio, which now recurred, seemed logical,
too.

"You now see for yourself, Craig, how unsuited to portrait work your
old quarters are," Julie argued.

"Virginia Hepworth won't mind coming here--she is next, you know; but
you can't go on this way indefinitely. Of course, it's possible that
you may find it desirable to take a temporary studio at Newport for the
summer; but in the fall people will expect a city studio worthy of your
reputation."

Atwood was tractable.

"We must have a look around," he assented.

"I have looked around," announced his sister; "and I've found something
you couldn't possibly better. It has every convenience--a splendid
workroom, a large reception-room, a dressing-room, and an extra chamber
which would be useful for the caterer when you receive. It will require
very little redecorating, though they're willing to do it throughout,
if we like."

"That sounds like the Copley Studios."

"It is."

Atwood laughed.

"Must it be the pink-tea district, after all, Julie? Boy in buttons at
the door, velvet-coated poseur--Artist with a capital _A_--in the holy
of holies. What will old Mac say! Jean, what do you think?"

She felt Julie's compelling eye upon her, and resented its domination;
but she saw no choice of ways.

"The velvet jacket isn't compulsory, is it?" she said lightly. "Why not
look at the studio?"

"I'll drop in the first time I am near," he agreed.

Julie coughed.

"I ventured to make an appointment," she said. "They only show it by
special permission of the owners, the Peter Y. Satterlee Company. Mr.
Satterlee himself offered to be at the building at twelve o'clock
to-morrow, if that hour will suit. To deal with him in person would be
an advantage."

"Would it?" responded Craig, hazily. "Very well. Can you go, Jean?"

"If you want me," she returned, feeling outside the discussion.

"Of course. I count on you and Julie to browbeat the real-estate shark
into reducing the summer's rent. All I shall be good for is to tell you
whether there is a practicable north light."

Jean came late. Richter had abruptly taken her off the
spirit-mortifying antique to aid him with one of his lesser studies for
the Western exposition, and the forenoon had been absorbing. To watch
Richter model was much; to help him a heaven-sent boon to be exercised
in fear and trembling and exceeding joy. The stroke of twelve, which
should have found her with Craig, saw her but leaving Richter's door.
The distance was short, however, and at a quarter past the hour the
overupholstered elevator of the Copley Studios bore her without vulgar
haste aloft.

It was all vastly different from Craig's unfashionable top-story back,
a mile or more down-town. No shabby street confronted this temple
of the fine arts; its benign façade overlooked a trim park and the
vehicles of elegant leisure. No base odor of cabbage or garlic rose
from the nether lair of its janitor; no plebeian tailor or dressmaker
debased the tone of its lower floors. Its courts were of marble, and
its flunkies had supple spines.

The door to which Jean was directed stood ajar, and she let herself in
to encounter other mighty differences. The entrance to the down-town
studio precipitated the caller squarely into the travail of artistic
production, but the architect who planned the Copley Studios had
interposed a little hall with a stained-glass window-nook and a
reception-room of creamy empire fittings between genius and its
interruptions.

From the studio proper issued Julie's level tones, presumably in
discussion with Peter Y. Satterlee, for Jean heard Craig's meditative
whistle in another direction. Following a small passage, she came upon
him studying the convolutions of a nervous jet of steam which found
vent among the myriad chimneys of the nearer outlook.

"Will it do?" she smiled.

"Splendidly--almost too splendidly. Julie and the magnificent Satterlee
are settling terms, I believe. Behold your studio, sculptress mine!"
he added with a grandiloquent gesture. "This is the extra chamber
of Julie's rhapsodies, otherwise a bachelor's bedroom about to be
dedicated to nobler ends. Notice your view, Jean! New York, the Hudson,
Jersey's hills, and the promise of sunsets beyond compare! And look
here"--descending to practicality--"running water handy and my workshop
next. We shall virtually work side by side."

He pushed open the connecting door, and they entered the studio.
Julie and a globular man in superfine raiment stood like ill-balanced
caryatids in support of either end of the mantelpiece.

"I agree to everything," he was saying. "The leases shall be ready
to-morrow."

The voice signaled some cell in Jean's brain. The face, which he turned
immediately upon her, gave memory its instant clew, and she felt her
skin go hot and cold under Peter Y. Satterlee's earnest gaze.

"Have you a double, Mrs. Atwood?" he asked, after a moment's idle
discussion of the studio.

She tried to face him calmly.

"A double? I think not."

"Why?" demanded Julie.

Satterlee pursued his investigations with maddening care.

"It's a most extraordinary resemblance, particularly as to eyes," he
said. "There was a young woman, a dentist's wife, living in a Harlem
apartment of ours--the Lorna Doone, it was--who might be Mrs. Atwood's
twin. You didn't marry a widow, sir?" he broke off jocularly.

Atwood laughingly shook his head.

"How curious!" he exclaimed. "What was her name?"

"There you have me," admitted the agent, after brain-fagging efforts.
"I can't recollect. I sold the property very soon."




                                 XXVI


Rid of them all, Jean was tormented by a host of replies and courses of
action, any one of which, she believed, would have blunted the edge of
Julie's suspicion. For she was suspicious! There could be no doubt of
it. To Craig she longed to offer some explanation, but her love bade
her reject anything short of the whole truth, even as it told her that
the whole truth was impossible. Every hour of her wedded happiness
heaped proof on proof of the joy he took in the belief that he alone
had filled her heart. And was he not right? Had not his dear image
persisted--canonized, enshrined, worshiped--since their forest meeting!
Paul had never displaced it. In truth, it had shone the brighter
because of Paul. But how put this holy mystery in words!

She took refuge in an opportunism not unlike Amy's. Did not time and
chance rule the world! Yet her peace of mind was fitful, and she
shunned the Copley Studios with a fear which hearkened to no argument.
It was useless to remind herself that Satterlee was a man of many
interests. Her imagination always figured him as haunting the room
where she had come upon him. There he waited, a rotund bomb by the
mantelpiece, with the explosive "Bartlett" in his subconsciousness
ready to destroy her the instant her face should at last apply the
fatal spark. So it fell out that, pleading her own work whenever Craig,
himself absorbed in the Hepworth portrait, asked her opinion of his
sister's ideas, the new studio's furnishing went forward without her
and in unhampered accord with Julie's ambitious plans.

How far-reaching these plans were she first adequately perceived
through MacGregor, whose card came up to her one evening when both
Atwood and Mrs. Van Ostade were out.

"I counted on finding you alone," he owned with characteristic
bluntness. "Craig has gone to the Salmagundi doings, of course,--I'm
due there later; while I happen to know that Julie is dining with her
mother-in-law. I met Julie this afternoon at the Copley Studios."

"Then you saw Craig's new quarters?"

"Yes. Have you seen them?"

"Why do you ask that question?"

"I gathered that you hadn't."

"I went there the day Craig took the place."

"And have not returned! Why?"

"I am working hard with Richter."

"So he tells me. Don't overwork. Art isn't everything."

"Aren't you inconsistent?" she laughed.

"Lord, yes! Consistently inconsistent. Life would lose half its
sparkle, if I weren't. But the new studio; you should have a look in;
it would interest you. I don't often trouble the pink-tea district,
but an errand took me into the Copley building to-day just as Julie
entered, and she offered to show me through."

His meditations became irksome.

"Well?" Jean prompted.

"Julie should have been a stage-manager," he said. "Her scenic instinct
is remarkable. She sees Craig's place peopled with a fashionable
portrait-painter's clientele, and has set her properties accordingly.
His Italian finds,--his tapestries, his old furniture, his Pompeian
bronzes,--the new grand piano, and the various other newnesses, all
present themselves as background for society drama. I take off my hat
to her. She, too, is an artist, an artist of imagination. It is all
perfectly done. Nothing lacks but the fashionable portrait-painter."

"And the drama?" Jean suggested.

"Oh, that is being looked after. She plans a house-warming of some
sort. You haven't been consulted?"

"No."

"Neither has Craig, I dare say. Perhaps the idea only took shape
while she talked with me. I can't give you the technical name of the
function, but it will be worthy of the manager's reputation. The scheme
is to get Mrs. Joyce-Reeves's portrait, Miss Hepworth's, and mine--yes,
mine!--before as many as possible of the opulent beings who itch to
hand their empty faces down to posterity. By the way, I want to see the
Hepworth portrait."

She took him to the billiard-room and brought the unfinished picture to
the easel. MacGregor turned off a warring light, chose a view-point,
bestrode a chair, and lapsed into a long silence. Jean tried to read
his rugged face, but finding it inscrutable, herself studied the
canvas. Fuller knowledge of Craig's sitter had failed to reveal the
qualities of mind he found so stimulating; but now, confronting the
immobile counterfeit, she hit with disturbing certainty upon the truth
that Virginia Hepworth's appeal was physical, and to men as men.

A moment afterward MacGregor confirmed her intuition.

"I don't know her any better," he said. "Outwardly she is the same
neurotic creature I've seen all along. Apathetic with other women,
she stirs to life and takes her tints from the particular male with
whom she chances to be. Craig has missed an opportunity to dissect a
chameleon."

"You think it's a failure!"

"Psychologically, I do; technically, no. In color, texture, it is
masterly. Don't distress yourself about its success; it will be only
too successful. I think it will even have the bad luck to be popular."

Jean's loyalty rose to do battle.

"It's to Craig's credit that he could not see her truly," she retorted.
"If she takes her tints from the man with whom she talks, then he has
painted into her something of himself, something fine. But wasn't it
hers for the moment? Why, then, shouldn't he show her at her best, not
her worst?"

MacGregor laughed immoderately.

"That is stanch and wifely and nonsensical. It is not a
portrait-painter's business to supply the virtues or the vices. His
palette ought to contain neither mud nor whitewash. It is his duty to
see things as they are."

"But how can you expect Craig to see Miss Hepworth as she is? He's
not--"

"Middle-aged, like myself," suggested MacGregor, as she hesitated. "Say
it! It makes your fling concrete, personal, feminine."

Jean's wrath cooled in a smile.

"I was going to add, cynical," she said. "Is that a personality?"

"It's wide of the mark, whatever we call it. I'm no cynic. If I were, I
should merely stand by and laugh, not interfere."

"Don't put it that way."

"It amounts to interference. I can't cheat you, and I don't fool myself
into thinking my talk about Craig's work is impersonal. Neither is what
I say about Julie impersonal. Of course you've heard that she jilted
me for Van Ostade? Eh? I thought so. Don't think you must say you're
sorry," he protested hastily, as her lips parted. "I'm not sorry.
I'm thankful for my escape. That sounds bitter to you. Perhaps I am
bitter, but the bitterness is for myself, not her; and it doesn't sway
my judgment of her influence upon Craig by a hair's breadth. He thinks
it does, naturally, and he discounts my warnings. But I know, and
you _will_ know, if you don't see it yet, that he must shake her off.
Otherwise he's damned."

Jean kindled from his fiery earnestness.

"What must I do?" she asked. "Do you think the new studio is a mistake?"

"No; I don't say it is. Craig had to come uptown. I'm not maintaining,
either, that he can't paint under such conditions. Some men they
stimulate. It isn't the studio; it's the commercial campaign it stands
for which makes my gorge rise. Mind you, I don't censure Craig for not
grasping Miss Hepworth in character. His youth is responsible for that
fluke. But if he listens to Julie, he'll soon be painting everybody at
their best moments. He'll take orders like a factory--yes; and execute
then? like a factory--shallow, slap-dash, characterless vanities all
of a mould, which fools will buy and the future ignore. There is no
lost soul so tortured as the fashionable portrait-painter who has once
known honest work. You must save Craig from such a fate. Don't think he
is too strong to succumb. I've seen men with as much promise as his go
under. Help him keep his feeling fresh. See that he has time to linger
over and search out each subject. Make him paint even the mediocrities
as they are."

"How shall I begin?"

"Throw Julie overboard," answered MacGregor, instantly. "I did not come
here to mince words. I want to bring this home to you before I leave
the country. I sail for Africa day after to-morrow."

"For Africa!"

"Yes. This is good-by. A magazine has made me an offer I can't afford
to refuse."

She was oppressed by a great loneliness.

"Then I must fight it out single-handed," she said.

"You would fight single-handed if I were here, I'm afraid. Nobody can
help you much. The most I can do is to try to convince you that you
must fight. You must show Julie her place, and show her soon. Don't be
soft-hearted about it. She's not soft, trust my word. You are dealing
with an enemy--understand it clearly. She is an enemy and a clever one.
Julie could not prevent your marriage, but she may break it."

She paled at the conviction of his tone.

"I can't believe it!"

"Can't you? I tell you the process of alienation has begun. Doesn't
Craig think you indifferent about the studio?"

"Perhaps. I had reasons--"

"Chuck them away."

"And he knows I've been busy with Richter. Craig himself is lukewarm
about the studio."

"You must not be. It may be your battle-ground. I don't say it will;
but it may be, and it behooves you to look after your defences." He
glowered at the painted face a moment, then: "You may know that the
Chameleon was Julie's own choice for sister-in-law. Yes? It's a fact
worth thinking over. Good-by, Jean, and good luck! I haven't been
agreeable, but I've spoken as a friend. You feel that, I hope?"

"Yes," she answered unsteadily; "and thank you."

MacGregor winced as her voice broke.

"Buck up, buck up!" he charged. "You'll win out, sure!"

She brooded over his words till Atwood's return, but without seeing her
way, and a restless night suggested only courses too fantastic for the
light of day. She could not repeat MacGregor's warnings to Craig, nor
could she voice them as her own; while to attack Julie openly seemed
maddest of all. She could only drift and bide a time to assert herself
with dignity.

Such a chance seemed to offer at luncheon when Mrs. Van Ostade asked
Craig for suggestions regarding the decoration of the small room off
the main studio.

"It has never been done up, you know," she continued. "The last tenant
did not occupy it at all. We shall need it, however, and I think it
should be put in order at once. I'll use my own discretion, if you
don't want to be bothered."

"But that is Jean's affair," he said.

Julie's eyebrows arched.

"Really!"

"She and I settled it in the beginning that she should have that room
for her work."

His sister drew her knife through an inoffensive chop with bloodthirsty
vehemence.

"Indeed!" she returned.

"I will look after its decoration," put in Jean, quietly.

Mrs. Van Ostade's dusky skin shadowed with the dull red which marked
her infrequent flush.

"It must be in harmony with the other rooms," she said sharply. "At
times it will be necessary to throw everything open."

"Of course."

"And it should be done immediately. In fact, Mr. Satterlee promised to
look in at the studio about it at five o'clock to-day."

Jean was staggered, but she could not hesitate.

"I will meet Mr. Satterlee," she answered.

Julie's thin lips parted in a travesty of a smile.

"You are sure it would be agreeable?" she asked.

Atwood lifted his eyes at her tone.

"Agreeable, Julie?" he said. "Why do you give the word that twist? Why
shouldn't it be agreeable?"

Jean felt like an animal in a trap, but she faced Mrs. Van Ostade with
head erect and unflinching eyes.

"Yes; why?" she demanded.

Julie seemed to weigh a reply which prudent second thought bade her
check.

"How tragic you two have suddenly become," she drawled. "Isn't it
possible that the exacting Richter may have a prior claim? I am only
too happy that Jean can find time to revisit the studio--and meet Mr.
Satterlee. I hope, Craig, you will be present yourself?"

Atwood looked frankly distressed over the rancorous turn the discussion
had taken.

"If you'll wait for me, Jean," he said, "we will walk over together.
Miss Hepworth is to give me a sitting at three."

Jean went heavy-hearted to her room and flung herself down to wonder
dully how it would end. Drowsiness overtook her in these unprofitable
questionings, and, spent with her wearing night, she fell into a deep
slumber which shut out all thought till a knock called her back to face
reality smugly embodied in a servant with a card-tray.

Paul! The bit of pasteboard fluttered to the floor. What brought him
here? Then, perceiving a gleam of human curiosity light the face of the
automaton with the tray, she gripped her self-control and bade the man
tell Bartlett that she would see him.

"It's Amy," explained the dentist, rising from a respectful survey of
Mrs. Van Ostade's drawing-room. "Nothing will do her but that you must
come up to the flat. It isn't a thing I could 'phone or I wouldn't
have broken in on you like this, let alone hustling down here between
appointments and maybe missing other patients."

"But what is it?"

"The drummer. Amy thinks he means to shake her, and she's gone all to
pieces. I ran in there to ask for the rent, which is 'way behind, and
found her all in a heap. It was no place for P.B. Amy needs another
woman and needs her bad; and it seems to be up to you. I know it's
tough, asking you to go back to the Lorna Doone where every stick of
furniture--"

"I'll go," she interrupted. "If Amy didn't need me, I know you would
not have come."

"I'm afraid I can't wait to ride up with you," Paul apologized. "You
see, I'm only here between appointments, and--"

"I understand. Besides, I must see Mr. Atwood first."

She mounted hurriedly to the billiard-room where Craig must still be
at work, but hesitated on the threshold. The door was half open, and,
unseen herself, she saw both painter and sitter. Virginia Hepworth had
dropped her pose and had come behind Craig's chair. Neither spoke,
though his brush was idle. They merely faced the canvas in a silence,
the long-standing intimacy of which stabbed Jean with a jealous pang
and sent her away with her message unspoken.

She trusted Craig, but she could not trust herself, and deemed it the
part of wisdom to leave word with the dispassionate butler that a
friend's sickness would prevent her going to the studio.




                                 XXVII


Jean entered the Lorna Doone with a sense of having known the
place in some former life. Its braggart onyx, its rugs, its palms,
all the veneer which went to make for "tone"--that fetich of the
dentist--greeted her with a luster scarcely dimmed; the negro hall-boy
flashed a toothful smile of recognition; and even a scratch, which
their moving had left on the green denim by the flat door, had its keen
associations.

It was a relief to lay eyes upon Amy, who had no close relationship to
this dead yet risen past. Amy, poor wight, seemed related to nothing
familiar. Easily flooding tears, which gushed afresh at sight of Jean,
had washed her prettiness away.

"I knew you'd come," she whispered, clinging desperately. "Paul thought
it was no use to ask, but I made him go. You're not mad at me, Jean,
for sending? I've nobody else--not a soul."

Jean soothed her as she would a child, and leading her into a bedroom
close at hand, made her lie down. No sooner did her head touch the
pillow, however, than she struggled up again.

"I can't lie still," she pleaded. "Don't make me lie still. I tossed
here all night. I can't rest, I must talk. I want you to know what's
happened. I want you to tell me what to do. I must do something. It
can't go on. I'll lose my mind. I'll die."

Jean drew the woebegone figure to her.

"Tell me, Amy," she said gently. "Perhaps it isn't as black as it
seems."

Amy rocked herself disconsolately.

"It's blacker than it seems," she lamented. "Oh, if I'd never taken
the flat! Fred never wanted me to do it. I've only myself to thank. I
didn't know when I was well off."

"But what has the flat to do with your trouble?"

"Everything. I thought it would be heaven to keep house,--my own
house,--but it's been a hell. Fred said we couldn't afford a girl,
though I never saw why, for he's done splendid in his new territory.
And he didn't like my cooking! I only learned the plain things at the
refuge, you know, and he's been pampered, living so much at hotels.
Somehow I never can do things his way. Traveling men think a lot of
their stomachs, and Fred is more particular than most."

Jean began to comprehend the sordid little tragedy.

"But you'll learn," she comforted. "Make Fred buy you a first-class
cook-book. Try the recipes by yourself till you succeed. Don't feed him
on the experiments."

"I did try by myself. I practiced on a Welsh rabbit, and I thought I
had it down fine. So I surprised him one night after the theater when
he came home hungry. He said it wasn't fit for a h-h-hog!"

Jean's indignation boiled over.

"It was a thousand times too good for him," she cried.

"Don't," begged Amy. "I didn't blame him after I tasted it. The thing
I do blame him for and can't bear is the way he criticises my looks. I
can't always look pretty and do my work. Fred seems to think I ought,
and is always holding up Stella to me without stopping to remember that
she has nothing to do but sing and change her clothes."

"Stella! Do you let Stella Wilkes come here?"

"Fred made me ask her. She's got a flat herself--just a common sort of
a place that she rents furnished, with two chorus-girls. She's making
money now. She left the Coney Island beer-hall for one of those cheap
Fourteenth Street theaters. Fred says she's bound to make a hit. He's
crazy about her,"--her voice rose to a wail,--"just crazy!"

Jean held the shaking form closer.

"Aren't you mistaken?" she said, without conviction.

"Mistaken!" The girl wrenched herself erect. "Last night I saw her in
his arms."

"Amy!"

"I saw them--here--in my own house! Stella was here when Fred came home
from Newark--I guess she knew he was coming--and he made her take off
her things and stay to supper. It wasn't a good supper. The gas-range
wouldn't work, and I'd forgotten to put Fred's beer in the ice-box. I
was hot and cross from standing over the fire, and hadn't a minute to
do my hair. I saw Fred looking from me to Stella, who was dressed to
kill, and I knew what he thought. I could have cried right there. I
don't know how I got through the meal, but it ended somehow, and they
went off into the parlor, leaving me to clear away the things. I washed
the dishes up, for, company or not, I hate to let them stand over until
morning; and then fixed myself a little to go where they were. I must
have got through sooner than they expected. I saw him kiss her as plain
as I see you."

"Did they know you saw them?"

"I let them know," rejoined Amy, with a heart-breaking laugh. "I'll
bet her ears burn yet. I ordered her out of the house, and she went,
double-quick!"

"And he?"

The light died out of Amy's face.

"Fred went, too," she said numbly. "I haven't seen him since. I'll
never see him again, I guess. I'm the most miserable girl alive! What
shall I do? What shall I do?"

"Divorce the scoundrel," counseled Jean, promptly. "I'll take care of
the lawyer. I'll employ detectives, too, if you need more evidence, as
I suppose you will. He must be made to pay alimony. But you've nothing
to fear, even if you don't get a cent. You earned your living once;
you can do it again. Be rid of him at once."

Amy turned her face away.

"You don't know," she moaned.

"What is it I don't know?"

"The truth--the real truth."

"You mean you still care for him?"

"I do care for him--I always shall--but that's not what I mean. I can't
divorce Fred. I'm not--not his wife."

Jean sprang to her feet.

"You're not married!"

A spasm of anguish racked the shrinking form.

"Not--not yet."

Jean stood in rigid dismay, striving to read this enigma.

"Not yet," she repeated slowly. "Did you believe, Amy, _could_ you
believe, he ever meant to deal honestly with you?"

"Yes!" The girl turned passionately. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
He couldn't at first. His wife had divorced him, and he wasn't allowed
to remarry for three years. The time wasn't up when we met again; it
wasn't up when we began to live together. It seemed so long to wait. I
trusted him. I loved him."

"But now? He is free now?"

"Yes."

"And does nothing!"

"We--we put it off."

"You mean, he put it off. Amy! Amy! Can't you realize that he is
worthless? Can't you understand that you must root him out of your
life? Face this like a brave woman. I'll help you make a fresh start.
Be independent. Cut yourself off from him completely. Do it now--now!"

Amy's haggard eyes were unresponsive.

"It's too late."

"No, no!"

"It's too late. I can't cut myself off from him. Jean!" Her voice
quavered to shrill intensity. "Jean! Don't you--don't you _see_!"

Jean saw and was answered, and her womanhood bade her sweep the
weakling to her breast.

"I've kept it from him," wept Amy. "He hates children about. I did not
dare tell him."

"I dare," cried Jean, like a trumpet-call. "And I will."

Her assurance quieted the girl like an anodyne, and presently she
slept. Sundown, twilight, and night succeeded. The watcher's muscles
grew cramped, but whenever she sought to loose the sleeper's clasp,
Amy whimpered like a feverish child, and so she sat compassionately on
aiding nature's healing work. Meanwhile she tried to frame her appeal
to the drummer. How or when she should reach him she knew not; Amy
must bring about a meeting. She did not believe that he had definitely
deserted his victim. His sample-cases in the hall, his innumerable
pipes, his clothing strewn about the bedroom, all argued a return.
She longed that he might come now while her wrath burned hottest and
she might scorch him to a sense of his infamy. It could be done. She
was confident that she could stir him somehow. Surely, he was not
all beast. Somewhere underneath the selfish hide lurked a torpid
microscopic soul, some germ of pity, some spark of manhood.

Then Amy awoke, refreshed, heartened, yet still spineless, clinging,
and dependent; and Jean threw herself into the task of cheering this
mockery of a home. She made Amy bathe her dreadful eyes, arrange
her hair, don a dress the drummer liked; and then set her ordering
the neglected flat, while she herself conjured up a meal from the
unpromising materials which a search of the larder disclosed. The
little kitchen was haunted with ghosts of her other life. The dentist's
astonishing ice-cream freezer and the patent dish-washer stared her in
the face, and her hunt for the tea-canister revealed the kit of tools
she had bought to surprise him. Not a utensil hung here which was not
of their choosing.

And so it was with the other rooms. When she came to lay the cloth,
its grape-vine pattern greeted her like a forgotten acquaintance; the
colonial sideboard and the massive table, as formerly, united to resist
invasion of their tiny stronghold. The silver candelabra, restored to
the giver, still flanked Grimes's Louis XV clock upon the mantelpiece;
the galaxy of American poets hung where she had appointed. The Jean
who had done these things, lived this existence, was a distant, shadowy
personality, and the feat of making her intelligible to another seemed
more than ever impossible. She rejoiced that she had locked this
chapter from Craig. Her present self was her real self, the Jean he
idealized, the real Jean.

The belated supper braced Amy's mood. She became apologetic for the
drummer and sanguine of the future.

"Don't be harsh with Fred," she entreated. "Tell him the truth, but
don't hurt his pride. Fred is so proud. He's the proudest man I ever
knew. Besides, I'm every bit as much to blame. Stroke him the right
way, and he'll do almost anything you want. I could have managed him,
if I'd been well. He means all right. He'll do right, too. I wish--I
wish you could see us married, Jean. If he would only come now, we
could get a minister in and have it over to-night."

Jean hoped as fervently as Amy for the drummer's coming, and in this
hope lingered till she could wait no longer.

"Go to bed," she charged. "Sitting up won't hurry him home. If
he comes, don't weep, don't reproach him, don't plead with him,
don't--above all--don't apologize. Keep him guessing for once, and
leave the talking to me. Find out in some way where I can see him. If
he will be home to-morrow evening, I'll come here; if there's a chance
of catching him earlier at the office of his firm, let me know and I'll
go there. Meanwhile say nothing, but look your best."

Amy promised all things, and Jean hurried out, horrified at the
lateness of the hour. The long down-town journey at this hour daunted
her till she shook off the atmosphere of the Lorna Doone sufficiently
to recall that penny-saving was no more a vital factor in her life.
Cabs were not wont to stalk custom in this neighborhood, however, and
even a search of the nearest cross-street, where business predominated,
was fruitless. As she hesitated, scouring the scene, the attentions of
a group of corner loafers became pointed, and, believing one of them
about to accost her, she darted down a convenient stair of the subway
and boarded a train which was just about to depart. She rode past two
stations before she discovered that in her haste she had entered from
an uptown platform.

Dismounting, she began a wait in the whited suffocating cavern, which
seemed endless. Under the hard glitter of the arc-lights the raw
flamboyant advertisements of soaps, whiskies, hair tonics, liver pills,
and department-store specials became a physical pain. The voices of
the ticket-choppers, gossiping across the tracks of the President whom
they called by a diminutive of his first name, were like the drone
of monster flies in a bottle. Then the green and yellow eyes of her
dilatory train gleamed far down the tunnel, and the rails quickened
and murmured under its onset. This show of speed was delusive,
however. They halted leisurely at platforms where no one got off or
on, and loitered mysteriously in the bowels of the earth where were no
stations whatsoever. The system seemed hopelessly out of joint and the
handful of passengers sighed or swore, according to sex, and tried with
grotesque noddings to nap through the tedious delays. Then more waits
and more stations succeeded, and the ranks of the sufferers thinned
until only Jean and a red-nosed woman, who smelled of gin and thirsted
for conversation, were left.

At last came release, and, spurred forward by the waxing friendliness
of the red-nose, who also alighted, she hurried to the surface. The
remaining distance was short, and in five minutes she was rummaging her
shopping-bag for a latch-key. The servants were of course abed. Not a
light was visible. All the house apparently slumbered in after-midnight
peace. She experienced a burglarious sense of adventure in fitting her
key to the lock, and a guilty start when the heavy door escaped her
fingers and shut with a resounding slam. At the same instant a light
streamed from the library at the farther end of the hall, disclosing
Julie haughtily erect in the opening, and Craig's stricken face just
behind.




                                XXVIII


"It is I, Craig," Jean called. "Surely you haven't worried?"

The man groaned.

"Worried!" he cried. "What does it all mean, Jean?"

He would have come out to her, but Julie laid a restraining hand on his
sleeve, saying,--

"Keep yourself in hand, Craig dear."

Jean moved quickly down the hall and confronted them.

"What is this mystery?" she demanded. "Did not the servant deliver my
message?"

Mrs. Van Ostade signed for her to enter the library. She passed in with
a bewildered look at Atwood, who walked uncertainly to the fireplace
and stood gazing down into its lifeless grate. His sister shut the door
and put her back against it.

"Didn't you receive my message?" Jean again addressed Craig. "Miss
Hepworth was with you, and I disliked to interrupt. There was no time
for a note. I left too hurriedly."

"With whom?" The question was Julie's and was delivered like a blow.

Jean faced her.

"I went alone," she replied quietly. "Does it matter?"

Mrs. Van Ostade flung out an imperious finger.

"Read that card beside you on the desk," she directed. "'Paul Bartlett,
D.D.S. Crown and bridge work a specialty,' Do you deny meeting that
person to-day?"

"Certainly not. He brought word that a sick friend needed me, and left
immediately afterward."

"And you have not seen him since?"

"No." Her denial rang out emphatically. "Craig," she appealed, "what is
the meaning of this catechism? I have been with Amy ever since I left
the house. She is in great trouble. It is a terrible story."

"It is indeed," struck in Julie. "Do you swallow it, Craig? Can
anybody! Perhaps now you will begin to use the reasoning powers which
your infatuation for this adventuress has clouded. How could you ever
have trusted her! Wasn't the bare fact of the reformatory enough?"

"Craig!" Appeal, reproach, anguish, all blended in that bitter cry.

Atwood disclaimed responsibility with a gesture.

"Your mother," he said.

"Yes; your mother," Julie echoed. "Before she sat ten minutes in this
room she had told all she knew--do you understand me?--_all she knew_!
I was your friend till then. I don't pretend I was not cut to the heart
by Craig's mad marriage. I would have given my right hand to prevent
it. Hadn't I seen you before you ever entered his studio? Didn't I know
how vulgar your associates were? Perhaps your 'Amy' was the drunken
little fool who created a scene in the restaurant where I made your
acquaintance? But I tried to put that out of mind when I accepted the
marriage. I took you into my own home; I hoped to school you to fill
your new place in life worthily."

"And have I not?" Jean interpolated proudly. "Have I shamed you or him?"

Julie scorned reply.

"But I knew nothing of the refuge story," she railed on. "I never
suspected the awful truth when you evaded every question I asked about
your girlhood. I knew your past had been common; I could not dream it
had also been criminal."

"Julie!" Atwood entreated.

"The time has come for plain dealing," she answered him. "You will live
to thank me for opening your eyes."

Jean took a step nearer her accuser.

"Let her go on," she challenged contemptuously. "She only distorts what
I have told you already."

Julie's dark face grew thunderous.

"Do I!" she retorted. "Let us see. What have you told Craig of this man
Bartlett? What have you told him of the flat at the Lorna Doone? Where
are your glib answers now? Can you suppose that, knowing your history,
I would suspect nothing when Satterlee put you out of countenance at
the Copley Studios? A double, indeed! From that moment you avoided
the place. From that moment every shift of yours strengthened my
belief that I had stumbled on one more murky chapter of your life.
Satterlee's memory improved; he recalled your twin's name. Thereafter
my investigations were child's play. Can you, dare you, deny that you
were known at the Lorna Doone as Bartlett's wife?"

Jean's face grew pale; Craig's, her agonized glance perceived, was
whiter still.

"It was a mistake," she answered. "They thought--"

"Ah!" Julie's cry was long-drawn, triumphant. "Do you hear, Craig? She
admits that she was known as Mrs. Bartlett. My poor brother! By her own
confession you have married either a discarded mistress or a bigamist!"

Jean's brain whirled. That passion could put such a monstrous
construction on her conduct, passed belief.

"Lies!" she gasped.

"Prove them false!"

"Lies, cruel lies!"

Atwood sprang to her side.

"I could not believe them, Jean," he cried. "You are too honest, too
pure--"

"Prove them false!" Julie challenged again.

Jean turned her back upon her.

"This is between you and me, Craig," she pleaded, struggling for
self-control. "I am the honest woman you have always believed me. I
have concealed nothing shameful. My only thought was to spare you pain.
You shall know now, everything; but it is a story for your ears alone.
It concerns us only, dear, our happiness, our love."

He cast a look of entreaty at Julie, who met it with an acid smile.

"You are wax in her hands," she taunted. "She can cajole you into
thinking black is white."

"No, no," he protested. "You are unjust to her, Julie. I know her as
you cannot. She is the soul of truth."

Jean's heart leaped at his words.

"God bless you for that!" she exclaimed. "Let her hear, then! Why
should I fear her now?"

The dentist's attentions at the boarding-house, their walks and
theater-goings, his help when the department store cast her out,
their engagement, the taking and furnishing of a flat, the apparition
of Stella, the confession and the crash--all she touched upon
without false shame, without attempt to gloss her free agency and
responsibility. She dealt gently with Paul, magnifying his virtues,
palliating his great fault, bearing witness to the sincerity of his
remorse. But Craig she could not spare, pity him as she might. She saw
his drawn face wince as if under bodily pain, and before she ended he
was groping for a chair. She perceived, as she had feared, that an
ideal was gone from him, perhaps the dearest ideal of all; yet she did
not realize what a blow she had struck this stunned, flaccid figure
with averted head, till, breaking the long silence which oppressed the
room when she had done, he asked,--

"Did you love this man, Jean?"

She weighed her answer painfully.

"Not as we know love, Craig," she said.

"You would have sold yourself for a home--for a flat in the Lorna
Doone! Where was your remembrance of the birches then?"

She forgave the words in pity for the pain which begot them. She forgot
Julie. Nothing in life mattered, if love were lost. A great devouring
fear lest he slip from her drove her forward and flung her kneeling at
his side.

"You were with me always, Craig, always," she said brokenly. "Is it
too hard to believe? If you try to paint an ideal and the picture
falls short, does that make your ideal less dear? What hope had I
ever to meet you again? How could I dream that I stood for more in
your thoughts than a heedless fugitive of whom you were well rid? You
could not know that you had given me courage for the guardhouse and
the prison; made me strive to become the girl you thought me; changed
the whole trend of my foolish life! How then have I been unfaithful?
Was it treachery to you, whom I never looked to see again, that when a
good man--yes; at heart, Paul is a good man--offered me a way of escape
I should take it? You ask me if I would have sold myself for a home,
for that poor little flat in the Lorna Doone whose cheapness I never
appreciated till to-night--I answer no. I know now that I did not love
him; but I did not know it then. It was left for you to teach me."

He made no response when she ceased. His hands lay nerveless under
hers; his eyes still brooded on the fireless hearth. So for a hundred
heart-beats they remained together.

"You believe me, Craig?"

"Yes," he wrenched forth at last.

Jean slowly withdrew her hands.

"But you cannot wholly forgive?"

He had no answer.

"I can say no more," she added, rising; and came again face to face
with Julie, who made way for her at the door. "I leave your house
to-morrow, Mrs. Van Ostade. If I could, I would go to-night."

Free of gnawing secrecies at last! The thought brought a specious sense
of peace. Julie's yoke broken! Her step on the stair grew buoyant. The
battle desired by MacGregor had been fought. Precipitated by causes
with which neither had reckoned, waged with a fierce heat alien to art,
Craig's emancipation had nevertheless been at stake. The break had
come, and it was beyond remedy. He must cleave to his wife.

Too excited for sleep, she began at once her preparations for quitting
Julie's hateful roof, and one after another overcame the obstacles
which packing in the small hours entailed. Each overflowing chair,
every yawning door and drawer, testified the increased complexity
of her life and the bigness of her task. The bride of a single
dinner-dress had become under Craig's lavish generosity the mistress of
great possessions. There were gowns of many uses and many hues; hats
and blouses in extravagant number; shoes--a little regiment of shoes
aligned neatly in their trees; costly trifles for her desk; books and
pictures in breath-taking profusion.

She now remembered that her one trunk, with Craig's many upon which
she depended, was stored on the top floor, and she debated whether to
wake one of the servants or await her husband's help. In the end she
did neither. She disliked Mrs. Van Ostade's servants, one and all,
suspecting them of tale-bearing, and after a vain wait for Craig, who
still lingered below, she went about the business for herself. It
was a difficult matter to accomplish without rousing the house, and
when, after much travail of mind and disused muscle, she effected the
transfer of her own trunk, she was tempted to do what she could with
it and let her other belongings follow as they might. This course,
also, she rejected. Nothing except a complete evacuation would satisfy,
and she craved the joy of leaving Julie's bridal gift conspicuously
unpacked.

By three o'clock all was done, and as she flung herself wearily upon
her bed she heard Craig's leaden step mount the stair. He entered
their living-room, which, save for one or two small articles he would
scarcely miss, she had not dismantled, switched on the electricity, and
after a pause closed the door of the dressing-room connecting with the
darkened chamber where she lay. Jean heard him light a cigarette and
drop heavily into a chair, which he abandoned almost at once to pace
the floor. The sound of his pacing went on and on, varied only by the
scrape of matches as he lit cigarette after cigarette, the penetrating
oriental scent of which began in time to seep into her own room and
infect her with his unrest.

She took alarm to find him so implacable. Did his sister sway him
still? Had Julie poisoned the truth with the acid of her hate? Might
she lose him after all? She could scarcely keep herself from calling
his name. And the monotonous footfall went on and on, on and on,
trampling her heart, grinding its iteration into her sick brain. Then,
when it seemed endurable no longer, it became a sedative, and she slept
to dream that she was a new inmate of Cottage No. 6, with a tyrannous,
vindictive matron whose face was the face of Julie Van Ostade.

She stirred with the day and lay with shut eyes, tasting the blissful
reality of familiar things. This was no cell-like room, no refuge
pallet. She had only to stretch out her hand--thus--to the bed beside
her own, and touch--? Nothing! Craig's bed stood precisely as the maid
had prepared it for his coming. Was he pacing yet? She listened, but
no sound came. Creeping to the living-room door she listened again;
then turned the knob. Empty! The untouched pillows of the divan, the
overflowing ash-tray, the lingering haze, bespoke an all-night vigil.
He had not only let the sun go down upon his wrath, he had watched it
rise again! An answering glow kindled in her bruised pride.

Left rudderless by his silence, she cast about eagerly for some new
plan of action while she dressed. Last night she had meant to order
her things sent to the studio until they could plan the future, but
that course seemed feasible no longer. She searched her pocketbook for
funds and found only tickets for a popular comedy. She smiled upon them
grimly. Comedy, forsooth! Here was more comic stuff--the screaming
farce of woman's lot! Flouted, she had no choice but to fold her hands
and wait while the dominant male in his wisdom decided her destiny.

At her accustomed hour she touched the bell for her coffee, and with
sharpened observation saw at once that, unlike other days, the tray
held but a single service.

"Mr. Atwood breakfasted downstairs?" she said carelessly.

The maid's eyes roved the dissipated scene of Atwood's reflections and
lit upon a strapped trunk which Jean had for convenience pulled into
the dressing-room.

"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Craig came down very early."

"Did he go out?"

"More than an hour ago."

Jean let the coffee go cold and crumbled her toast untasted. How could
she endure this passivity! Must she forever be the spectator? Amidst
these drab reveries her eyes rested for some minutes upon the topmost
of the morning papers, which the maid had brought as usual with the
breakfast, before one of its by no means modest head-lines resolved
itself into the words,--

                       MURDERED IN CENTRAL PARK

Then a familiar name and a familiar address leaped from the context,
and she seized breathlessly upon the brief double-leaded paragraph and
read it twice from end to end.

"The northern extremity of Central Park," ran the account, "became last
night the scene of a tragedy which its loneliness and insufficient
lighting have long invited. Shortly after midnight the body of Frederic
Chapman, a commercial traveler in the employ of Webster, Cassell & Co.,
residing in the Lorna Doone apartments, not ten blocks from the spot
where he met his death, was found with a bullet through the heart. Up
to the time of going to press, no trace of the murderer or weapon had
been discovered, although the physician summoned by Officer Burns, who
came upon the body in his regular rounds, was of the opinion that life
had been extinct less than an hour. Both precinct and central office
detectives are at work upon the case. Mr. Chapman leaves a young
widow, who is prostrated by the blow."

Jean sprang to her feet, her own woes forgotten in her horrified
perception of Amy's dire need. Tearing out the paragraph, she penciled
across its head-lines, "I have gone to her," and enclosing it in an
envelope addressed to Atwood, set it conspicuously on his desk.




                                 XXIX


Early as she reached the Lorna Doone, Jean found others before her,
drawn by the morbid lure of sudden death. The hawkers of "extras"
already filled the street with their cries; open-mouthed children
swarmed about the entrance of the apartment-house as if this, not the
park, were the historic ground; while Amy's narrow hall was choked with
reporters, amidst whom Amy herself, colorless, bright-eyed, babbled
wearilessly of the drummer's virtues.

"He was the best salesman they ever had," she was saying. "Put that
in the paper, won't you? In another year he'd most likely have had an
interest in the business. They couldn't get along without him, they
said. He was the best salesman they ever had. People just had to buy
when Fred called. He seemed to hypnotize customers. One man--" and she
rambled into the story of a conquest, beginning nowhere and ending in
fatuity with the unceasing refrain, "He was the best salesman they ever
had."

The sight of Jean shunted her from this theme to self-pity. She clung
to her hysterically, declaring she was her only friend and calling upon
the reporters to witness what a friend she was! They had, of course,
heard of Francis Craig Atwood, the great artist? This was his wife--her
old friend, her only friend. Jean urged her gently toward the bedroom,
and, shutting the door upon her, turned and asked the pressmen to go.
They assented and left immediately, save one of boyish face who delayed
some minutes for sympathetic comment on the tragedy.

"I'm only a cub reporter, Mrs. Atwood," he added, "and I have to take
back something. That's the rule in our office--get the story or get
out. Poor Mrs. Chapman was too upset to give me anything of value.
Perhaps you'd be willing to help me make good?"

"I know nothing but what the papers have told," Jean replied.

"I don't mean the shooting--merely a fact or two about Mr. and Mrs.
Chapman, whom you know so well. When were they married?"

"I can't tell you," she said hastily. "I--I was not present."

"But approximately? I don't want the dates. She looks a bride, and you
know the public is interested in brides. They haven't lived here long,
I suppose?"

"No; not long," she assented, thankful for the loophole; "a few weeks."

"This was their first home?"

"Practically. They boarded for a time. Excuse me now, please. You must
see how much she needs me."

"She is lucky to have you, Mrs. Atwood. Girlhood friends, I presume?"

"Yes, yes. Go now, please."

She turned him out at last and paused an instant to brace her nerves
before joining Amy. At the far end of the hall the parlor door stood
ajar, and she saw with a shiver that the shades were down. Then Amy
peered from the bedroom in search of her, a grief-stricken figure with
wringing hands.

"Don't keep me in here," she moaned. "Let me walk, walk." And she moved
toward the darkened room.

"Not there!" Jean cried, preventing her. "Not there!"

Amy stared an instant and then uttered a laugh more terrible than tears.

"He is not in the parlor," she replied. "They took him to an
undertaker's. There's a man--I forgot to tell you--there's a man from
the undertaker's here now. He wants clothes, black clothes. He's in
the spare room, hunting. I--I couldn't touch them. I told him to look
for himself. You help him, Jean. I couldn't touch Fred's things. It
seemed--oh, I just couldn't!"

Jean let her wander where she would, and opened the guest-room door. A
heavy-jowled man pivoted about at her entrance and stuffed a handful of
letters into a pocket of one of the dead drummer's coats. The garment
was not black.

"What are you doing there?" she demanded. "That coat might answer for a
horse-race, not a funeral."

The man had a glib answer ready.

"I took it down to look behind," he said. "The letters fell out."

She doubted his word and, walking to the closet, made a selection from
the more sober wear.

"Take these," she ordered.

He thanked her, gathered the clothing together, and left the room; and
she heard the hall door close after him while she lingered a moment to
replace the things his rummaging had disturbed. Coming out herself, the
first object to meet her eye was a telltale bit of cloth protruding
from the umbrella-rack, into which, she promptly discovered, the
supposed undertaker's assistant had stuffed every article she had given
him. The sight unnerved her, and she sought Amy in the parlor and told
her what she had seen.

"Don't let people in here," she warned. "The man was, of course, a
reporter. No experienced detective would have left the clothes behind."

Amy plucked at her throat as if stifled.

"What did he w-want?" she chattered. "What did he want?"

"Scandal, probably."

"You think so?" whispered the girl, ghastly white. "You think so? You
don't suppose he came because--because he suspects--"

"Suspects whom?"

"Me!" she wailed, her cry trembling to a shriek. "Me! Me! Me! I did it,
Jean. I shot him. I killed Fred. I'm the one. I--"

Jean clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Hush!" she implored. "You're mad!"

Amy tore herself free and dropped huddled to the floor.

"I'm not mad. I wish I were. They'd only lock me up, if I were mad. Now
they'll kill me, too."

Jean shook her roughly.

"Stop!" she commanded. "Some one might overhear and believe you. Don't
say such things. It's dangerous."

Amy threw back her head with a repetition of her awful laugh.

"You don't believe me!" she cried. "I'll make you believe me. Listen:
He came home last night after you left. You hadn't been gone ten
minutes when he came. He'd been drinking, but he was good-natured, and
I thought I would speak to him myself. It didn't seem as if I could
wait for you to speak to him, Jean. I thought I could manage it--he was
so good-natured--and so I asked him to make me an honest woman. I never
mentioned the baby--then! And I wasn't cross or mean with him. I asked
him as nice as I knew how. But he wouldn't listen--it was the drink in
him--and he struck me. Fred never struck me before in his life. He was
always such a gentleman. It was the drink in him made him strike me.
After that I went into the bedroom and cried, and I heard him go to the
sideboard and pour out more whisky. He did it twice. By and by he came
into the hall and took his hat, and I called to him and asked him not
to go out again. I said I was sorry for bothering him; but he went out
just the same. Then I followed. I knew, I don't know how, but I knew he
was going to Stella's, and it didn't seem, after all I'd been through,
I could stand for it. Sure enough, he turned down the avenue toward
that flat of hers I told you about, with me after him keeping on the
other side. I lagged behind a little when he reached Stella's street,
for it was lighter by her door than on the avenue, and when I got
around the corner he wasn't anywhere to be seen, and I knew for certain
he'd gone in at her number. I'd been trembling all over up to then, but
now I felt bold as a lion, I was so mad, and I marched straight up to
the house myself. I decided I wouldn't ring her bell--it's just one of
those common flat-houses without an elevator--but somebody else's, and
then, after the catch was pulled, go up and take them by surprise.

"I was half running when I came to the steps, and before I could stop
myself, or hide, or do anything, I banged right into Fred, who hadn't
been able to get in at all and was coming away. His face was terrible
when he saw who it was, but I wasn't afraid of him any more and told
him he'd got to hear something now that would bring him to his senses,
if anything could. He saw I meant business and said, 'Oh, well, spit
it out!' But just then some people came along and walked close behind
us all the way to the corner. The avenue was full of people, too, for
the show at that little concert-hall near the park entrance was just
over, so we crossed into the park to be by ourselves. We were quite
a way in before I spoke, for I was thinking what to say, and finally
when Fred said he wasn't going a step farther, I up and told him about
the baby. He said that was a likely story and started to pull away,
and then--then I took out the pistol. It was Fred's six-shooter; he'd
kept it in the top bureau drawer ever since the last scare about
burglars, and I caught it up when I followed him out. I didn't mean it
for him. I only meant to shoot myself, if he wouldn't do right by me
when he'd heard the truth. But he thought I wanted to kill him, and he
grabbed hold of my arm to get it away. Then, somehow, all of a sudden
it was done, and there he was lying across the path with his head in
the grass. I don't know how long I stood there, or why I didn't kill
myself. I ought to have shot myself right there. But I only stood,
numb-like, till all at once I got frightened and began to run. I ran
along by the lake and threw the revolver in the water, and went out of
the park by another entrance and came back here. Nobody saw me go out;
nobody saw me come in. The elevator boy goes home at twelve o'clock. I
guess you believe me now, don't you?"

Jean froze before the horror of it. While she mechanically soothed the
hapless creature who, her secret out, had relapsed into ungovernable
hysteria wherein Fred's praises alternated with shuddering terror of
the future, her own thoughts crowded in a disorder almost as chaotic.
She faced a crime, and yet no crime. Must she bid Amy give herself up
to the law? Must this frail girl undergo the torture of imprisonment
and trial for having served as little more than the passive tool
of circumstance? If they held their peace, the mystery might never
be cleared. Would justice suffer greatly by such silence? But Amy
would suffer! The fear of discovery--the fear Jean herself knew so
well--would dog her to her grave. To trust the law was the frank
course, but would the law--blind, clumsy, fallible Law whose heavy hand
had all but spoiled her own life--would the law believe Amy had gone
out, carrying a weapon, without intent to do murder? The dilemma was
too cruel.

The door-bell bored itself into her consciousness, and she went out to
confront more reporters.

"Mrs. Chapman is too ill to see you," she said curtly.

"But it's you we want to see," returned one, whose face she recalled
from the earlier invasion. "There are new developments, and we'd like
to have your comment. It's of public interest, Mrs. Atwood."

Her anger flamed out against them.

"What have I to do with your public?" she demanded. "I have nothing to
say to it."

"But you consented to an interview this morning," rejoined the
spokesman for the group. "Why do you object to another?"

"I consented to an interview!"

"Here you are," he said, producing one of the more sensational
newspapers. "'The beautiful wife of the well-known illustrator, Francis
Craig Atwood, has been with the heart-broken little bride since early
morning. Mrs. Atwood and Mrs. Chapman were schoolgirl chums whose
friendship has endured to be a solace in this crushing hour. Mrs.
Atwood brokenly expressed her horror at the catastrophe and added one
or two touching details concerning the Chapmans' ideal married life.
Their wedding--'"

Jean seized the cub reporter's "story" and read it for herself. The
drummer shone a paragon of refinement in the light of her friendship
and Craig's, for Atwood was not neglected; two paragraphs, indeed, were
given over to a résumé of his artistic career.

Tears of mortification sprang to her eyes.

"What an outrage!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Atwood has never seen these
people, never set foot in this building! I myself met this unfortunate
man but once in my life!"

The group pricked up its ears.

"We shall be very glad to publish your denial," assured the spokesman.

"Oh, don't publish anything," she cried. "Drop us out of it altogether,
I beg of you!"

"But in the light of the new developments, it would be only just to you
and Mr. Atwood," he persisted.

"What developments?"

"The revelations concerning Chapman's--er--irregular mode of life. His
former wife--she lives in Jersey City--has laid certain information
before the police. She seems to care for him still, after a fashion.
She only heard this morning of his remarriage, though she met and
talked with him day before yesterday."

Jean's hand sought the wall.

"What does she know?"

"The police won't disclose. But they say her information, taken with
another clew that's come into their hands, will lead shortly to an
arrest. Shall we publish the denial, Mrs. Atwood?"

"Yes," she answered; "yes."

As she closed the door, Amy tottered down the hall.

"I heard!" she gasped. "I heard all they said. The police--the police
will come next! They've found out I'm not Fred's wife. I'll be shamed
before everybody. They'll suspect me first of all. They'll find out
everything. You heard what they said about a clew? When they get hold
of a clew, they get everything! They'll take me to the Tombs--the
Tombs! Hark!"

The fretful bell rang again.

"The police!" chattered Amy. "The police!"

The same fear gripped Jean, but she mustered strength to push the girl
into the bedroom and shut the door; and then, with sinking knees, went
to answer the summons.




                                  XXX


No uniformed agent of pursuing justice confronted her; only the face
of him she loved best; and the great uplifting wave of relief cast her
breathless in Craig's arms.

"Come away," he begged, his answering clasp the witness and the seal of
their reconciliation. "Come away."

"Craig!" she whispered. "Craig!"

"I only just learned where you were. A reporter came to the studio,
showed me his paper--"

"Falsehoods! They perverted my words--"

"I knew, I knew. I'm the one to blame, not you. If I'd gone home,
stayed home, you would never have come here. Forgive me, Jean. I've
been a fool."

"Hush," she said, laying a hand upon his lips. "We were both wrong. But
I must have come to Amy. After what she told me last night, there was
no choice. You'll understand when I explain. It's ghastly clear."

"But come away first. Don't give anyone a chance to ferret out your
life, Jean. Why should you stay here now?"

A low, convulsive moan issued from the bedroom. Jean sprang to the
door.

"Amy!" she called. "Don't be frightened. It's only Craig. Do you hear
me? It was Craig who rang. I'll come to you soon."

Atwood followed to the little parlor.

"You see?" she said.

"But there must be some one else, some other woman--"

"There is no one who knows what I know. You must hear it, too, Craig.
It's more than I can face alone. You must think for me, help me." And
she poured the whole petrifying truth into his ears.

"She must give herself up," he said, at last.

"But--" And the dilemma of moral and legal guilt plagued her again.

He brushed her tender casuistry aside.

"The law must deal with such doubts," he answered. "We must help her
face it, help her see that delay only counts against her. She must tell
her story before they come at the facts without her."

"She believes they suspect already. They've found out something about
that wretched man's life,--the reporters don't say what,--and she lies
in that room shaking with terror at every ring of the bell. We thought
you were the police."

"We must help her face it," he repeated. "I will drive her to police
headquarters."

"Not you, Craig. You must not. The papers shall not drag you into this
again. I will go with her."

"Isn't your name mine? You see it makes no difference. I'll not allow
you to go through this alone. I've let you meet too much alone. We'll
talk to Amy together, if you think best."

Jean's glance fell on Grimes's gilt clock.

"Amy has tasted nothing, and it's nearly noon," she said. "I must make
coffee or something to give her strength. Wait till she has eaten."

She started for the kitchen, but brought up, white-faced, at the
recurring summons of the bell. Their eyes met in panic. Were they
too late? The ring was repeated while they questioned. Jean took a
faltering step toward the door, listening for an out-burst from the
bedroom; but Amy seemed not to hear. Craig stepped before her into the
hall.

"Let me answer it," he said.

Then, before either could act, a key explored the lock, and Paul
Bartlett's anxious face peered through the opening. He started at sight
of them, but came forward with an ejaculation of relief.

"I remembered I had a key," he explained. "It was so still I thought
something had gone wrong. Where's Amy?"

Jean signed toward the bedroom, and the three tip-toed into the parlor
and shut the door. An awkward silence rested upon them for an instant.
Jean's thoughts raced back to her last meeting with the dentist in this
room, and she knew that Paul could be scarcely less the prey of his
memories. Atwood himself, divining something of what such a reunion
meant, was stricken with a share of their embarrassment.

Paul pulled himself together first.

"I came to help Amy, if I could," he said to Jean; "and also to see
you. I've read the papers, and I thought"--he hesitated lamely--"I
thought somebody ought to take your place. It's not pleasant to be
dragged into a murder case--not pleasant for a lady, I mean," he
corrected himself hastily. "_I_ don't mind. Mrs. St. Aubyn won't mind,
either. I've 'phoned her--she always liked Amy, you know--and she's
coming soon. You needn't wait. You mustn't be expected to--to--oh, for
God's sake, sir," he broke off, wheeling desperately upon Atwood, "take
your wife away!"

Jean's eyes blurred with sudden tears, which fell unrestrained when
Craig's chivalry met the dentist's halfway.

"Now _I_ know you for the true man Jean has praised," he said, gripping
Paul's hand. "But I can't take her away. She has a responsibility--we
both have a responsibility it's impossible to shirk. Tell him, Jean!"

The dentist squared his shoulders in the old way, when she ceased.

"I'll see that Amy reaches headquarters," he said doggedly. "Neither of
you need go. There isn't the slightest necessity. I'm her old friend,
the lessee of this flat: who would be more likely to act for her? You
convince her that she must toe the mark--I can't undertake that part;
and then, the sooner you leave, the better."

Atwood turned irresolutely toward the window and threw up the shade as
if his physical being craved light. Jean met the straightforward eyes.

"Why should you shoulder it, Paul?"

Bartlett shot a look at Atwood, who nervously drummed the pane, his
gaze fixed outward; and then, with a sweeping gesture, invoked the
silent argument of the room.

"I guess you know," he added simply.

Her face softened with ineffable tenderness.

"I'll tell Amy you are here," she said.

The men heard her pass down the hall and knock; wait, knock again,
calling Amy's name; wait once more; and then return.

"Shall we let her sleep while she can?" she whispered. "It's a hideous
thing that she must meet."

Atwood's look questioned the dentist, whose reply was to brush by them
both and assault Amy's door.

"Amy!" he shouted. "Amy!"

They held their breath. Back in the parlor the gilt clock ticked like
a midsummer mad insect; the cries of newsboys rose muffled from the
street; even a drip of water sounded from some leaky kitchen tap; but
from the bedroom came nothing.

Jean tried the knob.

"Locked!"

The dentist laid his shoulder to the woodwork, put forth his strength,
and the door burst in with an impetus that carried him headlong; but
before either could follow he had recovered himself and turned to block
the way.

"Keep back, Jean," he commanded sharply. "Keep back!"

Their suspense was brief. Almost immediately he came out, closed the
door gently after him, and held up a red-labeled vial.

"Carbolic acid!" he said hoarsely.

Jean uttered a sharp cry.

"A doctor!" she exclaimed.

Paul shook his head.

"I am doctor enough to know death. Atwood, get your wife away."

"But now--" Jean resisted.

"Go, go!" he commanded, driving them before him. "Mrs. St. Aubyn will
do what a woman can. I will attend to the police. You left for rest,
believing her asleep. I suspected suicide, and broke down the door.
That's our story. Go while you can."

They went out as in a dream, striking away at random when they issued
on the street, seeking only to shun the still idling curious, grateful
beyond words for release, avid for the pure, vital air. Presently, in
some quarter, they knew not where, a cab-driver hailed them, and they
passively entered his hansom and as passively sat dependent on his
superior will.

"Where to?" asked the man, impatiently.

Atwood shook himself awake. "The Copley Studios," he answered. "Do you
know the building? It's near--"

The closing trap clipped his directions, and they drove away. They
gave no heed to their course till, passing a park entrance, they came
full upon a knot of urchins and nursemaids clustered between lake and
drive.

"That's where the Chapman murder took place," volunteered the driver.

Jean shut her eyes.

"This way of all ways!"

"It is behind us now," Craig comforted. "It's _all_ behind us now."

Neither spoke again till they reached the studio, and a porter
announced the arrival of several trunks.

"They're yours, Jean," Atwood said. "I ordered them sent here when
Julie telephoned for instructions. I realize that there is no
going back. She admits that she did you a wrong--she will tell you
so herself; but that doesn't alter matters. We must live our own
lives. To-night we'll go away for a time. In the mountains or by the
sea, whichever you will, we'll plan for the future. It's time the
air-castles were made real."

He ordered a luncheon from a neighboring restaurant, forced her to eat,
and then to rest. She said that sleep was impossible, and that she must
repack against their journey; but her eyelids grew heavy even while she
protested, and she was just drowsily aware that he threw over her some
studio drapery which emitted a spicy oriental scent.

It was a dreamless sleep until just before she woke, when she shivered
again under the obsession of Amy's door-bell. The studio furnishings
delivered her from the delusion, but a bell rang on. Where was Craig?
Then her eye fell upon a scrawl, transfixed to her pillow by a hatpin,
which told her that he had gone to arrange for their departure; and
she roused herself to answer the door. Here, for an instant, the dream
seemed still to haunt, for the caller who greeted her was the reporter
of the morning who had taken her denial.

"I'm right sorry to bother _you_ again, Mrs. Atwood," he apologized.
"I'm looking for your husband."

"Mr. Atwood is out."

"Could I see him later, perhaps? It's about five-thirty now. Would six
o'clock suit?"

"Why do you annoy him?" she asked wearily. "I told you that he has
nothing to do with this awful affair."

"The public thinks he has, and in a way, through your knowing Mrs.
Chapman, it's true. Anyhow, I'm authorized to make him a proposition
with dollars in it. Our Sunday editor is willing to let him name his
own figure for a column interview and a sketch of the Wilkes girl, in
any medium he likes, which he can knock off from our own photographs.
We got some rattling good snap-shots just as she was taken into
custody."

Jean stared blankly into his enthusiastic face.

"Taken into custody?" she said. "The Wilkes girl! You mean--on
suspicion--of murder!"

"Haven't you seen the afternoon editions?" cried the man,
incredulously. "You don't say you haven't heard about the new figure
in the case, the Fourteenth Street music-hall favorite, Stella Wilkes!
It was Chapman's divorced wife who put the police on the scent. She'd
spotted them together, and the janitor of the Wilkes girl's flat-house
identified Chapman as a man who'd been running there after her. Of
course by itself, that's no evidence of guilt; but they've unearthed
more than that. One of the clever men of our staff got hold of a letter
which the girl wrote Chapman. The police are holding it back, but it's
a threat of some kind, and strong enough to warrant them gathering her
in for the grand jury's consideration. But let me send up a hall-boy
with the latest. I'll try again at six for Mr. Atwood."

Stella! Stella accused of the murder! She pressed her hands to her
dizzy head and groped back to the studio. Could fate devise a more
ironic jest! Stella, wrecker of Amy's happiness, herself dragged down!
Then, her brain clearing, her personal responsibility overwhelmed her.
She alone had received Amy's confession. She alone could vouch for
Stella's innocence. She must dip her hands again into this defiling
pitch, endure more publicity, risk exposure, humiliate Craig! And for
Stella--byword of Shawnee Springs, fiend who had made the refuge twice
a hell, terror of her struggle to live the dark past down--of all human
creatures, Stella Wilkes!

But it must be done. She made herself ready for the street with
benumbed fingers, till the thought of Craig again arrested her. Should
she wait for him?

He entered as she hesitated.

"Rested, Jean?" he called cheerily, delaying a moment in the hall.
"Here are your papers. The boy said you wanted them." Then, from the
threshold, "You're ill!"

She caught one of the newspapers from him and struck it open. Its
head-lines shouted confirmation of the reporter's words.

"Look!"

"'Footlight favorite ... damaging letter ... journalistic enterprise,'"
he repeated.

"You see what it means?"

"Wait, wait!" He read on feverishly to the end.

Jean gave a last mechanical touch to her veil.

"I am going down to police headquarters to tell what I know, Craig."

"No," he cried. "You must not mix in this again. You shall not. There
is some better way. We must think it out. There is Bartlett--he knows!"

"Through me!"

"I think he'd be willing--no; that's folly. We can't ask the man to
perjure himself. We must hit on something else. You must not be the
one. Think what it might mean!"

"I've thought."

"They would dig up the past--all your acquaintance with Amy. The Wilkes
creature's tongue could never be stopped. She doesn't know now that
Mrs. Atwood means Jean Fanshaw. She must not know. Take no rash step.
We must wait, temporize."

"Temporize with an innocent person accused of crime!"

"They don't accuse her yet--formally. She is held--detained--whatever
the lawyer's jargon is. She isn't convicted. She never will be. They
can't convict her on one letter.--I doubt if they'll indict her. Why,
she may prove an alibi at once! Wait, Jean, wait! She's merely under
suspicion of--"

"Murder!" She stripped away his sophistries with a word. "Isn't that
enough? What of her feelings while we wait? Is it nothing to be
suspected of killing a man?"

"What is her reputation now? Unspeakable!"

"More reason that we make it no worse. No, no, Craig; I must do this
thing at any cost."

He threw out his hands in impassioned appeal.

"Any cost! Any cost!" he cried. "Do you realize what you're saying?
Will you let her rag of a reputation weigh against your own, against
the position you've fought for, against my good name? If you won't
spare yourself, spare me!"

"Craig!" she implored, "be just!"

"I am only asking you to wait. A night may change everything. It can't
make her name blacker; it may save you."

"Suppose it changes nothing; suppose no alibi is proved; suppose they
do indict! How would my delay look then? Can't you see that my way is
the only way? Don't think I'm not counting the cost." Her voice wavered
and she shut her eyes against his unnerving face which seemed to have
shed its boyishness forever, against this room which everywhere bespoke
the future she jeopardized. "I do! I do! But we must go--go at once."

His face set sternly.

"I refuse."

"Craig!"

"I refuse. This morning, when we had no way to turn, I was ready to
stand by you. But now--now I wash my hands of it all. If you go--"

Her face turned ashen.

"If I go?" she repeated.

"You go alone."

"And afterward?"

He dashed a distracted hand across his forehead and turned away without
answer.

"Yet I must go," she said.

Before her blind fingers found the outer door, he was again beside her.

"You're right," he owned. "Forgive me, Jean. We'll see it through."

       *       *       *       *       *

Their ride in the twilight seemed an excursion in eternity. Home-going
New York met them in obstructive millions. Apparently they alone sought
the lower city. From zone to zone they descended--luxury, shabby
gentility, squalor succeeding in turn--till their destination loomed
a dread tangible reality. It was fittingly seated here, Jean felt,
where life's dregs drifted uppermost, sin was a commonplace, arrest a
diversion. Would not such as these glory in the deed she found so hard?
Would not the brain beneath that "picture" hat, the sable plumes of
which--jaunty, insolent, triumphant--floated the center of a sidewalk
throng, envy her the publicity from which she shrank? Then, as the
ribald crowd passed and the garish blaze of a concert-saloon lit the
woman's face, she threw herself back in the shadow with a sharp cry.

"Look, Craig! Look!"

Atwood craned from the cab, which a dray had blocked, but saw only
agitated backs as the saloon swallowed up the pavement idol.

A policeman grinned sociably from the curb.

"Stella Wilkes," he explained. "Chesty, ain't she? She was pretty
wilted, though, when they ran her in. I saw her come."

Craig's hand convulsively gripped Jean's.

"They've let her go?" he questioned. "She's free?"

"Sure--an' callin' on her friends. Hadn't you heard? Mrs. Chapman left
a note ownin' up. If they'd found it sooner, this party would have had
a pleasanter afternoon. Still, I guess she's plenty satisfied. They say
a vaudeville house has offered her five hundred a week. She'd better
cinch the deal to-night. It will all be forgotten to-morrow."

Atwood strained the white-faced figure to his breast.

"You heard him, Jean? He's right. It _will_ be forgotten to-morrow."

From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier future.

[Illustration: From that dear shelter she, too, foresaw a kindlier
future.]

"To-morrow," she echoed.



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