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Title: The talkers

Author: Robert W. Chambers

Release date: December 18, 2025 [eBook #77500]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923

Credits: Tom Trussel, Tim Lindell, Holy Family University and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TALKERS ***




                               THE TALKERS

                           ROBERT W. CHAMBERS




                               THE TALKERS
                                   BY
                           ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

               AUTHOR OF “THE FLAMING JEWEL,” “THE SLAYER
                    OF SOULS,” “THE COMMON LAW,” “IN
                        SECRET,” “LORRAINE,” ETC.

                    [Illustration: Decorative Logo]

                                NEW YORK

                         GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                            COPYRIGHT, 1923,
                       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                    [Illustration: Decorative Logo]

                            COPYRIGHT, 1921,
                    BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY

                             THE TALKERS. I
                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                   TO
                                MY FRIEND
                             ROBERT H. DAVIS




                              THE TALKERS




                               CHAPTER I


Sadoul’s only experiences in love had been gross. The cynic in him
admitted nothing better.

Saturnine, without delusions, he went about his business in life, doing
no particular good, and with a capacity for harm limited only by his
talents.

He had been a little of everything, and always clever--art student,
medical student, reporter, critic, writer--intelligent, adroit.

His was a mordant pen and brilliant; and it was for sale.

The query, “Have you read Sadoul’s article in the _Wasp_?” or in the
_View Point_, or in some one of many irregular publications, was not an
uncommon question in the metropolis.

Sadoul on this or that had become fairly familiar to a talkative
public. He had something to say about everything and anything. His
personal convictions made no difference. And he always was interesting.

The second year after the war ended he went to France again. At the
University of Paris he took courses in psychology and philology: in the
Ecole de Médecine he attended lectures. Clinics where hypnosis induced
supplanted anesthesia in minor operations fascinated him.

But life, there, taught him nothing nobler to expect of a world already
proven sordid by personal experience.

He entertained no delusions concerning mankind, its friendship, or
its love; he neither expected nor desired anything of it except the
saturnine amusement which he extracted from it, and which was his
principal form of pleasure.

Then Chance tripped him up. Needing an English stenographer one day,
the American firm on the rue Colchas sent him a girl equipped to take
dictation.

It appeared that she was equipped for more than that. Sadoul silently
went mad about her.

A sort of still terror also took possession of the girl--the hopeless
immobility of a doomed thing, conscious of menace, apparently unable to
escape.

Resistance seemed to hold only along certain lines.

Otherwise there was no defence. She had stepped from reality into a
dream.

At his inquiry she told him her story. She did not wish to do so.

There was a ball in the Latin Quarter given by Julian’s that evening.
Sadoul took her. She wore pale, lunar green; which went with her red
hair and deep green eyes.

She had little to say to Sadoul’s friends. So reticent, so dazed she
seemed that some, troubled and perplexed by her youth and beauty,
suspected her of an addiction to drugs.

As for Sadoul, he had gone completely mad over her. He became her
shadow everywhere. And, save only for certain lines of resistance, he
seemed to have utterly mastered her.

But those occult lines held. The conflict almost crazed him--so pliant,
so yielding she seemed, so obedient had he made her in all excepting
certain lines. His dark face greyed at times under the strain. He
abased himself and begged; he grinned and told her what to expect if
she ever tricked him. The lines held.

His impression upon her had already been made; he could stamp it no
deeper; the girl was not in love with him. She never would be. And he
knew it.

She seemed to be a passionless little thing, her beauty a golden
chrysalis containing nothing--the Psyche within aborted.

In the Latin Quarter, lack of animation is unpopular. There was about
her that innocent detachment one notices in the preoccupation of a nun.
Invited, at first she went everywhere with Sadoul.

After a while they were seldom invited where pleasure was noisy and
untrammelled.

Early in spring a cabled offer from New York brought Sadoul’s affairs
to a climax.

For three days Sadoul beat at her very soul to club it into submission.
Then he crawled and wept. The lines held.

Again he battered her with his implacable will till her bruised,
stupefied mind gave up. But the lines held.

She was in a daze when the civil ceremony was performed. He cabled to
New York, giving up his quarters at the Fireside Club, and requesting
his friend Pockman to secure for him a furnished housekeeping apartment
on Riverside Drive.

He was having his way with her--or tried to believe he was having it.

And then Destiny pulled an ugly face at him. For the girl utterly
refused to submit to the religious ceremony. And the old lines still
held.

Early summer in Paris is paradise. But it had become a hell to Sadoul.
He walked the earth like a damned soul chained to its victim.

In July he secured passage for them both.




                               CHAPTER II


George Derring, Julian Fairless, and Harry Stayr organized the Fireside
Club in New York to gratify the instincts of the slovenly well-to-do.
Limited membership and a long waiting-list told its successful story.

Derring also had financed the big new building on 57th Street, where
the Fireside occupied the entire second floor.

The remainder of the building harboured members in apartments of one to
three rooms. Some apartments had studios attached.

The Fireside Club was the common meeting-ground. Members could sprawl
there in evening dress or bath-robe and slippers, all day and all night
if they liked.

Men with an inclination to conversation and a disinclination for work
seemed to compose the bulk of membership. Which gave to the Fireside
that intellectual allure so impressive among the mindless millions.

The glamour of genius played about the Fireside like St. Anthony’s
fire; its Thinkers and its Talkers found its exclusive luxury a
paradise.

But a few common and irreverent folk characterised it as an
intellectual doldrums where talent lay becalmed; or a maelstrom of talk
where creative energy was sucked under and ultimately engulfed.

In midsummer a majority of the Fireside wandered far and wide in that
restless quest for satisfaction characteristic of those who talk much
and do little.

But always a sprinkling remained to loaf about the club. From which
retreat, having dined well, the dusky tropic brilliancy of Manhattan’s
streets lured them into endless wanderings through a thousand and one
Metropolitan Nights.

       *       *       *       *       *

Early in spring Sadoul had cabled from Paris that he was giving up his
apartment there on May first. So somebody else moved in on that date.

Derring returned in June from a gastronomic tour of European Ritz’s. He
mentioned meeting Julian Fairless in Paris, but had not seen Sadoul.

Before Sadoul returned, Julian Fairless brought back a budget of
gossip, including news of him. Only a small percentage of Talkers are
doers. Fairless was industriously both.

To a question from Stayr he replied that Paris, the Latin Quarter,
and Julian’s were about the same as ever. A similar and dingy crowd
infested the schools; similar masters gave similar instruction. All
the unkempt ruck and reek of the atelier was there; massiers, models,
blague, noise--nothing had changed except the individuals composing the
mess.

Fairless, an incessant Talker, gossiped on without encouragement. Which
is the instinct of the true Talker.

So-and-so was dead--killed at Verdun; so-and-so goes on crutches; old
Clifford has a studio in the Court of the Dragon; Rowden died at Mons;
Creed, now wealthy, lives in the Parc Monçeau and paints no more; the
Beaux Arts is below par this year, and “our men” appear to be the pick;
etc., etc. So Fairless chattered on and on, talking the talk of the
Talkers.

He was still at breakfast, eating a soft-boiled egg out of its own
shell, in the rather dirty English fashion.

“I sold several pictures to profiteers,” he continued; “Paris is lousy
with nouveau riche. Derring bought two from me----”

Stayr remonstrated: “Derring isn’t nouveau riche.”

“Oh, no, but he played about with them. He wanted to see Julian’s. I
took him over. He was disgusted with the models. Besides, he kept his
hat on and they bawled him out.”

Fairless wallowed in a finger-bowl, dried his celebrated scarab ring:

“I saw quite a lot of Casimir Sadoul. He was doing philology at the
University, but he associated mostly with Julian men.... He had a girl;
went about everywhere with her. That’s a new idea for him, eh?”

“I suppose Sadoul did not wish to be conspicuous in the Quarter,”
suggested Mortimer Lyken.

“This affair was conspicuous. Fancy the contrast!--that big, blackish,
beetle-browed ruffian hooked up to a red-headed slip of a thing, so
bashful that you got no more out of her than yes and no.”

“Did she really belong to Sadoul?” asked Stayr.

“Apparently. He behaved savagely if you looked at her. Somebody told me
he got her by hypnotising her.”

“He knows how,” remarked Pockman. “He’s done it for me.”

“Bunk,” murmured Stayr, “--wasn’t it?”

“Well,” returned Pockman with his pallid smirk and hunching up his
wide, bony shoulders, “I’ve performed minor operations on patients with
Sadoul’s aid, inducing hypnosis instead of anesthesia.”

“The devil!” exclaimed Lyken. “That was Charcot’s graft.”

Fairless chattered on: “All the fellows concluded that Sadoul had some
sort of hold on her. She seemed too pretty and refined to fall for a
big, swarthy brute like Sadoul. She really was an exquisite little
thing, Harry--such features, such skin, such hands and hair--and the
fellows all wild to paint her--and old Sadoul foxy and sardonic....
They say the souls of the damned cast no shadows. I fancy Sadoul’s girl
still has a chance: he certainly was her shadow--always at her heels,
always on the job.... Somebody said he had threatened to kill her if
she ever fooled him. But I think Sadoul’s more likely to beat up the
man in the case.”

Fairless got up from the table.

“Now, if you fellows care to see what I brought back----”

A few of the other men rose and followed Fairless upstairs to his
studio where Angelo, his factotum, had already placed the first picture
upon an easel.

As usual, all the elements of popularity were apparent in the
picture--a typical Julian Fairless canvas, full of that obvious charm
so attractive to an obvious public, so acceptable to the professional
critic.

Fairless lit a cigarette and sat down to chat with Sidney Pockman, who
didn’t care for pictures.

“Where did Sadoul get that girl you mentioned?” he inquired, the smirk
still stamped on his flat, colourless face.

“In Paris.”

“How did she happen to be there?”

“Oh, a story of sorts. She and mama were living in London when the Huns
dropped bombs. Mama was blown into unpleasant gobs all over the house.
Then it was canteen work in Paris. Then no job. Then Sadoul ran into
her. That’s the story.”

“She’s English?”

“American, I believe. I couldn’t tell by her speech. She’s a dumb
youngster.”

“What’s he going to do with her? Marry her?”

“Well, I don’t know, Pockman. I fancy it’s high time--if he means to do
it at all.”

“Oh, that sort?”

“She doesn’t look it. She’s so dumb she seems almost drugged. Maybe
it’s true he’s obtained some sort of hold on her. I don’t know.”

“I had a letter from Sadoul last week,” said Pockman. “He must be on
his way back here by this time.”

Fairless nodded inattentively, motioning Angelo to take away the
picture and replace it by another.

Pockman seemed to grin at the new picture--or perhaps his pallid smirk
was habitual.

“What do you get for that kind of painting?” he inquired.

“Five thousand.”

“Did it take you very long?”

“Two mornings.”

Pockman laughed: “Yours is a soft graft, Julian.”

“So is yours, you pill-rolling fakir!”

“Not very soft, so far. But it ought to be when I succeed in grafting
the nymphalic gland to a corpse and break fifty-fifty with the New
Testament.”

“Isn’t Voronoff grafting glands and things?”

“Some glands; not the nymphalic. And that’s the whole problem, because
it governs----” Pockman hesitated, shrugged: “--Well, adios, Julian!
Much obliged for a view of your new pictures. Hope you sting the
profiteers.”

“You bet,” nodded Fairless complacently.

       *       *       *       *       *

But July is too late for an “exhibition.” Besides, the great American
profiteer had been rolling in art since the war ended, and, now
satiated after an orgy of antique-buying during the past winter and
spring, had begun to build bungalows. October or the middle of November
would see the town crawling again with newly rich. There was plenty
of time to prepare pasture for absent cattle--ample time for Julian
Fairless to plan his show. Besides, he desired a vacation at Greenwich,
in the vicinity of Veronica Weld.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was there, early in August, that Fairless again ran across Pockman
entering the railroad station.

Among other items of gossip he learned that Sadoul had returned to New
York, bringing with him his red-headed companion, and, furthermore,
that the red-headed one had suddenly disappeared within the first week.

“Sadoul’s a bad actor if you do things to him,” added Pockman. “He’s as
vindictive as hell. I’m wondering what will happen if he ever finds a
man with her.... Or finds her again, even alone.”

“What’s Sadoul doing?” inquired Fairless, pleasantly entertained with
the account of another man’s misfortune.

“Oh, he’s writing his free-lance stuff, as usual, and hanging around my
laboratory.”

“Grouching?”

“No; he’s rather quiet. I wouldn’t care to be the Johnny in the
case.... Or the girl, either.”

Fairless shrugged; then, inattentive: “Where are you bound for? Town?”

“I came up here to get a gland.”

“A what?”

“That young fellow who was killed here yesterday in the motor
accident.... You heard? Well, he proved a healthy subject, and his
nymphalic gland was of no further use to him. So I came up to get it.”

“What good is a dead man’s gland?” demanded Fairless.

“The gland isn’t dead.”

“What!”

“Not at all. I’ve got it in this grip packed in ice. I can keep it
alive for weeks in a refrigerator.”

“What for?”

“Graft it on some senile subject and add twenty years to his life.”

“It’s rather a loathsome business, yours,” said Fairless frankly.

“Not at all. You’ll need a new gland yourself some day. When you do,
give me a ring.”

Pockman smirked at the disgusted painter, picked up his satchel, and
stalked off at a stiff, crazy gait characteristic of him. Stayr always
said it reminded him of Holbein’s Dance of Death.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Pockman reached New York he telephoned Sadoul from his laboratory:

“Come on over; I’ve got a lively nymphalic on ice. Some gland, believe
me, Sadoul.”

But Sadoul seemed incurious and morose, and Pockman could not persuade
him.

So the latter continued to examine and caress his rather ghastly
acquisition, and Sadoul’s powerful, bony fingers drove his pen through
a mordant article destined to stimulate a moribund periodical in the
senile stage, kept alive only by Derring’s money.

Sadoul’s and Pockman’s remedies for inanition were, after all, similar:
gall and gland to stimulate the decrepit and delay ultimate dissolution.

       *       *       *       *       *

Derring, financing _The Revolt_ to please a rather handsome woman with
bobbed hair, had found himself let in for a deal of trouble.

She of the bobbed hair suggested that Sadoul “put a kick into the damn
thing.” Derring, at Newport, wired assent.

Sadoul, in seething silence, gave himself to the job with a fierce
persistence which made _The Revolt_ smoke enough to attract attention.

But it was all smoke: the fire itself smouldered in Sadoul, not in the
magazine. All that long summer and autumn Sadoul watched and waited and
burned. His olive skin and black eyes grew more shadowy; one noticed
his teeth under the crisp beard when he smiled.

He was usually at the Fireside Club in the evenings, but he lived
elsewhere--in a big, handsome housekeeping apartment, according to
Julian Fairless, taken, probably, on account of the red-headed one, now
vanished.

Twice, already, since her disappearance, Sadoul mistook others with
auburn tresses for the slender runaway for whom his smouldering gaze
was always searching amid the multitudes by night and day.

The third time there was no mistake. They met face to face on Fifth
Avenue, the red-headed one and Casimir Sadoul.

“Where have you been?” said Sadoul, smiling and offering his hand. But
his dark skin had turned greyish.

After the first startled glance, reassured by his smile and offered
hand, the girl seemed inclined to meet the issue with laughing and
youthful defiance.

She told him frankly that she had been bored; that she desired to enjoy
herself like a modern girl, and meant to do so.

“The modern girl,” said Sadoul, laughing, “is one who is determined to
have a good time in the world, no matter at what cost.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she conceded. “The trouble is that I don’t know
how to begin.”

“Haven’t you begun in all these months?” he inquired, fixing his black
eyes on her.

She laughed, made a childish face at him, mocked him in friendly
fashion.

“I’m not going to let you resume your way with me,” she said.

“Will you let me lunch with you, Gilda?”

“Why, yes. It’s nearly one, now. It’s quite agreeable to see you again.
I’ve sometimes wondered how it would seem....”

The Ritz was only a block away.

She was a piquant figure in her furs; and the touch of turquoise to her
hat made her red hair redder and her white skin whiter as she faced the
November east-wind beside Sadoul.

The raw air smelled of snow, but no flakes fell.

“So--you’re having a good time,” said Sadoul, showing his teeth in a
sudden smile.

“I told you I haven’t learned how, yet.”

“Will you let me try again?”

“Not--that way,” she said, colouring.

“No; that was a mistake, Gilda.”

She laughed in surprise and relief: “So you admit it?” she cried.

“I’ve got to, haven’t I? You left me flat.”

“I had to.”

       *       *       *       *       *

She was animated and friendly at luncheon--perfectly frank as
always heretofore, not untruthful, not evasive, but gaily declining
information concerning her recent career and her present domicile.

“It’s none of your business,” she said decisively. “I can always find
you if I care to.”

This attitude seemed to amuse him. He appeared to her to be very much
changed, and decidedly for the better.

He said: “George Derring is giving a dance at his studio apartment
tonight. If you care to come you’ll have one of those ‘good times’
you’re always wishing for.”

“Who is George Derring?”

“An intellectual panhandler.”

“What?”

“A beggar begs food from door to door; Derring, brainless and
resourceless, begs his daily modicum of amusement from friend to
friend.... He’s very rich. He has to be.”

“That sounds more like you,” she said with an uneasy smile.

“Oh, no; I’m off that stuff. Gilda, you’d better come to Derring’s
dance. It will be gay--a masked affair. All the men dress as kings; all
the women as queens. You have that wonderful green costume you wore at
the Julian ball, haven’t you?”

She nodded. Her eyes, which were emerald green, widened.

“I’d like to go,” she said.

“Very well. But where am I to call for you?”

At that she laughed outright. “I’ll take a taxi and drive to your
apartment. But I shall not go in.”

He made no attempt to persuade her. They fixed the hour amicably; she
told him in her frank way that if he followed her and attempted to spy
on her, she’d move elsewhere.

So, when luncheon ended, he lifted his hat and turned away, leaving her
to find her own taxi. Which she did, and drove to the matinée for which
she had a ticket, but where, alas! nobody awaited her.

For, even after all these months alone, and free to seek pleasure where
she wished, the acme, so far, of the “good time” so ardently desired by
her was a matinée; and the most delirious dissipation a drive on Fifth
Avenue all alone in a small limousine car hired and steered entirely by
herself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sadoul’s face was ghastly when he entered Pockman’s laboratory, and the
latter noticed it and commented.

“Gilda Greenway is coming to Derring’s party with me,” he said.

“Oh, is she back?”

“No. I met her on the street.”

Pockman cast a stealthy glance at Sadoul, then continued to filter the
contents of one test-tube into another.

“You were--er--glad to see her?” he inquired.

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Pockman, “you have a funny way of showing it. I’d run if I
met you in a dark alley.... Hand me that smeared slide, will you--and
that bowl of Reakirt’s solution----”




                              CHAPTER III


A masked figure followed them noiselessly upstairs and slipped behind
the portières to observe them.

Sutton, face to face with his first real adventure, was fascinated by
the little Queen in Green--not prepared, perhaps, to encounter such
youthful shyness at Derring’s. And now he attempted to discover her
identity, rather roughly, but she evaded his curiosity and ardent
advances, and coaxed him to show her Derring’s quarters.

The masked man watched them out of narrow eye-slits. They visited the
further rooms; then, having satisfied her curiosity, the Queen in Green
turned on her dainty heel.

As the two retraced their steps, she prettily avoided Sutton’s
love-making. It was only after he unmasked, and they had stopped by
the portières--so close that the man behind them could have stabbed
them--that the girl turned impulsively to Sutton, put her arms around
his neck, and took his kiss as passionately as he gave it.

It lasted but a second. She stepped back against the portières. Both
seemed hotly embarrassed.

A second later the Queen in Green was readjusting her gilt crown and
laughing at some light jest he had made--he could not recall what it
was afterward.

Below, the orchestra had begun again. He looked at her; she nodded.
They waited to catch the beat of the music. She was still laughing when
she placed her smooth little hand in his. But as he encircled her waist
she drew a swift, agonised breath and lurched forward against him.

He reeled under the sudden impact; her silk-clad body sagged, her
masked head fell backward, and then, as he caught her, the Queen in
Green collapsed in his arms.

He half dragged her to an armchair. One of her slippers dropped off.

For a moment he stood helpless, looking down at her; then, anxious, and
having had no experience with people who faint, he hurried downstairs,
perplexed, to find Sadoul, who had brought the girl to the party.

After-supper-dancing was beginning again in the studio, and the music
seemed unusually noisy. He tried to discover Sadoul, shouted his name,
but everybody was still masked and Sutton hunted for him in vain.

Finally he continued on through the studio into the supper room to get
a glass of ice-water, and saw Harry Stayr still browsing there.

As Sutton left the table, carrying the water, he said to Stayr in a
worried voice:

“That Queen in Green--the one Sadoul brought--has fainted in Derring’s
quarters.”

“Is she soused?” inquired Stayr, busy with food.

“No.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know. She wears a green mask. Casimir Sadoul brought her. If
you see him tell him she’s ill upstairs.”

“Put some ice down her back,” advised Stayr, reaching for the salad.

Sutton hastened on upstairs, hoping to find the lady better.

The Queen in Green lay face upward on the floor--a crumpled heap of
pale green silks. Her ruddy hair was dishevelled; her gilt crown had
rolled across the rug.

There was a day-bed beside the rose-shaded lamp. Sutton carried her to
it, laid her there and smoothed her clothing.

Under the mask her lips and skin were livid, but through the eye-slits
she seemed to be watching him.

He flushed, spoke to her, waited, then stripped off the green silk
mask. It shocked him to discover that her eyes were open.

“That’s a funny way to faint,” he thought. And he lifted the glass and
tipped it, spilling ice-water over the upturned face.

The water washed off some cosmetic but produced no other effect.

Scared, Sutton tried to find her pulse, and failed; tried to locate her
heart and couldn’t. There was nothing to loosen. He opened a window
and came back to her. Then he went out to the gallery and shouted down
through the clatter and music:

“Sadoul! Sadoul! Come up here!”

A masked figure in crown and crimson robes detached itself and came
forward under the gallery, looking up.

“Is that you, Sadoul?”

“Yes. What’s the trouble?”

“Your girl--the girl you brought with you--has fainted. She’s up here.
Bring Pockman, too.”

“What do you mean, my girl?” inquired Sadoul.

“The Queen in Green. You brought her, didn’t you?”

“Oh! _That_ girl? What’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know. You’d better find Pockman and come up. _I_ don’t know
what ails her.”

Sutton went back to the day-bed and gazed nervously at the Queen in
Green. Robes, stockings, slippers, jewels, all were green. Even her
strangely open eyes seemed golden green as a cat’s.

Sadoul and Pockman, in gorgeous costumes but unmasked, entered together
in a few moments.

“She doesn’t seem to be breathing, and I can’t find any pulse,”
explained Sutton. “What on earth is the matter with her?”

Pockman bent over; Sadoul and Sutton watched him. She wore no
stays--there was not much to her bodice, anyway--only a trifle more of
her body visible when Pockman stripped off her waist than the waist
had already revealed.

The two men watched him; the leisurely certainty of everything he was
doing preoccupied Sutton.

“Why, she’s dead,” said Pockman coolly.

Sutton stared aghast.

Sadoul said: “Well, of all rotten luck!--What the devil was the matter
with her?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You mean--mean to say that this girl is dead!” faltered Sutton.

“She’s been dead for more than twenty minutes.... _I_ don’t know what
killed her----”

Sadoul glanced up at Pockman, who was staring intently at him.

Sutton said miserably: “Is there anything possible to do--any other and
surer test to be made?”

“This girl is _dead_,” repeated Pockman, still looking significantly at
Sadoul. Then he shrugged his bony shoulders, went over to the telephone
and called his laboratory. While waiting, he said to Sadoul: “Here’s my
chance, by God! It will take about three hours,” he added, “--and half
an hour more----” His connection interrupted; he asked for somebody
named Stent, got him immediately, talked to him unhurriedly.

When he came back he asked Sutton to go into Derring’s bedroom and get
a sheet from the bed.

Sutton brought it; Pockman covered the recumbent figure decently,
concealing the face also.

He said to Sutton: “Sadoul and I realise that this is a good
opportunity for me to try something I am interested in.... It can’t
harm her, anyway----”

“Do you mean that there is any chance of reviving her?” asked Sutton,
his voice still hoarse from shock.

“Well--she’s dead.... Figure it out for yourself, Sutton.” And to
Sadoul: “This is a damned unpleasant episode for old Derring and his
party----”

... “Who was that girl?” interrupted Sutton, harshly.

“Her name was Gilda Greenway,” replied Sadoul, with composure; but his
long fingers were working at the gilt fringe on his robe.

“Has she any family?” inquired Pockman.

“No, I believe not----”

“Well--what the devil!--She had a home somewhere, I suppose!”

Sadoul shook his head: “Possibly. I don’t know where she lived.”

Sutton opened the telephone directory. There were only two Greenways in
the book. He called them up. Neither knew anything of Gilda Greenway.

Pockman turned to Sutton: “What were _you_ doing with her up here?” he
enquired with one of his pallid smirks.

“We were dancing--or going to. She wanted to look down at the floor
from the gallery when they began throwing confetti.”

“Oh, sure,” said Pockman, but his pasty, flat features bore no trace of
the sneer in his voice.

“We came up to the gallery,” continued Sutton, “and watched the battle
of confetti and flowers. Then she peeped into Derring’s quarters and
desired to inspect them.

“It was harmless curiosity--no matter what you’re thinking, Pockman.
She looked the place over; we were standing over there by the
portières. She was laughing; and then the music began downstairs--and
we were starting to dance up here.... And then--good God!----”

“Just like that,” nodded Pockman, softly.

There was something subtly horrible about the vernacular as he used
it in the dim room where death was. But death had become an old story
to Pockman, and there were for him neither thrills nor shocks in the
spectacle of human dissolution--nothing to awe or subdue or arouse
emotion--only a fact of routine interest to a student preoccupied by
original research.

He had a pale, flat, fat face, smoothly shaven; washed-out eyes; a
tall, ill-made figure with very wide, square shoulders, and scanty,
untidy hair of a faded hue.

He looked almost stealthily at Sutton, now, who, quite overcome by the
tragedy, sat staring at the sheeted figure of the girl he had been
laughing with half an hour ago.

“If you don’t feel like dancing,” said Pockman pleasantly, “stay here
until my man Stent arrives. Sadoul and I are going down.”

“You don’t mean you are going to dance?”

“Sure,” replied Pockman, adjusting his mask. “Why not?”

Sadoul said nothing. After a moment he slowly put on his mask.

“Aren’t you going to tell Derring?” demanded Sutton.

“I’m no crape-hanger,” replied Pockman. “Why spoil Derring’s party? If
you insist on staying here until Stent comes, you’d better lock the
door or some of those fair young things downstairs will get the shock
of their variegated lives.”

He started downstairs in his crown and fluttering yellow robes. Sadoul,
in flamboyant crimson, followed him. After a moment Sutton got up
and locked the door behind them, stood by it, looking back over his
shoulder at the form on the day-bed, then he slowly returned to his
chair.

       *       *       *       *       *

The decency that kept him beside a dead stranger was purely emotional.

He gazed miserably at the shrouded figure. After a long while he rose,
picked up her gilded crown and the little green slipper. The silken
crescent which had masked her still lay beside her bed. This also he
recovered, and then reseated himself, holding her toys in his lap, his
boyish eyes full of tears.

It was all very well for a graduate physician like Pockman to exhibit
callousness--and for the saturnine Sadoul--he of the long, horse face
and black eyes and Vandyke--he of the murderous, mocking pen--the
literary vivisectionist and jester at all lovable human frailties--it
was well enough for him to remain obtuse.

But a plain young man, like Sutton, continues to be emotional, whatever
garments of experience still clothe him.

He was horribly, profoundly upset.

       *       *       *       *       *

Several times an unseen clock in a farther room struck a treble note in
the stillness.

Faintly, too, came music and tumult from the gaiety below. Even the
odour of roses penetrated the locked room.

Sutton, staring at the covered form, was thinking it rotten hard luck
to be dead so young. He wondered who she could have been; who were her
people, her friends; what hearts were going to break for such an ending
as this.

He wondered whether she had been respectable--was fiercely inclined to
believe so--wondered why she had consented to come to Derring’s party
with Sadoul.

When again the silvery treble of the unseen clock sounded twice, Sutton
glanced at his own timepiece. It lacked a few minutes of two o’clock.
Gilda Greenway had been dead three hours and a half.

He rose and lifted a corner of the sheet. Her lower jaw had dropped.
Horrified, he covered the dead face and went back to his chair,
trembling.




                               CHAPTER IV


Somebody knocked at the door; Sutton rose nervously, unlocked and
opened it, dazzled by the outer lights.

Figures in brilliant silks entered--Pockman, Sadoul, a man and a young
woman in street clothes, carrying valises, and George Derring wearing
violet royal robes and tinsel crown, his vizard pushed up over his bald
forehead, a monocle shining in his pallid face.

“What the devil is all this?” he demanded. “If the girl is actually
dead she can’t remain in my place. The thing to do is to call up the
proper authorities----”

“Keep your shirt on,” interrupted Pockman calmly. “Come on in, Miss
Cross. You can change your dress in the next bedroom. Come over here,
Stent. Unpack your things on that table----”

“Is--this girl--dead?” faltered Derring, peering at the sheeted shape
through his monocle.

Pockman consulted his watch: “She’s been dead for three hours and forty
minutes, George.”

“Why didn’t you t-tell me?” stammered Derring. “What are you going to
do to her? This isn’t a morgue. It isn’t a place for autopsies----”

Sadoul drew the stammering man aside: “If you’ll keep your mouth shut,
Pockman will see to it that this affair is kept out of the newspapers.
Go downstairs, George, and when your party breaks up, come back here
and we’ll fix it up for you so there’ll be no notoriety or scandal.”

Derring, white and inclined to tremble, suffered himself to be led to
the door and thrust out. Sadoul turned the key with a grimace and came
back to where Pockman stood aiding his assistant, Stent, to unpack the
valises.

A case of surgical instruments was laid on the table. Beside this Stent
placed a miniature porcelain refrigerator, several basins, packets of
sterilized gauze, other objects unfamiliar to Sutton.

The young woman whom Pockman had addressed as Miss Cross came back from
the further bedroom clad in the white garb of a hospital nurse. She
seemed to know what was to be done with the several packages from the
valises and became exceedingly busy.

Pockman and Sadoul, carrying other packets, went away together toward
the bathroom, leaving Sutton standing alone by the table.

The efficient Miss Cross paid him no attention. She first unrolled a
rubber sheet and then began to undress the dead girl.

Sutton pivoted in his tracks and went slowly toward the bathroom, where
Pockman and Sadoul, their masquerade finery discarded, were dressing
in the white robes of operating surgeons. A smell of disinfectants
pervaded the place.

“What are you preparing to do?” asked Sutton.

“Stick around and see,” replied Pockman flippantly. His white robes and
flat, fat face made a most unpleasant impression upon Sutton.

Sadoul, also, was ready now; they returned to the room of death.

“If you’re squeamish,” remarked Sadoul, with his odd, shadowy smile,
“you’d better leave the room, Sutton.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I? Nothing. Pockman, however, is going to try something.”

“If she’s already dead, what more is there to try?” asked the other
huskily.

“Stand over here and watch. We shan’t be long.”

“Is--is this sort of thing legal, Sadoul?”

“Certainly. At least there’s no law forbidding it. Pockman is a
graduate physician. There are no laws forbidding a qualified physician,
who has been called in to do his best, from doing his best. And this is
Pockman’s one best bet.”

“But--after death--what _is_ there a physician can do?”

“What _is_ death?” asked Sadoul, with his dark and shadowy smile.

There ensued a silence while the washing of the unclothed body was
accomplished and the corpse laid face downward. One by one Pockman
took certain sterilized instruments from Miss Cross, employed each
with incredible deftness. Sutton had averted his head as Pockman made
a tiny, deep incision at the nape of the girl’s neck. The hemorrhage
was slight; Sadoul opened the drawer of the miniature refrigerator,
Miss Cross took from it something that she carefully placed in a vessel
filled with liquid. Twice she tested the temperature of the liquid.

“Ready,” she said in her low, pleasant voice.

With his forceps Pockman picked out from the liquid in the vessel
something that seemed to resemble a small oviform body--like a lump of
animal tissue, and inserted it in the incision which he had made at the
nape of the dead girl’s neck.

Deftly the wound was closed, sterilized, covered with a film of
transparent liquid which instantly hardened. A few drops of blood had
flowed freely.

“All right,” murmured Pockman, “turn her over.”

He cast another brief glance at the dead girl, then walked back to the
bathroom to wash.

Sadoul followed him, wiping his dark, bony hands on a bit of gauze.
Sutton, feeling slightly nauseated, turned away from the body which
Miss Cross was now swathing in a sterilized sheet.

He stood at one of the darkened and dripping windows, staring out. It
was raining, but a few large snowflakes slanted through the downpour.

The odours in the room--the taint of death--were becoming insufferable;
he went to the door, drew the bolt, and stepped outside onto the
balcony.

The ball was over, the music gone. The last of the maskers were leaving
the studio--a loud-voiced group lingering in the supper room, another
near the entrance hall.

Old Derring, in his rumpled royal robes, his crown on the back of
his ruddy, bald head, stood nervously receiving the adieux and noisy
gratitude of his guests. The air reeked with perfume of roses and scent
of wine; the floor was littered with débris of finery and confetti.

When at length Sutton returned to the room, the daybed was empty;
Stent had already repacked both valises and was putting his hat on
and buttoning his overcoat. Pockman, Sadoul, and Miss Cross had gone
into the farther bedroom, where a light burned. Sutton could see them
through the vista of the connecting rooms, moving quietly about,
dressed now in their street clothing--excepting Miss Cross, who still
wore her nurse’s garb.

When he went in to the chamber where they were gathered he discovered
that the dead girl had been laid in Derring’s guest-room bed.

She seemed asleep there on the pillow; her eyes were decently closed,
the bed sheets drawn to her throat. Only her wax-like skin betrayed her
condition.

As Sutton entered the room, Pockman turned toward him:

“Your views concerning the dignity and tragedy of death,” he said, with
that ever present undertone of irony, “are the popular and accepted
views. So if you don’t think it very charitable to leave this lady all
alone here during the night, why not sit up with her until I return in
the morning?”

Sutton flushed. “Somebody ought to remain here out of mere decency,” he
said slowly.

“All right. It’s up to you. Miss Cross is to stay for another hour;
and I’d really be obliged to you if you’d stand guard here tonight and
keep old Derring from making a fuss. Will you?”

After a silence: “What was it you did to her?” enquired Sutton in a
constrained voice, not yet under full control.

“Nothing illegal. I am within my rights. Ask Miss Cross. If nothing
happens it won’t make any difference, anyway. If anything should
happen, why, I don’t care how much it’s talked about. Do you, Sadoul?”

“Rather not,” said Sadoul, with that almost imperceptible smile on his
dark face, that waned and waxed like a shadow.

“What _could_ happen?” demanded Sutton. “Death is death--isn’t it?”

Pockman shrugged, gathered up his discarded carnival robes, went over
and gazed at the dead girl with a sort of mockery in his washed-out
eyes--yet his silent scrutiny was sufficiently intent to reveal some
graver motive--something deeper seated than sardonic indifference.
Presently he turned away, with a characteristic hunching of his
shoulders.

Sadoul followed him; Miss Cross went to the door with them and there
they remained in low-voiced consultation until interrupted by the
nervous entrance of Derring, still tremulous from shock but beginning
to choke with indignation.

And his anger knew no bounds when he learned what disposition had been
made of the dead girl; only a threat of newspaper notoriety hinted by
Pockman checked his rush to the telephone.

“If she’s dead,” he kept repeating, “what the hell do you fellows mean
by keeping her here in my apartment? It isn’t done, dammit all----”

“You go to the Ritz tonight,” counselled Sadoul. “She’ll be taken away
tomorrow morning without any fuss or scandal. Tell your man to pack a
bag--there’s a good fellow. Be a sport, Derring. Pockman is trying
something he never had a chance to try----”

“Confound him, are there no hospitals and morgues? What does he mean by
using my place to try his ghastly experiments----”

“Oh, shut up,” said Sadoul, and shoved the master of the house through
the door.

A fat man-servant arrived at his shrill summons, went into his master’s
bedroom, packed a suitcase, and carried it out again, breathing
laboriously. Sadoul and Pockman also put on their hats and went out.
Presently the front grille clanged distantly. Miss Cross closed and
locked the apartment door and came back to the chamber of death, where
Sutton was standing, fumbling with a rose-bud which he had found in a
silver vase.

“Yes,” said Miss Cross encouragingly, “lay it on her chest if you
choose.”

He dried the stem with his handkerchief and laid the blossom on the
white coverlet close to her snowy chin.

Miss Cross hovered over the dead girl, touched the bright hair here
and there, deftly curled and brought a saucy, wandering tendril under
graver discipline, more suitable to the circumstances.

“She was very pretty, wasn’t she?” remarked Miss Cross in her low,
pleasant voice, “--a very lovely young thing, physically--really quite
perfect, I should say.”

“What--what was it Pockman did to her in the other room?” enquired
Sutton in a strained voice.

Miss Cross had taken a chair. She was a healthy, vigourous young woman,
with black eyes and hair, a rosy and cheerful mouth, and a tip-tilted
nose.

Replying to Sutton’s question, she said: “If I answer you, I don’t
believe you’ll entirely understand.”

“Was it a precautionary test?”

“Oh, no. We all knew she was quite dead. Dr. Pockman desired to try
something never before attempted----” She looked up at Sutton,
hesitated. “--Why don’t you smoke?” she suggested. “You are dreadfully
nervous. It’s no disrespect to her. Seat yourself, Mr. Sutton, and
light a cigarette. I’m sure if she could speak she’d tell you to do so
too, poor lamb.”




                               CHAPTER V


Sutton sat in an armchair, a cigarette between his fingers, but he
could not bring himself to light it.

Miss Cross was seated rather nearer the bed. Behind them a small
Chinese lamp burned, casting a topaz tinted light over the dead girl’s
folded hands.

“Poor baby,” repeated Miss Cross, leaning forward and stroking the
clasped fingers with a caressing touch. “Rigour has not yet set in,”
she added, “nor is there any discolouration of the skin.... Aren’t you
going to light your cigarette, Mr. Sutton?”

“I’d rather not, I think.”

Miss Cross bent lower and looked wistfully into the girl’s face. “You
pathetic little thing,” she murmured. “I wish you could open your eyes.”

She resumed her position in her chair presently, and sat silently
smoothing out her white clothing.

“Haven’t you any idea what it was that Dr. Pockman attempted to do?”
she asked.

He shook his head.

“Would you care to have me explain it as well as I am able? I’m not
very clear at explanations, but it will help pass away the time.”

She settled herself back for her narrative.

“First of all--I am not a graduate nurse, Mr. Sutton. I was merely a
probationer at St. Stephen’s. Dr. Pockman suggested that I assist in
his research work. Microscope mostly. That’s what I’ve been doing. Dr.
Pockman is a most remarkable man.”

Sutton’s acquiescent nod was a very slight one. He did not care for
Pockman personally.

The nurse continued.

“What Metchnikoff began, what Claude Bernard continued, what Martens,
Beyer, and Voronoff did, and are doing, Sidney Pockman is continuing.
But all this means very little to a layman, I suppose?” she added
amiably.

“I’ve heard of Metchnikoff,” he said.

“Let us go farther back than Metchnikoff--farther back than any man,
living or dead--farther back, even, than mankind itself--millions of
years back,” said Miss Cross, smiling.

“I’ll tell you nothing about the origin of life--the first glimmer of
life on this planet. Nobody can do more than speculate concerning the
birth of life.

“But the _living thing_ which most closely approaches that form of life
which first appeared on earth is a tiny, microscopic being composed of
a soft mass and a nucleus; and is in the shape of a cell.

“It is called an amœba; it divides itself--reproduces swarms of its
fellows by means of perpetual division. And it _never dies_.”

Sutton seemed dully astonished.

“It’s true,” she said. “The amœba never dies. Voronoff himself says
decisively: ‘The breath of life which for the first time gave animation
to matter, held _nothing but life_. Nature, at that time, knew nothing
of death.’”

Miss Cross leaned over toward Sutton, resting her elbows on her knees,
and laid one forefinger across the palm of the other hand.

“It’s this way,” she explained; “the human body is not an individual
entity; it is an ensemble composed of billions of cells of different
sorts, each cell alive, each cell invested with its own special but
limited functions and duties, and each cell busy night and day.

“The human body is a society, a state, a republic of living cells,
ruled by the delicate cells that compose the brain.

“The primitive type of cell is the protozoan. Our body’s various and
highly organized cells are all derived from the elements of the initial
cell.

“The initial cell is deathless. But its highly sensitive and more
complicated descendants which compose our tissues have been greatly
modified, and their life depends upon the assent and good will of all
of the cells of our body.... I wonder if I am making it clear to you,
Mr. Sutton?”

“Perfectly.”

“Well, then, among all these billions of living and highly specialized
workers called cells, which compose that beehive, or anthill community
we call the human body, are many primitive cells without business or
profession, and they reproduce themselves continually. These are the
white blood corpuscles and the conjunctive cells; and they are always
at war with the more highly developed cells.

“When they win that war, as they always do in the end, _we die_.”

“What use are these conjunctive cells, then?” asked Sutton, mildly
interested.

“They are the regular army of the body-republic, and they fight and
slay foreign microbes which invade us. When they become unruly,
insurgent, and a powerful majority, they attack their own fellow
citizens. Then the body-republic falls. _That_ is death, Mr. Sutton.”

He said nothing, but the nurse saw he was more or less interested. She
said:

“What controls and keeps in order these billions of citizen-cells in
our body-republic are fluids from certain vital glands. If these glands
are removed, the cells go crazy and murder one another, and we die.”

“What are these vital glands?” he enquired.

“The thyroid in the throat; four small para-thyroid glands no bigger
than a needle’s eye near it; the two small supra-renal glands; the
little pituitary gland under the brain; the pineal gland in the middle
brain, which, a million years ago, was perhaps a third eye; and the
gland called the metathoracic or nymphalic gland, which lies deep
in the nape of the neck and which means instant death if injured or
removed.... And that, Mr. Sutton, was what caused this poor child’s
death.”

“What?”

“You were not watching closely, were you, when Dr. Pockman operated?”

“Not--closely, no.”

“You did not see him draw a long, gold-headed steel pin from where it
was imbedded in the back of her neck?”

“Good God! I didn’t see that!”

“It had been, probably, in her hair--to hold on her crown, perhaps,
and had become dislodged. If she threw back her head suddenly it might
have driven the pin deep into her neck.... Well, there it was, under
the soft, bright hair at the nape of her neck. Death must have been
instantaneous.”

“Did Pockman tell you I was dancing with her at the time--or about
to--I already had placed my arm around her. She was laughing at
something I said.... I remember, now, that she threw back her head and
laughed.... And crumpled up in my arms.... It is horrible--horrible
beyond words!----”

Miss Cross nodded. “Yes, Dr. Pockman told me. No wonder you are
upset.... I really wish you’d light your cigarette.” But he shook his
head.

After a moment he looked up at the nurse in pallid inquiry.

She nodded. “Now I’ll try to explain what Dr. Pockman did,” she said in
her cheerful voice. “He telephoned for Mr. Stent and me. You saw that
miniature refrigerator?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, Mr. Sutton. Death stops the heart and produces functional
discord of the organs. The individual is dead then. Very well. But the
several tissues composing that individual’s body are not dead yet. Not
at all. Hair continues to grow; the skin is alive; the bones retain
vitality; the brain, the glands, almost all the organs still remain
alive as long as eighteen hours.

“And if these organs are removed from the body before their own
individual death, they may be kept alive for weeks if preserved in a
zero temperature. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Yes, they retain all their vital energy for weeks.”

There was a silence.

“Shall I tell you what Dr. Pockman accomplished?”

“Please.”

“Dr. Pockman’s original research is in the direction of gland grafting.
Today a girl died at St. Stephen’s, of a fractured skull. Dr. Pockman
is externe there. He operated but could not save her. However, finding
the nymphalic gland uninjured and alive, he removed it in a jar of
Ringer’s liquid maintained at a temperature of some forty degrees.

“I preserved this living gland in the refrigerator you saw. When he
telephoned, Mr. Stent and I brought it here. You saw us place it in
Ringer’s liquid again, didn’t you?”

“Yes--I suppose so.”

“You saw Dr. Pockman make the incision, remove the injured gland, and
graft this living gland in its place.”

“Was that what he did?”

“That was what he did, Mr. Sutton.”

After a tense silence: “Why did Pockman do it?” demanded Sutton
hoarsely. “Had he any hope--any idea that--that death is not finality?”

She replied frankly: “He desired to know what effect on the cells the
secretions of this living gland might produce under these conditions.
Nobody knows. It never has been tried before. Theoretically it ought to
restrain the conjunctive cells in their onslaught against the nobler
cells, and invigorate and stiffen the resistance of these latter in the
increasing anarchy now running riot.”

“How long before any conclusion can be reached?”

“By morning, perhaps. If there is anything to be noticed, four to five
hours will show it.... Meanwhile, I must get some sleep.” She rose. “If
you think--if you feel that somebody ought to watch here tonight,” she
added, “why, you may remain, of course. But really it is not necessary,
I assure you.”

“I think I’ll remain until Pockman arrives.”

“That is nice of you, Mr. Sutton.”

She left the room. After a while she returned wearing hat and street
costume and carrying her satchel.

For a few moments she bent silently over the bed, then, pausing to
offer a firm, cool hand to Sutton, went away with a nod and a slight
smile. The outer grille clanged. Sutton and the dead were alone.




                               CHAPTER VI


Sutton was too much wrought up to fall asleep, although reaction
from shock now weighted him with physical weariness. Still dazed and
depressed by the swift tragedy of his first romance, the memory of it
both confused and accused him. In his anguished mind he reviewed it;
their chance encounter in the throng; a dance together; other dances;
the engaging shyness of the girl; her evident inexperience; something
vaguely disturbing in the girlish fragrance of her. Then the lovely
revelation of a youthful heart caught off its guard--and, suddenly, the
swift blaze of impulse flaming to a kiss!--and the silent confusion of
two disordered minds--to remember it overwhelmed him anew; even now a
dull glow kindled through his veins.

He lifted his heavy head from the armchair and gazed at her folded
hands, so still--so terribly still--

       *       *       *       *       *

He was at that psychological period of general revolt when youth is
most pitifully at the mercy of The Talkers--the period when faith
becomes clouded and old beliefs grow obscure. He had heard The Talkers
prove that there is no future existence. But now, gazing at the dead,
he felt that there ought to be some compensation.

After a while he got up heavily, went to the bed and dropped on his
knees.

Prayer, which The Talkers had proven to be a survival of gross
superstition, and to which he had been, lately, unaccustomed, now
proved difficult. He was ashamed to pray only in emergency. Confused,
weary, he strove to think and to behave unemotionally; tried to ask in
her behalf merely an equity in abstract justice.

In his boy’s heart, as in all hearts, there still remained fragments of
that temple builded to “the unknown God,” which men call Hope.

His prayer was primitive enough--to the “Power responsible for the
source of life”--asking decent compensation for this young death. It
took long to formulate; left him on his knees with his head resting
against the bed, very tired.

And, after a time, and still on his knees, he fell into a troubled doze.

Only when the clock again was striking did he become conscious. Stiff,
benumbed, he stumbled to his feet. Recollection returned in horror;
realisation frightened him.

He dragged himself to the curtained window. It was still dark outside,
but the rain had ceased and snow covered the sill. He looked at his
watch. It was nearly six o’clock in the morning.

For a little while he stood gazing into darkness, dreading to move.
Then, very slowly he turned and went to the silent bedside.

And noticed that her clasped hands had fallen apart.

Lethargy still fettered mind and body; dully he noticed; dully
attempted to account. Then the shock came. For her right hand clutched
his rose-bud. And her fingers were stirring now--the hand almost
imperceptibly creeping across the counterpane.

At that instant the girl opened her eyes.

There was no recognition in her gaze, no consciousness of environment.
But consciousness was dawning. It came with a spasm of pain.

Suddenly she sat up.

“I want to get out of bed!” she said in a frightened voice, struggling
to free her body of the sheets. Already she was touching the floor with
one foot, when, half senseless himself, he restrained her, forcing her
back to her pillow with shaking hands.

And now recognition dawned in her terrified eyes.

“Help me,” she said faintly. “Such--such a pain!--in my neck--deep
inside. Could I have a drink of water?”

He brought it, trembling. She propped herself on one elbow, set her
burning lips to the glass, draining it.

She asked for more; he brought it.

“Where is Casimir Sadoul?” she asked. “How long have I been here?”

“All night.” But she seemed not to comprehend him.

“My neck burns me so!” she whimpered. “Where are my clothes? I must
have been very ill.”

“Yes, very ill,” he said thickly.

“I can’t see--clearly--” she murmured. “I can’t hear the music, either.
Where is my green gown and my crown? Where are my clothes? I can’t stay
here. I want to go!”

“Wait a little while----”

“Oh, goodness--goodness!” she whimpered, resting on one arm and gazing
piteously around the room. “I must have been very, very ill. But I am
well now. I want to get up----”

Her nervously moving hands encountered the rose-bud again. She looked
at it stupidly, already half-blinded by a rush of tears.

“I--I want to go,” she sobbed, bowing her ruddy head and covering her
face with desperate white hands.

His stupefaction was vanishing in the overwhelming surge of rising
excitement. He brought her clothing to the bedside, drew her hands from
her convulsed face:

“I want you to be careful,” he said. “You’ve been unconscious for six
hours. There is a wound at the back of your neck. Do you understand?”

“Is that what burns me?” she asked tremulously, touching her neck with
one finger.

“For God’s sake be careful!”

“It isn’t bleeding,” she said, looking at her finger.

Then she drew the sheets closer about her shoulders and bowed her head
on her knees.

“Please let me dress,” she whispered.

“Are you strong enough?”

“I’ll call if I need you.”

He went out, drugged with excitement, incapable of reasoning--unable
to realise--not daring to think--knowing only that the horror of that
night was over, the frightful nightmare ended.

It was very dark outside; no hint of dawn above the chimneys opposite.
Snow lay everywhere, dim but unsullied. Familiar sounds of the living
world, however, now broke the wintry morning stillness. Once, to
the westward, an elevated train roared past; two trams clanged and
clattered south along Sixth Avenue; toward Broadway a taxi became
audible.

When she called to him the sound of her voice almost stopped his heart.
She had contrived to dress herself in her ball gown, and was twisting
up her hair with her back to the mirror as he entered the room. Her
features were painfully flushed; traces of tears marred her features.

“Could you find my masquerade costume for me?” she asked. “--And one of
my green slippers is missing----”

He brought the golden-green robes of royalty and the missing slipper.

“Are you in much pain?” he ventured.

“I deserve it. What did they do to my neck?”

“That long, steel pin you wore wounded it. A physician cared for you.”

“What pin do you mean? These?” She displayed a bronze hairpin for
his inspection and then passed it through a thick, ruddy strand that
clustered over one ear.

“I think it had a gold hilt. You wore it to hold on your crown, didn’t
you?”

“Oh. That was a ‘misericorde.’ My father gave it to me .... You don’t
know how deathly strange I feel,” she murmured. “I had horrible dreams
.... We fought.”

“Who fought?”

“Another woman and I. Ugh! It was too ghastly!... What time is it?”

“Half past six in the morning. You had better put on your costume, too.
It’s cold out doors.”

“I have a fur coat in the cloak room downstairs.... I am ready if you
are.”

He made a bundle of his own costume and they went out of Derring’s
living quarters, leaving the lamps burning; and so, slowly, down the
studio stairs to the littered ball-room, where the stale air stank of
rotting flowers.

He discovered her fur coat. When she was well wrapped in it, they went
through the hall to the grille and let themselves out. Dawn already
grayed the street. A battered taxi, returning to headquarters, stopped
for them. She gave Sutton her address; he directed the driver and they
drove away over the snow, as yet unsoiled by traffic.

Lamp posts still remained lighted as they turned east into Thirty-fifth
Street and drew up along the curb. Looking out, Sutton saw a line of
darkened shops. Over them, the row of old-time brick houses evidently
had been converted into apartments.

In silence he aided her to descend.

“Are you still in pain?” he asked.

“Not in pain.... No.”

“I think I’d better help you up the stairs.”

“If you will, please.”

He told the driver to wait, supported the girl to the swinging street
door which was open, and aided her to mount a dark, uncarpeted stairway.

At the top of this was a narrow landing, a shop on the second floor, to
the left, and another swinging door to the right, also open, revealing
a shorter flight of carpeted stairs.

She was slow in mounting, rested on the landing of the third floor,
supporting herself against the old-fashioned banisters. From the pocket
of her fur coat she drew a gold-mesh bag and handed it to him. Among
its varied contents he discovered keys. She indicated the right one;
he fitted it and opened the door.

In a narrow hallway an electric bulb burned. To the right was a dim
dining-room, to the left a living-room, where a lighted lamp stood on a
piano.

He turned and closed the hallway door and led the girl into the large,
square, lamp-lit room. Her bedroom opened out of it.

“Have you a maid?” he asked.

“She doesn’t sleep here.”

He drew off her fur coat, disembarrassed her of her masquerade robes,
seated her in an upholstered armchair, and turned on the ceiling
chandelier, which flooded everything with brilliant light. The room
seemed very cold.

“Let me look at your injury,” he said. And she bent her head and
remained so, resting her face between both hands.

The tiny vertical scar was purple, the area indurated but only slightly
swelled.

“Does it pain very much?”

She shook her head.

“Shall I try to get a physician?”

“No, please.”

“What time does your maid arrive?”

“After ten. But I need nobody.”

After a silence: “Have you a telephone?... I should like to call you
later to inquire how you are.”

She gave him her private number and he tore the margin from an evening
paper and wrote it.

That seemed to be all there was to say. He picked up his hat; she
extended her hand. He retained it for a moment, but neither spoke until
he turned and opened the hallway door.

“I think you’re all right,” he said. “I’ll call up to be sure.”

“Yes, call me.”

And that was all.




                              CHAPTER VII


Sutton slept late. The telephone beside his bed rang repeatedly but did
not awaken him. He was still stupid with sleep when he opened his eyes.
From habit he rang for coffee and a newspaper. And he was preparing for
further sleep when he remembered what had happened the night before.

Instantly his startled brain cleared; he snatched his coat from the
chair, discovered the slip bearing the telephone number, seized the
receiver, and called her.

Only when he recognised her voice did he realise what a panic possessed
him. Intense relief rendered him inarticulate for the moment.

“Yes?” she repeated; but her voice was almost a whisper.

“This is Stuart Sutton speaking,” he managed to say.

After a pause “Yes, Mr. Sutton?”

“I am very anxious to know how you are today?”

“I am--well.”

“Do you feel any ill effects?”

“None.”

“No pain?”

“None.”

“Have you heard from Sadoul?”

“No,” she replied in a ghost of a voice.

“Do you expect to?”

“No.”

Her brevity disconcerted him. He said: “I should like to see you again.
Would you be at home at five?”

There was a pause. Then her voice again almost inaudible: “I did not
imagine you would wish to see me again.”

“Why not?”

“The inconvenience--annoyance I put you to----”

“Good heavens! Could you help being ill? Let me come down----”

“I’m ashamed--I could not face you--I haven’t the--the assurance--Mr.
Sutton----”

“I’m coming to see you at five,” he interrupted confidently.

Waiting for a reply, after a little while he heard it very faintly:
“Good-bye, then.”

A servant brought his breakfast and usual Sunday newspaper, a swollen
bundle of coloured print. He got back into bed and took the tray on his
knees. Coffee, clear, was all he could tolerate. Nor did the bloated
Sunday paper appeal to any need in him.

For now, all the confused emotions of the night before were astir
again. Vivid recollections, both poignant and charming, flared in
succession--his encounter with Gilda Greenway; his gay, irresponsible
courtship, her shyness; then her sudden response and swift embrace; and
then the swifter tragedy--all the horror of it--every circumstance--the
warm scent of roses in the room, the distant laughter, music, the
girl’s dead eyes fixed on him through her slitted mask, death stamped
on the pallid, upturned face, his fear and horror!----

And suddenly he remembered his demand for justice--saw himself again,
scared, half stunned, down beside her bed--heard again his own plea to
the Source of Life--to “The Unknown God.”

And now remembered that God and gods were easily proven to be myths
where The Talkers gather to explain all things to all men, and play at
God one with another.

Had the Unknown God answered his demand? Was this a resurrection? A
miracle? A reply? Had the girl really died who now was alive?

He wished to believe so. His recent fright had left him receptive,
humble--grateful, too, to somebody.

He lay back on his pillow, willing, anxious to be reassured, inviting
memories long dormant--recollections of quieter years--safe years--the
years when problems were simple--when the Source of Life was God--a God
who protected, who took the heavy responsibility of the world from a
boy’s shoulders.

Lying there with his arms crossed behind his crisp, blond head, he
tried to remember whose daughter it was who had been raised from the
dead.

A sinister and forbidding legend of the Old Testament kept intruding
among his thoughts; but it was not of Jephthah’s daughter he had been
thinking--not of pagan sacrifice and bloody altars, but of the still
brightness shining from Christ.... And of a little dead girl whom he
made alive again....

The Talkers had explained it, offering several solutions so that a
wistful world, reproved and disillusioned, might take its choice:

The episode was a myth; or, whosesoever daughter it was had not
been dead at all but in a coma; or, the account was not to be taken
literally because it was merely metaphor, Oriental imagery--all
Orientals being fond of extravagant analogy--etc., etc.

Sutton was becoming perplexed and troubled, wavering between a boyish
need and a boy’s respect for The Talkers--“The Talkers who talk of the
Beginning and the End.”

He got up heavily, looked at his watch. By half past four he had
completed his toilet, and was already leaving the room when the
telephone rang.

It was Sadoul’s voice, strained, scarcely controlled:

“Sutton? Are you crazy? I’ve been trying to find you all day----”

“What’s on your mind, Sadoul?” he interrupted.

“Where did you send that body?” demanded Sadoul harshly. “I’ve called
the morgue and the hospitals----”

“Nonsense! The girl woke up and went home.”

“Good God! You tell me she’s--_alive_!”

“Rather. Your friend Pockman made a fool of himself. It looks like
malpractice to me----”

“Do you mean--mean to tell me that she _got up_ and--and _went_ away?”

“I do. She was quite all right--except where that ass Pockman jabbed
her in the neck.”

“Where did she go?” demanded Sadoul in a strangled voice.

“Home, I believe.”

Sadoul’s voice had become almost a whisper: “Where does she live,
Sutton?”

“You ought to know; you brought her to Derring’s.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Why do you ask _me_?”

“You know where she lives, don’t you?”

“Possibly. Does that ass Pockman want to experiment further with her?”

Sadoul’s voice became harsher: “Sutton, she was _dead_! Absolutely
_dead_! She had been dead three hours when Pockman operated. He knows
she was dead. So does Miss Cross. If she is actually alive now, it is
Sidney Pockman who put life into a corpse! And it is Pockman’s right to
know where to find her. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Not entirely.”

“Well, understand this, then: Gilda Greenway is a friend of mine. I
have known her for years. She is alone in New York----”

“You left her alone, too, when you thought her dead, Sadoul.”

“Will you tell me where she is?” demanded Sadoul, violently.

“Why do you assume that I know?”

“Because everybody saw how you behaved with her last night. You’re
headed for trouble if you continue.”

“Trouble with you?”

“Perhaps. Now, are you going to tell me where she lives, or not?”

“Probably--not,” drawled Sutton.

“Will you tell Pockman where to find her?”

“I’ll consider that matter.”

“Are you trying to make an enemy of me, Sutton?”

“I’m not trying to, Sadoul.”

“Then tell me where Gilda Greenway lives.”

“I’ll tell her that you inquired. Then it will be up to her.”

“You promise to tell her?”

“Yes,” said the other curtly.

“Will you ask her to communicate with me? And tell her it’s vitally
important----”

“I’ll tell her that you _say_ it is.”

“When do you expect to see her?”

“At her convenience, Sadoul.”

There was a pause; then: “Very well, Sutton.” And Casimir Sadoul was
off the wire, leaving a most disagreeable impression on Sutton.

Presently it occurred to him that he might even be spied upon and
followed if he lingered. He took his hat, overcoat and stick, went out
and down in the lift, stopped a taxi, and directed the chauffeur to
drive toward the Park.

He was surprised at himself for his disinclination to reveal Gilda
Greenway’s whereabouts to Sadoul; more surprised, still, that Sadoul
should be ignorant of her address.

It had begun to snow again; the air was hazy with fine particles but
not very cold.

The Sunday traffic on Fifth Avenue was not heavy; but by the time his
taxi reached the Plaza it was time to turn around.

He alighted before the row of basement shops on Thirty-fifth Street,
exactly at five o’clock.

A moment later, on the second landing, Gilda Greenway herself opened
her door to him.

“How d’you do?” she murmured, in flushed confusion. “My maid takes
Sundays out, but I’ve made tea--if you care for it----”

She lingered shyly while he disposed of overcoat, hat and stick, then
led the way into her living room, where a tea-tray stood beside a wood
fire.

“It’s amazing to me,” he said, “that you seem to feel so perfectly
well. You look wonderfully fit, too.”

“Why, it was only a very little wound,” she protested. “I’m disgusted
with myself----”

“May I look at it?”

She bent her head obediently. Like many people with red hair, her skin
was that dazzling, snowy white which flushes easily; and now a swift,
shell-pink stain deepened and waned as he examined the closed wound.

“It’s healing perfectly,” he said. “This is absolutely astonishing.”

She straightened herself, turned and poured tea, the colour still vivid
in her cheeks.

“It was so absurd of me to faint,” she said, “--so humiliating----”

“I’d scarcely call it that. It was tragic. Did you know that you were
unconscious for six hours?”

“How ghastly!”

“Rather. We thought you dead, you know.”

For an instant she failed to grasp the startling import of what he had
said; then, looking quickly around at him:

“Are you serious, Mr. Sutton?”

He decided to enlighten her; and he told her as much as he himself
understood of the affair, speaking gravely enough to impress without
frightening her.

Gilda Greenway’s gaze never left his face. There was no fear in her
eyes, only growing astonishment.

When he had ended his narrative, her first comment startled him:

“How perfectly awful for _you_, Mr. Sutton!”

“For _me_!”

“Your horrid situation--if I had really died!”

There was a silence. Her face had become very grave and she shuddered
slightly once.

Presently she said: “You were more than kind to me. I--hadn’t
realized----”

“I did nothing----”

“You sat there all night because you thought me dead. Is that nothing?”

“One doesn’t leave the dead alone all night--” he muttered.

“The others did. Even Sadoul.”

He was silent.

“So they all thought me dead,” she murmured. “And they all went
away--even Casimir Sadoul----”

Reminded suddenly of Sadoul’s message, he gave it to her.

“I don’t want Sadoul to know where I live,” she said quickly. “Is he a
friend of yours?”

“I’ve known him for some time. He’s very clever and amusing, when he
chooses.”

“Yes, I know,” she said in a low voice, “I know Sadoul.”

There was a silence, then they spoke of other things. She had become
diffident, almost unresponsive. Unless he spoke of the night before,
conversation seemed difficult; for these two had no real knowledge of
each other--no knowledge at all save for that brief flash of passion
amid the mocking unreality of masquerade.

“I am wondering how you happened to go to Derring’s party with Sadoul?”
he ventured at last.

The girl blushed scarlet. “I--I met him quite by chance on the street
two weeks ago. I hadn’t seen him for--months. We talked. I lunched
with him. He asked me to go with him to Mr. Derring’s party, and he
described the costumes to be worn. I wanted to go. I had to have a
dinner gown anyway, this winter--or thought I had to have one.... Last
night I put on my costume here and drove in a taxi to the St. Regis,
where Sadoul was waiting under the porte cochère.... That is how it
happened.”

They were busied with their tea for a while before he ventured a
lighter tone.

“I am considering the eccentric capers of Fate,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“When your mask slipped as we passed,” he went on, “it was Fate that
loosened it. Do you doubt it?”

Her lowered face was all surging with colour now; she bent over her
cup, motionless.

That the girl dreaded further reminiscences was pathetically plain to
him. And again her shyness puzzled him as it had the night before.
Because one scarcely expected to meet a novice at one of Derring’s
parties.

Again he became conscious of the subtle charm of her--felt the faint,
sweet warmth of her presence invading him.

“It would have been a jolly party if--” he stopped short, aware already
of his mistake.

She sat with head averted, but he suspected tears. After a little while
she crumpled her handkerchief, nervously, touched her eyes with it.

“You are still under the strain,” he said in a low voice. “No wonder.
But it came out all right, thank God----”

“I--I can’t--bear----” She shrank back against the sofa and hid her
face in her arms.

“There’s nothing to feel that way about,” he said, reassuringly.
“Everything is all right now----”

“I--I can’t bear it!--what happened. I can’t endure the thought of--of
what they m-must have done to me----”

He reddened but said coolly: “There was nothing unusual--when one is
desperately ill----”

“They treated me as--as the dead are treated----”

“The physician and the nurse----”

“Sadoul was there.... Were _you_?”

“No,” he said, lying.

After a while he ventured to unclasp the desperate fingers from their
clutch on the sofa--ventured to raise her to a sitting posture.

“Come,” he repeated confidently, “it’s all over. You’re behaving like a
kid,” he added, forcing her to turn her head.

The glimmering eyes opened on him, closed quickly, and the tears rolled
down her cheeks.

“It’s all over,” he insisted; “isn’t it?”

He held both her hands. She released them. “Yes,” she whispered, “it
is all over--all of it--all, all!...” She slowly straightened her
shoulders, slowly dried her cheeks, still sitting there with closed
eyes. And speaking so:

“It’s the end.... And a new beginning.... I think the girl you knew
really did die last night.... I am not that girl.”

“Oh, yes, you are, Gilda Greenway,” he said cheerfully; “you are that
very same and very delightful Queen in Green!”

“Do you think so?”

Her eyes unclosed. She considered him curiously, her gaze wandering
over him almost absently.

The room had grown dusky. She reached behind her and lighted the lamp
on the piano.

“That’s jolly,” he said. “I wonder if you feel like playing something.”

“Would you like it?”

She stood up mechanically, moved to the piano and seated herself.

After a moment a deadened chord or two broke the stillness. Then the
old and well-known melody of Schubert grew more softly ominous in
the demi-light, lingered in deep, velvety pulsations, slowly expired.
Silence absorbed the last muffled chord. The girl’s hands drooped
motionless; she lifted her deep green eyes and looked across the piano
at Sutton. Her face was partly masked by the transverse shadow of the
lampshade.

“What was it you played?” he asked.

“‘The Young Girl and Death.’”

“That’s a cheerful jazz,” he remarked, getting up. He took an uncertain
step or two, looked at her irresolutely, then went over to the piano
and leaned on both elbows.

“We mustn’t turn morbid,” he said. “We’ve had the shock of our lives,
but it won’t do to brood on it.... I want you to be as you were last
night.”

She looked up at him, her hands still resting on the keys.

“You were so jolly--such a bashful, charming kid,” he added.

Something suddenly glimmered in her shadowed eyes.

“Are you smiling?” he asked.

“I think I--am.”

“Well, it’s about time! I’m trying to remember what it was I said that
made you laugh, just before you--you were taken ill.”

She could not seem to recall it; absently ran a scale or two; rested.

“We were beginning to have such a gay evening together--weren’t we?” he
insisted.

“Yes.... I enjoyed it.”

“The fact is,” he went on, “I kidnapped you, didn’t I?”

“Kidnapped? Are you really so old?” In her shadowy eyes the glimmer
appeared again.

“No, I’m not very aged, but Sadoul--I stole you from him, you know.”

“Did you find it--difficult?”

She moved as she spoke, and the lamp-light fell full across her face.

Again he was conscious of warmth in his veins--of a heart quickening a
little in the shy revelation of her smile.

And again he tried to account for her presence at Derring’s party,
where there was more pulchritude than bashfulness, and more experience
than both.

About Gilda Greenway there seemed always a hint of wistful
inexperience--a sort of unchastened innocence, which was not without
its provocation, too.

In his rather brief career, Sutton had never encountered what is called
“danger” among women within his own caste or outside of it. Only the
male ass need dread the “vamp”; but he never does.

As for all the subtler species known as dangerous, from cradle-snatcher
to the married-but-misunderstood, few had floated within his social ken
where, on the Hudson, ancient respectability in substantial estates
maintained colonial tradition in summer, and modest but grim town
houses in winter.

Smiling at the girl, now--wondering a little concerning her--and
curious, too--he asked her whether, like most of the others at
Derring’s, she was on the stage.

It seemed she was not.

“Nor in pictures?”

“No.”

Her reserve was a smiling one, yet not encouraging him to further
inquiry.

“You dance so delightfully,” he said, “that I thought--perhaps----”

“No; I don’t do anything, Mr. Sutton.”

He dissented and tapped the piano as emphasis.

“Oh, I play a little.”

The bench she was seated upon was long and narrow. He stepped around
the piano; she laughed and made room for him.

“Tell me about all your accomplishments,” he insisted.

“They are too numerous to catalogue. I can cook if I have to; make a
bed, wash windows, read, write, add and subtract----”

“Are you American, Gilda?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve lived elsewhere?”

“Abroad.”

It was plain that she had little inclination to speak of herself.

He wondered why she was living alone in New York. Suddenly he desired
to ask her other questions--from whom she inherited her delicate beauty
and shy manners--her cultivated speech, her pretty green eyes.

“Don’t you want to tell me anything about yourself?” he asked.

“It isn’t necessary, is it?”

He laughed. “There is no necessity about the matter, you funny child!”

She seemed relieved for a moment, then a little troubled.

“What worries you, Gilda?” he demanded, still smiling.

“Nothing.... Would it be impertinent for me to ask your advice before
we really know each other?”

“Nonsense! What is it?”

“There are several things I would like to ask you--if I might----”

“For example?” he inquired, much amused.

“Well, one thing is that I have some money. I’d like to ask you how to
invest it.”

“Good heavens!” he said. “You don’t know anything about me! I might be
the King of the Crooks, for all you----”

She did not seem to notice what he was saying, for she went on very
seriously:

“--Also, I’d like to have you recommend to me a lawyer whom you believe
trustworthy----”

“Enter crook number two! All right, Gilda. What else?”

“Quite a number of things--when we begin to know each other--a
little----”

“Haven’t we even begun to know each other?”

“Why, no,” she said, surprised.

“Then isn’t it rather rash of you to ask me about investments?”

She smiled at him. It was her charming answer--as pretty a compliment
as ever was paid a man.

“Gilda Greenway,” he said with youthful rashness, “ask me anything and
I’ll do my best! You seem to know I will, too; but how you guessed it,
I don’t know.”

He got up, took a short turn or two, stood looking at nothing for a few
moments.

“Don’t tell Sadoul where I live,” she said in a low voice.

He swung around: the girl’s expression had changed and her face seemed
shadowy and pale.

“No,” he said, “I shall not tell Sadoul.... Are you feeling ill?”

“Not ill----”

She rose abruptly, and again her changed expression struck him. It
seemed almost as though her features had altered subtly--as though
something familiar was fading, something he had forgotten in her face
was becoming vaguely visible.

“I want you to go, please,” she said in a dazed way.

“If you are feeling ill----”

“No, not ill.... You must go.”

“But, Gilda, don’t you want me to come again?”

“Yes.... Telephone me.... But you must go!--oh, please!--please!----”

The strangeness of her face silenced him.

She followed to the little hall, waited for his departure, her face
averted. To his perplexed and troubled adieux her response was
inaudible.

The next moment the door closed behind him and he stood alone in the
wintry dusk of the shabby corridor.




                              CHAPTER VIII


The intimacy between Sidney Pockman and Casimir Sadoul was a
companionship rather than a friendship--a personal association based on
similar tastes, similar inclinations, and a common lack of scruple.

This mutual accord seemed to be sincere; stood the usual strains to
which real friendship is subject; and, so far, had remained unimpaired.

But when, that night at Derring’s, Pockman raised his pale gaze from
the dead girl and rested it on Sadoul, Sadoul realised instantly that
he had never trusted Sidney Pockman. And for the first time in his life
he knew what it was to be afraid.

       *       *       *       *       *

The following afternoon, closeted in the private office of the
laboratory with Pockman, and having recounted his telephone
conversation with Sutton, he awaited Pockman’s comment with a mind
already darkly on its guard.

The first unhealthy colour of excitement had faded from Pockman’s
flat features; he was taking the astounding news coolly enough. Even
a slight smirk returned as he looked up at Sadoul, who still wore his
faded soft hat and brown overcoat.

“You’ll have to find her for me,” he said.

“I don’t _have_ to do anything for you,” retorted Sadoul softly.

After a silence Pockman stole a stealthy glance at him, and learned
nothing. However, he was already convinced.

“Don’t you think it’s up to you to find Gilda Greenway?”

“I’m not certain it’s up to me, Pockman.”

“Who is to do it, then?”

“There’s Sutton. And if he refuses, then there are confidential
agencies----”

“Hadn’t we better _cover_ this affair between ourselves?” inquired
Pockman. “It’s safer for--everybody--I imagine.”

The slight menace was not lost on Sadoul, but he coolly chose to
misinterpret it.

“You’re a little worried about the irregularity of what you did, I
suppose.”

“Not the irregularity of what--_I_ did,” retorted Pockman, smirking.

“What’s bothering you, then?”

Pockman opened a desk drawer, flicked a blue-print toward Sadoul.

“What’s this?” asked the other.

“Finger-prints. They were on the gold-headed pin--or dirk--or
stiletto--whatever _you_ call it,” he added with a slight snicker.

Sadoul studied the blue-print. Then he glanced up inquiringly.

“Whose?” he asked.

“_Yours_, Sadoul.”

Sadoul continued to examine the whorls with detached interest.

“Well?” he inquired finally. “What’s the idea?”

“Nothing,” said Pockman; “you needn’t worry--only--_lay off on that
stuff_, Sadoul.... Because I happen to need your girl in my business.
That’s all there will be to it--as far as I’m concerned.... Let me have
that blue-print.”

Sadoul passed it back to him across the desk, thoughtfully:

“Do you really think I killed her?” he asked, with his shadowy smile.
“Or are you facetious?”

“I’m not speculating.... She isn’t dead, anyway.... And I mean to see
that she remains alive and kicking. That’s all.... So----” He smirked,
dropped the blue-print into the drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key.

“In my safe-deposit box there’s a duplicate print,” he remarked. “Also
a statement.... I want to observe this girl for a while. _I don’t want
anything to happen to her._ When I’m through with her--you can have the
finger-prints back if you like.... And the--weapon. Is it understood?”

Sadoul, apparently preoccupied, and sitting motionless in his chair,
made no reply. But his brain was a flaming hell.

Impulse after impulse flashed up and raged through him, tearing at
self-control. For the first terrified instinct of self-preservation had
instantly become a violent desire to end forever the danger threatening
him. His powerful frame was tense with purpose. Yet, a trace of reason
remained. And he seemed to realise that, even if he could bring himself
to do it--and devise a way--it would not help matters to kill Pockman.
It was too late. He understood that. But his burning brain raged on.

Sadoul had never before planned murder. He had never even thought of it
as a solution for any problem until he saw Gilda Greenway in Sutton’s
arms. Then he went mad.

But, even then, had she not been so close--the warm fragrance of her
very body in his nostrils--and a weapon at hand, dangling from her
perfumed hair----

       *       *       *       *       *

His swarthy face grayed a little: he got up from his chair, as though
very tired, and put on his shabby hat.

“Whatever you think,” he said in an altered voice, “you have no
business to threaten me.... Gilda is perfectly safe--you have my word
of honour, if you wish. But you must let me have those--blue-prints.”

Pockman was looking at him with intense curiosity. In his gaze there
was, also, a sort of half-fearful respect which the habitual smirk
intensified.

“My God, Sadoul,” he murmured, “I never even dreamed that sort of thing
was in you.”

Sadoul picked up his worn portfolio, slowly buttoned his overcoat,
stood so with head lowered.

“I must have the prints,” he repeated in a low voice. Then he raised
his smouldering eyes.

After a silence: “Do you give me your solemn promise to let her alone?”
demanded Pockman.

“I promise not to--harm her.”

“I want you to keep away from her.”

Sadoul thought for a few moments: “Pockman,” he said calmly, “I shan’t
interfere with you if you desire to keep her under professional
observation. But, _otherwise_--I tolerate no other man.”

The unhealthy flush made Pockman’s face a livid pink again.

“My interest in your damned girl is purely professional,” he said.

“Let it remain so. Because my interest is slightly different.”

“What’s _your_ interest in her? I thought you were through,” sneered
Pockman.

“I’m still--interested.”

“That girl is turning you crazy!” burst out Pockman. “You’d better look
out or you’ll find yourself on the front page some morning----”

Sadoul turned on him, baring every tooth: “_Tomorrow_ morning!--if you
don’t get those prints for me. And you’ll be there, too.”

“Get out of my office, you crazy bum!” shouted Pockman.

“Do you really mean that?”

There was a long and tense silence.

Presently Pockman found his voice, weakly: “What in Christ’s name has
got into you, anyway!” he demanded.

Sadoul shook his sombre head: “I don’t know.... I don’t know,
Pockman.... I can’t manage to forget her--and I can’t go on this
way--always----”

Pockman ventured to lay one hand, fearfully, on Sadoul’s shoulder--he
had to force himself to do it.

“I wasn’t serious. Hell! I’ll get those things for you. Then you’d
better go away somewhere and rid yourself of this fool obsession before
it kills you--or somebody----”

“All right.... Thanks.”

After a moment he opened the door and went out, moving as though
fatigued, his shabby portfolio hanging from one bony hand.




                               CHAPTER IX


Sadoul went home. His thoughts were not very clear. The interview at
the laboratory seemed unreal; the day itself like one that had not
dawned. He remembered little of what they said in the office--except
that Pockman had called him a crazy bum.

The large apartment which he had furnished for two, but which he alone
inhabited awaiting the expiration of the lease, appeared unusually
dreary and unreal.

The two canaries he had bought, the black cat, the potted flowers,
furniture, books--everything had taken on a misty, wavering aspect. He
had a numb sensation in his head, and he seated himself in the living
room, his hat and coat still on.

The only sound that broke the silence was the interminable
seed-cracking of the canaries.

In the dull aftermath of fear, lethargy drugged his nerves and clouded
thought.

He was tired to his very bones, tired, benumbed. And so, rested all
alone there in the gray daylight.

The cat came in, and, passing his chair, paused to look up at him. Then
went on, noiselessly, without further notice.

About one o’clock his Japanese servant announced luncheon.

Sadoul awoke, rid himself slowly of coat and hat, went to the dining
room, and ate what was offered.

After that he sought his study, where some manuscripts lay in various
untidy stages.

After all, he had to keep going--he had to eat and clothe himself and
go on living--or--_did_ he have to go on at all?

He seemed, finally, to come to that conclusion, pulled a pad toward
him, inked his pen.

He had been writing for two hours or more when his servant came and
announced a lady.

“Who?” demanded Sadoul.

“She no name, sir.”

“All right--in a minute.”

The Jap retired; Sadoul went on writing--was still writing when
something moved at his doorway; and he raised his head. Gilda Greenway
stood there.

Sadoul’s visage turned a clay grey; Gilda’s face, too, was very white,
framed in her dark furs.

“Sadoul,” she said in a low voice, “what have you done to me?”

He sat as though paralysed for a while. Finally the shock passed; he
got up, rested against his desk, and after a moment found his voice:

“Are you coming back?” he asked, somewhat indistinctly.

“No. Answer me; what is it you have done to me?” she repeated.

He moistened his lips, staring at her:

“I don’t know what you mean, Gilda.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Sit down and tell me what you--think I have done to you.”

“Very well.” She seated herself. He took his desk chair, his eyes never
leaving her.

“Now,” she said, “tell me what you have done to me.”

“Nothing. You fainted at Derring’s. Pockman brought you around----”

“You thought me dead!”

“Did Stuart Sutton say so?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Did he tell you what Pockman did to--revive you?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. A gold-headed pin got loose from your hair and
pierced a vital spot in the nape of your neck.... That was our theory.
Sutton came to me; I got Pockman; he operated. That’s all.”

“You thought me dead. So did Dr. Pockman.”

“We were mistaken. What of it?”

“But you _did_ think I was dead!”

“What of it?” he repeated, now in full control of his voice and himself.

She leaned a little toward him: “Were you alone with me--after you
thought me dead?”

“No.”

“That is a lie, Sadoul.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I know it’s a lie. You were alone with me after you thought me dead. I
_saw_ you!”

He made no reply, waiting.

“That is all I remember,” she said, “--lying dead on a chair and
looking at you.... I _was_ dead. I didn’t know it until now--until this
very instant. But I know it, absolutely, now.”

His sombre eyes regarded her without expression and in silence.

She was watching them, too; and now she drew her white-gloved hand from
her muff and rested it on her knee, clenched tightly.

“You once told me,” she said, “that I never could escape you, even by
dying.

“You told me that while Charcot was interested only in paralysing the
body by inducing hypnosis, there was no reason why the indestructible
life-principle itself could not be caught and controlled at the moment
of death.... Did you tell me that?”

“Yes.”

“What did you mean by the indestructible life-principle? The escaping
soul?”

“You can call it that if you like.”

She clenched her gloved hand tighter:

“You told me that, at death, the life-principle has been seen and even
photographed. Is that true? Or is it one of your psychic lies?”

“It is faintly luminous and has been photographed in the dark,” he said
patiently, and now quite prepared for whatever else she had to say to
him.

“What happened when _I_ died?” she demanded, her childlike face whiter
than ever.

“If you insist that you really died--I regret to say I was not
present----”

_“I saw you!”_

His shadowy smile flickered a moment.

“Sadoul!”

“Well, Gilda?”

“Did you try to stop my soul from leaving me?”

“No; I wouldn’t have been such a blithering fool. Where do you get
that stuff?” he added with his sneering laugh. “I told you, once, that
photographs had been made in a dark death-chamber, which did really
show a nebulous something apparently freeing itself from the dead and
assuming something like a human shape.”

“Yes, you told me that.”

“I certainly did. Also, I may have told you that psychic
materialisations also have been photographed, exuding in rather
unpleasant and luminous convolutions from the medium.

“All students of psychology are interested. I am. Psychic phenomena in
their relation to hypnosis also interest me----”

“Yes. That is how you destroyed me.”

After a silence: “There was no destruction,” he said in a low voice.

“What do you call it then, Sadoul? You caught my soul--spirit--or
whatever you call my tenant--outside my body. You hypnotised it,
paralysed it, left my body for days without a tenant!... And once,
when you released me, and I returned, I found a new tenant in
possession.... Since that time I have had to turn her out a thousand
times!... When I--died--she was there, waiting. We struggled for
possession. And she is still waiting her opportunity to slip in--always
watching--always near.... Last evening, suddenly, she got possession of
me--I was tired--off my guard. She locked me out----”

Gilda’s face began to flush and her gloved hands crisped and beat
against her muff, crushing and scattering the bunch of violets:

“_That’s_ what you did to me!” she cried, “--you tried to catch my soul
outside of me and kill it, or something--so you could let in that other
one! You’ve always tried to--always, always! You wanted my body, not
caring what tenant it had! And you’ve tried to drive me out and let the
other in!--you tried it even when I was dead!”

She sat striking her muff hysterically with her little, gloved fists,
her green eyes alight and the pretty mouth distorted with a rage she
had never known until that instant.

“I’ve wanted to live rightly,” she said; “but this _Other One_
interferes! There was no other one until you let her in. She comes,
now, before I know it.... When I am almost happy--thinking no wrong,
God knows----”

She sprang up, trembling: “Can’t you let me alone?” she said. “I never
liked you; I never shall live with you.”

Sadoul’s eyes glowed, and he slowly got up from his chair:

“If you won’t live with me, you’ll live with no other man,” he said.

“I don’t want to! I couldn’t, anyway--with the memory of that civil
ceremony rising like a nightmare to frighten me----”

“You had better remember it ... when such men as Sutton are dangling
around you,” he said with his alarming smile.

Gilda’s face flushed scarlet.

“_I_ shall remember it,” she said.... “It’s the _Other One_ who--who
frightens me----”

She took up her muff, abruptly, walked swiftly to the door, turned,
trembling, blinded with tears:

“_Now_, do you understand what you have done to me!” she said in a
choking voice. “Even the _Other One_ cares nothing for you! Even if
she ever manages to destroy me, it gains you nothing! And that’s what
you’ve done to me and to yourself!”

He followed her to the hall and detained her on the landing.

“Remember,” he said, “I tolerate no other man.”

“There is no other man.”

“There may be.”

She pushed by him and pressed the elevator bell.

“My God!” he whispered--“My God! Can’t you be even half human, Gilda?”

“That’s the trouble. I’m not more than that, now, I suppose.”

He kept on saying under his breath, “My God, my God! I can’t go on this
way! I can’t go on without you----”

The ascending cage interrupted.

She nodded adieu.

“Let me know where you are,” he said.

The cage dropped. She made no reply. He stood still for a moment,
dragging at his lips with bony fingers, then he snatched his hat and
ran down the spiral iron stairway.

But he was too late at the street door; and the porter had not noticed
which way her taxi turned.




                               CHAPTER X


Gilda was in a hurry to get home, and this was the reason:

A telephone call from Sutton had awakened her that morning; she had
been glad to hear his voice again; the incident had made the beginning
of a grey day very delightful.

Bathed, dressed, and having breakfasted, and still agreeably conscious
of her waking pleasure, Gilda had gone lightly about her morning duties.

First there came a consultation with her maid-of-all-work concerning
marketing. Then dish-washing. Then sweeping, dusting, airing, and
bed-making, in which Gilda aided. Then accounts--Gilda crouched over
her desk, very intent upon the few bills and advertisements which alone
composed any morning’s mail.

Mending was next in order. Then preparation for a walk, including
shopping. After that, luncheon, the leisurely pleasure of a book,
or a lazy needle embroidering towels--with contented glances at the
comfortable and pretty things surrounding her.

Her bedroom, in blue, was an austere and rather dim place, with an
etching or two on the wall, and a slim bed and chair patterned after
some prim model of the 18th century.

But Gilda’s living room was done in sunny hues which tinted it with
a summery light, even on sour, grey days. And here amid upholstered
furniture, a piano, old gilt mirror, a few mezzotints, hyacinths
growing in a yellow bowl, a shelf of books, Gilda Greenway lived and
had her highly complex being.

Earlier that afternoon she had been embroidering a doiley with
buttercups, sewing light-heartedly, with recollections of her pleasant
waking to the sound of Sutton’s voice.

She had ventured to ask him to tea; but he couldn’t come until after
six. But with this in agreeable prospect the winter day was passing
tranquilly. Old, unhappy memories were being lulled by the soothing
rhythm of her silken-threaded needle; old sorrows faded; her slowly
moving hand at last ceased and lay idle on her knee.

After a while she no longer guided thought, but followed where it
strayed.

Very stealthily Thought betrayed her.

It led her into a labyrinth and abandoned her there. Presently, into
that magic labyrinth there glided the phantom of him she had followed
thither; and, mentally, she went to him as she had that tragic
night--yielded again to his swift embrace--to his lips--offering her
own----

And awoke to find herself on her feet and every startled instinct
striving to arouse her sleeping senses.

Still partly dazed, throbbing with fear and shame, her confused mind
was offering no aid. With stiffened limbs and clenched hands she stood
blindly facing what threatened her.

Desperately she strove to warn her mind against the warm, sweet impulse
invading it--to free her excited heart of that which quickened it--to
bar all ingress to that _Other One_--the invader--now gliding nearer.

As she struggled against the enchantment, she realised that the _Other
One_ had surprised her--that sensual thing which Sadoul had summoned,
offering _her_ as its abiding place----

Suddenly her anger blazed white. In raging silence she tore the shadowy
intruder out of her, drove it forth, barred the citadel of her soul
against it.

Flaming, breathless, still bewildered by the battle, she strove to
think what must be done. Then fear came--the old dread began to creep
upon her--old griefs stirred--the spectre of Sadoul took shape,
menacing her with destruction.

Scarcely knowing what she was doing, she ran to her bedroom closet,
pulled on her hat and fur coat, and took her muff to which the
morning’s violets were still pinned.

Then she went out into the city to seek Sadoul.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus it was that she had found him, had accused him, and demanded of
him an answer. And, even as she demanded, a flash of clairvoyance
answered her own question.

He had lied to her, but she already knew the truth.

So she had left him--hurrying because it was already late.

And now, driving east through the Park, where already electric
lights sparkled amid naked trees, only one clear thought remained
and persisted unconfused through all the tumult and bewilderment of
mind--the calm recollection of her engagement with Sutton.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was only five when she arrived--time enough to regain composure,
change her gown, and make disposition of the few flowers which she had
ordered that morning and which had been delivered while she was out.

Aglow from her bath, and a vigourous struggle with her thick, burnished
hair, action already was driving from her mind the hateful shadow
haunting it. Her maid came from the kitchen, wiped her efficient hands,
and got Gilda into her gown.

Her mistress had never had a guest to dinner, so Freda made no inquiry
concerning an improbable contingency; nor did Gilda even think of such
a possibility.

She went into the sitting-room, examined herself approvingly at full
length in the long gilt mirror, pirouetted, and immediately concerned
herself with the flowers and the two glass vases destined for them.
The carnations she placed on the piano, the roses on the tea-table.
Then she lightly made the tour of the room, poked the fire, dusted the
hearth, straightened pictures which the interminable jar of street
traffic always left askew again.

She crossed to the piano, and, standing, ran scales nervously; then
went over to her desk, seated herself, opened a drawer and consulted
her bank-book.

She must ask Sutton to advise her. Something must be done with her
money.

Delectable aromas from the kitchen reminded her agreeably that dinner
was preparing--then, horrified, she rose and opened both windows,
calling upon Freda to keep the kitchen door shut.

While the place was airing, she roamed about, casting frequent glances
at the clock which had struck six some time ago, and was now preparing
to announce the half hour.

An abrupt thought that Sutton might not come almost hurt. She gazed
rather piteously around at her preparations--the prim sofa cushions in
a row, the straightened pictures, the two vases full of flowers. She
was realising how happily she had counted on his coming.

The half hour sounded. She felt she would have scarcely any time at all
with him, dinner being so nearly ready.

She went slowly to the windows, closed them, drew the curtains. Her
heart was becoming heavy.

Five minutes later she was giving him up.

At a quarter to seven she gave him up.

Confused, hurt, and innocently surprised at the hurt--and with an
effort to believe that the disappointment was trivial--she heard seven
o’clock strike and turned to nod to Freda, who came to announce her
dinner.

“Those yoong yentleman do not come tonight?” inquired Freda.

“No, I think not.”

Gilda walked slowly into her tiny dining room. Appetite had left her.

As she seated herself, her door-bell rang.




                               CHAPTER XI


Sutton, always debonair, came in gaily:

“Awfully sorry to be so late,” he said, gracefully saluting and
retaining her hand. “I suppose you’ll put me out bodily, as you did
before----” He checked his breezy loquacity as the lighted dining room
and table caught his eye.

“Oh, Lord! I didn’t know I was that late!” he exclaimed. “Forgive me,
Gilda, and let me come tomorrow----”

“No; stay, please.”

“But this is rotten of me----”

“Please stay. I hadn’t thought of your remaining to dinner, but I’d be
happy if you would.”

“You charitable girl!--you really don’t want me----”

“I _do_.”

He hesitated; he even had the grace to blush; then he disembarrassed
himself of hat and overcoat, ashamed of himself for doing it.

Gilda ran into her bath-room, selected her best towels, combed out her
silver brush, dusted the powder from the toilet table, and returned to
Sutton.

“I’m a beastly bore,” he said, “and you know it! Yet, now you propose
to curry-comb me and feed me. Oh, Gilda!”

Her heart was blithe as she danced away to the kitchen door:

“Oh, Freda, Mr. Sutton will dine with me. There’s enough, isn’t there?”

Freda proved adequate to the emergency; a place was ready at table for
Sutton when he reappeared.

There was a fragrant oyster stew, two chops and a baked potato apiece,
half an artichoke with wonderful dressing, a cherry tart divided,
camembert, coffee, cigarettes.

Sutton appeared to be enchanted. He had an easy way of seeming so, but
he really was, this time.

Gilda was happy; her appetite had returned, and between them they ate
everything.

She broke off a rose-bud and gave it to Sutton for his button-hole.
Then they took their cigarettes and coffee into the living room, and
sat down side by side on the wide sofa where Gilda had placed the row
of prim cushions in pleasant anticipation of such an event.

Sutton was in high spirits, very sensible to the girl’s beauty, very
much the opportunist in any such situation.

“Why did you eject me so suddenly the other evening?” he asked in his
gay, bantering way. “First you bowled me over, Gilda, then you threw me
out!”

She turned shy at that, offering no reply, and addressed herself to her
Minton coffee cup.

“Didn’t I behave properly?” he insisted, laughing. But he could extract
no comment from her, and her uncertain smile baffled him.

“Are you quite all right again?” he inquired. “You look so wonderfully
fit that I didn’t even ask you.”

She said, diffidently, that she was perfectly recovered; and, at his
request, suffered him to examine the nape of her neck.

“Amazing!” he exclaimed. “Have you heard from any of
them--Pockman--Sadoul?----”

“I saw Sadoul.”

“Really! When?”

“Today.”

“Oh. What did he have to say about that rather ghastly affair?”

“He said I really died.”

Sutton shrugged. He no longer believed it. “Death is death,” he
observed. “There is no remedy for death, and there never was----”
Something seemed to check him; he hesitated--“Not since Christ,
anyway,” he added.

“I _did_ die,” she said in a low voice.

Her tranquil finality silenced him for a moment. He took her empty
coffee cup and set it aside with his own.

“Gilda,” he said, “I’ve a lot of very friendly curiosity about you--no
use pretending I haven’t. Am I impertinent?”

She remained mute, not looking at him, her slender and very white
little hands clasped loosely in her lap.

He said: “The other evening you asked me to advise you in regard to
investments, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Well, then,” he went on, “don’t you think I’d better tell you
something about myself?”

“If you care to.”

“All right. I’m twenty-eight; I’m in the lumber business. That’s what
made me so late this evening--one of our men arrived unexpectedly from
up-state. I had to talk to him. We’re reforesting on a big scale--we’re
driven to do it. Everybody has got to come down to cases in our
business, now, because the end of the standing timber is in sight, and
there’ll be no more lumber unless we lumbermen begin to grow some. But
you’re not interested in that----”

“I might be. I don’t know anything about lumber.”

“It’s an interesting business, really--if you’ll let me tell you
sometime. But now, in regard to any advice from me--it being your money
and not mine--all I could say to you would be on old-fashioned lines:
buy for investment only; buy only what is absolutely safe.”

“Is that what you would do if it were your money?”

“I’d probably speculate,” he admitted with a grin.

“I’ll do it if you advise it.”

“I _don’t_! Good heavens! I shouldn’t want anything like that on my
conscience.... Anyway, I know nothing about your circumstances----”

She told him very frankly and simply how much money she had. He
pointed out that, even in spite of the income tax, safe investments in
conservative securities would give her an income adequate to the needs
and even the little luxuries required by any young girl living alone in
New York.

She nodded: “I’ll tell you a little more about myself. My father and
mother did not live together. I grew up in boarding schools, here and
in France. I never had seen my father. He wrote to me once a month. My
mother sometimes visited me.... Then war came. My father suddenly sent
for me and I went to London. That was the first time I ever saw him....
And the last.

“Troops were leaving; he was an officer.... I might have liked him....
But he went away.... Before he left, he made provision for me.... And
that is the money I now have.”

“What else happened?” asked Sutton gently.

“My father was killed in Asia.”

“I see....”

“Mother arrived in London.... There was legal trouble.... I wanted her
to have half, but my father’s solicitors would not permit it. I was
trying to devise a way to divide with her when the German airships came
over.... Mother was killed ... in Regent Street.... They found her
gold-mesh bag.... Nothing else.”

Sutton waited gravely. Gilda sat with head lowered, her clasped hands
lying loosely in her lap, her brooding gaze remote.

“What happened to you then?” he asked.

“I thought I ought to learn how to support myself in case the Germans
overran the world and ruined everybody.”

“It nearly came to that,” he remarked.

“Yes.... So I hastened to learn shorthand and typing. When I was
fairly efficient, there happened to be a demand in Paris for English
stenographers who understood French.... So I took a position they
offered with an English firm of stenographers in the rue Colchas.” ...
She sat very still for a few moments, then, averting her head: “--That
is all, Mr. Sutton.”

Of course it was not all; she had not spoken of Sadoul nor of the
period in her life wherein he had been a factor. However, it was,
evidently, all she cared to tell him about herself.

He glanced sideways at her; she sat very still, gazing straight
in front of her. The pretty, childish contours seemed altered,
somehow--less youthful, sharper where shadow fell, accenting a profile
almost nobly traced. He watched her furtively, curiously, interested in
the detached sadness of a face so young, in its pale preoccupation with
things beyond his ken.

The opportunist in him, too, had become subdued in the gravity of her
altered mood.

The world always accepts you as you present yourself. So Sutton now
found himself inclined to view Gilda Greenway more seriously than he
had ever expected to. Usually he reserved for this sort of pretty girl
those gay, casual, amiable, irresponsible qualities usually expected of
a man by such girls.

She had not invited them, even at Derring’s. Apparently she did not
expect them.

Was she one of the impossible kind who supposed a man didn’t know the
difference?... Or--was there, possibly, not as much difference as
he naturally had supposed--meeting her sans façon at Derring’s--and
finding her so pliant in the end----

He had, of course, placed her, generally, but not at all definitely.
There seemed to be nothing specific about her--with her freshness and
youth and oddly winsome shyness.

Yet, there was Derring’s anything but exclusive party; and there was
Sadoul.... Certainly, he thought, there are all sorts in the world; and
of new kinds there is no ending.

He was first to break the long silence with a banality: “Some day,
Gilda, will you tell me more about yourself?”

She turned her head, faintly surprised: “No; I don’t think so.”

He took his snub with such unfeigned and flushed chagrin that she,
also, blushed.

“I didn’t mean it unkindly,” she murmured. “It sounds so. I’m sorry.”

Her concern was so candid, so unconsciously sweet, that he recovered
much too quickly. Such young men do. That’s the trouble with candour
and inexperience.

He told her, impulsively, how deeply interested in her he was becoming.
He took her passive little hands in his and told her again, with enough
emotion in his voice to charm and trouble her.

The emotion was quite genuine. It always is in young men. The only
trouble is that they have an unlimited capacity for it--if only the
girl involved be fair to look upon.

But now, in hopeful recollection of an episode altogether charming,
this young man was slightly surprised when Gilda’s supple body
stiffened, and her firm, cool hand removed his enterprising arm.

“Please,” she said under her breath, “--I had rather not.”

“You didn’t say that at Derring’s----”

Her lips tightened and she closed her eyes more tightly still, as
though chagrined at the remembrance.

“Are you really sorry, Gilda?”

“Yes.... I mean I don’t know whether I am.... I had rather you didn’t
kiss me--again----”

“I won’t, if you don’t wish it----”

“No.”

He took it amiably enough--even a trifle anxiously, afraid of offending
a girl who was beginning to pique his curiosity--that overwhelming
symptom of masculine egotism ever latent in young men.

“Of course,” he said gaily, “it was carnival time at Derring’s.... I
didn’t mistake you for a moment.... I really like you tremendously,
Gilda.... You are such a lovely thing, anyway--don’t be too severe with
me.”

“Not severe--with you.... No. It isn’t that.” ... She drew a deep
breath, smiled uneasily at him.

“I do like you.... I want to be friends.... Will you try always to
remember that?”

“Yes, you charming girl!----”

“--Because--you may not think so, sometimes.... I may do things you
will not understand.... It won’t be because I don’t--don’t like you.”

She rose; he stood up, too. She said slowly:

“I want you to go, now.... Will you still believe that I like you, very
much, if I--I ask you to say good-night to me?”

“Of course!... You’re the most winsome girl, Gilda--the most
delightful!--I _do_ care a lot for you----”

“Telephone me--soon.”

“Rather!” ... He had his coat on, now.... “I’ll call you tomorrow, if I
may.”

She nodded and opened the door for him. He wanted her hand again and
got it.

“You like me a little, don’t you, Gilda?”

Her tightly held hand began to tremble in his, and she loosened it with
a sudden nervous movement.

“I want you to go,” she whispered.

There was a strange, uncontrolled note in her voice--and he looked at
her green eyes in the demi-light.

“I’ll tell you--sometime,” she said breathlessly.... “I do care for
you.... We must help each other--not destroy----”

“What frightens you?”

“Please go, if you care for me at all!”

He stepped back in silence; the door closed smartly, and he heard
her bolt it. And, listening, he became aware of another sound in the
stillness--a murmur, broken, incoherent, as though inside the door the
girl were whispering to herself, and whimpering all alone.




                              CHAPTER XII


What was known concerning the extraordinary case of Gilda Greenway was
being man-handled, daily, at the Fireside Club--old George Derring
having gabbled widely to the fierce annoyance of Sadoul.

Pockman, also vastly annoyed, made the best of it--made no bones about
it, in fact.

Badgered, disgusted, but at bay, he was perhaps too cynical, too
indifferent, or possibly too confident of himself to lie or to evade
newspaper publicity--the terror of all reputable physicians.

“Well, what astonishes you?” he retorted to the veiled gibes from his
tormentors at the Fireside. “I’ve killed rats and done the same thing
to them.”

“Do you mean to tell us,” demanded Harry Stayr, “that you’ve
resurrected dead rats by grafting glands on their necks?”

“One gland--the nymphalic.”

“Oh! Have rats got that gland, too?”

“All vertebrates have it.”

“And those rats really were dead?”

“They were not only dead,” said Pockman wearily, “but I’d had them in
cold storage at zero for three months.”

“And when you thawed ’em out and operated they came to and squealed
their thanks,” suggested Stayr, grinning.

“They became lively enough in a few hours.”

“And squealed?”

“That’s what they did, Harry.”

“Did little Miss Greenway become gratefully demonstrative when you
brought her back from the Pearly Gates,” inquired Julian Fairless, “or
did she cry for her harp and halo?”

“When she came to life she dressed and went home in a taxi, I believe,”
replied Pockman drily.

“Where’s Sadoul’s girl to prove it?” demanded Sam Warne. “I’d like to
ask her what she saw up aloft after she died.”

“So you believe in the survival of the soul, do you, Sam?” said
Fairless languidly.

“Well--Pockman says so----”

“I did _not_ say so,” interrupted Pockman. “I said that I have proven
survival of the life principle in certain glands; and that, after what
we call death occurs, a state of anarchy prevails in the cadaver. All
the organs are still alive; the cells which compose them are engaged in
civil war.”

“What is your theory, then?”

“A very simple one--that the secretions of the nymphalic gland control
every one of the trillions of cells in the human body. I assume that
ultimate dissolution begins with atrophy of this gland. I believe that,
by grafting a new and young and living nymphalic gland upon a dead
human body, the organs of that body can be revived, rejuvenated, and
persuaded to resume their natural functions. And I am now absolutely
satisfied that I have proven this theory to be a fact.”

“Won’t this make a considerable splash in the medical puddle?” asked
Fairless.

“Not if the newspapers get hold of it,” replied Pockman. “As
Shakespeare says, ‘Publicity doth make monkeys of us all’!” He glanced
about him almost wistfully: “If you fellows would be reticent and
decent and permit me to go on for a year or two, and then, when I’m
ready, let me make my own announcement through proper channels----” He
looked around again at The Talkers; then the habitual and glassy smirk
disfigured him, and he shrugged his shoulders:

“What’s the use?” he concluded. “You’re born to talk and you’ll do it.
So I’ll get the dirty end of the stick for awhile--I’ll get what’s
coming to me from the newspapers. I’ll get hell from my profession. You
fellows couldn’t hold your tongues if you wanted to.”

“Matters discussed in a gentleman’s club are sacred,” observed somebody
heavily.

“Sure,” sneered Pockman; “--I’ve been a victim of gentlemen’s
agreements.” His pale eyes rested mockingly on Derring, flickered,
travelled on impartially.

“It’s the dinner table that undoes you,” he added, “--when it’s not
your best girl--in ‘strictest confidence.’ Yes--I know.”

“That’s a nasty thing to say about any member of this club,” protested
Julian Fairless. “I haven’t the slightest desire to gossip, and your
damned glands don’t interest me.”

“A nasty insinuation and a nasty subject,” broke out Derring, in his
high, shrill voice. “I’m sure I had enough of it when they put a corpse
into my spare bed and performed autopsies all over my apartment----”

“Do you object to our talking to Sutton and Sadoul about it?” inquired
Harry Stayr. “I promise you it won’t get outside this club----”

But Pockman had no illusions: “Talk your damned heads off if you
like,” he said, getting out of his arm-chair and striding away in that
ungainly, rickety gait which, Stayr insisted, always made him think of
Holbein’s “Dance of Death.”

Death continued to be the topic of The Talkers gathered around the
grate at the Fireside Club that snowy evening.

Sadoul, looking ill, wandered in later and joined the circle, but
sullenly refused information regarding the episode in question,
and stretched himself out on a lounge, his sombre eyes veiled in
indifference. Only when Mortimer Lyken strolled in was the surgical
aspect of the affair revived--Dr. Lyken’s researches having associated
him for years with the work of that shadowy personage generally known
as The State Electrician.

But Sing Sing autopsies, not the grafting of glands, were Lyken’s
specialties, and he had nothing new to contribute to the talk of The
Talkers.

So The Talkers, who loved to talk of The Beginning and of The End,
fell, presently, to discussing the soul--the same old soul which so
often they had proved non-existent, and merely a component part of the
exploded God-myth.

Said Stayr, whose articles on “The God-myth and Its Origin” were known
everywhere that Talkers talked:

“If some of you millionaires like George Derring will back me, I’ll
post a standing offer to perform any miracle mentioned in the New
Testament or forfeit the stakes.”

Somebody objected to treating such a matter as a sporting proposition.

“Why not?” insisted Stayr. “It’s the way to exterminate the God-myth
and Christ-superstition.”

Sutton, who had come in unnoticed and seated himself by the fire,
touched Stayr on the arm:

“Where does it get you, Harry, to prove there is no God?”

“Get me? What do you mean? Don’t you want the truth?”

“Yes.... But are _you_ authorised to dispense it?”

“Oh, well,” said Stayr, “--if you want to take that tone you’d better
stick to the God of your forefathers, Stuart.”

“But where does it get you?” persisted Sutton, “if you convince people
that there is no Divinity, no resurrection, no survival? The world is
a wolf at heart. What’s to control it if you destroy its belief in
spiritual survival?”

“Self-interest. The good will continue to be good, not for any sordid
reward hereafter, but because being good is good business. The bad will
be canned for the same reason.”

“You think the world could remain sane if it believed death meant
spiritual annihilation?”

“Isn’t the immortality of the cell enough?” inquired Lyken.

“He’s an authority on cells,” piped up old Derring:

    “Sing a song of Sing-Sing
    To see a poor guy die--”

His shrill doggerel ended in a cackle and he slapped his knee,
convulsed. It was George Derring at his most brilliant. But he gave
parties.

Lyken forced a smile: “You are composed of several billion cells that
never can die, George. Ultimately these cells will reunite, form a new
republic, and develop into another living being. Isn’t that enough
immortality for you?”

“That’s all there is to this soul business, anyway,” added Stayr.
“There’s no survival of individual personality after death.”

“You seem to differ with Sir Oliver, Sir William, and Sir Conan,” said
Fairless, “--not to mention a few million other educated folk.”

“I’ll do that, too, if Derring will stake me,” retorted Stayr. “I’ll
move tables, produce raps, report progress from celestial regions,
and materialise spirits. I’ll talk the jargon to you, too--all about
psychic forces and planes and controls--the whole bunch of bunk!”

Sadoul sat up on his couch and peered through the firelight at Stayr.

“As long as the world can depend on _your_ omnipotence, Harry,” he
sneered, “it won’t miss God.”

“What’s worrying you?” retorted Stayr. “Do you believe in spiritual
survival?”

Sadoul gazed about him. Half of his face was painted an infernal red
by the firelight, half remained in shadow. His lambent gaze rested on
Sutton, shifted from one man to the next, returned finally to Stayr.

“The life-principle survives after death,” he said in a dull voice.

“Yes, several billions of ’em,” rejoined Stayr, “--separately.”

“No; there is _personal_ survival--call it vital-principle
life-origin”--he shrugged--“call it soul, spirit--anything you
choose.... But it is indestructible; and it isn’t one of a billion
cells, or any of them, or all of them--the thing I speak of--it’s _you_
yourself; it’s your individual, personal survival in form, feature, and
intelligence.”

“In other words, the same old orthodox soul we’ve canned so often,”
nodded Stayr. “But up it pops like jack-in-the-box, every time you
psycho-hypnotic gentlemen wave your hands and murmur ‘abracadabra.’”

Fairless said politely: “Perhaps Sadoul has proven his theory of
individual spiritual survival.”

“Pockman proved his theory of physical survival,” added Warne,
“--according to his own deposition.”

“Do a hypnotic or psychic stunt for us,” urged Derring shrilly. “Go
ahead, Sadoul. Seeing is believing, you know,” he added, cackling.

Sadoul glanced at him disdainfully.

Sutton said: “If seeing were believing, there had been no crucifixion.”

“I’ll believe what I see,” piped Derring. “But you’ve got to show me,
Sadoul.”

Sadoul’s sombre gaze returned to Derring. He looked at him intently for
a moment; then, measuring his words:

“Very--well--Derring. I’ll--show--you. But--you--can--never--see;
never--understand. You--only--look--but--you--see--nothing.
You--hear--but--you--understand--nothing.... Stand--up--you--old--ass.”

Everybody had turned to stare at Derring. They saw him rise, obediently.

That he was under the control of Sadoul was evident to every man
present. Nobody questioned that; nobody exclaimed.

“That’s very clever of you, Sadoul,” said Stayr, putting on his
eye-glasses. “How did you pick him for a sure-fire subject?” He tried
to speak easily.

“Can you make him turn a hand-spring?” asked Fairless.

“Don’t make a monkey of him,” said Sutton sharply.

Derring’s faded, frivolous features remained fixed and rigid.

“Sit down,” said Sadoul, contemptuously. Derring obediently resumed his
chair.

Seated there, full in the firelight, there was something grotesquely
revolting about this carefully preserved, empty-headed, garrulous
bon-viveur, with all his shrill chatter shut off, all his fidgety
initiative paralysed--nothing left except an inhabited suit of evening
clothes and a foolish old face above a winged-collar----

“For heaven’s sake,” said Sutton, “wake him up, Sadoul.”

“Wake up, Derring,” said Sadoul carelessly.

Derring’s eyes had been open. Now he moved in his chair, glanced about
him, then looked at Sadoul.

“Well,” he said shrilly, “seeing is believing. You’ve got to show me,
Sadoul; I’m from----”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” snarled Stayr, and spat into the fire. Then,
looking at Sadoul: “Do you expect a thing like that to survive?”

“Expect what?” piped Derring. “What are you talking about? I missed
something somebody said----”

Fairless interrupted, speaking across the fire to Sadoul:

“Clean stuff,” he said, “--very professional.... And can a surgeon
operate under such conditions?”

“One first induces a more profound hypnosis.... After that--yes.”

“Major operations?”

“Certainly.”

“Treatment by suggestion, also, I suppose,” ventured Sutton.

“Yes.”

“Well,” admitted Stayr, “you called a bluff very cleverly, Sadoul. I
admit it. Now if you’ll show us a soul or two----”

“I showed one to Derring,” returned Sadoul with a slight sneer.

“Hey? Showed _me_? What do you mean?” cried Derring. “What did you show
me? I didn’t see anything----”

“I didn’t say you did. I said you _looked_ at something.”

“God bless me, what the devil did I look at?” exclaimed Derring. “Come,
now, Sadoul; that won’t do, you know. That’s all bunk, d’you see? I’ve
been sitting here all the time and I didn’t see anything unusual, nor
did anybody else, I’ll wager!”

Sam Warne laughed. Stayr, always bored and never amused by Derring’s
obvious antics, turned to Sadoul:

“Come on,” he said impatiently. “Show me something I can’t account for
and I’ll hand it to your orthodox God and go out of business.”

“Why should I? I don’t care what you believe,” retorted Sadoul wearily.

“Don’t you care if I believe you a fakir?”

“No.”

“Well, then, as a sporting proposition?”

“No.”

“Not even for the pleasure of making a monkey of me and putting me out
of business?”

“If I showed you--something--you wouldn’t believe you saw it.”

Fairless asked Sadoul if it were necessary for him to go into a trance
to materialise anything. Sadoul shook his head, but his sombre eyes
remained fixed on Sutton.

“What a fakir you are, Sadoul,” observed Stayr.

Sadoul, not noticing him, said to Sutton: “I can show you something.”

“What?”

“Something you’ll be up against unless you keep away from a certain
person of whom I have already warned you.... Shall I show you?”

“I don’t quite get you----”

“Very well. _Look!_”

Almost at the same moment Sutton saw something on the lounge beside
Sadoul--a greyish figure that became more distinct as he stared at
it--the figure of a girl--her face already assuming the contour and hue
of life.

He realised it was Gilda he was staring at--yet a Gilda he had never
seen in living shape--this sensuous young thing with softly rounded
body, a trifle too heavy, with lips too full, too scarlet--this unknown
Gilda with her languid eyes--her smiling lips scarce parted----

Swiftly the thing turned grey, faded--was no longer there.... Sutton
got up; Sadoul rose, also.

“Did you see anything?” asked Sadoul grimly.

“Yes.”

“Well--_that’s_ what the cat brought back!... _You_ wouldn’t like it,
Sutton.... But _I_ do.... So keep away or there’ll be trouble----”

Stayr, who had risen, took Sadoul by the elbow.

“Very clever,” he said harshly, forcing his voice to steady it; “--very
neat and professional, Sadoul. I saw a grey thing, resembling a human
figure, seated on the lounge beside you.... You hypnotised me, of
course----”

“I told you that you wouldn’t believe what you saw,” sneered Sadoul,
shoving past him and striding toward the door.

“Did _you_ see anything?” demanded Fairless, pulling Stayr’s sleeve. “I
didn’t.”

The latter glanced around at the others with an annoyed expression, yet
slightly foolish, too.

Nobody else, it appeared, had noticed anything unusual, but everybody
was curious to hear what Stayr had seen.

“That fellow, Sadoul,” said Stayr, “is a fakir.... I thought I saw
something.... I guess he got in some of his hypnotic bunk on me when I
was off my guard.... Something like that.... Isn’t that about how it
hit you, Sutton?”

“Perhaps.”

“You _did_ see something, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know--I guess so,” he said vaguely.

“Don’t you want to talk about it?” asked Stayr uneasily.

Sutton shook his head and walked slowly toward the cloak-room.




                              CHAPTER XIII


Sutton’s daily programme was characteristic of young men of his sort.

He rose early enough in the morning to bolt a cup of coffee by nine
o’clock, and be at his office by half-past nine.

In New York, workmen rise early; business men late--a custom that had
better change before it is changed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sutton’s business, in common with the business of most reputable
people, had suffered under the eight years’ blight of a mindless
administration.

Even from the beginning, the grotesqueries of a comic-opera cabinet had
alarmed the business world. Now, through eight incredible years, amid
the ape-like leaps and capers of a contemptible Congress and the din
of the demagogues in authority, a faint glimmer appeared in the grey
obscurity.

Monstrous policies, infamous measures were nearing a climax; social
unrest was approaching a boiling point; all the national and local scum
from those eight miserable years was coming to the surface.

There it floated in its filth, stupidity, arrogance,
incompetency--there seethed the dregs, too--national humiliation,
sectional ruthlessness, class hatred, bitter consciousness of the
world’s amused contempt.

There were the poisonous precipitations, too, in this hellbroth wherein
the nation was stewing--enmities sown recklessly abroad; at home, the
most infamous tax laws ever imposed since the day of the German King of
England, George III.

And then the grotesqueries--the fanatic, rampant and victorious,
imposing _his_ will as ruthlessly as the Holy Office had dealt with
any who opposed its dogmas--an entire people indicted as drunkards,
and laws made to discipline everybody--laws contemplated, advocated,
to regulate a people’s religious beliefs, devotional observances,
spiritual requirements, minds--every inherent liberty which was theirs!

Everywhere the bigot, the despot, the mental pervert, were lifting
hydra heads out of the accumulations of the last eight years. And, on
this rotting culture, the crack-brain fed and battened--the parlour
socialist; the ragged--and far more to be respected--anarchist;
the miserable scribbler of seditious articles; the half-crazed
intellectual, writing in praise of human equality--to which he must
aspire in vain; the terrorist screaming in red print; the half-educated
millionaire, with his mischievous efforts to start a religious pogrom;
Congressmen of the “poor white” variety, appealing to sectionalism;
and then the vast genus of Grafter--the contractor with his “code of
practice”; the politician getting “his”; the walking delegate; the
“leaders” who make the very name of “labour” a nauseating stink.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now, in this grey, unhealthy obscurity befogging a nation, and
gradually thickening during the last eight years, men’s minds and
thoughts became dull and greyish, too.

Dull minds ruled and dictated the “trend of modern thought,” the cult
of the commonplace made the average person duller, the stupid stupider,
the intellectual morose.

It was an era of joyless dulness in literature and in art; creative
work by the dull for the dull offered only what was negative and
dreary. Solemnity reigned. The misty moroseness of Scandinavia and of
Russia settled like a cloud over the country, clogging inspiration,
tarnishing all brightness, reproving exuberance, so that in modern
fiction there remained no buoyancy, no charm, no beauty, no tender
frailty, nor any hint of sun and blue sky--nothing of human
aspiration--no heart, no blood--only a monotony of all that is sordid,
colourless, and passionless in human life.

In art, too, the plodding pedant spread the accentless cult of the
commonplace, or of ugliness, physical and spiritual. That tour de force
of degraded taste, _The Faun_, symbolised horribly the mental decadence
of a sickened world.

The human-cow-school flourished: in every studio and art gallery
cow-like human females suckled babies or dangled large bronze hands or
marble feet over meaningless pedestals.

Architects beautified such squares as The Plaza with chunks of Indiana
limestone and a series of superimposed cheeses for a fountain to
face a gilded General, whose steed was led recklessly down town by a
barefooted servant-girl wearing wings.

The ugliness that was New York’s!--the ugliness that was the
nation’s!--physical, mental, spiritual, affronting a Creator who
created nothing unlovely since the first nebulæ floated incandescent on
the ocean of the night.




                              CHAPTER XIV


The only sign to indicate the suite of offices was a bronze and marble
tablet between elevators:

    SUTTON AND SON
    (INC. 1809)
    LUMBER

According to custom, the senior Sutton always retired upon arriving at
the age of sixty, and turned over the business to his sons.

Stuart was the only son of the present generation.

       *       *       *       *       *

So his father, Charles Edward Stuart Sutton, conforming to the
custom of methodical forebears, strolled out of the flower-bedecked
private office on his sixtieth birthday, wearing a white rose in his
buttonhole, and a bland expression on his handsome features.

Which troubled mightily his son and heir.

“For heaven’s sake, dad,” he remonstrated, “you’re not going to leave
me flat like that, are you?”

“You bet,” returned Sutton senior; “I’ve had enough. So hoist your own
flag, Stuart, and lay your own course. Your mother and I propose to
saunter through the remainder of our lives.”

“But if I signal for a pilot----”

“Certainly. Set signals if you need me. But unless you’re really in a
pickle, be a good sport, Stuart.”

They exchanged a handshake; Sutton senior strolled on; son,
considerably sobered, stood motionless in the familiar private office,
staring at the masses of flowers, feeling uncomfortably modest and
slightly alarmed.

He had supposed that he had already discounted the inevitable
retirement of his guide, prop, and mentor. He really had. This painful
modesty was due to the sentimental shock that now stirred up his boyish
emotions.

The normal boy experiences it at the moment his father leaves him at
his first boarding school. All bumptiousness disappears. He needs his
daddy.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day Sutton junior arrived alone at the office and was received
respectfully as the head of the firm.

There were fresh flowers for him. The entire office force presented
congratulations individually.

That ceremony over, Stuart closed the door, poked up the coal fire in
the grate, went to his desk and laid violent hands on a formidable
morning mail.

Until noon he dictated letters. He lunched at the Foresters Club--a
luxurious place on top of the newest skyscraper.

All that rainy afternoon he remained busy with his secretary, Miss
Tower, or with business callers, or with officers and clerks of his own
entourage.

He left rather late, and was too late to dress for dinner, finding his
father and mother already at table.

“Did you get along all right?” asked his father, carelessly.

“Well, yes, I think so. You know there’s one thing you inaugurated,
about which I don’t know anything----”

“Our land reclamation policy?”

“That’s it. I’d better go up and look over the new pineries.”

“They’re mostly under snow, now. But I think you better go in the
spring.”

His mother said: “It’s all like a dream. I can’t realize that your
father has retired and that you are ‘Sutton and Son.’”

“Well, _I_ realise it,” remarked the husband. “I’ve been trying to
decide between California, the West Indies, and the Riviera. I can’t.
Can you, Helen?”

The mother smiled and looked at the son. She was loath to put such
distances between them.

“If Stuart would only learn to take care of himself----”

“For heaven’s sake, mother!”

“You won’t go to a doctor when you take cold!” retorted his mother.
“You smoke too much, you don’t eat properly, you sit up too late. I
shall worry if I go away.”

Her son had passed the resentful age; some glimmer of understanding
mitigated masculine impatience under maternal solicitude.

“I haven’t had a cold this winter; or needed a pill, either. Go ahead
and gallivant with dad.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Sutton senior and his wife were going to the opera, and the car had
already arrived.

They lingered over coffee in the library, listening to Stuart’s
description of his first day down town as head of the firm.

Maternal pride struggled with eternal solicitude: “You’ll stand by him
at first, won’t you, Charles? Stuart’s shoulders must be gradually
accustomed to such a burden. Before arriving at any vital decision he
ought always to consult you; etc., etc.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Theirs was that solid respectability that maintains ancestral estates
on the Hudson and a grim brownstone or brick foothold not too far from
the Marble Arch.

That section of society known as the Zoo recognized them, mechanically;
but there was no foregathering. Even the fat and formidable
ring-mistress of the Zoo, now in her dotage, but still socially
formidable--and whose only remaining pleasure was in making lists of
people she did not want to know--had not cared to write off such folk
as the Charles Edward Stuart Suttons.

The snob-sets were tolerantly aware of them; the intellectuals, the
nomads, the scores of social whirlpools and puddles in which swam the
contents of Blue Book and Register, all were politely conscious of that
rather placid and dowdy circle born of the Hudson and rooted amid the
rocks of old Manhattan since he of the wooden leg marched out and the
red ensign shot up over old Fort George.

“They do anything they damn please, but ignore you if you do the
same,” was a complaint not unknown in New York regarding such folk as
foregathered with the Suttons.

This was true. They made no bones about doing as they pleased within
their circle or outside it. But in one respect they were beyond
reproach; they seldom made an undignified marriage. Where other sets
had been diluted by frequent mésalliances, they married and propagated
their own sort. No obscure beauty born in outer barbarism, no frail and
lovely meteor from the Follies, no charming daughter of the nouveau
riche, had penetrated, matrimonially, those dull and dowdy mansions
which gazed complacently upon the Hudson--frequently through dirty
windows.

       *       *       *       *       *

A rather frowsy maid in limp black came to announce the family bus--a
limousine of pre-war excellence and dignity, and not to be discarded in
deference to fashion.

For six years it had rolled majestically over New York asphalt and the
Boston Post Road, and had borne the Suttons between the town house on
Ninth Street and Heron Nest, the ancestral Hudson home.

Now it was solidly ready to bear them unto the temple of music, and
thence homeward ere it was solemnly put to bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Going, his mother fulfilled the ceremony of the family kiss:

“Good night, Stuart. _Don’t_ sit up late; you won’t feel well in
the morning.... I forgot to say there was a girl called you on the
telephone about six o’clock--I should say a well-bred person from
her voice. Her name was Greenway. But I don’t seem to remember any
Greenways----”

“There were the Courtland Greenways----” remarked Sutton senior, giving
his son the family handshake.

Descending the stairs, his wife reminded him that the Courtland
Greenways were in London.

As the front door closed below, Stuart unhooked the telephone receiver
and called Gilda Greenway’s number.

He waited a long while. He could hear the operator ringing.

At last came the final nasal verdict: “The party doesn’t answer.”

He hung up, drew the evening paper toward him, hesitated.

Gilda’s maid had gone home; Gilda had gone out.... He wondered
where.... It was odd, but he hadn’t thought of her as having
friends--going about in the evenings.... Still, he had first seen her
at Derring’s.... Derring’s.... Was that the sort of thing she had gone
to?... With whom?... With Sadoul?

He spread his newspaper with decision, read the headlines
successively--read on for a while ... sat thinking with the paper
across his knees.

That saturnine mountebank, Sadoul!... Clever, always; but always a
charlatan.... Yet not entirely a fakir.... Derring had been clay
in Sadoul’s hands that evening at the Fireside Club.... And as for
the--whatever it was--vision, or image--the shape he saw--_thought_ he
saw.... Of course that was some sort of mental suggestion--hypnotic
suggestion--something of that sort----

An impertinent thing for Sadoul to do.... Clever, of course--a
trick.... But outrageous to evoke--project--materialise--or rather,
mentally suggest, to him such an aspect of Gilda.... That sensual,
wanton-eyed, languid girl with her heavier limbs and her thick red
lips----

He picked up his newspaper, tried hard to read it, flung it onto the
sofa, and went to the telephone.

Her number did not answer.




                               CHAPTER XV


The firm of Sutton & Son, while solvent, had been hard hit. All honest
business was in the same pickle or in a worse one.

Through a murk of business despair the miserable year approached its
end. The national administrative body, too, like a dying rat, was
now nearing dissolution--with kicks and jerks and spasms from the
intellectual tatterdemalions who composed the vital parts of it.

Distant, still, loomed the incoming administration. It was too early
to expect--perhaps even too early to hope--that the scandalous
inequality of taxation might be remedied--that economical decency
might prevail, founded upon a budget system--that universal service,
military and civil, might unify the nation and make it secure and
self-respecting--that an international tribunal, reserving national
self-determination, and backed by proper means to enforce its verdicts,
might be erected upon the ruins of the ridiculous league which the
nation had repudiated.

Perhaps such a programme was too much to hope for, judging from the
congressional scum still stagnating in what had become the national
disposal plant.

And New York was depressed with the approach of a blue Christmas, a
bluer New Year, and prospects of the very bluest blue.

And, among others, Sutton & Son paid the fourth quarter of its income
tax and found that it had nothing left to lay aside.

       *       *       *       *       *

So the Year of Graft was closing amid a mess of scandals--municipal,
industrial--all the old symptoms of corruption, and a few new ones.

A good man is a good thing; and the American people, who love good
things, gorge themselves, over-eat, spew it up, and blame the good
thing.

So went the greatest modern American; so went the best modern mayor of
Gotham; and the American people turned gratefully to their swill again.

       *       *       *       *       *

Stuart had come uptown early, aghast at the future taxes to be faced,
terribly depressed by a long consultation with his bankers and the
utter impossibility of obtaining sufficient financial aid.

But he had no intention of carrying such a face home. He continued on
uptown, trying to walk himself into a glow of cheerfulness.

But the crowds on Fifth Avenue lent him no countenance; it was a
noticeably subdued throng, in spite of the late sunshine--not the
bustling, cheery, complacent crowd that, in former years, stimulated
already by the distant prospect of Christmas, surged gaily north and
south along acres of gilded grilles and plate glass.

He thought he would go as far as The Province Club--that dull oasis of
social respectability usually avoided by its members--but the sight of
it annoyed him and he kept on.

Sunset still reddened the western wastes of Jersey as he entered the
Park.

But there the sheer dreariness of everything halted him.

A first and sure symptom of hidden corruption is municipal neglect of
the Park.

Dead trees stood everywhere. The long row of elms stretching up Fifth
Avenue, decimated, had been replaced by wretched little elms, instead
of the only tree suitable--the sycamore.

Untidy scraps of paper fluttered over path and grass; untidy employees
slouched and dawdled and puttered among eroded hillocks and crippled
vegetation.

High in the sunset sky sea-gulls passed over toward the reservoirs and
North River; and across dead grass starlings walked and chilly sparrows
hopped and quarrelled.

Stuart turned back again into the shabbiest metropolis in the
world--but a good enough city for its fool inhabitants--and, not
knowing where to take such a solemn face as he wore, walked on at
hazard, infinitely depressed by the dinginess of life.

With the crowd he waited while the glare in the traffic-towers died out
and a crimson lens and a green one signalled cross-street vehicles to
move. Then, as the white flare played out once more over the Avenue,
he walked on mechanically, a prey to sinister reflections, noticing no
passing face, no lighted window, nothing specific in the moving swarm
or in the glass corridors through which it poured.

At Forty-second Street, traffic having halted, he turned to cross to
the west side of the Avenue. Somebody, crossing eastward, nodded,
passing him. As he took off his hat and turned to identify her, she
also looked back.

“Gilda!” he exclaimed, retracing his steps to join her.

She was in black and white and wore silver-fox and violets--a slender,
elegant figure of Gotham type indigenous nowhere else on earth.

“Are you shopping?” he asked, “or are you homeward bound--or elsewhere?”

“I’m homeward bound, Mr. Sutton. Will you walk with me?”

“If I may.”

“Of course.... It’s two weeks since I have heard a single word from
you.”

“Two weeks ago tonight I telephoned you,” he retorted bluntly.

She frowned, considering, trying to recollect. “Two weeks ago
_today_?” Suddenly she remembered, with a rush of vivid colour to her
cheeks.

“I called you at eight-thirty, and again at ten,” he went on; “but your
house did not answer.”

“I’m sorry.... My maid sleeps out....”

“You also must have been out.”

“Yes.” She offered no further information. Her affairs were, obviously,
none of his business; yet once more he felt that slight resentment, as
though some explanation were due him.

At the corner of Thirty-fifth Street she stopped in the glare of the
show windows.

After a moment’s hesitation, she offered her white-gloved hand.

“Are you dismissing me?” he asked good-humouredly.

“Why, no,” she said with a quick blush, “--if you care to--remain with
me----”

“Shall we dine somewhere and go to a show, Gilda?”

“I’d love to; only, you see ... my maid already is preparing dinner.”
There was a pause: she looked away from him, hesitated, added shyly:
“Would you care to dine with me?”

“Do you really want me again?” he laughed.

She looked up, smiling: “I’m dying to have you,” she said. “You know
it.”

The winning candour of the girl enchanted him, quickening the dull mind
and heart he had carried about with him all day long.

“You’re charmingly generous,” he said, walking on beside her; “it
hasn’t been a very gay day down town and I’m not in extravagantly high
spirits.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ll try--try to----”

“----To put me in boisterous humour?” he inquired.

They both laughed as they climbed the dusky stairway to her apartment.

“I’ll try to be cheerful anyway,” she said, unlocking her door.

They went in.

She left him to look after himself and continued on toward the
kitchen. Her maid presently appeared, turned up the lights, smiled at
Sutton, and offered conveniences to enable him to rid himself of the
accumulated grime of Gotham.

Later, when he was seated on the sofa with the evening paper, the maid
reappeared and closed Gilda’s bedroom door.

He glanced at the financial columns; and gloom returned. There was more
unpleasantness on the front page, with its scare-heads recording graft,
violence, greed, at home and abroad.

Gilda took the usual three evening papers--the one popularly supposed
to make vice attractive, the one notorious for making virtue odious,
and the third unpopularly known as “pink and punk.”

There was nothing of merit in any of them. The same clowns conducted
special sections as vehicles for a sort of mother-wit; the same critics
devoted the same space to exploitation of their own idiosyncrasies,
offering the reader nothing of value concerning the books and plays
which they pretended to discuss.

An incredible meanness seemed to characterise these modern
papers; there was in them nothing generous, nothing just, nothing
honest--nothing, in fact, except the dreary evidence of uneducated
contributors and of vulgar intelligences furtively directing them.

Stuart’s depression had now returned with a vengeance. He got up and
began to walk about, nervously inspecting Gilda’s household gods--the
few inexpensive mezzotints, the orange-tinted curtains and upholstery;
the silvery-green carpet, the desk of sycamore and tulip wood painted
with tiny flowers, where lay writing materials, wax, seal, and a
silver-gilt candlestick bearing a yellow taper.

Except for the Adam desk, the English mirror, and a couple of old
Sceaux figures on the mantel, there was nothing either antique or
valuable in the room. Yet taste and colour charm were everywhere
evident--in the yellow Japanese bowl where flowers were growing, in the
lamp shades, draperies, pictures.

He went to the shelf of books and looked at their titles. All were
standard works in French or English--dramatists, essayists, poets,
historians, haphazard memoirs--Saint-Simon, Fanny Burney, Lady
Russell, Cardinal Retz, Evelyn, Pepys--a sprinkling of dictionaries
and reference books--all of Tennyson, all of Shakespeare, volumes of
Coleridge, Keats, Robert Browning, the Laus Veneris--all of Molière,
some of Racine, Musset, Hugo--but nothing modern save Rostand and
Maeterlinck.

And among all there was not one unused volume, nor one doubtful or
unhealthy or degenerate book--no fiction later than Dickens, Scott,
Thackeray, Hugo and Dumas, except the Belgian mystic and the great
French poet.

The whole place, in fact, gave Stuart an odd sensation of having seen
such a room somewhere else.

He said so when Gilda’s door opened and she came forward in a black
dinner gown, smiling inquiringly as though to ask him how he had spent
the time awaiting her.

“It’s so comfortable--all this----” he indicated the ensemble.

“It’s cheerful, isn’t it?” she assented, pivoting to review the
familiar place.... “There was a room in my father’s house in London----
... I tried to make this look a little like it.”

“That’s probably what I feel,” he nodded; “----it’s like a room in
an English home.... And as for you, Gilda, you are very beautiful in
black; do you know it?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “I don’t.”

All men like feminine youthfulness in black, but feminine youthfulness
usually avoids black until it becomes inadvisable to wear it.

“You’re lovely,” he repeated. “I once thought you very fetching in
green, but you’re adorable in black.”

She gave him a demure glance to see if he were in earnest, and, seeing
that he was, turned happily to nod to Freda, then took his offered arm
lightly, with exaggerated ceremony.

“We’re to dine on last night’s turkey, my poor friend; do you mind?”
she explained gaily, as Freda set the better part of a fine roasted
bird in front of Stuart.

“The wonder to me is that anybody can afford turkey,” he remarked,
preparing to carve.

“Oh, this bird was a present. It’s a wild turkey. I have some mallard
ducks, too, in the ice chest, and several quail.”

Always it seemed to surprise him to discover that Gilda had other
friends than himself. He wondered who had sent her the game--a man, of
course, and, of course, a wealthy one. Always, too, the slightest sense
of uneasiness accompanied such discovery--perhaps with the memory of
Derring’s party in mind--the memory of Sadoul, too, and of Pockman, and
all that irresponsible, over-accented crew of irregulars from which,
sooner or later, are recruited the frail battalions of Cytherea.

Yet why he should make it a personal matter at all was not clear to
him: it was none of his concern what friends this young girl had--this
girl whose status had seemed more or less obvious when he first met
her, and afterward anything but obvious.

For since then he had come to realise that he knew absolutely nothing
about her--that he never had encountered any prototype with which to
compare her.

Only one thing seemed evident; she didn’t belong to Sadoul; she didn’t
belong in the Cytherean element where he had found her. He simply
couldn’t determine what might be her proper habitat, or to what genus
to assign her.

Gilda was gaily animated during dinner--having discovered that shooting
interested her somewhat subdued guest.

And presently Stuart warmed up, stimulated by her tactful questions;
and he began to tell her all about the game club in Virginia of which
he and his father were members, and about the upland and water shooting
to be had there--the live decoys and how they were cared for, handled,
and bred; the kennels, and how promising pups were trained--all the
gossip and lore of masculine haunts whither man repairs to shoot and
drink and gamble and sprawl and gossip with his brother man.

After dinner she was still the interested hostess whose light, swift
response to the voluble mood she had evoked in him gave him no interval
for gloomy reaction.

But reaction was inevitable; it was coming now. Aware of it, she went
to the piano and started midway in one of those vivid, impetuous
Hungarian fragments, wild as a Tzigane’s frolic where the flashing
skirts reveal a knife in every garter.

He leaned moodily on the piano, passing his fingers through his crisp,
blond hair, his gaze absently following her flying hands hovering like
white moths above the keys.

Stopping capriciously, she rose and reached over for a pile of tattered
music; but his hand checked hers; held it.

“I want to talk to you, Gilda.”

She nodded, came from behind the piano: “Please don’t look so worried,
Mr. Sutton. Can’t I make you forget for a while?”

They had seated themselves on the lounge where her prim cushions stood
in a tidy row.

“Anyway,” she said, “your troubles can not be really vital.”

He looked at her with sudden curiosity:

“No, they are not vital. Are _yours_?”

“Mine?... I have no troubles.”

After a silence she said lightly, but with an effort: “Anyway, we are
not going to compare troubles this evening, I hope. Otherwise, I’m a
miserable failure at amusing you.”

“I’m not thinking of my own troubles, Gilda.”

“I have not asked you to concern yourself with mine,” she said coolly.

“Is that a snub?”

She flushed: “Do you think I could afford to snub my only friend in New
York?”

“You have other friends, haven’t you?”

She shrugged her shoulders and her head remained lowered.

“You never speak of your friends to me, Gilda,” he added.

“Do you speak of yours to me, Mr. Sutton?”

Naturally he had not. There had been no reason to--no point of contact
or of interest, of course, between the people he knew and a girl he had
picked up at Derring’s.

She lifted her head and looked at him gravely:

“I am not interested in your friends. As for the people I know, I do
not believe they would interest you. They scarcely even interest _me_,”
she added with a ghost of a smile.

“Do _I_ interest you, Gilda?”

“Do _I_ interest _you_, Mr. Sutton?”

“More than--than I can find words to tell you,” he blurted.

“Oh.... There’s a dictionary in my bookcase--if you require words----”

He turned very red.

“To aid your limited vocabulary,” she explained, already uneasy at her
own badinage. But the next second he was laughing, and she seemed much
relieved.

Her unexpected and delicate impertinence, and now her confused smile,
enchanted him.

“I don’t need your dictionary,” he said, “to say you’re the most
charming girl I ever knew--and that’s how much you interest me!”

He took one of her hands. She suffered it to remain in his possession
but gave him a sweet, confused look, utterly irresistible to
sentimental youth.

Like the majority of young men under similar circumstances, he had no
particular intentions when he drew her forward into his arms and kissed
her. She shook her head, averted her face; but he tipped her head back
against him; and she remained so, restless, unresponsive, silent.

A little flame flickered in the boy’s heart and stole through his
veins, hurrying the rhythm of every pulse. The faint, warm scent of her
restless head--the softness of her body--were thrilling him; but he
tried to speak lightly:

“----There was once a little Queen in Green who returned a kiss I gave
her----”

“I can’t--any more.”

“Why?”

She was silent.

“Why?” he urged.

“Because there is somebody else to consider!”

Chilled, he released her. She drew away slowly.

“You didn’t understand me,” she said, not looking at him.

“You meant that there is another man to consider, didn’t you?”

“I meant that I must consider myself.... Indiscretion is a temptation
when I’m with you.”

He drew a swift breath of delight and relief: “But, Gilda dear, there
is nothing to be afraid of with me!”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s nothing rotten about me----”

“How do you know there isn’t about _me_?”

“What!” he cried incredulously; and caught her in his arms, laughing,
drawing her closer.

“Now,” he said gaily, holding her imprisoned, “are you afraid any more?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t afraid at Derring’s.”

“No.... But--that was before I--I died.”

“What do you mean, Gilda?” he demanded.

She said almost fiercely: “Because I _do_ care for you, I’ve got to
tell you everything, I suppose!... I wasn’t afraid for myself that
night at Derring’s.... I was merely bashful and stupid about it. But
_now_, I’m afraid.... Because I--I am _not_ that same girl you kissed
at Derring’s. That girl died.”

“What! Do you actually believe you died that night?”

“I _know_ I died.... And when my soul--or whatever it is called--tried
to reënter my body she found another occupant there!”

“Another--soul?”

“Yes, a stranger. My own soul drove her out! I _saw_ that other one.
She was a sly, supple, beastly thing; and she struggled to stay....
I might as well tell you, too, that she often comes back, slinking
around, lurking about to get possession.... I suppose you’ll think me
insane to tell you this. But--I like you--so much--that I had to tell
you.... And that’s why I’m afraid--to let you--touch--me----”

“Good heavens, Gilda,” he said, “this is a sort of waking nightmare--an
obsession----”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.... Ask Sadoul, then----”

“Sadoul!” And all at once he remembered the shadow-shape he saw on the
lounge beside Sadoul that night at the Fireside.

A sudden, raging curiosity seized him, overwhelmed him, to learn
more--if there was more to learn--if, indeed, there was anything at all
real and coherent in this wild absurdity he had listened to.

He said: “Sadoul is a clever fakir--I suppose he hypnotised me--for
he once showed me something that vaguely resembled you--parodied you,
Gilda, in a rather dreadful way----”

“When?” she whispered.

He told her everything briefly. “If that’s the thing you’re afraid
of,” he added, “make yourself easy, Gilda, for it’s not real; it’s not
a spirit; it’s nothing but a rather beastly brain-figment shaped by
Sadoul’s mind. By hypnotic suggestion he made me see it, too. That’s
all there was to that affair.”

She sat white, drooping, silent--not resisting when he drew her to him.

“You mustn’t be afraid,” he said. “You didn’t really die, of course.
Nothing threatens your soul, or mine.”

She looked up, still very white; he put one hand behind her head, but
she turned her cheek to his kiss, shivering in his arms.

“I tell you,” she said in a low, hurried voice, “that the _Other One_
is watching us. I’ve got to be on my guard----”

“You darling. You need not be----”

“Stuart!--for God’s sake--listen----”

“Are you afraid to let me kiss you, you adorable child?”

“Yes! And I’m afraid to tell you--tell you what I’ve got to tell you,
now--that it was not I who called you on the telephone two weeks ago.
It was the _Other One_! It was--it was _that thing you--you saw seated
beside Sadoul_!”

“Are you mad?”

She said desperately: “I’m trying to tell you something terrible that
has happened to me. I’m trying to tell you that my own soul had been
driven out of me when I telephoned you, and that the _Other_ was in
possession!

“And--and not finding you, that _Other One_ called Sadoul.”

“Sadoul!”

“My God, yes! But only to mock and torment him--not for the reason that
I--that _it_ called you.... I want you to listen to me, Stuart....
Sadoul came here that evening. I was waiting and ready, burning, the
very devil in me. We dined at the Palais Royal--danced. Then there were
other places.... And later a party at Harry Stayr’s.... I drank enough
to terrify myself.... It was daylight before the dance ended. I don’t
know what I said to the men there or the women. Women still call me up
every day. Men send flowers and ask me to dinner. One of them sent me
that game from the South.... And that’s what I did!--God knows why!...
_Now_, do you want to kiss me? Do you want to touch me? Do you care to
chance what might happen if the _other_ caught us off our guard?”

His face had become ghastly. He got up from the sofa, took an uncertain
step toward the door; looked back at her in horror; and saw her eyes
blinded with welling tears.

“I had to tell you,” she said.... “You won’t care to--to see me again,
will you?... Because I told you I was afraid--if you kiss me--you might
find the--the _Other One_ in your arms----”

He came back to her in a sudden passion:

“I’d better look after you, I think, if you’re likely to make another
night of it!”

“Stuart--do you care?”

“Of course, damn it! You don’t belong on Broadway. You don’t belong at
Derring’s or at Harry Stayr’s! I don’t know what this crazy obsession
of yours amounts to.... It can’t be true. There are no such things as
malign spirits watching to possess and destroy anybody.... And God
knows _I_ shan’t ever harm you--Gilda--Gilda!----”




                              CHAPTER XVI


When Stuart Sutton told Gilda Greenway that he intended to keep an eye
on her, he meant it.

Her own account of her behaviour surprised and disconcerted him. He
hadn’t supposed she was likely to do that sort of thing; yet, after all
there was no reason for him to think otherwise.

Somehow, his boyish egotism persuaded him that he had become a factor
in Gilda’s career. He had airily taken it for granted that, since their
encounter at Derring’s, the girl had lost interest in other parties and
other men.

Her description of her conduct had jarred, disappointed, even irritated
him, although he realised it was none of his business.

However, all that was one thing; and her amazing belief in her
spiritual peril was another.

Undoubtedly the girl’s dread was genuine. There could be no question
that she believed herself to be threatened by what she called the
_Other One_.

Sutton had heard The Talkers talk about “possession”--the temporary
but repeated seizure of the human body by mischievous disincarnate
intelligences, when that human body was in a defenceless state due to
physical insensibility, either healthy or morbid.

Science recognised the phenomenon, examples of which varied. The
personalities of the subjects “possessed” were as far apart as Mr. Hyde
and Sir William Crooke’s pretty little helpmeet in her teens.

Hypnotic and psychic phenomena, in their sensational aspects, interest
everybody.

Stuart Sutton had read a little--and superficially--concerning the
latter subject. He had heard The Talkers arguing about it. It was the
fashion to take it seriously. Stuart so took it.

Like the majority of people, he also concluded that individual survival
after death, even if not scientifically proven, was safely to be
assumed as a fact. He had really never doubted anything about it
except its orthodoxy. The indestructibility of that living, individual
intelligence we call the soul is a belief necessary to the world’s
moral health.

But to Stuart, as to the majority, the soul is a widely different thing
from the physically living being which harbours it.

Modern scientific investigators, however, seem to think otherwise.
Among these were Sidney Pockman and Casimir Sadoul.

       *       *       *       *       *

Stuart came into the Fireside Club for dinner one wet, windy night,
tired from a bad day down town, where the banks cared to lend little
money and everybody wore long faces and stocks had tumbled from seven
to ten points at closing.

The boy was nervous, depressed, needed a cheerful face and voice, and
found neither. He had called Gilda on the telephone but her maid said
she was dining out--another disconcerting item in the long day’s list.

His father and mother had gone to California; he dreaded a solitary
dinner alone; the dull, pompous atmosphere of the Province Club
repelled him; it lay between the Harvard and the Fireside; and he chose
the latter.

       *       *       *       *       *

He noticed Sadoul and Pockman dining together at a small table, and it
relieved him to know that Gilda was dining with neither.

He exchanged nods with them. Pockman looked as unhealthy as usual.
Sadoul’s long, dark visage seemed thinner and more shadowy, and his
eyes smouldered like a man’s sick with fever.

Derring was there in evening dress with Julian Fairless; Lyken wore a
dressing gown and slippers, and was talking animatedly to Harry Stayr
over a chafing-dish full of shrimps and whitebait.

“There’s no doubt,” he was saying, “that consciousness remains in the
brain for an appreciable time after death. A swiftly severed head is
perfectly conscious of its own ghastly predicament--the guillotine
experiments have suggested that--and now it has been proven in our
research laboratories.”

“Well,” said Stayr, busy with his food, as always, “what happens to
the wretched boob in the chair at Sing Sing when the State Electrician
pulls the lever? Does he know he’s dead?”

“_The mind knows._”

“What? With all those volts tearing tissues to pulp and vapour?”

“You can’t kill the indestructible,” insisted Lyken. “You can kill
the body, all right; but it takes time for the ‘soul’ to leave it....
Sometimes quite a long time even when bodily death is instantaneous.”

Stuart, listening to the cheerless conversation, finished his dinner
gloomily and went into the great main room to smoke.

Here, by the fire, The Talkers, as usual, had gathered to “tell the
world.”

There seemed to be nothing they did not know. And there was nothing
anybody else knew. They were there to persuade, to explain, to
controvert. They were The Talkers, and they were there to talk.

Yet, before these men joined the Ancient and Unmitigated Order of
Talkers, many among them had promised brilliancy in their several
professions--science, art, literature, medicine, the law.

But talk is a stealthy and subtle malady which, discounting
initiative, infects talent and ability, gradually renders them
sterile, paralyses action, and ultimately atrophies all functions
except the vocal.

Stuart listened to The Talkers for a while; but action down town had
already satiated him. He got up and went slowly into another room,
where a cannel-coal fire burned in a smoke-blackened grate. Nobody else
was there. He dropped into a deep leather armchair, as though very
tired.

He may have fallen into a light sleep. Something caused him to open
his eyes. A cake of fat coal had crumbled, blazing with a sort of
frying-crackle as the flames set shadows dancing on the wall.

One of these shadows seemed to detach itself--a shape seated in sombre
silhouette before the fire. And, as Sutton looked, he saw it was
Sadoul’s dark head resting against his hand, redly edged with firelight.

Stuart broke the silence: “I’ve been asleep, I think. When did you come
in?”

“Not long ago.”

Neither spoke for some minutes. Then Sadoul turned slightly in his
armchair:

“Do you want to talk, Sutton?”

“All right.”

“There’s a person who seems to cause some little feeling between you
and me. I suppose you guess who I mean.”

“Little Miss Greenway?”

“Yes. I thought I’d speak of her----” Sadoul half rose from the
depths of his chair and turned full on Stuart: “I thought I’d be
circumspect--beat about the bush--convey, intimate--as well bred men
handle such matters--that possibly you are seeing Gilda Greenway
oftener than might be good for her.”

Stuart bade him go to the devil in a low voice.

Sadoul slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said, “that gets us nowhere. And I’m not going about the
matter politely, either: I’m going to speak quite plainly if you’ll
listen. Will you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try. It’s better to understand each other. May I speak?”

“Go on.”

“Then, there’s no use in telling you that I’ve been in love with Gilda
Greenway from the moment I laid eyes on her----”

“You left her lying alone in Derring’s bed when you thought she was
dead.”

“I know what you think----”

“You went downstairs to dance!”

“I went downstairs to--kill myself.”

Sutton sat up and shot an incredulous look at Sadoul.

“I went into the wash-room,” said the latter quietly. “I had a gun--and
there was a convenient mirror there.... Pockman stopped me and tried
to take my gun. We discussed the chances of gland grafting. I’d seen
him resurrect dead rats. So I thought I’d wait and see.... After the
operation Pockman discovered my gun in my overcoat pocket, and he took
it and drove to his laboratory.

“When I found the gun was missing, I suspected Pockman and I took a
taxi after him. All I wanted was the gun. I was willing to go back to
Gilda and wait the limit before killing myself. I didn’t want to die
if she was coming back. But Pockman tricked me into his dark room and
turned the key on me.... That’s the story. Ask Pockman if you care to.”

Sutton listened sullenly, not doubting the explanation, and not much
pleased with it, either.

“Well, what else?” he asked bluntly. “I’m not concerned with your
morbid emotions, Sadoul.”

“I suppose not. It was merely to make the case clearer. I want to
clarify it still more. You speak of morbid emotions. My emotions are
normal. I’m terribly in love.”

“And I want to tell you a little about Gilda----”

“I don’t want to hear anything that does not concern me----”

“It _does_ concern you----”

“Or anything of a private nature in any way reflecting on her----”

“I don’t lie about women. I don’t even tell the truth if it’s
unsavory,” said Sadoul coolly.

That was his reputation.

Sutton shrugged acquiescence, muttering something about lack of
interest. But his boy’s mind was flaming with interest if not with a
curiosity more vulgar.

Sadoul said: “The instant I set eyes on her I was in love. I couldn’t
help it. I wanted her or I didn’t want to live.

“I couldn’t help the nature of my passion. It suffocated me. I strove
to involve her, to envelop her in it--not conscious, so help me God,
that it was hypnosis, mostly, that caught and held her.

“Only by degrees did I realise it was mostly hypnosis that made her
so exquisitely pliant, so docile. I tell you I had not consciously
exercised any such power, in the beginning.

“The awakening was for me. It was not--pleasant.... It was less
agreeable when I did use that force to awake the child to normal
life.... My God, Sutton, when I discovered that the real Gilda cared
nothing for me----”

He sat twisting his lank limbs and bony fingers like some living
gargoyle in torment.

“My God,” he said, “my God!... Well--I used the hypnotic force that was
in me. I sent her back into the negative state.... And she was pliant
again--in a way.... We were together.... I know she likes my mind. I’m
intelligent. We went about together all the time.... She was amused.

“Then came a time when she had to go to England. A matter of
property--attorneys to consult.... And I meant to tell you, every day
or so there were terrible scenes if I let her slip back to normal even
for a minute....

“After she returned from England I did everything desperation suggested
to an unscrupulous man crazed with passion. I threw the hypnotic switch
wide open. I gave her every volt I could control.... Because there is
no other woman for me. Never will be. It’s Gilda or none.”

He sat in silence for a very long time. Then he rose stiffly, his
shoulders sagging.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it does not take long to die. But it always
takes time for the indestructible life-principle to disengage itself
from the body. If you think I speak at random, I can show you
photographs of the process. It’s a curious affair--not resembling the
escape of the moth from its chrysalis--not a metamorphosis----”

“Are you trying to make me understand that the soul has been
photographed while leaving the body?” demanded Sutton.

“Many times, recently; photographed, and also seen.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Several times.”

“You talk very carelessly about seeing that which the world is longing
to believe exists.”

“If the world saw it the world would not believe it.... I showed you
something, once. Today you do not believe you saw it.”

Sutton flushed: “I don’t understand such things.”

“Nor does the world.”

“Didn’t you suggest to me what I saw?”

“No. But it became visible to you through both hypnosis and suggestion.”

“Well, what I saw--thought I saw--was not Gilda Greenway.”

“Not--yet.” Sadoul seated himself. Suddenly he swung his long, dark
head toward Sutton with a movement noticeable in powerful animals
turning ugly. His eyes were wells of depthless shadow.

“The bond between a corpse and its leisurely escaping soul,” he said,
“is not more essential than the occult bond which knots my being to
Gilda Greenway.

“Do you know that a faintly luminous umbilical cord unites the escaping
soul to the body? When it is finally severed the body really dies--that
is, the brain becomes empty of its deathless principle, though the
various organs of the body continue living for a day or so....

“That is what will happen to me if Gilda goes out of my
life completely. The tenuous bond will dissolve. I shall be
dead--_here_!----” He covered his forehead with his hand.... “Sutton,
is it worth while for a casual young man to interfere, wantonly?”

He sat with his hand still covering his forehead, gazing vacantly in
front of him. After a moment the stare faded to a darker glimmer, and
he looked directly at Sutton.

“I’ve told you as much as suits me--not all. I’ll tell you one thing
more: When Gilda’s body was dead, I tried to hold back her escaping
soul-principle long enough for Pockman to operate. But it got clear
of her body except for the umbilical cord. And, no sooner was the new
nymphalic gland in place, than another disincarnate intelligence drew
near and stood watching us.

“I recognised it, yet never before had seen it. Astronomers know
that unseen stars exist. I knew this _Other One_ existed. And now I
encouraged it to seize Gilda’s body for its habitation. _That_ was the
figure you saw seated on the lounge near me. That’s what _I_ wanted.
And I aided it--tried to.... I wanted it to possess Gilda’s body,
and drive out the tenant that stood near her head, vaguely luminous,
still attached by the umbilical cord to the corpse.... Do you think I
have encouraged that _Other One_ for the pleasure of any man except
myself?... Do you think I have started a spiritual conflict in Gilda
Greenway for _your_ ultimate gratification, damn you?”

Sadoul’s voice had become a whisper; his hand fell from his forehead.
He got to his feet again, a bent, grotesque phantom against the
drifting glare of flame-tinged dusk.

“I--thought I’d say this,” he muttered in an odd, querulous voice not
like his own, but older, and with a sort of senile quaver.

Sutton got up, too:

“I don’t quite see your object in telling me these things, Sadoul.”

“I think you’ll see it when you reflect.... There are other women,
Sutton.... I mean for you. I hope you’ll see it that way.... There are
so many other women to play with. There are some even to fall in love
with.... I hope you’ll see it that way, Sutton.... So--good-night to
you.”

Sadoul went out through the ruddy shadows, passed without a sound
across the velvet carpet, loomed for an instant, a wavering shape
framed by the doorway, and was lost somewhere in the vista of uncertain
light beyond.




                              CHAPTER XVII


At the office one afternoon Stuart discovered among his letters a note
from Gilda Greenway:

  “Dear Mr. Sutton:

  Freda told me that you telephoned. I’m so sorry I was out. I haven’t
  heard from you since. Are you discouraged? I thought you threatened
  to keep an eye on me. Empty threat!

                                                                 GILDA.”


He really hadn’t missed her, except when he chanced to remember her.
Romance abhors a busy man.

But her note stirred him. He went to the inner office and called her.

“Is it really you?” she asked in the gayest of voices.

“Certainly. Are you all right?”

“Certainly,” she mimicked him; “are you?”

“You sound very frivolous.”

“I am--being no longer in dread of that threatened eye.”

“Have you been going to parties?”

“Now and then.”

“Have you seen Sadoul?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“I supposed you weren’t going to.”

“Why did you suppose that?”

“On account of his--influence----”

“Oh,” she said carelessly, “that is of no use to him. Besides, it’s
worn out. I’ve grown up. On one of my minds he has no longer any
influence; and he’s afraid of my other mind.”

“I suppose you know what you mean,” he said curtly.

“Isn’t that a trifle impertinent, Mr. Sutton?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.... But it’s over now. What a wonderful day it is--the bluest
sky and the air like champagne. I’m riding this afternoon. I wish you
were.”

“Have you a horse?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh, no, just an Academy nag. Could you ride with me?”

“I’m nailed down here at the office until six.”

She waited. He said no more.

“Well,” she said, “if you care to see me, sometime, you’ll do it, I
suppose.”

“Do you care?”

“I do. But I’ve concluded that your Guardian Eye is otherwise occupied.
There are _so_ many girls in the world! To keep watch on all his
friends, a modern young man ought to have more eyes than Argus----”

“Are you going home after your gallop?”

“Veronica Weld asked me to tea.”

“I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I met her at Katherine Ashley’s.”

“The devil! Do you know her, too?”

“You speak as though you didn’t consider me presentable.”

“Nonsense. I didn’t know you went about with those people; that’s all.”

“One must go where one is asked or remain a recluse.”

“I suppose Derring and Warne and Fairless--all that crowd--will be
there.”

“Where?”

“At your confounded tea.”

“Will you come and get me?--unless you are otherwise engaged----”

“I’ll be there at six-thirty to keep an eye on you, as I threatened.”

“Shall we dine--at--home?”

Her charming yet diffident acknowledgment of intimacy surprised and
touched him. He began to realise how impatient he was becoming to see
her again.

“That will be fine!” he exclaimed, with all his former enthusiasm. “I
have missed you, Gilda.”

“You’re not obliged to say that merely because I have happened to miss
you.”

“Have you really? What an engaging child you can be----”

“Very full of engagements this afternoon. I’ve a taxi, now, spinning
money down in the street. Will you really come to Veronica Weld’s for
me at six-thirty?”

“You bet----”

“Au revoir, donc----”

       *       *       *       *       *

At six he left the office and departed for home in the family
limousine. All the way uptown he thought of Gilda, sentimentally.

In high spirits, he took a red-hot bath and then an icy one; got into
fresh linen and a dinner coat, and drove to Central Park, West, where
dwelt Veronica Weld in a studio apartment overlooking the park.

Veronica, always fair, and now becoming plump, had stepped from the
Winter Garden to the hymeneal altar with the button-headed scion of a
wealthy New York family.

Scion lasted three months; then Family bought him back. And Veronica
maintained herself agreeably upon the net profit of the transaction.

She always had a penchant for intellectuals--which cast a raw light
upon the scion episode--and she preferred mind to matter when she could
afford it.

A tarnished residue of Talkers was apparent when Stuart entered
the salon of Veronica Weld. Fashion, too, was represented in a few
chicken-headed youths, a few rickety old sports of the Derring type,
a woman or two who haunted the outer edges of things. As for Beauty,
it was there, also--Katharine Ashley of the Filmy Films Studios;
Eve Ferral (born O’Farrel), made famous overnight as _Godiva_ in
the great spectacle of that name at the Palisades Palace; and there
were Gilda Greenway, and Frances Hazlet, the brown-eyed dancer, and
other specimens of pulchritude, all enveloped in cigarette smoke,
intellectual atmosphere, and pretty gowns.

Cups clattered, glasses tinkled accenting the tumult of The Talkers;
Derring’s falsetto titter added tintinabulation to the general jingle,
in the midst of which Stuart made his bow to Veronica and received her
tapering hand heavy with rings.

“Toujours rondelette?” he murmured with debonaire impudence, saluting
the most expensive ring.

“Old stuff, my dear,” returned Veronica, unruffled; “the squelette is
démodé.”

“You’re prettier than ever, Nika; the struggle with mighty intellects
agrees with you.”

She opened her fan and said confidentially: “Take it from me, Stuart,
it’s the baby-doll that’s crazy for knowledge, not the girl born to
Miss Spence’s. No Johnny believes that, but it’s true seven times in
ten.”

He smiled incredulously, declined the offered tea-cup, spoke to one
or two people near him, stepped aside and gazed about him to discover
Gilda.

There she was, cornered by Stayr with a plate of cake, and otherwise
hemmed in by Pockman and Fairless, with Sadoul looming darkly in the
background.

She wore black and white and her silver fox with somebody’s orchids.
She caught his eye, smiled and made a slight gesture of recognition.

When he came up and spoke to her, Stayr said: “You’re as popular as a
rattlesnake, Stuart. Aren’t there any other girls in the room?”

Pockman said to Gilda: “Good-bye, then, and don’t forget your promise.
It means a lot to a poor devil of a doctor.”

Frances Hazlet drifted by, shook hands vigorously with Stuart, and
drifted on with Stayr and Julian Fairless in tow.

As Pockman left, Sadoul crossed over, nodded to Stuart and said to
Gilda in a low voice: “I’ve a table at the Palais des Miroirs and
theatre tickets--if you are free, Gilda.”

“I’m sorry----”

“You’re busy?”

“Yes.”

He stood a moment, then turned on his heel without a glance at Stuart.
The latter followed him with his eyes and saw him seat himself near the
door, beside Katharine Ashley, where departing guests were within his
range of vision.

Stuart shrugged and looked at Gilda, who understood his glance:

“Does it matter?” she said carelessly.

“Not to me.”

They smiled.

“I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he said, “----or do you really
grow more lovely during my absence?”

This commonplace seemed to make her happy; she gave him one of those
shy, disconcerted little laughs, but managed to sustain his gaze.

“Advanced thinkers,” she ventured, “say that beauty is a necessity....
You don’t seem to agree.”

“Because I’ve remained away from you, and you are Beauty?”

“It was my deduction from your premises.”

They laughed.

“Do you want more tea, more atmosphere, more talk,” he inquired,
“----or shall we go?”

“Don’t you desire to converse with some of these interesting people?”
She adjusted her furs as she spoke, seeming to expect no answer. There
was a slight flush on her face as she went with Stuart to make adieux
to Veronica.

“Don’t forget you’re dining with me Thursday,” said the latter to
Gilda, as they turned away.

Sadoul’s sombre eyes avoided them as they passed him.

Stuart wondered whether he really might turn unpleasant some day, and
the surmise aroused a vague anger in him.

His car was waiting.

“Oh, is it yours?” asked Gilda curiously.

“The family bus,” he nodded; gave directions to the chauffeur, got in
and pulled the fur robe over Gilda.

Probably the Sutton bus had never had so lovely an occupant since its
ponderous wheels first turned on Gotham asphalt.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


By the middle of December there was some talk among The Talkers of
Stuart Sutton and little Miss Greenway.

“She plays her game quietly,” remarked Julian Fairless. “I haven’t
anything on her. She _looks_ straight.”

“Wasn’t she Sadoul’s girl?” asked Sam Warne.

“You never can tell whose girl any girl was.”

Stayr said: “It’s usually somebody you never heard of. Possibly she
once made a monkey of Sadoul. Probably she’s making another of Stuart
Sutton. Certainly there has been, is, and will be a simian somewhere
cherished by her.”

“If it’s true that there are two kinds of women,” observed Fairless,
“no man can guess which is which unless they tell you.”

“There’s only one kind,” said Stayr.

“You mean potentially, I hope.”

“Does it matter?” sneered Stayr. “If you marry you’re stung; if you
don’t you’re stung just the same. It’s fifty-fifty however you play ’em
or however they play you.”

“Yours is not an amiable philosophy,” said Warne, laughing.

“Listen, old sport, here’s the true and only solution: take ’em easy
when they come; give ’em three cheers when they go. The man who makes
of woman anything more than an agreeable incident belongs to the era of
the Dodo. Don’t try to understand her. There’s nothing to understand.
You have only to observe her. She’s utterly obvious. A protozoan is
subtle compared to her.

“She has only one imperative function--so has a cat that fills a
basket full of kittens. All her habits have their origin in that single
necessity.”

Thus talked The Talkers, whose necessity is to talk, and who can no
more escape functional destiny than can the female cat.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gilda was forming a habit of going about with Stuart more or less,
traversing a lively but limited orbit the centre of which was a
semi-intellectual coterie of unclassified modernists who knew no law
except inclination.

All were opportunists, but lived up to that creed only lazily. For the
inclination of the majority was to think idly, live idly, follow lines
of least resistance, and balance the account with talk.

Gilda went with Stuart to various teas, dances, restaurants, theatres,
exhibitions, lectures, conferences, and parties of sorts. He dined
at her apartment now and then. Their preference for each other was
discussed and the intimacy criticised with varying degrees of charity
and cruelty.

What perplexed people was the absence of sentimental symptoms, none, so
far, being apparent even to the most malicious scrutiny.

As though, in the banquet of youth, these two had begun at the wrong
end with the dessert, and now were progressing tranquilly backward
toward the hors d’oeuvres.

Even the smouldering gaze of Sadoul detected nothing to serve as fuel
to feed inward fires. And Stayr, utterly gross, observed them uneasily,
disturbed that any theory of his should be punctured with impunity.

“The trouble,” snickered Pockman, “is with Sutton. He’s one of those
congenital celibates. The girl really is a little devil.”

“What’s the trouble then?” demanded Stayr. “Any girl ought to land any
saint.”

“The trouble,” said Pockman, “is that she knows she’s a devil, and
watches herself.”

“If she’s a devil she’ll behave like one some day. Otherwise, what’s
the fun in being one?”

“There you are, Harry. Sometimes a girl like that gets more pleasure
out of martyrdom. And I think that’s the case with Gilda Greenway.”

“Isn’t there any question of morals involved?” inquired Warne. “Some
people have ’em, in spite of what you say.”

“None. Chastity is an heirloom in some families--like the Hudson River
Suttons. There are certain things such cattle _won’t_ do. As for the
girl--well, maybe it’s a moral kink--I guess she was born with the
usual virginal instinct--but she’s had a brand new fight on her hands
ever since she died----”

He smirked and cast a stealthy glance at the men about him. Although a
doer, in spite of professional fears Pockman was also a born Talker. He
couldn’t help it. But every indulgence in garrulous dissipation brought
him remorse. Even now he knew he would regret what he was going to say.
But he said it:

“I gave Gilda Greenway a new nymphalic gland and started her machinery
again. Sadoul tried to give her a new ego. But the original ego came
back, too; and now, I fancy, there’s mental hell to pay at times.”

“Do _you_, a reputable physician, believe that?” yawned Stayr in utter
disgust.

“I’m telling you what Sadoul tried to do to her. I express no personal
opinion concerning psycho-hypnosis. I entertain none concerning any
psychic phenomena--not even when I see examples.”

“_What_ have you seen?”

“I saw Sadoul photograph the exuding ego from a cadaver in St.
Stephen’s Hospital.”

“A soul?”

“Call it that.”

“What did it look like?”

“It began to exude as a tenuous vapour, very faintly luminous. After
forty-eight minutes and some fraction it commenced to assume human
shape. An umbilical cord was visible.... The process continued for
several hours.”

“Sadoul photographed it?”

“He did. And when the cord dissolved and the formed ego was ready to
depart, Sadoul actually halted it through what seemed to be hypnotic
control.... My God,” muttered Pockman, suddenly sweating at the
recollection, “we had that damned thing in the death-chamber for hours,
under Sadoul’s control, and subject to his every suggestion.... I don’t
scare easily. But I got sick with--well--with superstitious fright,
I suppose.... I believe I’d have gone crazy if Sadoul hadn’t let the
thing go.”

Pockman’s flat, livid features had become viscous with unhealthy sweat.
He wiped his face, hunched his shoulders, and started to move away at
his rickety “Holbein” gait.

“Go on and tell us more about those stunts!” called Sam Warne after him.

“Go to the devil,” retorted Pockman. “I’m sorry I told you fellows
anything. You’re all mouth and ears and there’s nothing else to you
except intestines!”

       *       *       *       *       *

There wasn’t much else--merely a matter of degree. Stayr was a greater
feeder than Derring; the latter had the larger ear area; Fairless more
loquacity, etc., etc.




                              CHAPTER XIX


It was likely to be a dull evening at the Fireside. Frances Hazlet was
giving a birthday party--or, rather, some kind gentleman was giving
one for her, and had taken Fantozzi’s drab, demure private mansion on
Lexington Avenue.

Sutton had gone home from the office to dress. He was rather restless
because he had not been able to get Gilda on the telephone. He dined
alone at the Province Club, finally, but continued to haunt the
telephone between courses.

Something in Freda’s placid responses hatched suspicion in his mind. He
began to wonder if Gilda was really at home and wouldn’t come to the
telephone. He had vaguely suspected this on other occasions, but always
concluded there could be no reason for such behaviour, and was ashamed
to mention it to her.

However, the odd suspicion returned, now, to haunt him; and, the
Province Club palling on him, he sent for a taxi and drove to the
Fireside.

Seeing Sadoul reading in a corner relieved him, although Sadoul also
was in evening dress and, moreover, wore a camelia. They exchanged nods
but no words. Sadoul calmly turned a page in his book. Sutton sat down
by the log fire to smoke a cigar.

Toward eleven Pockman came rocking in with his coattails flying, an
opera hat crammed over his prominent ears. Sadoul laid aside his book,
got up and went downstairs with him.

After that there was a gradual exodus from the club toward Fantozzi’s.
Warne went, Lyken, other men.

Sutton tried to read; couldn’t; grew irritable; decided to go home;
decided not to; tried Gilda’s house again, but nobody answered, not
even Freda.

His watch seemed to have gone wrong; he discredited what it reported.
So he went downstairs and looked at the standard clock in the lobby;
and discovered it was long after midnight.

Where could Gilda be? It was none of his business, which made him
the madder. She had decided not to go to Frances Hazlet’s party. She
declined his guidance thither. Had she changed her mind?

Harry Stayr strolled into the cloak-room to reconstruct his white
evening tie.

“Going to Fantozzi’s?” he inquired, looking at Sutton in the mirror.

“No,” said Stuart shortly.

Stayr turned, took him by the elbow; but Sutton demurred, saying he
didn’t feel like dancing.

“One can always eat and drink,” observed Stayr. “Come on, like a
sport. That Esthonian Prince and his suite are there, and it’s likely
to turn lively by this time. Besides, don’t you want to pay homage to
concentrated pulchritude?”

“I’m not in the humour----”

“You’re going with _me_, old dick! Get into your bonnet!”

“It’s one o’clock--nearly half past one, Harry----”

“Those night-blooming blossoms will be in the fuller bloom! Allons!
Houp! Come into the garden, friend. There’s many a nosegay to gather at
Fantozzi’s.”

       *       *       *       *       *

When they descended from their taxi there was not a gleam of light
visible about the house; all shades were drawn; Fantozzi’s had the
aspect of a private mansion fast asleep.

They ascended the brownstone steps and rang. The door opened.

Into a dim vestibule they stepped; the outer door closed; then an inner
grille clicked and they stepped into a glaring inferno of heat and
noise.

Fantozzi’s fairly seethed with colour and turmoil; the rooms to the
right were swarming with dancers whirling through tobacco haze, amid a
deafening outcrash from the energetic orchestra.

Upstairs, downstairs, _on_ the stairs, everywhere were pretty
faces--flushed, laughing, eager faces vis-a-vis masculine and ardent
youth--lank youth, fat youth, chuckleheaded youth, handsome youth--and
middle age, too, bearded and saturnine like Sadoul, with a half sneer
on his features--dapper and bald like George Derring yonder, capering
with Nikka Weld, whose bobbed hair bobbed as she danced.

And there was his Serene Highness of Esthonia footing it
enthusiastically with Frances Hazlet. He and his suite looked like
Ritz waiters--having no backs to their heads--but they were tenderly
cherished by beauty, and seemed to be having a magnificent time.

Already the party had become a trifle rough. There was a girl there
whose partner had lifted her off the floor, and was swinging her in
circles, her body and legs nearly horizontal.

Sutton eluded collision with this pair of flying feet and backed into
the hallway.

Here a girl he had never before beheld seized him and danced with him.
Here, later, he encountered Frances Hazlet, who kissed him boisterously
in return for birthday wishes.

About that time an Esthonian fell downstairs; and Freedom was preparing
to shriek, but he landed uninjured on the back part of his skull which
wasn’t there.

The heat and noise were bewildering. Stayr beckoned Sutton to the punch
bowl, where his Serene Highness, encouraged by Katharine Ashley, was
bobbing for floating strawberries, amid shouts of laughter. He lifted a
dripping muzzle in triumph and bolted a berry.

“Nasty beast,” muttered Stayr, tucking several bottles of champagne
under his arm and picking up a silver ice-bucket. “Come on upstairs,
Stuart, and we’ll crack a quart like gentlemen.”

There was tumult, too, above stairs; laughter and singing at the supper
tables; a negro banjo trio hammering stridently; sporadic dancing and a
riotous tendency to throw flowers and sweet-meats at all new arrivals.

Sutton received a heavy handful of flowers full in the face; then the
girl in the white dinner gown, who had hurled them, rose straight up
among the gay and disorderly group surrounding her, pushed her way
violently through the throng, gained the hall, and already had started
running downstairs, when Sutton caught her by the waist.

Both were breathing irregularly and fast when they confronted each
other. Her cheeks burned crimson, and there was a scent of wine in her
breath.

“I thought you weren’t coming here,” he said. “You told me so.”

“_You_ said _you_ weren’t coming!”

“Is that why _you_ came?”

No answer.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“Yes, it is,” she panted, “----if you’ve got to know! Please, may I
pass you----”

“One moment, Gilda. Where are you going?”

“I’m going home.”

“Then I’ll take you----”

“I don’t wish you to!”

“Is somebody else----”

“Yes, Sadoul!--if you’ve got to know.”

The shock left him white and silent; the girl released herself, started
to pass him, saw his ghastly face, stopped, stood motionless and mute
with her green eyes fixed on him.

After a moment she shivered as though chilled. “I’m safe with Sadoul,”
she said. “Can’t you understand that I’m safe with Sadoul when I’m this
way?”

“Have you had too much wine?”

She shook her head, set one foot on the stair below, descended another
step, laid her left hand on the banister, halted, looked back and
upward.

“I’m better off with Sadoul,” she said again.

He made no answer.

Suddenly she turned, sprang up the stairs and came close to him where
he stood on the step above her:

“You are not to care what I do!” she cried. “Let me go home! You don’t
know what you’re doing to me!”

“I’m not holding you,” he said, astonished.

Her fingers tightened on the banisters. All at once her eyes were
glittering with tears.

“Take me home,” she whispered. “I can’t stand this.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes! Yes! Can’t you see I do?... Only--I was safer with Sadoul....
When this happens--when I’m this way--I’m safe with anybody except you.”

She took his hands, strained them convulsively between her own. Cheeks,
eyes, lips were burning; the column of her white throat was stretched
up toward him. For the second time in their lives she threw both arms
around his neck and returned his kiss as passionately as he gave it.

But now the hallway was invaded by a noisy company ascending the
stairs. The girl clung tightly to his arm as he started downward with
her through the increasing tumult and disorder.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was tearful, excited, incoherent, when they entered the taxi;
almost hysterical when they ran up the dark stairway, unlocked her
door, and entered.

“I want you to go,” she wailed. “I’m not myself tonight--not the girl
you know--not even friendly----”

“Don’t be frightened. Has Sadoul tried any of his beastly tricks----”

“Don’t you understand what I mean!” she cried. “Can’t you see it’s not
I who stand here? It’s that damned _Other One_!

“It’s the thing you saw!... She’ll tear my heart out for this! She’ll
tear my soul out! I’m trying to tell you that we’re not safe with
her.... I’m asking--you--to go----”

She turned with a tragic gesture and caught her quivering face in both
hands. He stared. After a moment she dropped her snowy, naked arms,
moved her lovely head until her eyes met his.

“I suppose you know I’m in love with you,” she said.

When he could find his voice he said: “Do you know that I am in love
with you, also?”

“I knew it tonight, on the stairs.”

Neither stirred for the moment, but the boy was all a-quiver now; swept
by his first overwhelming surge of passionate love.

She came to him and rested both white hands on his shoulders.

“What are we going to do about it?” she asked.

He gazed blindly into her altered face. All the flushed and sensuous
stigmata were there. He felt the heavy sweetness of her body; the
languour of her eyes invaded him.

Suddenly the clamour of the telephone filled his ears. She paid no heed
to it; her gaze lost in his, searched deeper; her red lips, too full,
trembled.

But the monotonous shrilling of the telephone had partly aroused him
to some consciousness of the world about him--to _self_-consciousness,
too. And, with this confused resurrection of submerged senses,
came mental awakening--a glimmering recognition of facts.... Of
indestructible facts which never change.... Old, old facts which never
can be ignored, never altered....

There were two things which a man of his race did not do. One of these
he was about to do now.

He took the girl into his arms and held her close, not kissing her.

“I’m in love with you, Gilda,” he said unsteadily.

“I want you to be.”

There was a brief and breathless silence, filled suddenly by the racket
of the telephone bell. The metallic outburst cleared his brain, but it
seemed to madden hers.

She flung wide her bare arms in a sort of childish rage, her lovely
mouth distorted.

“Do you hear that telephone?” she cried. “That’s Sadoul! And _this_ is
where his damned cleverness is urging me--not into _his_ arms--into
_yours_!----” And she clasped him fiercely, strained him to her with a
little cry:

“It’s _you_, not Sadoul! It’s you! only you! Shall I prove I love you
better than my soul?”

The boy turned scarlet: “I want--want you to marry me,” he stammered.

“What!” she exclaimed in flushed astonishment.

“Didn’t you understand?” he demanded.

“M-marry you?” she faltered. “_Darling!_ What are you saying? Don’t you
know I can’t _marry_?”

“Why not?”

“Because I _am_ married.”

He gazed at her aghast.

“Darling! I married Sadoul in Paris ten months ago. Didn’t anybody ever
tell you?”

He seemed stupefied.

“I thought you knew it,” she repeated in a bewildered voice. “That’s
why I ask you what are we to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said vacantly;.... “I’d better leave you alone, I
suppose----”

She caught his lips with hers to silence him; clung closer in a passion
of fear until again he drew her to him.

She was trembling all over now, imprisoned in his arms. After a while
the boy dropped his blond head beside hers, pressing his face against
her hot cheek.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, “----it isn’t in me--it isn’t in
any of my race--to love--lawlessly....”

The girl was crying silently. But when he lifted his head she looked up
at him through her tears:

“I didn’t ever want you to see me when I am this way,” she said
tremulously. “That’s why I always try to escape being with you
when--when the _Other One_ is in possession--and I seem to be what I am
not----”

“Do you mean that this other--this intruder, this strange, depraved
intelligence--is in possession of you _now_!” he demanded hoarsely.

“Can’t you see? Look at me, Stuart. Can’t you see that tonight I am
the--the thing Sadoul showed you?”

But already he knew it was true; knew that he was in love with her even
as he saw her now--even with this depraved intruder gazing out at him
through Gilda’s lovely eyes.

Exasperated, well nigh beside himself, he took the girl by her bare
shoulders, violently:

“You’ve got to free yourself,” he cried; “You’ve got to rid yourself of
this obsession--this waking nightmare. You’ve got to divorce Sadoul----”

“He won’t let me, Stuart. What can I expect from a man who trapped my
soul when I lay dead and sent this _other_ shameless thing into me,
hoping it would prove a friend to him?”

“Can’t your own soul drive it out?”

“It is fighting now.... By tomorrow, I hope----”

“But your mind is still your own, Gilda.”

“My own soul controls that, always. It’s the senses that the _Other_
seizes.”

He looked at her fearfully, unloosed his clasp from her waist, stepped
backward, passing one hand heavily across his eyes.

“This is incredible,” he muttered. “If it’s true, it’s too monstrous to
be without remedy.... After all, God lives--somewhere----”

He pressed his hand, tight, over his eyes again.

“Stuart?”

“Yes,” he said harshly.

“Shall I attempt to make it clearer to you? I think I can.”

“How?”

She thought a moment: “Dearest, I am going to try to show you more than
Sadoul once showed you. I want you to _know_ exactly what happens to
me. Come.”

She took his hand, led him across the room, and opened her chamber door.

There was a bright ceiling lamp burning in her bedroom. She lighted the
rose-shaded night lamp also, then pointed toward the lounge.

He seated himself. She said in a low voice: “I think God will let me
show you.... I pray that He will.... Don’t touch me--_afterward_. Don’t
even speak. Just turn out both lights and go home very quietly. Do you
promise?”

He nodded.

The girl went over to the bed and lay down on the lace counterpane,
extending her slender figure so that she rested on her left side. Her
left arm lay extended; her eyes were covered by her right hand.

For a second or so she moved a little, adjusting herself; then she lay
unstirring under the brilliant ceiling light.

Minutes passed. He scarcely stirred, watching her motionless form.
But into his memory crowded poignant recollections of another night,
when he had sat beside a dead girl until, unable to endure it, he had
dropped on his knees beside her to ask an “Unknown God” for equity and
justice.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thinking of God now, and his eyes fixed upon the still form on the bed,
he was suddenly aware of another person in the room--a girl, standing
near the fireplace.

Over his neck and back and thighs slow chills crawled.

She was like Gilda; lovelier, possibly. The brilliancy of her
complexion under the ceiling light--the exquisite, nameless grace of
her somehow seemed to still the surging fear in him--quiet his pulse’s
panic.

In the flood of light where she stood there was absolutely nothing
unreal about her. And had Gilda not been lying there on the bed he
would have believed this girl was she.

Then, to his astonishment, she looked at him smilingly; came to him and
rested a light hand on his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of it; he
looked up into her face, and felt the fragrance of her breath.

This was no phantom. Scarcely knowing what he did, he started to rise,
and was arrested by the pressure of her hand gently resisting.

“You promised,” she said, smiling. The sweetness of the low voice was
indescribable.

“Are you real?” he asked, under his breath.

She laughed silently. “Oh, very,” she said. “Touch me.”

Her arms and body were warm and firm. She took his hand and placed it
over her heart. Under it he felt the steady beating.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“I am Gilda.”

“Then--then _what_ is that on the bed?”

“My home. There is an intruder in it.... Look! Do you see her lying
there, watching us?”

And now, beside the motionless shape on the bed, he saw another figure
lying, half hidden, peering stealthily at him over the naked shoulder
of the unstirring form.

Slowly, furtively, its head lifted; and he recognised the sensual
features of the thing that Sadoul had made him see--the languorous
eyes, the scarlet lips, the neck too white and thick, the limbs, marble
fair, heavy, marvellous----

The thing rose on the bed, supported by one naked arm to prop it.
Suddenly it leaped lightly to the carpet--a living creature, breathing,
palpable, utterly real.

The girl on the bed stirred slightly and a deep sigh escaped her.

The figure beside Stuart bent down and whispered to him to put out the
lights and go.

He rose. The _Other One_ laughed at him; touched his face with her soft
pink fingers as he passed her to extinguish the rose-shaded night lamp.

Before he put out the ceiling light he paused, his hand on the electric
button, and looked at the three he was leaving in the bedroom--leaving
in darkness there.

He looked at the motionless form on the lace counterpane; he looked
at the _Other One_ in all her flagrant beauty; he looked at his first
and loveliest visitor, who returned his gaze sweetly, tranquilly,
reassuringly.

Then he switched off the light.




                               CHAPTER XX


It being Saturday, and a half day down town, Stuart went to the
Fireside on pretense of lunching, but particularly to find Casimir
Sadoul.

From his office he had tried to get Gilda on the telephone, but she
was still asleep. Then he called up Sadoul at his apartment and at the
offices of one or two periodicals, without finding him.

Now, at the Fireside, he learned that Pockman and Sadoul, much the
worse for wear, had breakfasted there about noon and had gone away
together.

He had left word for Gilda to call him when she awoke. She had not
done so. After lunch he telephoned again. Freda informed him that her
mistress was still asleep.

Stuart had had no sleep, having arrived home only in time to bathe and
change for the office.

But it was the nerve-shattering experience with Gilda which so
disorganized him that he could scarcely hold a fork or lift a glass of
water to his lips.

“Where do you suppose I could find Sadoul?” he asked Dr. Lyken, later,
in the cloak-room.

“He’s usually at Pockman’s research laboratory in the afternoon. Have
you ever been there, Sutton?”

“No.”

“Some laboratory! You know what they’re up to, don’t you?”

“I know, vaguely, what Pockman is doing.”

“Glands. And Sadoul has taken the other end, now. He writes his
vitriolic stuff in the morning, and investigates psychic phenomena all
the afternoon. Pockman staked him.”

“Staked him?”

“Yes. Pockman has given Sadoul several rooms in the laboratory and has
fitted them up. He must believe in such things, or he wouldn’t have
spent all that money on quarters and apparatus for that clever fakir,
Sadoul. Why don’t you go over and take a slant at the place?”

“Where is it?”

“Over toward Fifty-seventh Street and the East River. Of course,
I can’t bring myself to subscribe to such theories and procedure,
although, like the majority of scientific men, I’m on the fence and
ready to be convinced.... I couldn’t tell you whether there is anything
in it or not. I don’t mean Pockman’s work: that’s sound; I mean
Sadoul’s psycho-physical research.... If you’re going over, I’m walking
that way as far as Third Avenue.”

They turned east at Fifty-seventh Street.

“It’s quite a laboratory, Sadoul’s,” continued Lyken. “He’s got one
machine there invented, I understand, by Sir Oliver Lodge. It’s an
amazingly delicate affair. It keeps a record of all muscular effort on
the part of a medium during tests. Any loss of weight, any addition,
is accurately noted. It gives a continuous chart of temperature,
pulse, breathing. It notes all mental activity; it even photographs
visualisation when concentration is sufficient----”

“That’s impossible!” ejaculated Stuart.

“No, it really isn’t,” said the other. “Sensitized plates wrapped in
opaque coverings have been tried out. When the subject concentrates on
any object there is a very good photograph of it on the plate. Which
seems to prove that thought-waves are really projected----”

“Have _you_ seen any?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Made by Sadoul?”

“Yes.”

After a silence, Lyken went on:

“Sadoul uses ultra-violet rays and quartz lenses when he takes a movie
of any psychic proceedings.

“He’s well equipped with x-ray apparatus, radium tubes--the latest and
most delicate instruments.... You know you can’t help respecting a man
who is so patiently trying out evidence.”

Sutton walked along in silence beside the garrulous Lyken,
understanding little of what the latter was saying.

“I’m on the fence,” repeated Lyken, “but I’m no bigot, and I’m quite in
favour of research experiments along those lines--if anybody has the
time and the courage.”

“I suppose experimenters are ridiculed.”

“Not so much, now. Too many great names are associated with the
investigations--Lodge, Wallace, Crookes, Edison, Imoda, Van Zeist,
Matla, Zaalberg--too many tremendous names to scoff at.”

“What do they want to do?”

“Here’s their programme: experiments in, and investigation of,
clairvoyance, materialization, dual projection, levitation, soul
photography, subconscious mind, human polarity----”

“I don’t know what those are,” interrupted Stuart bluntly.

“Nobody does. We don’t even know what the electric fluid is; we know
only that it’s there.”

“At least we can see it.”

“We can see one phase of it. The vast, overwhelming forces--energy
and its sources--are invisible. We know them only by their results.
I don’t see why these tremendous psychic forces should be visible,
either. One thing is certain: they’re there, and we know it because of
their results. The thing to do is to find out what these forces really
are--physical or psychical--manifestations of the psychical ego, the
mental, or the spiritual.”

They paused at Third Avenue.

“I’m taking the Elevated,” remarked Lyken. “Are you going to swap yarns
with Sadoul?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with Sadoul,” returned Stuart
unsmilingly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Pockman’s laboratory consisted of several shabby old houses converted
into a single rambling structure facing the river.

A young woman in nurse’s uniform admitted him and showed him to a dingy
waiting-room. Pockman presently appeared in white operating costume,
which became him as cerements become a corpse.

“Glad to see you,” he smirked. “What the hell put it into your blond
head to come over here?”

“I’m looking for Sadoul,” replied Stuart.

“He’s in his own section. I’ll send him in----”

“Pockman--just a second.... I want to ask you something--and I
don’t know how to put it.... Is there any actual--any scientific
basis--anything to be taken seriously in these psycho-hypnotic tricks
that Sadoul does?”

Pockman hunched his bony shoulders and began to walk about the room in
his jerky, cockroach way.

“I don’t know how he does the things he does,” he said. “Maybe he’s
faking; I can’t tell.... But there seem to be phenomena along those
lines worth investigating.... I’ve given him a place of his own in the
next house.... If you want to talk to him----”

“Yes, I mean to talk to him.... But you’re a graduate physician,
Pockman--a specialist in certain lines of research--and your standing
is high, according to all I hear about you.

“And so I desire to ask such a man as yourself about these disquieting
and somewhat unpleasant performances of Sadoul’s----”

“Which one in particular?”

“In particular I’m thinking of his meddling with little Miss Greenway.”

“I supposed you had her in mind.” Pockman cracked his knuckles,
resumed his pacing, arms dangling and jerking: “She’s a morbid
subject,” he said. “Otherwise he couldn’t have snapped her up over
there.... God knows what one human mind can do to another, Sutton. No
use asking me; I can’t tell you.... We don’t know anything yet. You
tell ’em! We don’t know the alphabet of life. We don’t know what life
is, how, where, when it originated.... But we’re going to know. You
tell ’em that, too!”

He burst into a harsh twitter and went racking on around the room like
some spavined thing, his arms jerking.

“I want to ask you,” said Stuart in a low voice, “do you think Sadoul
really has any psychic control over Miss Greenway?”

“Well, by God, I don’t know!” almost shouted Pockman, coming to a stop
in front of Sutton, his long arms flying about uncertainly:

“Here’s a theory: we all have dual personalities--many of us have
multiple. Personality is that indestructible identity which persists
after bodily death. Call it a soul. It’s a short word.

“Now, take little Miss Greenway’s case. That girl’s body died and
remained physically dead for hours. No doubt about it, Sutton.

“But what happened to her soul I don’t know of my own knowledge. That
indestructible identity which was Gilda Greenway certainly returned as
her body’s tenant; but whether it found another lodger in possession
and has had to put up a continual fight, as Miss Greenway says----”

“Did she tell _you_ that?”

“Yes, she told me.”

“When?”

“She speaks of it every time she comes here----”

“Here? Does Gilda come here?”

Pockman’s flat face was all glistening with sweat; he wiped it, but the
ghastly smirk remained.

“Say,” he said, “you and Sadoul and Derring and Harry Stayr do nothing
but camp on that kid’s trail.

“I’m trying to keep tabs on her, and she’s decent enough to see the
scientific importance of submitting to daily observation. But you’re
all chasing her and keeping her excited and nervous, and where the hell
do _I_ come in?”

Sutton, astonished and troubled, said nothing; Pockman flourished his
flail-like arms:

“I’m trying to keep a record of the only case on record. My God, can’t
you fellows show some decency and self-control--you, taking her about
town at all hours and driving Sadoul insane with jealousy--Gilda
claiming that Sadoul is having her shadowed by a disincarnate, homeless
and malicious soul that has no morals and wants to drive out her own
soul and get in--Sadoul, licking his chops as though it were true, and
hopeful that there might be something for him with a new tenant in
possession of Gilda’s pretty body--and all those other johnnies chasing
about, sending her flowers and fruit from Florida and ducks from----”

He went rocking and teetering around the room again, shaking his bony
hands above his head:

“How am I going to observe the results of transplanting a nymphalic
gland into a corpse with all this feverish hullabaloo going on in
that child’s life? What do you suppose it does to her?--all this
excitement----”

“Wait a moment!” said Stuart, detaining him as he rambled past,
and holding him by one flapping arm: “All I want you to tell me is
whether, in your opinion, it is scientifically possible for Sadoul
to meddle spiritually--or in any occult way--with what you call that
indestructible identity which is Gilda Greenway’s soul?”

“I’m telling you I don’t know!” shouted Pockman. “He seems to be able
to do things to identities. He materializes them, weighs them, takes
their pulses, temperatures, blood-pressure--he photographs them,
measures them, listens to their lung action---- There seems to be no
end to what we are learning about those disincarnate personalities
vulgarly known as ‘spirits’ and so long exploited by psychic crooks and
fake ‘mejums.’”

He wiped his unhealthy skin with the sleeve of his operating robe.

“That’s all very fine,” he said. “Let others go to it. The nymphalic
gland is my job----”

“You haven’t answered my question, Pockman.”

“Which one? Oh! Do I think it possible for Sadoul to encourage some
homeless but more sensual spirit to enter little Miss Greenway and
ultimately drive out her real identity?”

“That’s what I asked you.”

“Sutton, I don’t know. I know he has always tried to arouse in the girl
some response to his own morbid, lovesick importunities. Normally the
girl always seems to have been fascinated by his brilliant intellectual
equipment--seems, in a way, to have fallen a victim to it--probably
aided by hypnosis.

“But for the rest--I guess not. No--I’ve studied her. She isn’t that
kind. The girl is, when let alone, perfectly normal in everything.

“The new nymphalic has put her in superb physical condition--a
magnificent young animal!--that’s what the girl is.... And as far as
I can see she has, normally, a vigourous, healthy mind to control her
every emotion.... And yet, she does break loose--like the other night
at Fantozzi’s.... But that’s exuberance--letting off steam----”

“Do you call that normal, Pockman?”

“Well, no, I don’t.... And she tells me--with some very wild and
breathless tears--that it isn’t natural for her to kick over the traces
and raise the devil in that fashion.”

“It would almost look, then, as though----” Stuart hesitated, his
haunted eyes fixed on Pockman.

The latter said:

“Well, she claims it’s what she calls the _Other One_ that creeps
in when she’s asleep, or off her guard--at some psychological moment
when her subconscious self is off duty.... _I_ don’t know. We’ve read
‘Jekyll and Hyde,’ and ‘Peter Ibbetson,’ and ‘The Brushwood Boy’--and
a score of other clever tales. This business of Gilda Greenway sounds
like another volume of the same series.... And then, again”--he
shrugged his bony shoulders--“the story of Gilda Greenway may be as
true as anything in the world.... The world itself being only a big
lie told to amuse a lot of gods--somewhere yonder--beyond the outer
stars--and all laughing like hell----”

He stood rocking on heels and toes with the irresponsible movement of
something inanimate swept by tempests.

“No,” he muttered, wiping his clammy visage, “we don’t know anything,
so far.... My God, no.... Are you going in to talk to Sadoul?”

“Another time.”

“Oh! From your face I thought you were looking for him to kill him.”

“I’m not the killing sort, Pockman.”

“Oh! Well, _he_ is. It’s a tip--if you ever mean to mix it with Casimir
Sadoul.”

Stuart looked neither interested nor surprised.

“I haven’t yet decided what I want of Sadoul,” he said without a trace
of threat, yet with a simplicity that seemed to make no question of
getting whatever he might wish for.

Pockman looked at him long out of fishy eyes. Then he snickered.

“Some day,” he said, “if you and little Miss Greenway are good to me
and let me observe her in peace, I’ll tell you both something about
Sadoul that will make it easier for you to put a crimp in him.”

“No, thanks,” said Stuart coldly.

“As you choose, Sutton.... Drop in again and look over my assortment of
glands--all alive and guaranteed to start any corpse two-stepping....”




                              CHAPTER XXI


Often in those days, working with his secretary, or, in the little
inner office, working alone, something approaching realisation of the
problems in which he was being involved would suddenly confront Stuart,
leaving him dismayed.

The simpler of the problems was less disturbing. Their solution, if
they were to be solved, was obvious: he could ignore the traditions of
his race and drift on with little Miss Greenway as his mistress; he
could challenge those traditions and marry her--after her case had been
pulled through some legal knot-hole or other.

He was now aware that he had only to choose. Either choice lay outside
the customs and habits of his race. The Suttons had never condescended
to irregular love affairs; the Suttons did not marry ineligible women.

The basic question, however, was yet to be solved--whether this
impassioned preference for little Miss Greenway was actually love. It
had several of love’s ominous symptoms--all its impulse, restlessness
and fever, all the familiar sieges, alarums, and excursions incident to
the oldest story in the world--older even than death.

Not to see her for a day was endurable. And it was always during the
first day’s separation that he doubted the genuineness of his passion.
A second day brought restlessness, and time lost in freeing his
thoughts of her so that other matters might be pursued with a free mind.

Then, before the third day, his vague unease became a longing. The
desire to see her set in like a tide--as passionless but as inevitable
as some immemorial custom of nature obeying its law.

It was this phase that made him aware of depths within himself
unstirred heretofore--blind, unplumbed depths, profoundly in motion.

Always their reunion quieted these deeps in him--even in that strange
phase of her when her soul seemed helplessly entangled in obscurity and
her over-flushed and altered beauty warned him of the dark transition.

For he found her, sometimes, during those unreal and shadowy moments
when another intelligence possessed her.

In that lovely and tragic transfiguration she no longer attempted to
avoid him. On the contrary, she now called him, her changed voice alone
being sufficient warning.

For they had talked it over together, sadly, in fear, consulting each
other what was safest for them while the shadow of the _Other One_
possessed her.

The boy had laid down the law, furiously. She was to call on him; never
again to face this obsession recklessly out of bounds.

No more parties where, unafraid and maliciously immune, she could watch
Sadoul, undaunted, and taunt him with the very lips he had altered
for his own desire. No more escapades. The fever must burn itself out
behind doors that opened only to him.

He was to take the brunt of it--though, in tears, she bade him remember
and beware of treachery within herself--warned him that she must prove
a false ally in that occult crisis--in the burning obscurity of her
obsessed mind; in the faithless intent of a subtle and uncaged heart.

“There is no other way, dearest,” he said. “If there’s ever a débâcle
then we crash down together.”

“And when I awake, Stuart?”

“Had you rather awake in any other arms?”

“No.... But I don’t want ever to awake that way.... Even in your
arms.... What was it you told me about one of those Western states?”

“It’s necessary to establish a residence.”

“How?”

He went over it with her again--details that he spoke of with
difficulty--the whole sordid legal procedure so utterly repugnant to
them both, yet which held for them a miserable fascination. Also,
there was Sadoul, and they did not know what he might do to fight
divorce--she very certain that he would follow her--he aware that
Sadoul could close her road to complete freedom and make it a drawn
game.

       *       *       *       *       *

One dark afternoon toward Christmas-tide, they had been speaking of
it--an odd time to revert to so miserable a subject, for Gilda was
going to have a tree for them both, and they had been dressing it.

Now she knelt beside the tree with yards of tinsel trailing from her
hand, watching Stuart winding the electric wire, with its rows of tiny
coloured bulbs, among the branches.

“I don’t know,” she murmured--“I think the only way is to go on as we
are. Don’t you, Stuart?”

He muttered something inaudible, twisted a strand of bulb-set wire
through a fragrant green branch.

“We are anything but unhappy,” she ventured. And, as he said nothing,
busy with his wire among the branches: “I wonder why you care to marry
me. It would not be agreeable to your family.”

He turned around: “Why do you assume that?”

“I don’t assume it, Stuart. Sadoul told me.”

“What damned business is it of Sadoul’s----”

“Please! The conversation had become general; Veronica was giving us
tea; George Derring talked snobbishly about old families and social
traditions. Somebody mentioned you. Sadoul etched one of his vivid
portraits--a sort of composite portrait of a Sutton.... You know Sadoul
is a master of trenchant English--a word is a phrase with him.... Your
race lived for a hundred years when he spoke.... I was quite scared....
Then I realized that what he said was sneeringly meant for me.... That
was all, Stuart.”

After a silence he resumed his task among the branches:

“A man marries to please himself,” he said in a slightly sullen voice.

“Men of your race marry within their family’s approbation.”

“Good heavens, Gilda! That dreary, stilted era is as dead as Mrs.
Grundy!”

“Sadoul says its traditions never die out among such families as yours.”

That was true. He knew it. Even within himself, to his impatience and
annoyance, the musty old precepts remained alive, surprising him at
inopportune moments by their ridiculous virility.

“Well, Gilda,” he said, “if there remain in us absurdities, narrowness,
traces of the priggish Victorian, we’re not utterly antediluvian. I
do not believe for a moment that the attitude of my family would be
anything but cordial to the girl I marry.”

She drew the shining strands of tinsel slowly through her slender
fingers, still kneeling, not looking up.

“I was not thinking of myself,” she said.

“Of whom, then?”

“You, of course.... I would not have your pride suffer through me.”

“How do you mean?”

The girl sighed lightly. “There are so many ways--situated as you
are.... I know a little about the traditions of old and conservative
families.... Their traditions are part of them. They are not to be
suppressed or removed. They are as much part of them as heart and
lungs: they last till death.”

“You speak with familiar authority on such things,” he said, smiling.

She looked up.

“Yes,” she said. “I am a victim of tradition.”

He came over and knelt down on the floor, facing her.

“How do you mean, Gilda?” he asked curiously.

She was sorry she had spoken; that seemed evident. She said,
reluctantly: “I am not yet twenty, Stuart.... I am living here in New
York quite alone. Nobody related to me is visible. There seems to be
nobody to vouch for me.... Do you imagine it always was so?”

“Dear, I don’t suppose so. But you never have spoken to me of these
things----”

She shook her head: “No; there’s no reason to.”

“But if we should ever marry----”

“Yes, there would be a reason then.... I would not wish you to think me
less than I am.”

The boy put both arms around her:

“I could not think more of you, dearest. I don’t care what were your
circumstances----”

“That’s the darling thing about you, Stuart,” she said, flushing and
drawing his face to hers impulsively. “You know something about me. You
know vaguely about Sadoul--that once he was part of my life----But what
part you don’t know, you never ask; you are just sweet and kind to me,
Stuart, and I fell in love with you before I knew it--before I meant
to--wanted to----”

Her fresh lips rested on his; she looked deep into his eyes.

“I didn’t think there was any future for us when I fell in love,”
she said. “I didn’t think of anything. If I had I’d have been
frightened.... Because, if the world had not gone so wrong with me,
I ought to have met you on your own level--if destiny intended us to
meet.”

“I’ve always thought that,” he said.

“Have you? You’re such a darling, Stuart. And you are not wrong....
I’d rather not talk about it--unless it ever should come true that we
marry. Just believe that I am not--not less than you would wish me....
Not in _any_ way, Stuart.”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“I can’t bring myself--please--you see there are--others to
remember--shelter--unless I were married to you--when their honour
becomes yours also----”

“I understand, Gilda.”

“Do you? I am speaking of my father and mother. Unless I were married
to you their tragedy could not be made a confidence between us to be
guarded with our own honour by both of us.”

He nodded gravely.

“It’s as though,” she explained wistfully, “there were such a tragedy
in your own family. If I were less than your wife you could not permit
me to take my share in it and help guard the common honour.”

“Of course.... That I am in love with you is not enough.”

“No, dear; not even if you were my lover.”

“That’s the only thing that would ever make me doubt your quality,
Gilda--that you ever could consider such a thing possible----”

“Oh, Stuart, that is the peril to me when the _Other One_ is in
possession. Because you and I _are_ of the same sort--and there is no
condescension--only the common fault--to share between equals----”

“If Sadoul really gave that _Other_ right of way into your heart, he’s
a devil incarnate,” said Stuart, slowly.

“He did it because he wanted me at any cost. And it has cost _him_ his
last chance.... But _you_, Stuart!--_you_ know that I’d be miserable,
humiliated, heartbroken, if I were your mistress--no matter how much I
was in love? It’s only when the _Other One_ is in possession----” She
dropped her face on his breast, clung so, closely.

“I trust you so,” she whispered, “--even when the dark transition
comes--even when I am in your arms and the _Other One_ looks at you out
of my eyes----”

A quick little sob cut her short; she rested one hand on his shoulder,
sprang to her feet, whisked away a tear, laughed uncertainly.

“Are we going to dress our tree? Or make each other unhappy----”

“We’re going to dress this jolly little tree,” he said, getting to his
feet.

She brought a big pasteboard box full of brilliant, flimsy
things--stars, globes, shining shapes of various patterns to dangle
from the branches. He hung them subject to her approval, and they
became very busy again.

“Tell me,” he said, “what do you do over there at Pockman’s laboratory
when you go?”

“Oh, it’s a nuisance, Stuart. Pockman fusses around. He has a lot
of charts--I don’t understand them. It seems that it’s important,
scientifically, for him to keep me under observation for a while. He
takes measurements, pressures, all sorts of records--do you know I’ve
grown a quarter of an inch since you first met me?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“I _have_! Also, I’m informed that I’m superbly healthy, and--if you
please, monsieur--rather unusually symmetrical. Now, may I expect a
more respectful attitude from you?”

“Am I lacking dear?”

“You never ask leave to kiss me.”

He started toward her; she fled around the tree; taunted him; consented
at last to kiss him through the branches; and came around to join him
with her box of baubles.

“It’s going to be charming!” she exclaimed, surveying the glistening
boughs laden with glittering objects and striped canes of candy.
“Stuart, there’s only one thing I want you to give me for Christmas.”

“What’s that, darling?”

“A doll.”

“All right. I’ll give you a hum-dinger----”

“No! I want an old-fashioned French doll of wax. I want her eyes to
open and shut. I should like to have her say ‘_Ma-ma!_’ in a squeaky
voice when her tummy is gently indented. Will you give me that kind?”

“You bet, sweetheart!”

“Thank you. What do you wish, Stuart?” she added. “If you say anything
sentimental I’ll throw this green globe at you!”

“Well, then”--he meditated for a moment--“give me a toy shovel and pail
so I can transplant little pine trees this spring.”

“Shovel and pail,” she repeated, making a mental note. The dressing of
the tree was resumed. Presently she said: “When do you expect to go
North?”

“Not until the ground thaws.”

“It must be very lovely up there where all your tiny new forests are
growing.”

“It’s pretty except where it’s been lumbered. We’re planting that by
degrees. And the standing timber, of course, is beautiful.”

“It must be,” she said, with an unconscious sigh.

“Would you like to come with me?” he said.

“Darling!” she protested with an enchanting smile.

“You mean the Grundy?”

“I do. You said she was dead, but I knew you were mistaken.”

“Would you really like to come?”

“I’d adore it. But how?”

“There’s Veronica----”

“Oh, Stuart, that wouldn’t be wise. You know what they’d all
think--Katharine Ashley, Frances Hazlet--and then the men----”

“Of course,” he said, “we’ve got to care what is said about you.... If
we could get into my car and just beat it some day, nobody would be the
wiser; and you and I know we’re all right----”

“That,” she said quite seriously, “is the nuisance of not being
married. And--oh, Stuart!--if ever you wanted to marry me afterward and
your family found out!”

“Awkward,” he admitted.

“What a perfectly beastly nuisance not to be married!” exclaimed the
girl. “Think of the things we could do, Stuart. Have you any idea how
my heart sinks when you have to go home, and I lock the door and come
back here alone--thinking of a million things I forgot to tell you----”

“Do you, dear?”

“Yes. Don’t you feel that way? Or are you pig enough not to?”

“Don’t you suppose I miss you as much as you do me?”

“I don’t know.... I want you desperately, sometimes. A woman’s
different, I suppose.... I don’t think any woman in love is absolutely
self-sufficient.... A man in love, I fancy, is not so dependent....
A girl admits a companion to her mind and heart for the first time
in her life when she falls in love.... A man has other comradeships
which stave off loneliness of mind--of heart, too, perhaps.... It’s
curious--and rather sad.... No woman ever completely filled her lover’s
mind. No lover but completely fills the mental and sentimental life of
any girl who really loves.”

The boy hung the last specimen of papier-maché fruit upon the tree,
came around and took the girl’s idle hands in his.

“Do you think I’m in love with you, Gilda?”

“I--think so.”

“Are you in love with me?”

“Yes, I _know_ it. You see, Stuart, it’s merely the difference between
knowledge and belief--the fundamental difference between our sexes.
Belief satisfies us; knowledge alone satisfies you.” She laughed,
rested her lips lightly on his chin. “So--we both are satisfied.”

They stood smiling at each other.

“I’ll go home and dress and we’ll dine at----”

“Dear! Freda has such a nice dinner!”

“Don’t you want to see a show----”

“No!”

“Don’t you want----”

“No. Are you tired of me?”

“You lovely little thing----”

“Let’s stay with our tree. I adore it. I’ll play for you, after
dinner.... And we can read more of those vapid, egotistical memoirs----”

“That impossible woman!”

“Do you know,” said Gilda, thoughtfully, “she really is not impossible.
She’s quite nice and human--even sweet to people she likes.”

“You speak as if you knew her,” he said.

“I do----” The girl flushed as though recollecting herself, gave him a
confused look.

“You know the Countess of Wyvern, Gilda?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. There was a silence. She lifted
distressed eyes to his, looked elsewhere, stood nervously twisting her
fingers.

“Lady Wyvern is--a relative,” she murmured.

She had turned partly away. Now she went to the mantel and stood
looking at the clock.

“If you have anything to do before dinner,” she said over her
shoulder--“I think I had better see what Freda is about----”

She turned on her boudoir and bathroom lights for him and continued on
through the dining-room toward the kitchen.




                              CHAPTER XXII


The week had been a clear and joyous one for Gilda. Not a shadow
disturbed it.

Christmas Eve she was like a little girl, trotting about the apartment
with ropes of evergreen, filling every vase with holly, hanging wreaths
at every window, tying up dozens of little packages--inexpensive gifts
all destined for Stuart.

That young man came in after dusk, his arms full of packages, and Gilda
flew to him, on fire with curiosity, touching the brilliant Christmas
ribbons with exploring forefinger.

“Everything is to be placed at the base of the tree,” she explained
breathlessly, “--yours are all there, Stuart--I _wonder_ what is
in this big box! Darling--shall I take one little look? Oh, no; it
wouldn’t do, would it?”

“Keep your lovely little hands off those packages,” he warned her,
laying aside his hat and overcoat.

They went into the living room and she stood watching him in youthful
excitement as he squatted down and laid packet after packet around the
base of the tree.

“It’s the most real Christmas I ever had. It’s a storybook Christmas.
All mine were in schools and most uninteresting. Isn’t our tree lovely?
No, we must not light it until after dinner. Positively, dearest! And
oh, Stuart, _did_ you bring a stocking to hang up?”

He gravely unrolled and displayed the desired hosiery. Hers already
hung from the mantel, daintily empty; and she hung his beside it,
stepped back to view the effect, clasped her hands with a swift intake
of breath.

“Don’t they look perfectly darling together!” she said as he drew her
head back against his shoulder. The next instant she wriggled free,
pinned a twig of holly to each stocking.

“Poke the fire, Stuart. I want to see the sparks. There! Isn’t it
enchanting?”

Everything was “enchanting” or “adorable” or “darling” that Christmas
Eve; the dinner, too, with its roast goose--reconnoitered with
difficulty by an unskilled carver--its egg flip and mulled spiced
wine, and its very British plum-pudding--that over-praised and soggy
sham--which blazed gaily under its burning sauce, and exhaled the only
appetising ingredient in it--its odour.

They stood up and drank to each other, almost unsmilingly, almost
awkward in a seriousness unpremeditated.

That was in flip. He got up again later, and offered their “love
everlasting” in a cup of mulled wine.

An odd shyness overcame her; she was able to reply only with a smile;
but as she lifted her silver cup, a swift mist glimmered in her eyes.

She closed her eyes and kissed the rim of her goblet; they exchanged
cups, drank to love in silence.

Very soon they were at their ease again with each other.

“A Christmas goose,” he commented, “is very English.”

“They always sent me one.”

He looked up interrogatively.

“To school--wherever I happened to be--in Belgium, or France. There
came always a Christmas box from my father--always.”

He nodded gravely.

“Mother also sent me my Nöel,” she added.

“That helped,” he ventured.

“Yes.... Convent schools are not gay at Christmas-tide.... Isn’t this a
most enchanting Christmas?”

He thought: “You pathetic kid!” But he said it was truly an old
fashioned and genuine Christmas Eve.

As they left the table she said a trifle bashfully to the boy:

“I don’t know what Christmas bowl we should drink after dinner. I’ve
looked all through Dickens and his stories are full of steaming bowls,
but he doesn’t say how they’re made----”

Stuart shouted with laughter, and they went on gaily to the piano.

For a while she sang in her clear, childish voice the quaint French
carols--the Nöel of the peasants, or its sweet and sophisticated modern
equivalents--charming chorals of convent days.

She drifted to a familiar hymn. He leaned beside her, sang with her.

Her white hands hung listlessly on the keys; her cheek touched his.

Hesitatingly she mentioned her own faith; waited for some response. In
the wistful silence his boy’s heart grew heavy. The Talkers had left in
him little with which to meet her appeal.

“Have you no God?” she asked in a low voice.

“I would--would like to have one. Children are better off.”

“You are only a boy, Stuart. You still need God.”

He nodded. Presently he said: “I needed Him when you died that night. I
asked Him to be fair to you.”

“You prayed for me?”

“I asked justice. I was over-wrought, overwhelmed. I suppose I
reached out instinctively for help--my mind confused with memories of
Christ--of miracles--and the little dead girl He made alive again----”

“Jairus’ daughter.”

“I remember now.... You seemed such a little girl to be dead....”

She said, seriously: “Do you think it was Christ--or what Pockman did?”

“I want to think that what Pockman did was by grace of Christ.... I
don’t see why a modern mind may not believe that.... Except....”

“What, Stuart?”

“Oh, I don’t know.... There is so much to think of ... so much science
and logic--and the wisdom of modern thinkers to consider. The trend of
thought is not toward Christ as the ultimate solution of the world’s
problems.”

The girl sat very still, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.

She said: “How can modern science admit spiritual survival and deny
Christ?”

“Spiritual survival is being proven.”

After a pause: “I didn’t think I was at liberty to tell,” she said in a
voice that was nearly a whisper, “but I saw Christ’s shadow, once.”

He turned slowly to look at her.

“When I lay dead in the chair.... You laid me there. Then you went
away.... Shall I tell you?”

He scarcely nodded.

“I lay there, dead. Sadoul came from behind the portières. My soul was
already leaving me. Sadoul saw it.

“God only knows what he meant to do--but suddenly the white shadow of
Christ passed between Sadoul and me!... I saw His shadow on the air,
and knew it. And that is all I knew until I opened my eyes and saw you
beside my bed----”

She pressed her face convulsively against him.

The boy caressed her passionately, in silence, trembling to remember.

What she had told him was the delirium of a dying brain. But he did not
say so. All he did say was:

“Sadoul did not come from behind the portières. I was alone with you
when you died.”

“Sadoul was there.”

“No, dear----”

“I tell you he was behind the curtains, Stuart!”

“But I went down stairs to find him----”

“You went down and did not find him. When you returned he was gone. But
he _was_ there. I saw him.”

She sat upon the piano bench beside him and patted her bright hair into
better order. He gave her a vague, incredulous look. Then an odd mental
flash stilled his heart for an instant--a mere glimmer--a phantom
thought scarce formed.

“Behind the curtains,” he repeated, mechanically.

She nodded, still busy with her hair.

“Stuart,” she said, “it is all passed and happily ended by the grace of
God. I died: God heard your prayer and gave me my soul again. Pockman
was only the instrument He chose----”

She turned and took his hand impulsively:

“Darling, can’t you believe that Christ made me alive again?”

“Yes, I can--in a way----”

“Believe it this Christmas Eve. That would be the most wonderful gift
for us--your new faith. Because you saw. What more does anybody ask?
What clearer proof had the publican, Jairus? He asked aid. Christ
answered and raised his child from the dead. You asked God to help
me----” She threw wide her arms--“here I am, alive!” And she flung her
arms around his neck.

       *       *       *       *       *

She touched the keys again. He sat humbly beside her, silent, while she
sang in her lovely, child’s voice the nobler hymns, or, sometimes, only
played them.

And very soon it was time to light the magic tree. But first she
banished him to her bedroom, closed the door, then ran to her desk and
took out the gaily beribboned little gifts for his stocking.

When it was filled and bulging, she called to him and, in turn,
submitted to banishment, and he drew from his overcoat pocket the
gifts destined for her slim stocking, filling it from toe to knee.

It lacked a few minutes to midnight when they lighted the tree. She
cried out in delight and caught his hand.

They stood so until the clock struck.

At the last stroke she turned and wished him an excited Christmas
greeting, and:

“Oh, Stuart!” she cried, “I want to see what is in that large box!----”

It was her old-fashioned French doll of wax. It opened and shut its
eyes. It bleated “_Ma-ma_” when its tummy was discreetly pressed.

She clung to it through all the heavenly excitement of that Christmas
morn. A slim hoop of diamonds glittered on her wrist; there were
some beautiful handkerchiefs, stockings, a garnished suitcase, boxes
of gloves, books, bon-bons--and then the foolish little gifts, odd,
pretty, dainty things without value. But amid all she clutched her
doll to her breast in a passion of half laughing, half childish
possession--the strange instinct that persists so often despite
self-mockery, pretense, and denial--the little girl deathless in the
adolescent--the heart’s eternal youth till it beats its own requiem to
the last faint throb--the Feminine, immutable, imperious, imperishable.




                             CHAPTER XXIII


They had expected to spend New Year’s Eve together. She telephoned him
at the office that morning, asking him to come uptown early. Something
in her voice made him uneasy, and she admitted she was feeling a little
restless, but did not seem apprehensive.

When he returned from lunching at the Forester’s Club he learned that
she had called him again but had left no message.

Vaguely disturbed, he hastened to conclude business affairs for the day
and arrange for everything over the holidays.

He was longer than he expected; some final stock transactions
calculated to mitigate taxes were not completed; the closing for a few
days of such a business required precaution and careful attention to
every detail in the machinery.

However, after five, he wished everybody a happy New Year and sped
uptown in his car.

He did not find Gilda at home, but he found a vaguely worded note from
her saying merely that she was too nervous to see him that evening, and
had gone out with friends.

A hot flush of anger carried him to the Fireside Club; but anxiety
chilled it. Few men were in the club; the stillness was unusual; the
Talkers ceased because they were few; silence remained unbroken save
when there came distantly out of the dark city a dull rumour of tumult
from the “Roaring Forties.”

Apprehension lay a dead weight on his heart; he made a pretense of
eating; then, for an hour or two, he haunted the telephone booths
below. But Freda had left by that time and there was no response.

Where Gilda had gone and with whom he dared not surmise. If
her uneasiness of the morning had been caused by any occult
apprehension--any premonition that the _Other One_ threatened her with
possession, she had not intimated as much. And it had been understood
that, in such crises, she was to call him to bear the brunt of the dark
obsession.

Stuart went home about eleven. His taxi skirted the Forties; far
flashes from a river of fire revealed Broadway.

Before he fell asleep the vast droning of whistles penetrated his
breezy bedroom. The miserable year was ending in folly amid the empty
howling of a mindless people.

       *       *       *       *       *

Freda answered his morning inquiry saying that her mistress was still
sleeping.

He didn’t bother to ring up again, and his resentment had not cooled
any when he had dressed, breakfasted, and was on his way to call her to
account.

Freda said that her mistress was not well--not even dressed. Stuart
flung his coat and hat on the hall chair and went into the living room.

The curtains were still drawn. A chill demi-light revealed the shadowy
Christmas tree still standing.

On the lounge lay Gilda’s evening cloak and gloves, flung at random.
It was cold in the grey obscurity of the place. As he turned he set
his foot on something limp and slippery--a matted cluster of dead
orchids--and he kicked them aside and went across to her bedroom.

The door hung ajar. The girl was sitting on her bed huddled in a grey
wool wrapper, clasping her doll.

Her hair, loosened, fell in a coppery cascade; her little bare feet,
slipperless, hung limp above the fur rug. She scarcely looked up when
he opened the door.

“Where the devil have you been?” he asked harshly--suddenly reacting
from the tension.

“Where--the devil--I don’t know.... I don’t know ....” she said vaguely.

There was a silence; she drew the big wax doll closer, giving the boy a
vacant look.

“Are you ill?” he asked bluntly.

“Ill? Yes--quite ill. The world slipped away--somewhere.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I called you.... You were too far away.... Too far.”

“With whom were you?”

“The night was squirming with faces.... I am sick of faces. There was
no shelter.”

“Was Sadoul there?”

“Yes.... There was no shelter in that glare.... I am withered.”

“So you spent the eve of the New Year with Sadoul in riot,” he said
fiercely.

“In hell,” she repeated in a ghost of a voice. “The blaze has burned me
out--burned out my mind--blackened me....”

She looked up out of the burnished disorder of her hair, and he saw in
her eyes that the _Other One_ was still in possession.

“Drive out that damned thing!” he cried in an ungovernable rage.

But the _Other_ looked out of her eyes at him in dangerous beauty: “If
we burn--together--our ashes will be clean.... Do you love me?”

“Get into that bed!” he said in a strangled voice; went to her, pushed
her back among the pillows, and covered her to the face.

He stared at her for a moment--at her dangerous eyes looking at him,
shadowed by her hair--at the vacant visage of the doll at her breast,
its wax eyes closed.

He looked around him at the disorder--stockings, underclothing
trailing from the sofa or underfoot--a painted horn, a fancy paper cap
on the mantel----

An indescribable anger seized him; he went to the bed again, leaned
over:

“You poor little devil,” he said in a strangled voice, “--you poor,
miserable little devil----”

Always her eyes watched him,--depthless wells of peril.

“Don’t get up. I want you to wait for me here. I’ll be back this
afternoon. Call Freda when you are able to eat. Do you promise, Gilda?”

She lifted both arms in the wool sleeves, rested them on his shoulders
and lay looking at him, her red lips parted.

“Do you promise?” he repeated.

“Yes.... I am so in love--Stuart----”

“So am I. But not with the beastly thing in command of you now.”

“If you are in love with me, don’t go,” she breathed.

“Because I am, I’m going--loosen your arms!----”

He used force; she lay on the pillows again, flushed, her eyes veiled
with tears.

At the door he looked back. She had bowed her head against the blond
head of the doll, burying both in the disordered glory of her hair.




                              CHAPTER XXIV


He went to the Fireside Club but neither Pockman nor Sadoul were there.

He called a taxi and drove to the laboratory. It being New Year’s Day,
the place was closed; but a very dirty old man, who said he was the
engineer, answered the bell.

It seemed that, although the laboratory was closed and the employees
absent, Dr. Pockman had come in. Probably he was in one of the research
rooms.

Stuart climbed the iron stairs, knocked at the private office. Nobody
answered; he went in. A flat, suspicious, morgue-like odour pervaded
everything. Stuart opened the connecting door on a room full of jars
and chemicals and unknown apparatus. A grey chill possessed the place
and the sweetish odour hung heavily, horribly, as though it disguised a
stench more foul.

The place was dusky and empty, but he heard a scuffling in the room
beyond and went in.

In the dim, chilly light he saw Pockman running round and round after
a crippled rat which had escaped. Along the wall hobbled and scrambled
the hump-backed thing, trailing paralysed hind legs, dodging the bony
grasp of Pockman in pursuit, who was capering about like Death gone
crazy.

He caught the creature, which shrieked, and he held it up, twisting and
trying to bite.

“Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded, seeing Stuart.

The latter was experiencing a slight sense of nausea.

“I’m looking for Sadoul,” he managed to say.

Pockman held up the squirming rat. He had it by the back of the neck.
Then he ambled over and thrust it into a wire-faced hutch.

“I gave it a shot of the nymphalic,” he explained, wiping the sweat
away. “It’s an old rat on its last legs, and it’s going crazy with a
rush of youth. Look here; I want to show you a few creatures under
observation----”

“I can’t wait, now. Is Sadoul in the building?”

“I don’t know. That was a rough night last night. You weren’t along,
were you, Sutton?”

“No.”

“Your girl was. Didn’t Eve Ferral ask you?”

“Yes. Was it her party?”

“Hers and Katharine Ashley’s. The whole ‘Godiva’ company showed up.
It was large, Sutton--very noisy and very large.... I haven’t had any
breakfast. You ought to have come; Gilda let go last night----”

Stuart’s bloodless face checked him.

After a moment: “What part of the building does Sadoul occupy?” asked
the boy.

“You can go through that door, follow the corridor.... He may not be
there; I haven’t seen him----”

Stuart had already passed through the door. A whitewashed corridor,
full of the evil odour, led him to an iron door. He opened without
knocking; and saw a small room with a lounge in it. Sadoul lay on the
lounge. His eyes were open. He looked at Sutton as he entered, but made
no motion to rise.

Neither spoke for a few moments, but a sneer etched itself on Sadoul’s
dark features. Sutton came slowly toward him.

“Sadoul,” he said, “will you tell me the truth?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“Have you really anything to do with these periodic outbreaks of Gilda
Greenway?”

Sadoul disdained to evade the issue.

“I suppose so.”

“How?”

“Well, if you want to know, I suppose I put some badly needed animation
into her, widened her vision, stimulated a natural capacity for
pleasure. She needed a liberal education. She got it.”

“How did you do this?” asked Stuart curiously; but his clenched hand
was quivering and he dropped it into his overcoat pocket.

“I used what skill I had,” replied Sadoul, coolly.

“How? Psychically?”

“Possibly.”

“Hypno-psychic suggestion?”

“A very interesting subject,” sneered Sadoul.

“Yes.... You think, then, that Gilda’s periodic outbreaks”--he
moistened his lips--“these sudden alterations in her character--the
total change----” He could not go on for a moment or two. Sadoul lay
watching him out of smouldering, sardonic eyes.

“You believe you are responsible for these things?” he managed to say
at last.

“Does Gilda think so?”

“Yes.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Sadoul,” said the other slowly, “if it is true that you are
responsible--that you have been able to call in another and sinister
intelligence to combat her own self--break down in her all that
instinct and education have made her--can you, who have done this to
her, drive out this intruder--this enemy you called in?”

“Does it concern you, Sutton?”

“Yes.”

“You are mistaken. It doesn’t. But I’ll tell you that I wouldn’t undo
anything I’ve done if I could.”

“_Can_ you?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. Probably. I have not tried. I don’t intend to
try.”

“But you could free her of this if you tried, couldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How? Through hypno-psychic suggestion?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Is there any other way?” asked Sutton, very white.

The two men looked hard at each other.

“If you died--for example,” added Sutton in a scarcely audible voice.
And he saw in Sadoul’s burning eyes that Gilda’s freedom lay that way.

“Sadoul,” he said, “you had better free her of this obsession if you
can. Because, if you do not, I’m going to do it for her.”

Sadoul slowly raised himself to a sitting posture. There was murder in
his eyes and his dark face sharpened.

Sutton nodded: “That’s it, Sadoul. You understand. If you don’t free
her, I’m going to kill you. I’ll give you time to do it. I’ll give you
reasonable time. I’ll wait as long as I think proper. Then I’ll set her
free in my own way.”

Sadoul got up, his eyes ablaze.

“So that’s a threat, is it, Sutton?”

“Not all of it. What were you doing behind the curtain the night that
Gilda Greenway died in my arms?”

Sadoul’s whole figure froze; a pallour swept the blood out of every
feature.

“I don’t know how big a blackguard you were,” said Stuart in a
curiously still voice. “You may have killed her. You had a chance--with
that misericordia. You look capable of it. I don’t suppose we’ll ever
really know.

“But I know you’ve tried to kill her soul--you and that shadowy devil
that you let into her.

“Now, take your shadow-devil and get out. Get out of her life; or I’ll
put you out of this life.

“That’s all, Sadoul.”




                              CHAPTER XXV


When Sutton came out on Fifty-seventh Street a raw wind was blowing
from the river. Whether from this or from reaction the boy was
shivering in his overcoat; and he turned up the collar around his
pinched and bloodless face.

There was no vehicle to be seen; he walked westward along the wide,
dreary street, bisected at intervals by filthy, rusting elevated
structures and by desolate avenues through which dust whirled. Swarms
of dingy people, shabby and purposeless as dirty, wind-driven leaves,
eddied about the streets.

Half-frozen children, their faces masked or smeared with rouge and
charcoal, drifted hither and thither, whining and begging for New
Year’s alms.

He hailed a taxi, at last, and drove to Thirty-fifth Street. Freda
opened the door and went back to her kitchen. The place was still
dusky, shades lowered, curtains drawn.

Again he passed by the ghostly Christmas tree, with its festoons of
tinsel and its unlighted bulbs, and knocked at her bedroom door.

He heard her stir, heard a faint response, went in. She sat up
sleepily, gave him a confused glance, stifled a yawn with the back of
her hand.

But, in her clearing consciousness, now, he saw her own self looking at
him out of sweetly disconcerted eyes.

“Stuart,” she said, “this is rather casual of us, isn’t it?----” But
already she was remembering; the humourously uneasy expression faded
from her features. She pushed aside her hair, gazed at him, then her
face flushed to her throat, and her furtive gaze stole fearfully
around the disordered room.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered to herself, and took her face between her
snowy hands.

She remained so in the chill of the semi-dusk, her knees drawn up to
her chin, her face dropped between her hands, unstirring, silent.

There was some wood by the hearth, kindling, last evening’s paper still
folded.

He built a fire, went into the bath-room and turned the hot water into
the tub.

When he came out he stood looking at her for a moment.

“We’ll talk it over when you are ready, Gilda. Don’t worry; we’ll fix
it. You must never go through this again.”

He went out, closing the bedroom door, rid himself of hat and overcoat,
walked into the kitchen.

“Could we have breakfast in an hour?” he asked. “That’s fine, Freda.
We’ll have it on a card-table in the living-room.”

The living-room, evidently, had been swept and dusted, and Gilda’s
derelict evening garments removed.

He raised the shades and drew the curtains. A gleam of wintry sunshine
struck the wall.

The fire being laid, he set a match to it, seated himself to collect
his thoughts.

Reaction had brought that weariness for which rest seems to be no balm.
His tired mind seemed like some infernal machine which went on running
after all else had run down.

It continued hatching out thought--no use trying to stop it, quiet it,
ignore the hellish monotony of its functioning. He had to follow the
record of the machinery, endlessly committing the same words, the same
scenes to the custody of his tired brain.

The mantel clock timed the wearying reiteration; the flames on the
hearth asked the same questions and answered them softly, lightly,
inexorably. To what had his chance encounter with this girl brought
him? It had now brought him to the verge of murder.

Because he loved her? Yes, evidently. Because he loved her enough to
lay down his own life for her happiness? Evidently. Then he really
loved her? It seemed so. If there was no other way to help her he was
going to kill a man for her sake. And pay the penalty.... And permit
his father and mother to share the penalty?

Thought went on burrowing through his brain to find a way out of it.
There was no way out, if he killed Sadoul.

There was no way out for Gilda, either, unless Sadoul held his
hand--unless he should be able and willing to undo what he had done
toward her spiritual destruction.

The boy stared, hot-eyed, at the flames.

       *       *       *       *       *

Freda opened and placed a card table on wabbly legs. In a few minutes
she brought breakfast. Gilda entered, fresh from the bath, her skin all
roses and snow and her red-gold hair in two braids.

She stole a shamed look at Stuart as he set a chair for her by the
hearth. They had little appetite, pretended to none. Freda took away
table and tray and closed the door.

The girl sank back in her deep chair, rested her chin on one hand and
looked steadily at the fire. The silk sleeve of her boudoir wrap fell
to the elbow.

“Tell me, Gilda,” said the boy in a low voice.

“Yes.” Her gaze never left the fire. “I’ll tell you, Stuart.... I
hadn’t slept well. I was a little restless; but I didn’t think it was
because of the _Other One_. Still, I wanted you--I wanted you to come
early.... Because it didn’t seem as though I--I could endure my love
for you, alone.

“You were in my mind, in every breath I drew, in every heart-beat....
It seemed to become so overwhelming.... Then that strange buoyancy
came over me; contact, touch of earth, consciousness of material
ebbed.... That flame-like lightness was all there seemed to be of
me.... Even then it all seemed too heavenly to fear.... I was lying on
the couch.... I think my soul stood a little way from me. Over by the
second window.... It’s hard to remember. I can’t remember, in fact....
Only my heart had been looking out of that second window from where it
would be possible to see your taxi when you arrived....”

Her bright head dropped on her hand, and her eyes grew tragic.

“When I realised that the _Other_ was in possession I got up in a dazed
way. My heart was already in her control--I felt the fire stealing
through my veins. But I thought my mind was still clear. I tried to
pray.... And sat up laughing, reckless, blind, deaf to everything----”

She fell silent, dropped her hands in her lap and fell to turning a
black pearl ring that she sometimes wore.

“Shall I tell you where I went?” she asked, intent on her ring.

“I have heard.”

She gave him a startled glance.

“Pockman told me,” he said in a dull voice.

The hot colour stained her to the forehead. Twisting her slim fingers,
fighting to control her voice, she said:

“If a girl can become so depraved is--is it worth your while to try to
hold her?”

“Are you depraved, Gilda?”

“Not utterly ... so far.”

“Were you intoxicated?”

“Yes.”

The boy’s face had gone very white.

“What happened?”

“Nothing I dare not tell you.”

He looked into her eyes.

“There are two ways out of this for you,” he said. “Either Sadoul must
undo what he has done to you, or----”

After a pause: “He will not help me. What is the other way?” she asked.
And suddenly understood what he meant.

Presently she fell to shivering, placed her feet on the fender. His
eyes rested on them. They were very white in the sandals.

“What good would it do me?” she asked, trembling. “Would it help if you
destroyed yourself and your father and mother? There are other ways.”

“What ways?”

“One, anyhow. Do you think I’d let you destroy yourself to save me?
I’d rather give myself to you, innocence, evil, and all, and take the
consequences!”

“Do you think it makes a difference _how_ your spiritual destruction is
wrought?” he demanded hotly.

“Yes! The difference is that it’s you, not Sadoul. I’d rather kill
myself.... I shall, if you talk that way----”

“Gilda----”

“I shall, I tell you. My physical virtue and bodily purity are not
worth murder, if my mind is right. And my mind _is_ right--my real
mind. You cannot make it more upright by shooting Sadoul and ruining
yourself and your family’s honour.”

“What do you expect me to do?” he said with an ugly light in his eyes,
“--sit by complacently and see you go to hell?”

“Do you want to go, too, and leave your people to die under the
disgrace?”

The boy gave her an agonized look, and she gave him a white and
terrible look in return.

“There’s another way,” she said harshly. “You can step out of my
life--or I can step out of yours.”

His visage grew ghastly.

“Either that, or I become your mistress.... Or, if you’re afraid I’d be
too unhappy, I’ll go away, or kill myself----”

She leaned forward, twisting her fingers convulsively, her voice
scarcely controlled:

“If you think you are in love, I’ll prove I love you better. If your
conscience resents me, unmarried to you, send me away. I’ll go. It’ll
hurt you. But you’ll get well and marry somebody----”

“Don’t!--Gilda----”

“Well, then, what? _What?_ Tell me! It’s _your_ agony. You can’t go
on--can’t continue. Killing Sadoul won’t help. I’m trying to find
something to help _you_. Don’t you understand? I’m trying to think of
something to take away pain from _you_!”

“It isn’t that----”

“It is! _I_ can stand anything. When a girl loves as I love she can
stand anything. It’s love that keeps one dauntless. If you were dead,
it would keep my head up. If you were my lover--and my pride agonising
within me--it would keep my head high, and my heart in my eyes for you
to see where love dwells!----”

She got up, flushed, trembling, excited, took a step or two past the
tree, turned and came back to confront him.

“I don’t ask you to look out for me,” she said. “I can do that. It is
you who need aid, who need counsel, education in the courage of love.
If you want me you shall have me. If it would help you to have me go,
I’ll go. It’s for you to find out and tell me what to do for you.”

He got up, dumb, crimson to his temples, confused and scorched by the
girl’s fiery outburst. Something in his face excited her compassion,
and she went on recklessly, feeling the tears in her eyes and throat:

“You have said to me that men of your race are not accustomed to defy
convention. You must not think that I would defy it, lightly. What do
you suppose brought me here to New York, friendless, alone? Defiance of
age-old law. But not by me.

“That is why I never had a home. All the misery of my childhood and
youth arose from that. And do you think I would defy lightly the law
that still revenges itself on a girl because the dead are beyond its
punishment?”

The boy leaned heavily on the mantel, his face buried on his arm.

“There’s no way out of it,” he said.

“The way out of it is what you choose to have me do.” She came nearer,
almost blinded by tears:

“There remains the last hope of all--to ask the Christ, who gave me
resurrection, to stand by us, now.... If you wouldn’t mind praying
beside my bed--with me----”

He looked up; she could scarcely see, holding out one hand toward him.

They went into her room together, settled to their knees beside each
other. Her low, trembling voice drove all other thought out of his mind.

“O God,” she whispered, “let Stuart be my husband, somehow--so that if
I misbehave it will be with him--and let me marry him--unless it would
make him unhappy and ashamed, or alienate him from his parents....
Amen.”




                              CHAPTER XXVI


It was Life’s first hurricane for Stuart Sutton. It had arisen in fury
out of nothing; caught him unprepared. Where was it driving him? On
what unknown shore would it wreck him; in what maelstrom engulf him?

In the first hour he had ever set eyes on Gilda Greenway the tempest
began to gather. With incredible swiftness it had burst within that
hour.

Then, for the first time in his life, he had seen Death in the midst of
Life. He had known its stupefaction, its horror; had struggled against
it in anguished incredulity.

Bewildered, almost hysterical, he had demanded justice and
equity of the Unknown God. Justice had been accorded--by
somebody--something--somehow or other. The horror had dissolved
overnight; daylight ended the dream of evil. But the tempest was
still blowing, imperceptibly gathering force; storm clouds thickened,
writhing around this woman and himself.

Suddenly out of the whirling, infernal light burst love, in flames,
already full grown, fully armed, dangerous.

Beyond, a desolate vista opened through grey years, and endless,
purposeless, hopeless as ages born of hell----

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of nothing had been hatched this hurricane--born of a green
disguise, a smile, a little mask half lifted--a kiss given;
passionately forgiven.

All, instantly, became part of the boy’s life. Death also entered,
lingered, lightly withdrew.

But now the boy was learning that Death had left behind that which is
stronger than Death--a lovely and defenceless tenement haunted of
shadows--a young girl’s body for a battle-ground--a sanctuary where
victim and assassin lurked, watching each other behind the temple of
the mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Where was the tempest driving him? Shallows of passion, deeps of
love--over these he had been hurried, blindly, without choice; and
suddenly, low on the horizon, leered the red smear of murder.

So far had the tempest hurled him.

       *       *       *       *       *

There came an hour, late on a winter afternoon, when the last clerk had
left his office, the last letter had been signed, and he remained alone
at his desk, determined now to face the apparition of the future.

Into a life which had been so accentless, so methodical, so pre-ordered
as his own, had stepped from outer bournes a girl in pale silks and a
pale green mask.

What was he to do with her?

He was trying, now, to think what to do. Distant doors closing alerted
him of departing stenographers, clerks, heads of departments. Now and
then he could hear the muffled stir in adjoining offices, the slam of
roll-top desks, murmur of voices, a distant laugh.

Behind him the coal fire burned low. He rose, stirred the coals, stood
irresolutely looking at his overcoat, then walked to the window.

Outside the pinnacles of Manhattan glittered like cliffs and peaks of
solid jewels. There was a young moon in the southwest--a mere tracery
in the sky--then the towered masses of light, huge standing shapes
of shadow--bridges with necklaces of gems festooned above an unseen
river--and the deep, interminable roaring rumour from below--New York
aspiring to the stars, growling in its caverns--New York monstrously
breathing, pulsing, gigantically, vulgarly vital, exhaling its false
aura under the stars.

He looked up at that little immemorial virgin, the moon, thin-edged,
sly, spinster-like, malicious--like all who endure aborted.

In that glimmering magic framed by his window there seemed nothing
friendly. He turned, instinctively, to the fire.

       *       *       *       *       *

What was he to do? Letters from his mother were in his pocket.
California was warm, and sunny with ripe oranges.... And his father
played golf.

There were other letters in his pocket--some stacked up on his desk--to
be acknowledged, answered somehow.

A familiar, inherited social routine had been disrupted almost without
explanation since he had met Gilda Greenway.

He had been, practically, nowhere in that limited world reserved as a
matter of course for young men of his particular genus.

Dinners, dances, theatres, country parties--the usual succession of
events in which youth of his race mechanically participated--he had
avoided since he had known Gilda.

It was not a sudden distaste, not even inertia, not indifference.
Except for the civilised routine required in avoiding them the boy had
become oblivious to any social responsibility.

To be forgotten overnight in New York is inevitable unless one employs
effort to avert personal annihilation.

Stuart made no effort. Possibly, in the back of his crisp, blond head,
he realised that it is easy for such men as he to reappear.

But for some time, now, the clubs, the society, the amusements he chose
were not those familiar to his parents or to people composing those
interlinked circles wherein the Suttons were accustomed to consider
themselves at home.

       *       *       *       *       *

What should he do about it?

Here was a girl he couldn’t marry. Her world was utterly alien
to his own; her little circle peopled by garish imitations of the
real--by painted shadows on the screen of Life--Veronica, Eve,
Katharine, Frances--by monstrous mouths--The Talkers--those who think
they do life’s work with wagging jaws--and by darker phantoms--by
Sadoul, and Pockman, with his spasm-like smirk, and Lyken, handler of
lightning--blasted cadavers--Harry Stayr, sensualist, grossly feeding a
swathe through life; Julian Fairless, nimble painter in thin colours,
nimble-witted as a thimble-rigger whose public pays for the living
he claims it owes him; Derring, empty as his own falsetto voice,
fussing in the wake of noisy youth, sniffing its perfumed pleasures, a
high-pitched titter amid its noisy gossip.

       *       *       *       *       *

What was he to do? What was he becoming? Where was the end? Was there
no end? By stepping out, the whole unreal pageant would pass like a
dream. All this--all these tinted marionettes would go jerkily by him,
on and on, dwindling into toy perspective--somewhere--wherever they
came from.

All would pass on along a preordained path--all this grotesque Noah’s
Ark--men, women, beasts--Nika, Eve, Pockman, Stayr--the pickled things
in jars, the crippled rats and shreds of human flesh--the Monstrous
Mouths--all Talkers--and the phantoms, too--Sadoul, Gilda----

What was happening to him? What was happening to the safe, familiar
world about him? Once, death had been death--irrevocable, definite, an
end. Now it was no longer an end. There _was_ no end to life; not even
any orthodox conclusion.

The world was peopled with deathless shapes--it swarmed with
shadows--some malignant, like the wanton thing that haunted Gilda--that
sensuous, red-lipped shape that sometimes hid within her and looked at
him out of her dear eyes----

“I don’t know what to do,” he said aloud, staring vacantly at the
coals. “I thought we were protected from such things--that such things
never had existed.... I supposed God was in absolute control over
evil----”

He became silent as though somebody had spoken. Listening, he seemed to
hear the words again: “Deliver us from Evil.”

It was his own mind answering him.

“But deliver us from evil,” he repeated. And sat thinking for a while.

Were, then, such wandering, disincarnate intelligences--such
indestructible and sinister individual survivals--a form of evil
hitherto unrecognised--or not recognised since the gross superstitions
of former days peopled the earth with malignant phantoms?

“Deliver us from evil.” Was prayer the remedy? Was it a weapon? Was it
the whine of a coward for protection to a dull, monstrous, tyrannical
God, or was it a call to arms to an ally against a common enemy?

The boy stared at the whitening ashes. He did not know what to think,
what to do, whether he loved enough, or loved rightly. There seemed to
be no outlook, no solution, no help.

       *       *       *       *       *

As he got up and took his overcoat from the peg, his desk telephone
rang.

“Is it you, Gilda?” he said, happily.

“What in the world are you thinking of, darling? It’s after eight and
poor Freda is frantic about the dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but his face had cleared and his voice was
joyous, “--I’m so sorry, dear. Tell me, are you all right?”

“Of course I am. Are you?”

“Yes--now. I’ll come uptown immediately----”

“Don’t dare stop to dress, Stuart!”

“No. Are you particularly and enchantingly gowned?”

“I hope you’ll think so.”

“Had you rather I ate in the kitchen?”

“You silly thing!”

“Which are you hungriest for, dinner or me?”

“If I survive till you arrive I’ll tell you. Hurry, dear, I’m starving!”




                             CHAPTER XXVII


Sadoul came into the laboratory where Pockman was taking a tray of
frozen rats out of a refrigerator.

Sadoul looked thin and stooped; his clothes flapped on him. He glanced
at the rows of frozen rats with a wizened sneer:

“I feel like one of those, sometimes.”

“Sometimes you look like one,” returned Pockman. He tittered and
carried the tray to a porcelain table. First he sponged off the table
with some pale yellow solution, then he placed three frozen rats on
it. The vermin were rigidly congealed. They lay there stiff as bits of
metal, discoloured teeth and naked feet exposed.

“Is Gilda Greenway here?” inquired Sadoul.

“Not yet. Why?”

“I wanted to see her after you had made your observations.”

“She’s late,” said Pockman, absently. He counted out three more rats,
laid them on top of a wire-screened box, then returned the tray with
the remainder of the rats to the refrigerator.

Sadoul looked into the box. On a bed of sand lay several rat-snakes
coiled together for warmth. Pockman took a frozen rat by the tail,
opened the lid of the box, and dropped the rodent. A slow head stirred
in the composite snaky mass. There was no other movement.

“They won’t take it that way,” said Pockman. “The trouble is that I’ve
got to be careful they don’t bite me.”

“They’re not poisonous snakes.”

“All ophidians are more or less poisonous.”

“You think so?” asked Sadoul.

“I’ve yet to find one from which I couldn’t extract venom of one sort
or another. It’s not always poisonous to man.”

Pockman took the frozen rat by the tail and began to draw it across the
sand. Like lightning the stroke came from the snaky mass--a rat-snake
had the rodent by the head. The next instant Pockman jerked away the
rat by the tail and tossed it onto the porcelain table.

“That’s all I wanted,” he snickered. “Now we’ll try to find out what a
gland will do to that virus.”

He immersed the rat in a dark solution which was warming in a porcelain
basin over a low-turned lamp.

“They can eat the others,” he said, taking the two remaining rats by
the tails and dragging them across the sand.

Instantly a snake struck. After a few moments the snake’s jaws widened
spasmodically and a gush of saliva wet the frozen fur. Pockman went
back to his simmering rodent; Sadoul watched the revolting process in
the box.

The other snake took more time--less hungry perhaps--and held the rat
crossways as a pickerel holds a minnow before bolting it by the head.

Pockman, busy with his four rats, and using a gland macerated to pulp
for grafting, heard Sadoul cough now and then.

“If I had that bark I’d take it to Arizona,” he said. “Why the hell
don’t you get your sputum analyzed?”

Sadoul dropped the wire lid and came over to the table.

“Pockman,” he said, “did you ever tell anybody about those blueprints?”

“No. Why?”

“Sutton once said something to me.”

“I’ve never uttered a word. What did Sutton say?”

“Nothing definite. He asked me why I was standing behind those curtains
at Derring’s that night.”

After a moment Pockman leered at him sideways:

“_Were_ you?”

“Whether I were or were not,” returned Sadoul calmly, “he had no
knowledge of it.”

Pockman worked on, using a syringe. Presently:

“I’ll tell you something, Sadoul. When little Miss Greenway lay dead on
the chair where Sutton had propped her, with the misericordia imbedded
in the nape of her neck, she--that is, her still living mind--saw you
come out from behind those curtains.”

“She told you that?”

“She did. Probably she has told Sutton. Is that an explanation?”

Sadoul slowly nodded.

“How long,” he asked, “does consciousness persist in the brain after
death?”

“For some appreciable time. It varies.”

“If I had been there could she have been conscious of it?”

“Certainly,” snickered Pockman.

“For how long?”

“I tell you the time varies. The process of death is, as you know, a
slow and gradual detachment of the indestructible or etheric body from
the corpse. There is resistance, sometimes. Some people die hard. There
seems usually to be some difficulty.”

“What is the average length of time it takes to detach the etheric body
from the cadaver?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think we’ve struck any average, yet. You
are as familiar as I am with the process.

“In a quick and easy death the cold creeps upward from the extremities
to the brain. You and I have observed the procedure of the etheric body
as it detaches itself from the physically dying body.

“Something--some occult energy--seems to shake the etheric body, or
soul--loosen it, so to speak. When this lateral movement ceases,
millions of gentle vibrations begin, from the soles of the feet,
upward. The indestructible soul-principle begins to withdraw from the
extremities, upward, toward the head. Life slowly fades at the knees,
the thighs, the hips, the chest.... You and I have seen that faint
brilliancy gathering around the head. That, I fancy, is where the delay
usually occurs.”

“I think the brain dies hard,” said Sadoul.... “I wonder how long it
takes.”

Pockman shrugged and continued to wrap up his rats in sterilised
cheese-cloth and deposit each one in a sort of incubator.

Sadoul roamed about the place; Pockman had finished washing and drying
his hands when the door opened and Gilda Greenway came in.

The cold had made her pink; her furs accented the exquisite colour.
Under her toque the gold-red hair edged her cheeks with burnished flame.

“How do you do, Dr. Pockman?” she said cheerfully. “----I’m sorry I am
so late----” She caught sight of Sadoul. “Oh, I didn’t know you were
here!”

Her face altered, yet still remained smiling--an odd little smile,
slightly humorous, slightly guarded, faintly sarcastic, and entirely
devoid of fear.

He offered to shake hands with her, and she accepted with the hint of a
shrug.

To Pockman she said: “Aren’t you nearly finished investigating me? You
must have volumes already on the history of my case.”

Pockman tittered, smirked, hitched his shoulders, started jerkily for
his private office. The girl turned, nodded to Sadoul, her gloved hand
on the door.

“Could I see you when you’ve finished with Pockman?” asked Sadoul.

“If you like.”

“I’ll be in my end of the place.”

“Very well.”

She went out; Pockman teetered after her. Sadoul’s shadowy visage still
remained red from the encounter. He had joined his bony hands and was
twisting them as though to subdue physical pain. His sunken eyes seemed
filmy, unseeing, as he turned his head with the curious, nosing motion
of a blind thing caged, striving to realise its limits.

       *       *       *       *       *

After a patient examination, Miss Cross being present to record all
observations, Gilda drew a quick breath of relief, smiled whimsically
at Miss Cross, picked up her muff.

“You’re destined to be a very celebrated young lady,” said Miss Cross,
smiling, “----if you permit Dr. Pockman to use your name in this
report.”

Gilda laughed. “He has agreed to mention me as Miss X. I don’t wish to
be celebrated as a pathological prodigy.”

“You’re a prodigy all right,” snickered Pockman. “I am given to
understand that you’re even a more amazing girl than you appear to be
to me.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Pockman?”

“Psychically. I understand that you have an extraordinary potentiality.
It’s rather a pity you don’t like Sadoul.”

“I don’t dislike him,” she said quietly.

“I thought you did.”

“I do not like some things about him. Otherwise, I have always been
rather fascinated by his cleverness and intelligence. He can be an
extraordinarily agreeable companion.”

Pockman said in a low voice: “I never supposed you had any use for
Sadoul except to torment him--even,” he added, “when you let him take
you to parties.”

The girl flushed and glanced at Miss Cross. The latter, however, was
beyond earshot; and left the room the next moment.

“That’s what I hate about Sadoul,” said Gilda, quickly, “----the
material side of him. It angers me. It arouses cruelty. I have a
contempt for that side of him, and he knows it!”

Pockman held no brief for Sadoul, but the girl’s scorn seemed to pepper
his sex generally.

“After all,” he remarked, “he’s only in love with you.”

“Physically,” she retorted, reddening.

“Well--my God----” began Pockman, thinking in terms of glands, but the
girl interrupted:

“That’s part of it, I suppose. In fact, I know it, now. And I don’t
wish to know any more about it--not from him--not from anybody.... What
has he to say to me? Do you know, Dr. Pockman?”

“Well, I rather suspect it’s something concerning your unusual psychic
possibilities.”

“Do you mean _his_?”

“I mean yours, Gilda.”

“I didn’t know I had any--independent of Sadoul’s.”

“His amount to little compared to yours,” said Pockman.

She gazed at him incredulously; he smirked at her. “Tehee,” he
tittered, “how do you suppose you’ve fought him off?”

“With mind and will.”

“I mean in subconscious conditions--in successive periods of
hypnosis--even in phases of obsession--how do you suppose you have held
him off?”

“My soul is captain of my mind--whatever else invades my body to betray
it!”

“How did you know that?”

“I don’t know. My soul seems to know.”

“And so you fight it out, between soul and body?”

“At times.”

Pockman snickered, but his pale eyes were intent on her:

“Soul always comes out top dog, I suppose,” he said. “There are no
drawn battles, Gilda----”

“Yes, there are,” she said, crimsoning at her own honesty.

“No drawn battles in which Sadoul figures? Hey?”

“No.”

“Another man?”

“Yes.”

“And the other man has only to chip in to turn the tide of war one way
or the other?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know this?”

“Yes. He stands as ally to my real self. Our minds are comrades.”

“You’re at his mercy then?”

“When the dark change comes, I am.”

“Thin ice,” tittered Pockman. “A man’s a man. He’s likely to change
his battle-hymn to a Cytherean rag.” Again judgment, conclusion were
arrived at in terms of glands. Why not? The world’s work is done
through them. The world’s Talk continues for lack of them.

“Cats and kittens,” snickered Pockman. “It all filters out finally to
these. You needn’t fear Sadoul. You know it.... Of course, I don’t see
why you need fear anything. But folk-ways rule the world of folk. Taboo
remains tyrant. Always will. However, there’ll always be kittens.”

Gilda turned aside and looked out of the window.

“Nice girl,” said Pockman. “Morals are fashions. Always keep up with
the latest creations. Smartness wins.”

“Are you on Sadoul’s side?” she asked, her face still averted.

“On the contrary. The biggest lie ever hatched is that all the world
loves a lover. Half the world is masculine. The only lovers they love
are themselves.... No; I’m not on Sadoul’s side. I’m not on any _man’s_
side.”

Gilda continued to gaze out of the window. What she looked at was rusty
chimney pots against a heavenly blue sky. What the girl saw is another
thing--for her eyes were as remote as the skies.

After a little while: “Is there anything abnormal about me, Dr.
Pockman?” she asked, turning her head.

“No, Gilda.... No, not in a morbid sense, anyway.”

At that she slowly faced around:

“You speak with reserve.”

He hesitated; an unhealthy colour came into his flat face.

“It is possible,” he said, “that, transplanting a brand new and very
vigorous young nymphalic gland may have--have over-stimulated you a
little--added powerfully, perhaps, to a naturally ardent physique.”

Under his twitching smirk the girl lowered her eyes. She stood looking
at her muff, pinching the fur with white-gloved fingers, smoothing it
out.

“There is nothing to distress you in what I said,” insisted Pockman.
“You’ve doubled your natural vitality, that’s all. You’ve doubled your
years of youth, probably. You’re to be envied, Gilda.”

“I don’t know. I may find life too long.... I was thinking that, the
other day.”

He looked at her keenly: “I suppose you can’t get rid of Sadoul,” he
said in a lower voice. “He won’t stand for it, will he?”

She shook her head.

“Can’t have you himself and won’t let any other man,” commented Pockman
with a subdued snigger. “Well, that’s man--except in novels....
Or among the glandless. A Talker will talk himself into anything.
Words are all he lives. If you’d been married to a Talker, now, he’d
have done a lot of fine phrasing--talked himself into a thousand
attitudes--but he’d have let you go.... Sadoul won’t. He’ll follow.
He’ll fight. I don’t know what else he might do.”

“Nor I,” she said absently. “I think he is capable of killing me.”

Pockman stole a look at the door.

“You obsessed him from the first. I think his mental balance isn’t
what it once was. I’m always noticing. He’s suspicious--difficult to
observe. I’d walk pussy-foot for the time being. After all, you’ve got
time. You’ve more time coming to you than he has. He was handicapped
anyway before I gave you a new gland. That man has no chance. Play the
lady Fabian. That’s where he loses. He can’t wait. He can’t stand the
pace of Time. It’s your make as the cards lie. Take your time.”

She said in a low voice: “It’s a ghastly game. It’s cruel,
revolting.... And he is so clever, so interesting--fascinating
intellectually.... And has winning qualities. To subdue me, bend me to
his will--dominate and direct my inclination--this is a tragic madness
with him. All else is sane, likable, attractive. I ask no more amusing
comrade, no more stimulating companion.... Only--underlying everything
is the pitiable tragedy of a man sane on all subjects excepting one.
And on that, ruthless, brutal, inexorable.”

“Idée fixe,” muttered Pockman. “You may expect anything from that
egg.... Are you going in to see him?”

She nodded; he opened the door for her.




                             CHAPTER XXVIII


The room which Gilda peeped into resembled a chemical laboratory in a
way. There was some equipment for physical research, also, an X-ray
machine, a camera, electrical apparatus, dry batteries, arc lights,
incandescent lights, Hewett-tubes, other paraphernalia less familiar.
There was also a bare table and several uncomfortable chairs. A dark
cabinet adjoined, hung with black velvet draperies.

Sadoul was seated on one of the small chairs, his thin elbows on his
knees, his shadowy face framed in both hands. He got up as though
fatigued when she came forward.

“Gilda,” he said in a peculiarly agreeable voice, without any taint
of the habitual sneer, “you are doing a lot of things to help Sidney
Pockman. He’s building future fame on your kindness. Submitting
yourself to his observations means everything in the world to him.”

“I’d be disgustingly selfish not to help him,” she said, seating
herself. “Whatever I am,” she added lightly, “I’m not ungrateful.” She
rested her muff on the table and looked amiably, almost wistfully, at
Sadoul.

He dropped both elbows on the same table, propping his chin on
inter-linked fingers--the pale, bony fingers of a sick man.

“I wondered,” he said, “whether if I asked you’d be willing to help me
a step or two toward fame and fortune.” Irony in his voice was faint
but it was there.

“Always,” she said, “----reasonably.”

“Would you lend yourself to an experiment or two?”

“Of what nature?”

“Psychic.”

“Am I psychic, independently of you?”

“Unusually so.”

“What do you wish me to do for you?”

“I want you to give me a chance to study your two selves at close
range, with every paraphernalia, every equipment, every condition
favourable to exhaustive observation.”

A slight flush mounted to her cheeks: they looked intently at each
other across the table.

“I have only one self--excepting the intruder you let in,” she said
curtly.

“There are always two selves, Gilda. What you call the _Other
One_ belonged to you. You say I called her in. She was already in
attendance. She always has been. She’s part of you--not the stranger
you think--not an intruder from outer regions.”

“She is _not_ part of me!” cried the girl, blushing.

“She is and always has been,” he repeated calmly; “----but she always
had remained aloof--outside--during your waking hours. When you slept
she crept in and slept, also. All I did was to awake her before it was
time. And when you died, and your other self resisted her entrance,
I gave her ingress. That is all I did; I aroused her before the--the
conventional hour for her awakening had arrived. And when you fought to
evict her, and bar yourself against her, I merely let her in.”

He bent his cadaverous head; one hand shaded his eyes.

“I’m sorry I meddled,” he said. “She has proved no friend to me.”

Gilda fixed her eyes on her locked fingers.

She said slowly and without resentment: “It was a devilish thing to do
to a girl.”

She looked up, saw in his fixed gaze regret--not for what he had done,
but because it had failed.

“You were willing to carry me to hell with you,” she said.

“If there were no other way. Besides, there is no hell, except what I’m
in now.”

“Sadoul?”

“Yes, Gilda.”

“How did you happen to be behind that curtain?”

He denied his presence, pleasantly.

“I was thinking,” she said, “if you could do such a devilish thing as
you did to me, perhaps you killed me.”

“_Tu mihi solus eras._ I did not kill you, Gilda.”

“With a misericordia?”

“Why?” he asked, patiently good humoured.

She dropped her head, thinking of Stuart and their first kiss. Then,
vague eyed, she regarded Sadoul.

Strange scenes in her long resistance against this man took shape and
faded in her mind. It seemed odd that she hated him so little--and
only one phase of him. It seemed strange how much of sorrow, of pity,
of wistfulness tempered her resentment--how much attraction remained,
inclination to overlook, understand, forgive, this blazing, ruthless
mind which had failed to subdue hers.

She looked sadly at his features, marred and worn and sunken by the
sickness of aborted passion.

Undaunted, his deep set, smouldering eyes returned her gaze. Within
that great, bony frame the dull fire burned on, stealthily devouring
him. In his ravaged features she marked its devastation. And it would
burn on, consuming all--even his mind in the end. She could not look at
him unmoved.

Impulsively she placed a slim, gloved hand on his. She saw that her own
cause was hopeless, appeal useless. But she was not thinking of herself.

“I am not your enemy,” she said. “I’ll help you if I can.”

“You trust me?” he asked.

“No, Sadoul.”

“You are afraid?”

She laughed miserably: “Oh, no, I’m not afraid. I never was. I’m so
sorry you never understood that.”

“I did understand. I knew it. The fear was mine alone. Fear! The most
terrible thing in the world. Fear is the real Slayer; Death the
gentle, grave physician who assists at the birth of souls. Death--the
world’s family doctor--wise, kind, faithful, always on time. He
shuts the door against Fear and locks it. He delivers the soul,
patiently, skilfully. He severs the natal cord. A new birth is tenderly
accomplished.”

“What have you feared, Sadoul?”

“To live without you.”

Tears flooded her eyes: “I couldn’t--under God----” she faltered. “I
couldn’t--I couldn’t, Sadoul----”

She buried her face between her arms. Sadoul looked at her in silence;
gazed, burned on.

After a little while she got up, found a handkerchief in her muff.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She remained busy with her handkerchief for a
few moments. Then:

“You’ll have to show me what you wish me to do.... When shall I come?”

He suggested a day; asked her if she were free. She nodded. After a
short silence she turned and walked toward the door.

He opened it for her. After she had gone he stood so, for a long while,
peering down the empty corridor and nosing the silence like a great
beast blinded, bereft, confused by its unutterable isolation.




                              CHAPTER XXIX


It being Saturday, Sutton came uptown early and found Gilda lying on
the couch before the fire, still clad in a loose Chinese lounging robe
and slippers.

“You’re outrageously late,” she said. “I’ve had no breakfast.”

“Why didn’t you wake up?”

“The bed was warm and I lazy. It doesn’t excuse you for keeping
breakfast waiting. You annoy me, Stuart.”

He came over to her but she refused to kiss him, lay warm and spineless
in his arms, half lifted from the couch.

“Darling, I’m sorry,” he said. “I can feel that you’ve lost several
pounds. You’re wasting away!”

Her face remained averted but he could see she was smiling. Then,
gradually her arms encircled his neck; she looked up at him, tenderly
humorous, pretending defiance.

“You bully me,” she said. “Kindly remove that blond head!”

“You’re holding it.”

“Am I? Well, it’s mine. I don’t know what to do with it either.”

She considered him, searched him with hostile eyes, then with a swift
sigh relented and gave him her lips.

       *       *       *       *       *

Freda brought the card-table and spread it. Gilda, on the couch, one
knee crossed over the other, glanced absently through the morning
paper, pausing between pages to reach out her pretty hand to Stuart.

“Bosh,” she said, “listen to this, Stuart: ‘In response to cheers the
President doffed his hat.’ Did you ever hear anything as vulgarly
expressed? A gentleman lifts his hat; an old gaffer ‘doffs’ it. Can
you imagine the American newspaper as an educational influence? Or a
schoolmaster using double negatives?”

Stuart laughed: “The Great American Boob doesn’t know the difference.
His native tongue, properly written, perplexes and annoys him. Like
Mr. Lillyvick he doesn’t ‘like the langwidge.’ Besides, it is he who
is writing our newspapers and our novels for us; and he likes what
he writes; he likes it fine, Gilda. _He_ would doff _his_ hat. What
does he know about other people? Don’t ever be afraid of anarchy. The
terrifying part of the social revolution in America was accomplished
long ago.”

The girl swung her slippered foot and laughed, carelessly turning the
pages of the great New York daily.

“I thought you were a good republican,” she said. “Are you doomed to
the guillotine, too?”

He smiled: “I love my country passionately,” he said. “The people in it
are its only defects.”

“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “I can see where our heads are going to fall
some day. Mine always did fall every time the blade dropped in the
Place de la Revolution.”

“I didn’t know _you_ felt that way.”

“How should you know how a girl feels whom you picked up at Derring’s?
Dame Theroigne was a natural inference----”

“Good heavens,” he protested, “----stop that baby chatter----”

“Didn’t you pick me up?”

“Are you serious?”

“No, darling. You can’t tell where you’ll find a lost diamond, or why
the setting wore out. They’re even found in sewers, you know----”

“What the deuce,” he exclaimed, irritated by her wayward humour.

“You sweet thing,” she said, “I’m bad tempered because I’m hungry. You
know I don’t belong in a sewer. So do I. Where on earth is Freda?” She
jerked the paper open again, swung her foot with the nervous grace of a
kitten switching its tail.

“I’m cross,” she remarked, “because I haven’t a vocation.”

“Do you want one, dear?”

“No, I don’t.”

They both laughed and she flung the paper at him.

“I don’t want to do anything except be your wife,” she said, swinging
her slim foot to and fro and clasping her knee with both hands.

“I want children, too,” she said with a rebellious little kick. Her
slipper flew. He got up and replaced it, touching her instep with his
lips.

“All that,” he said, “is a vocation to which no other can compare.”

“I don’t believe you want me for your wife, Stuart.”

“You believe it utterly.”

She turned to him, searched his face. Slowly the smile dawned,
deep-eyed, heavenly. She rested her cheek on her shoulder and watched
him; abandoned her hand to him, her eyes, vaguely sweet, following his
still caresses.

Freda came with breakfast, but they scarcely took the trouble to
separate.

However, the grossly material perfume of hot muffins aroused Gilda from
ethereal bowers, and she sat up hungrily surveying the tray.

During breakfast she told him about her promise to Sadoul, explained
what was wanted of her.

He was hearing this for the first time, could not comprehend, was not
at all edified.

“You darling,” she said, vigorously occupied with bacon and coffee, “do
you suppose I’d do anything I shouldn’t?”

“I can’t see how you can endure that man----”

“Nonsense! I always shall find him interesting. Whatever he did to
me has wrecked him, not me.... And it may seem strange to you--to a
man--but a woman is sorry.... If she really has been loved, she can’t
hate utterly. Sad indifference, regret for a man fiercely wasted,
unhappy solicitude for mad perversity which brings only agony and
disaster--these all generous women feel.... Once, on a lonely mountain,
my collie dog went crazy and attacked me. Chasing me he fell into an
abandoned well. I went back and saw the dog swimming around and ’round
in the bottom of the well. There was no ladder, no rope, no way to save
him. It tore my breast to look at him. I wanted to go away--but the
creature had seen me, and kept up a horrible sort of screaming as it
struggled.... I thought it did not want to die entirely alone.... It
almost killed me to remain. But I--I talked to him--until the end.”

“Where was this?”

“In Wales, when I was a child.”

“It’s like you, Gilda.”

“It’s like any woman--if a thing once loved her.”

“You are willing to help Sadoul in his research work?”

“I am helping Dr. Pockman. I couldn’t refuse Sadoul. He’s not very
successful. His books are partial failures. Outside of the free-lance
press nobody reads him, nobody hears of Sadoul. Besides, I am
not--untouched--by his unhappiness.”

She lifted her lovely, honest eyes to Stuart:

“Out of your own abundance,” she said, “give something to this man.”

“You are giving.”

“Not without permission.”

“Dearest,” he said, deeply stirred, “what you choose to do is my choice
always.”

“I knew it. Your will is mine, also.” She smiled at him.

“What time are you due there?” he asked without enthusiasm.

“At three. But you are coming with me, of course.”

“That may not please Sadoul.”

“That,” she remarked, “is of no consequence whatever. I never intended
to go without you.”

He drew a sharp breath of relief. “All right,” he said.




                              CHAPTER XXX


At the laboratory they were shown into the small reception room. There
was nothing there except a wired crate marked “Cobra. Do not handle.”

“That’s amusing,” remarked Stuart. “What does Pockman want of a cobra?”

Miss Cross, in her neat uniform, came in. She remembered Sutton, gave
him a quick look, clear, interested, but without conclusion concerning
their appearance together for the second time within her personal
experience.

She shook hands smilingly with Gilda, turned to Stuart, quizzical,
amused:

“A more agreeable reunion than our first association, Mr. Sutton.”

“Yes,” he said. “I was pretty badly scared.”

“You were the most tragic young man I ever beheld. You wouldn’t smoke.”

“You were very nice to me,” he said, forcing a rather painful smile.

“I was sorry for you----” She looked at Gilda, “sorrier for you, dear.
But it turned into a happy miracle.” She smiled, looking from one to
the other, the invisible and delicate antennæ of feminine intuition
exploring the situation without comprehension, until Gilda looked at
Stuart, and the boy returned the fleeting glance.

Miss Cross knew, then. But that was all she knew.

Gilda inquired for a dressing room; Miss Cross took her away to hers.
Stuart started to pace the narrow floor, but a door opened and Sadoul
came in.

He was prepared to see Sutton; Gilda had averted him by telephone,
tersely, hanging up as he began to demur.

“Come in, Sadoul,” said Stuart coolly. “I’m rather relieved at the
opportunity to tell you that I spoke thoughtlessly the other day.”

“Oh, no,” said Sadoul, “you’d thought it all out.”

Sutton reddened. “Yes, I had. And I came here to say what I did say.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

“Yes; I shan’t ever kill you. It’s one solution, but not a satisfactory
one.”

Sadoul laughed. “You mean not a respectable one. I’d die only once, but
the Hudson River Suttons would die every day that they lived----” A fit
of coughing interrupted him.

The colour in Stuart’s face deepened.

“Undoubtedly. That’s the only reason it’s no solution for our problem.”

“The problem’s yours,” remarked Sadoul, “not mine. As for Gilda, she
belongs to me--whatever you and she choose to do about it. But I don’t
worry. The Gods of the Mountain--the Holy Catskills--will hold you to
respectability. As for Gilda, her chastity is--more--admirable----”

Another fit of convulsive coughing shook his bony frame. He wiped his
face, looked sneeringly at Stuart:

“What a gift of God is a truly good young man,” he said. “But a
respectable young man is a pearl without price----” Another access of
coughing seized him. The crisis passed. He leered at Stuart, unable to
speak.

The rushing, confused impulse to kill this man surged, ebbed, passed,
leaving the boy dazed and pale.

“I thought you’d do it,” panted Sadoul; “it would have been worth it
to me to make a clean sweep of all Suttons. You got rather white. But
respectability is a sheet-anchor and the Highlands of the Hudson a firm
fortress----”

The words choked in his throat: a thin stream of bright blood squirted
from his mouth--gushed over his chin.

Moments of silence, terribly significant: Sadoul, eyes closed, sopping
his mouth with crimsoned handkerchief, the boy staring.

Sadoul opened his eyes, red with hell. His shoulders sagged, his gaunt
chest heaved, he leaned trembling against the wall like a horse,
sinking by the withers.

“Can I do anything, Sadoul?” ventured the boy in a ghostly voice.

Sadoul nodded: “Yes, mind your business.”

“I don’t care what you say to me.”

“I don’t either.” Sadoul sat down, rested for a while, got up.

“Are you all right?” asked Stuart.

Their eyes met. Both knew now it was only a waiting game. And, with
this astounding knowledge, the boy softened.

“You ought to go away,” he said. “I’ll play square.”

“Arizona and a clean shirt?” sneered Sadoul. He looked at his wet
handkerchief, at his stained hands.

“Play square, eh?” he repeated. “Well, that’s a little more than being
respectable. That’s emotional. Respectability doesn’t admit of any
except prescribed and predigested emotions. Be prudent, Sutton, or your
ancestors will squirm underground.”

Stuart said: “Well, whatever you do I’ll play square, Sadoul. I think
I’d do it on my own account. But Gilda likes you----”

Sadoul, on his way out, paused at the door.

“You’re never going to have her,” he said. “So don’t lie awake on my
account.”

He went out, leaving the door ajar. Sutton heard him in the wash-room.

A little later Gilda returned alone, noticed his expression, came to
him, questioningly.

“It’s nothing. Sadoul was here. We always upset each other.”

“I know it. I hated to ask you to come.”

Pockman came in at his crazy gait, arms jerking and dangling and his
face glistening with sweat.

“All ready,” he said. “Lyken is in there with an electrician and camera
man. I hope we’ll get something. How do you feel, Miss Greenway?”

She smiled and said she felt very well indeed.

“Is Sutton expected to be present?” he asked with a smirk.

“Certainly,” she said, “----if I am.”

“Oh, sure!” He cast a stealthy glance at Stuart, then led the way out.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the same room in which she had last seen Sadoul. Except that the
various machines were ready to go into action, and a lot of flowers
about, the room was the same.

Dr. Lyken shook hands with her; the electrician and camera-man bowed.

Miss Cross came in with another young woman in uniform--a Miss Parry,
who seated herself prepared to make stenographic records and fill in
charts.

The electrician took up his station; to control and direct the delicate
gradation of light was one of his jobs. The camera-man’s assistant
entered. A few minutes later Sadoul appeared, went immediately to
Gilda. She removed her hat. Miss Cross took it. They consulted in quiet
voices for a while, then she went with Sadoul into the dark cabinet.

Almost immediately Sadoul came out alone and nodded to Pockman. Lyken
and Stuart also followed. The interior of the cabinet was very dark.
Pockman flashed an electric torch.

Gilda lay on a fur rug on the floor, partly resting on her right side,
her legs a little drawn up. Both hands covered her face. She did not
stir. Her breathing was regular and quiet. Temperature, pulse, heart
action, blood-pressure, all proved normal.

“Nothing morbid in that trance,” said Pockman in a cautious tone.

They returned to their chairs near the table. Lights faded to a
discreet twilight. Miss Parry withdrew to a corner where a shaded bulb
hung low.

“Is that camera ready?” asked Sadoul.

Lyken whispered to Stuart: “He’s using a quartz lens. They’ll flood the
room with violet rays when they shoot.”

Pockman, on the other side of him, said: “The only thing to do is to
settle the question definitely one way or another: whether these forces
that ‘sensitives’ possess, and which induce psychical phenomena, are
merely forces of nature at present unknown to us, or forces exerted by
living identities which have survived physical death.”

Sadoul, speaking in a natural voice, said to Lyken: “I’ve used a
microscope on the body exudations from a highly sensitized medium. It
disclosed living cells of a type not found in the human body.”

“Was there a nucleus to each cell?”

“Positively.”

Lyken seemed startled. “What are we to expect, now, from little Miss
Greenway?” he inquired of Pockman.

“Dual projection, I believe.”

“Materialization?”

“Yes,” said Sadoul.

At that moment the vague dark draperies of the cabinet were flung aside
and a young girl in white stepped out.

From somewhere a cool breeze stirred in the room, blowing the perfume
of the cut flowers.

“Camera!” said Sadoul quietly. And, to the electrician: “Violet,
please.”

The figure in white came forward tranquilly, unembarrassed. As she
neared the table a book lying there caught her eye, and she paused,
turned the pages curiously, as though interested.

“It’s Einstein’s book,” whispered Lyken. “If she can understand that
she’s better than I am.”

The figure raised its head, smiling, as though she had overheard the
remark.

She was a trifle shorter than Gilda, like her in a celestial way, with
a more dazzling skin.

“Are you Gilda?” asked Sadoul.

“Yes,” she said quietly. Her voice was like Gilda’s, with another
indefinable quality--something exquisitely lark-like, unsullied as pure
song showered down from skies.

“Look at the _Other_!” exclaimed Lyken.

Sadoul called to the electrician: “Flood!” And to the camera-man, “Go
on shooting. Get them both together!”

Stuart sat rigid in his chair, gripping it. He saw the _Other One_
advancing, brilliant in white, exquisitely indolent, every movement
gracefully sensuous, and her mouth a red flower in the demi-light.

She paused beside the table, leaned on it, bending her face to the
flowers.

“Are you Gilda?” asked Sadoul unsteadily.

She looked up and laughed. Stuart saw her clearly for the first time,
and trembled a little, so lovely she was.

The other figure leaned there beside her, too, near-smiling, fresh,
exquisite, unsullied.

“Sadoul,” said the _Other One_, “why do you try to create dissension
between us?” She encircled the other’s waist. The latter looked
seriously at Sadoul: “We are in harmony. Why do you try to separate
us? Why try to distinguish between us? If you separate us you make us
self-conscious. You offer us violence, Sadoul.”

Sadoul got up from his chair. Both figures laid their hands on his. He
drew them a little way aside.

“God,” said Pockman, sweating, “that’s going some! For Christ’s sake
keep on grinding that camera, you----”

Sadoul held the two white figures by their right hands resting between
his own.

He said: “Is _that_ why there is no hope for me? I didn’t understand.”

The _Other One_ said: “You sow dissension between us who are twins.
Didn’t you understand that we really are one?”

“No.... That is the reason, then.”

They nodded: “That is the reason, Sadoul.”

He stood for a little while with dark head lowered, retaining their
hands. The _Other One_ seemed impatient; her companion drew a stem of
frisia from the vase on the table and laid it in Sadoul’s hand where
her own had been lying.

Then she leisurely crossed the room, passing so close to Sutton that
her white garment touched him, and he felt the breathing warmth of her
body.

“Gilda,” he whispered.

She paused, looked down at him.

“That’s no ghost,” said Lyken, nervously. “Ask her if she’ll let you
take her in your arms.”

The figure looked uncertainly at Sutton as he rose.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered.

“Be very gentle,” she said. “_She_ is asleep in the cabinet and you
could easily hurt her.”

She came into his arms, rested against him, a warm young creature, a
living, breathing shape.

“Is she real?” demanded Lyken.

“Absolutely.”

“Then somebody had better look into that cabinet,” he said, almost
violently. “Reason is reason and a joke’s a joke, God da----”

The _Other One_, passing near, closed his mouth with her slim hand, and
Lyken nearly fainted on his chair.

“Get out if you can’t control yourself,” said Sadoul coldly. And, to
Pockman: “Take their pulse and temperature.”

The slender figure in Sutton’s embrace released herself, rested one
hand on his arm and leaned down to re-open the book. The page that
interested her was printed solid with mathematics.

“Do you understand that?” whispered Sutton.

“Yes. How simple and interesting.”

Pockman came with a clinical thermometer and Sutton stepped back.

He watched nervously the procedure--the tests made with this radiant
being--the weighing, the stethoscope, the vial for saliva, a
microscopic paring from a finger-nail, a few red-gold hairs, a tear
duct excited and the secretion caught and bottled while the lovely
creature laughed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Pockman and Sadoul, camera-man and electrician, and the stenographer,
Miss Parry, were busy for hours, it seemed to Sutton.

Gradually the lights had been increased to an intensity where
photography required nothing else to aid it.

Lyken, inert on his chair, slack-jawed and pop-eyed, merely stared and
stared, utterly valueless as any assistance.

The _Other One_, who had come curiously to look at Sutton once or
twice, and who did not seem very friendly toward him, now smiled at him
for the first time, rather shyly.

“I am glad you did not touch me,” she said. “Some day, perhaps. We are
going now. Good-bye.”

Sadoul turned from the camera: “Have you got to go?”

They nodded smilingly.

“I want to ask one more thing of you,” he said, following the two
figures toward the cabinet. “I beg you to let us see you both, with
Gilda lying asleep at your feet. Will you do this?”

They seemed uncertain, whispered together for a moment. Then the _Other
One_ nodded.

Pockman and Sutton joined them; Lyken lurched up from his chair and
stumbled toward the cabinet.

It was very dark inside.

Sadoul reached up and turned on a flood of light.

Gilda lay as they had left her, her face in her hands. Beside her the
two white figures looked down at her, gravely.

“Camera!” said Sadoul, with an effort. “Pull that curtain wide, Sutton!”

In the silence they heard behind them the grinding of the machine.

“Turn off the light,” said the _Other One_ to Sadoul.

“Must I?”

“Yes.”

He closed and bolted the door, lifted a bony arm and plunged the
cabinet into darkness. Nobody moved for a few minutes except Lyken,
swaying on legs that scarce supported him. Then Sadoul turned on the
light. Both white figures were gone.

On the rug at their feet Gilda sighed and stirred and opened her eyes.




                              CHAPTER XXXI


The daily grind down town was beginning to wear on young Sutton. It was
not the routine of business, not the new responsibility that dragged
him; it was the constant depression, the interminable whining. Gloom
possessed the cañons of the district like a dirty fog from the bay.
Nobody did anything except snivel about the rottenness exposed by the
several investigating committees, Civil, State, and Federal.

The interminable jeremiad set men’s nerves on edge; nothing was to be
looked for from the moribund Administration and only mischief came from
it--the last spiteful and convulsive clawing at the people who had done
it to death.

Pygmy wrath, miserable bunkum, sullen inertia--these were to be endured
until March. Then the rat-pit would be empty and ready for fumigation.

Meanwhile, those joyless bacteria which feed and propagate on gloom
became noisier in their bigoted zeal, boasting of their ability to
blackmail a cowardly Congress. Paul Pry was at the keyhole; Mrs. Grundy
at her window; Torquemada junior, an itinerant advance-agent, notifying
a half-educated people from the Gulf to the Lakes that the incredibly
cruel and stupid old god of Sabbath had come back to burn all heretics.

“Believe as I believe or I’ll roast you,” bawled Torquemada junior. “It
pleases me to twiddle my thumbs on Sunday; and you’d better twiddle
yours or I’ll know the reason why!”

Time’s great pendulum was being swung by fools too violently and too
far forward. The backward swing was nearly due. A patient people,
mostly ignorant or semi-educated, looked on, confused by the din of the
fools and the Talkers.

But they were the people who had suddenly arisen in spite of the
Administration and battered the face of Destiny out of all recognition.

The people who had burned for a space, transfigured in the blazing
beauty of their Flaming Sword. And had dulled to a cinder, and returned
to their millions of wallows, grunting of grandeur--the wonder,
laughter, and sorrow of the world they saved for the sake of Jesus
Christ.

       *       *       *       *       *

The lumber business, in common with all affairs, remained in the
doldrums.

Financing anything through old and accustomed channels was now the
idlest of dreams.

Also an open winter in the Northland did not help. There was little
snow. Logs were difficult to move. And when, late in January, arctic
cold settled over a naked North, it was not good for forests.

Stuart Sutton worried a great deal. He worried about logs; he feared
for the new plantations unprotected by snow. They sent him reports of
depredations by deer--miles of browse--balsam, hemlock, Norway spruce
cleaned out.

Slashings and danger of fire in reforested regions were ever in his
mind; the weevil was a nightmare, too. But most terrifying of all to
him was the white-pine blight--that dreadful, leprous thing out of the
Orient. And he turned the ledger pages devoted to extirpation of wild
and cultivated currant and gooseberry, and figured out the cost of
saving from extinction the noblest tree that ever grew in North America.

Only less noble was the chestnut, now, from another leprous blight,
almost extinct. And upon the lumber-men of the land lay the
responsibility for the survival of the white pine.

Letters from his father and mother in California were a trifle
disturbing, too. They had heard that their son and heir infrequently
decorated those social circles wherein, since Colonial days, the Hudson
River Suttons were accustomed to gyrate. They confidently laid it to
the exactions of business, fatigue from overwork. And cautioned him
against it.

Which tender admonition hurt his Sutton conscience; in a rush of
remorse he accepted a number of invitations; reappeared among his kind
for a few weeks, bored and impatient at losing all that time away from
Gilda; and then dropped out again--Gilda and the lumber business being
all he could possibly attend to in life.

Suspecting this state of affairs, the girl chided him.

“You mustn’t give up your family’s friends,” she said. “Such ties are
generations in making. They are worth something, mean something. If one
has an undisputed place in the social fabric, one should not vacate
it without a reason. I know how that is,” she added with a light,
unconscious sigh.

They were seated before the fire in her living room. He reached over
and rested one hand on hers.

“Do you care to tell me a little, dear?” he asked.

She did not misunderstand him, though not prepared for a demand of
confidence so intimate.

After a short silence, and absently caressing his hand where it lay on
her lap:

“There was domestic unhappiness when I was a child. My parents
separated. Mortification made my father a recluse. My mother spent the
remainder of her life in Europe--until the tragic end.”

She took his hand between both of hers, pressed it, clung a little:

“The courts,” she said, “left me under joint control.... I understand,
now, that my father’s attitude toward me was not aversion; it was that
the sight of me made his shame and grief unendurable.

“My mother was much younger. She cared for gaiety and the brightness
of things. She was very pretty; she had ample means, friends ... a
position, once.... And still a position on the Continent.... It was
obvious that my place was in boarding school. Under the court’s ruling
I could not remain more than a fortnight with my mother. I could have
gone home to father, but he did not want me.

“So--you see what position in the world we had was vacated. There was
no longer any circle; no longer a family; nor family friends.

“There were--and are--relatives. They write to me, still. They are very
kind.... But I prefer liberty--the liberty of reserving my parents’
affairs for my own private attention. Kinship can be a burden.... I
could never endure being accounted for, explained ... at the expense of
family privacy ... and the domestic misfortune of two dead people who
gave me birth ... and whose sorrow is no concern of strangers.”

Presently he said: “It is for you to decide, of course. And yet,
presentable relatives mean almost anything to a girl alone.”

The Hudson River Suttons who spoke out of his mouth were right. Perhaps
Gilda Greenway was righter.

“I can’t, Stuart. I am not very discreet, not even cautious. You know
that. I’m not fastidious. You know how we met. But whatever else I
do--whatever I condescend to, unworthy perhaps--I can’t go back and let
my relatives account for me at the expense of my father and mother.”

He made no attempt to discuss the matter. Perhaps he felt that, when
the time came, it would smooth their way with his own relatives and
friends if Gilda had somebody presentable to account for her.

However, he said nothing further on the subject, nor did she.

Also, it was time to change her gown, for she had persuaded him to
go to a reception at the Creative Arts Association with her--the girl
refusing to neglect any opportunity to enlarge the pathetically small
and badly mixed circle wherein she had her only social exercise.

It was a tea in aid of a drive to provide the starving inhabitants of
Roumelia with fezzes.

Stuart usually lent himself to this sort of thing when she asked
him, speculating uneasily at times upon his own future and unaided
ability to lead her into a duller, more respectable circle--the sacred
water-hole, trodden deep, hatched up, and trampled by generations of
social pachyderms and gazelles.

“Or we’ll make our own wallow,” he concluded. But the alternative
caused him a slight pang when he remembered the family corral on the
Hudson, the old-time gardens, the ancient domain, tradition, tenantry,
dirty window-panes and all.

       *       *       *       *       *

They arrived at the Creative Arts Association in Sutton’s car.

The function was in full blast; the Talkers were talking; big lions,
little lions, fat lions, meagre lions, mangy lions, all were roaring.
Potential pup-lions, pathetic, lovable adolescents, yapped shyly when
noticed and patronised. There was the Fifth Avenue matron with a
home on the Hudson and stringy hair, who condescended for charity’s
sake. Other fashionables were there, gracious, profusely democratic,
patiently ready to endure, for the sake of Roumelia and half a million
red fezzes.

The Creative Arts were there, physically hungry, mentally ravenous
to filch material, but mostly bursting with necessity for vocal self
expression.

Listeners were few, Talkers dominated. Here an intimidated world was
told where it got off sixty times every minute.

On the edge of this milling mess of mouths Gilda stood, unconsciously
holding tight to Stuart, who good humouredly identified for her the
fauna:

Mrs. Marmot de Grasse, prominent at Newport and in Greenwich Village.
Her Article in _The Post_, “Should an Art Student Pay $10,000 for a
Studio?” was shaking Fourth Street to its profoundest cabarets.

Miss Smith-Durian, the wealthiest maiden lady in Tuxedo, had offered a
prize of $300 annually for the best novel by a New Yorker. The novel to
remain the property of Miss Smith-Durian.

Harry Stayr came up grinning like Silenus, and shook hands with Gilda.

“Heavens,” he said, “what food. All squashy; and a fake punch to add
the classic insult.”

“It’s so interesting,” said Gilda, “----and one doesn’t think of food.”

“_One_ does!” retorted Stayr with a grimace. “Mrs. Bazelius Grandcourt
swindled me into coming, promising booze. I gave up ten bones. You’re
stung, too, I suppose.”

“Mr. Derring sent me tickets,” said Gilda. “Who is that preparing to
sing, Harry?”

It proved to be the lovely Farrar, immortally young, always generous in
charity.

The Talkers ceased for a while: Heaven opened; then the celestial
transformation faded, drowned by the “noise of the storks.”

Julian Fairless presented himself, saluted Gilda’s hand, turned to
interpret and identify at her eager request:

“They’re all there. That’s the new novelist, Theodore Howard
Belper--small-town stuff, you know--wrote ‘The Town Pump’--the last
word in rube stuff.”

“Why do you suppose he wrote it?” she asked with a distressed smile.

“Small towns want small-town stuff.”

“But New York reads it.”

“New York’s the smallest of ’em all, only it doesn’t know it,” sneered
Stayr. “That solemn guy, Gilda, is Horatio McPhoon, the sculptor. He
has submitted a plan to make a bronze statue of the President a mile
high, and erect it on top of Pikers Peak.”

“Oh, dear,” she said unhappily.

Fairless pointed out to her in rapid succession the bald, wide-eared
editor of the _Daily Pillar_; Montgomery Skippy, the great publisher
and platitudinarian; young Rawmore, the romantic actor, idol of
the metropolis; Fitz-William Paunder, patron, director, founder,
life-member of everything corporate in Gotham; Mrs. Charles Gilderling,
a beauty once, socially formidable, and mother of several already
notorious young Gilderlings.

And there were the Talkers, Leopold Pouncing, the critic; old
Hunkerson, book-reviewer, brilliant as a spitting cat in the dark;
his confrère, the ponderous gabbler on the _Daily Forum_, Seth
Hawver; Scratchowsky, the Polish etcher; Sir Daniel Brunderby of the
Embassy, worn and perplexed by Yankee and Sinn Fein alike, but talking
hands-across, God bless him!--the only Talker of them all who had a
word to say worth hearing.

Mrs. Gillately Gray fluttered up, always bright and birdish: and “How
d’you do, Mr. Stayr, Mr. Fairless, Mr. Sutton--isn’t it too wonderful
for poor Roumelia?--_How_ d’you do, Miss Greenway!----” fluttering to
the presentation, _toujours oiseau_, preening the nearest feather, her
own or another’s--_vrai tête de linotte_.

After migration, Stayr said: “_Oiseau de flamme et bec de gaz!_ Brrr!
What a humming-bird!”

Fairless said to Gilda: “She has the social importance conferred by the
social column. Her opera box drips diamonds. There’s nothing else to
her.”

“Oh, come,” said Sutton; “she’s civil and anxious to please. Why the
devil do you knock everybody, Julian?”

“You don’t have to,” retorted Fairless. “But your boosting is as
snobbish as my knocking. I don’t know which is the more sickening,
after all----”

The greatest of living pianists began to play. It was an artistic
mistake; the place was unsuitable; but it was a charitable success.
Roumelia could be proud of her fezzes.

“If you’ll shake this and come around to my place I’ll shake something
in a shaker that would shake a Shaker to----”

Julian’s elbow in his stomach silenced him.

The most famous of string-quartettes was deliciously beginning.

But this, too, like all happiness, came to its own enchanting end.
Again the place was clamorous with the talk of the Talkers.

Sutton whispered in Gilda’s ear: “Who would you care to meet, darling?”

She ventured a preference or two, shyly. The men he went after, rounded
up, and fetched. To the women he took Gilda, casually secure in his own
self assurance.

And Gilda was too lovely to suspect--until she had gone--when the
inevitable feminine reaction occurs, and any man is under suspicion who
presents one woman to another.

       *       *       *       *       *

She had enjoyed every moment. She said so to Stuart.

“I know where you belong,” he said glumly. “And you’re going there some
day.”

He meant, of course, the sacred water-hole.

Gilda surmised it, looked at him tenderly, humorously, inclined to
laugh, wholly inclined to adore him and his funny social instincts.

To certain English people there are no particular social distinctions
to be expected in America. The only difference they notice is between
those who are amusing and those who are not.

Perhaps Gilda’s parents might have entertained some such idea--if they
ever had troubled their heads about it at all.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were going to the theatre that evening.

He took her home, went back to dress, returned to take her to dinner at
the Ritz. And found her in her black evening gown, flushed, feverish
from weeping.

But when, surprised and troubled, he took her to his breast, she
wound her arms around him, strained him to her, kissed him, sobbing,
stammering, warning him to beware. And gazing intently into her
tear-wet eyes he saw the dark change coming, mirrored there in peril,
trembling on her reddening lips, fragrant in her breath.

She turned, covering her quivering face with both desperate hands, sank
down on the sofa.

He laid aside his overcoat and hat, seated himself near, and turned his
altered face to watch her, grimly determined to see it through.

Freda had gone. But there was food in the refrigerator--a cold
pheasant, salad, a bottle of claret.

When she heard him in the kitchen she rose and went out.

“I’ll do all that,” she said humbly.... “Do you really mean to stay
with me?”

“Do you think I want you to call up Sadoul?” he said bitterly.

She had laid the cloth; she stood now, with a handful of silver, gazing
at him. The _Other One_ was rapidly possessing her. She gave him a
lovely, flushed look.

“It is always one kind of hell for Sadoul,” she said. “It will be
another kind for you if you stay.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, reddening with anger at the maddening
hopelessness of it all.

She laid the knives and forks on the cloth and came close to him.

“You had better let me call up Sadoul,” she said. “I am safe with him.”

“You are safe with me,” he said with an oath.

They both reddened painfully. He caught her hand, asking pardon--but
released the burning palm.

“It is destruction for you to stay.... I still know what I’m saying.”

“I’m going to stay. We’ll have to win out together, Gilda.... Do you
understand?”

She made no reply. And, looking at her, he realised that she no longer
understood.

       *       *       *       *       *

Toward morning the girl had cried herself to sleep, lying flung across
the bed, face buried in her dishevelled hair, and one little hand
so convulsively linked in his that the boy could scarcely manage to
release himself.

He sat on the chair beside the bed for a while, gazing at her out of
haggard eyes. Then, when he saw the dark change fading from her burning
cheeks he got up, took his hat and coat and went out into the grey
light of a foggy morning.




                             CHAPTER XXXII


Sadoul, playing with his cobra--or rather tormenting it--said to
Pockman:

“Take the case mentioned by Chevreuil among scores of others. It is
certain that the ‘sensitive’ experiences terror and anguish when any
materialisation in which he or she has been concerned is subjected to
brutal handling.”

Pockman looked around from his microscope at Sadoul, then at the cobra
in its glass-faced double hutch. It was a black cobra, not a spectacled
one.

Sadoul ran his gaunt forefinger up and down the glass. Inside, the
snake, erect in its coils, followed every movement.

Sadoul said: “The sensitive seems to be physiologically anæmic. It is
her own substance of which the phantom is composed. There are other
cells, too, but the structural emanation is from the sensitive. And
when anything excites or shocks, the sensitive begins to recover her
own cells.

“What’s your deduction?” inquired Pockman.

“This: that any common identity of sensitive and phantom is largely
material; that this mutual sharing of substance accounts for bodily and
mental injury to the sensitive if the materialisation be injured.”

“Logically argued,” nodded Pockman. “If one knew how to sever the natal
cord between medium and phantom, the former would die, probably.”

Sadoul stood absently teasing the cobra. “Yes,” he said. “But in a case
of dual projection, what?”

“A case of Siamese twins, I suppose.”

“I wonder.”

“You have in mind the case of Gilda Greenway?” Pockman spoke, leering
into his microscope.

Sadoul no longer cared what Pockman thought--no longer took the trouble
to conceal motive or purpose. He said, coolly:

“I’ve concluded it would endanger her if I attempted to rid her of one
of these phantoms.”

“Rid yourself, you mean--don’t you?” tittered the other.

Sadoul’s silent glance, full of effrontery and contempt, measured
Pockman from head to foot.

“Yes, rid myself,” he said. “But I don’t know how.”

“Your cobra was a premature investment,” remarked Pockman, agitated
with a sort of whispering laughter which hunched his shoulders to his
ears.

“No,” said Sadoul, “I got the snake too late, I’m afraid.”

“What do you do with your hypodermics full of venom?”

“Try them on sputum.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

Pockman looked up incredulously. “That’s a new one, isn’t it?” he asked
with a ghastly smirk.

“Quite new.”

“Does it do the business?”

“Absolutely.”

“I see. You mean to attenuate it, gradually attempt to render yourself
immune. Then--what? Inject it?”

“That’s the idea,” said Sadoul tranquilly.

Pockman skeptical, disdainful of any amateur, yet intelligent enough to
be interested, stared at the other in silence.

Sadoul’s hand, moving rhythmically on the glass, seemed to hypnotise
the snake which, towering from its coils, hood dilated, swayed gently
with the moving hand.

Suddenly Sadoul made an abrupt pass; the cobra struck like lightning; a
stream of venom clouded the glass and ran down inside.

The cobra seemed to collapse like a punctured rubber tube, falling limp
in a flattened coil.

Sadoul took a bamboo rod, went to the rear of the hutch, opened a
small panel, and, with the rod, flung the snake into the adjoining
hutch and lowered the dividing screen of glass.

Then he opened the entire back of the hutch, stepped in and filled a
small syringe from the cloudy pool gathering in the cup-shaped glass
sill.

Pockman watched the proceedings with a sort of horrid, mocking
intentness. To play with death was part of his profession. To watch
an amateur do so approached the levity of a sport. Here was a man who
might easily have abrasions on his skin, handling without rubber gloves
the most deadly and rapid poison known to man--a poison for which no
known antidote exists.

“Keep the damn thing away from me,” he said as Sadoul came toward him
with his syringe. “If you get any of it in your skin it’s going to act
like lightning.”

Sadoul made no comment, and Pockman realised that perhaps he didn’t
care very much what happened. Which discovery did not particularly
affect Pockman, except that if Sadoul died he might as well die a
victim to research as die a jackass.

He said as much with a hunch and a shrug, but the other replied with
a sneer: “Quand même, on ne meurt pas; on s’addresse, tranquilment,
gentilement, au pays de l’ombre.”

“If you want to, you can stop that murderous cough,” said Pockman. “And
if you’re so fond of snakes there are plenty in Arizona and New Mexico.”

Sadoul laughed: “You think I’ll leave those two together?”

“Better than to leave them together permanently. You had another
hemorrhage this morning----”

“You lie, Pockman.”

“Why, you damned lunger,” shouted Pockman, “I saw you in the wash-room.
Don’t tell me I lie or I’ll fire you out of my place.”

“You’d better not try,” said Sadoul, his indifferent eyes on the angry
man.

He went away presently, to his own quarters, carrying the syringe
carelessly in one hand.

At the further end of the two rooms which Pockman had allotted to him
for his experiments, was a third and smaller room. This he had fitted
up as a combination of bedroom and study, and here he now did his
writing.

To this place he had removed various articles from his apartment--some
books, clothing, photographs of Gilda taken abroad, small personal
possessions, letter-files, private papers, even the canary birds that
never sang, for some reason or other, and that hopped and hopped and
cracked seeds all day long in the tarnished tinsel cage.

As for the big, lonely apartment which he had taken nearly a year
ago, he went there rarely. The Japanese servant remained as guardian
of the furniture--all the dreary accumulations necessary to equip a
housekeeping apartment for married people--furnishings for living-room,
bedrooms, dining-room, kitchen--pictures, mirrors, curtains, linen,
carpets, silver, glass, china, batterie-de-cuisine--the whole appalling
outfit.

That apartment had become a horror to him; there were no recollections
connected with it except painful ones; no phantoms haunted those
dusky rooms to evoke in him even the wistful pleasures of sadness; no
memories clung to the unused, desolate place.

Except by a tuner the piano never had been touched; the brocaded chairs
had never known the caress of her slender body; no lovely ghost looked
out from the dim depths of gilded mirrors; there was nothing anywhere
of her for whom, because of whom, he had cabled to Pockman to lease a
home.

He might have sub-let it for the remainder of the year, but, sullenly
determined upon her return, he had hung on.

Now it was not worth while; storage charges would more than balance
any advantage of sub-letting. So he let it go with a final auction
vaguely in mind, and established himself here on the East River. It
was less lonely. He could sit, when feeling ill, and gaze out on the
grey stream; on barge, schooner, steamer; on the forbidding prison in
mid-stream; on the vast and dreary bridge overhead.

Here, when very tired--perhaps with a towel wetted crimson in his
clutch--he could lie in a morris-chair and follow the gulls in their
interminable flight; or mark the mile-long convolutions of smoke from
some lofty chimney, tinged with sombre sunset hues, or see the diamond
blaze of light flash out across the bridges as the red west smouldered
through thickening mists.

And, lying here, he could ponder the eternal problem--the only problem
that preoccupied him since he first laid eyes on Gilda Greenway.
Ways, means, methods, chances, how to win her, hold her, dominate,
possess--always the dull fierce searching in his fevered mind--always
the fixed idea, sleepless, burning, eternal.

All else was but an incident in the unaltered problem--the aborted
marriage, the domestic débâcle, the advent of Sutton--even the
girl’s death--all were merely incident to the main never-changing,
never-ending problem.

His own physical condition, so long and sullenly unrecognised and
unadmitted, merely enraged him with impatience. Yet, far in the sombre
depths of his mind he was conscious of an ominous mental stillness.

It was the stillness of fear, awakening to the advent of the
Future--trying to estimate its approaching speed--watching in a sort
of stunned apathy the swift coming of something which had not existed
yesterday.

       *       *       *       *       *

Along with his daily free-lance work--always in demand, always
profitable and to be depended upon to give him competence--he carried
his psycho-hypnotic research. There was a road, that way, leading
toward something--recognition, perhaps, authority, fame, as much of
Fortune as the jade carries in her stuffed purse, perhaps.

Also, it was something to do--food to feed fever--possibly a key to
unlock the Problem--the only problem existing for him.

       *       *       *       *       *

He filled a phial with his cobra venom, washed the syringe without
precaution, pocketed it, sealed his phial, stood for a while staring
absently about him; then, very tired, lay down by the window and
crossed his arms behind his dark head.

Presently his thoughts began to hover around death--but not his
own--like grey dusk-moths round a ghostly blossom.

Long since satisfied of the incidental unimportance of human
dissolution, he had left that conclusion as a starting point for
research; for speculation, too.

For the exploring mind, impatient of proof, wanders on out of bounds.
And Sadoul’s idler thoughts roamed at hazard among scenes peopled by
surviving identities--entered vast regions thickly inhabited, stirring
with colour and energy and life in its every and illimitable aspect.

And now, finally, he thought of himself. How would it be with him and
_her_? His passion must survive if he died.... Would her indifference
survive with her? Was the pursuit endless as a star’s course in
orbit--endless as the drift of the universe?

If it must be, it must be. Eternal or not, it was a part of the scheme
of things, irrevocable, inalienable, eternal.

       *       *       *       *       *

A fog gathered on the river. Tall masts passed like shrouded spectres;
the deep vibrations of the fog-horns grew in the thickening stillness;
dock lights burned from every pier; long rows of windows glittered
dimly in Astoria; a melancholy bell tolled incessantly.

Sadoul closed his heavy-lidded eyes, then opened them with an effort.

River whistles were blowing; the hour struck on some phantom ship; one
by one the giant bridges festooned themselves with gems, veiled in the
cerements of the fog.

A chill sweat grew on Sadoul’s forehead, dampening his thick black
hair, but in his hollow cheeks dull fire burned.

       *       *       *       *       *

He awoke in the dark, coughing, ensanguined, wet to the skin with icy
sweat.




                             CHAPTER XXXIII


There had come into Stuart’s voice a hint of anxiety in these days when
he greeted Gilda over the telephone. It was always the same eager,
boyish question: “Are you all right, dear?” And a swift breath of
relief when reassured.

The girl had taken up her music again, vocal and piano, and, three
times a week, she had an Italian lesson as corollary to vocal
cultivation.

A visit with Stuart to an exquisite loan exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum gave birth to an artistic impulse in the girl. The needle-work
on the French renaissance furniture thrilled her; she ardently desired
to learn the art; and she discovered a place on Fifth Avenue where
instruction was given in _gros point_ and _petit point_--where canvas
was supplied, designs furnished and stamped.

Often, now, she sat by the window, her oval frame on her knees, an
array of rainbow tinted skeins of silk at her elbow, embroidering with
dull-tipped needle.

It was slow, minute, painstaking work, but Gilda, quite mad about it
already, nourished a plan to tell in _petit point_ the deathless story
of Eros and Psyche.

The girl had copied designs filched bodily from every available source;
and, determined upon covering two chairs, a sofa, and a footstool--none
of these period pieces yet acquired--regarded her dismaying programme
with mingled excitement and despair.

“After all,” she ventured to Stuart, “we have a whole lifetime before
us. Princesses used to sit in turrets and peg away at a lifetime’s work
without impatience.”

She showed him the designs she had copied and tinted--delicate panels
from the industrious Angelica, from Fuseli via Bartolozzi, even from
Flaxman transposed into Bartolozzian terms--lovely, pastel tinted
designs in regulation cartouches.

“You’re terrifyingly clever,” he said. “I wonder,” he added, smilingly
uneasy, “what you ever saw in a lumber merchant to attract you.”

“Don’t be silly, Stuart.”

“I’m not going to be. But I’m wondering a little----”

“Piffle, darling. I was taught to draw by various teachers in various
convents. That’s where I learned to play, also. No girl could escape.
Whether one wished it or not one was compelled to produce designs, tint
them with watercolours. I could have learned _petit point_ from the
sisters; I did learn ordinary embroidery, crochet, the simple tapestry
stitch. I don’t want you to think me talented.”

“Well,” he said, “music, design--any artistic manual dexterity is
utterly beyond me--any creative talent or any interpretive one.”

“What I do is nothing,” she said, smilingly occupied with her needle.

“You’re better read than I am, too,” he went on. “You’ve read more
widely in standard literature. You’re familiar with things I’ve merely
heard of. I don’t know what the devil I learned at Harvard. I’ve
brought nothing away with me.”

“You’ve brought away an unspoiled boy--with a blond head--and the
perfect equipment of all that is ideal in manhood,” she said, keeping
her eyes on her embroidery.

He bent and kissed her where, at the nape of the neck, the hair grew
soft as pale red-gold.

“I’d better read up on art and things,” he said, “or there’ll be
silences at the breakfast table some of these days.”

“I hope there’ll be too many children for that,” she murmured, intent
on her needle.

The boy laughed and she flushed at her temerity, but the former,
thrilled by the picture, took her small, smooth hand and rested his
lips on it.

“All the same,” he said, “I don’t want to be the only dumb creature at
breakfast, Gilda. You are far more cultivated than I and it worries me
now and then.”

She laughed: “I’m glad of it. I don’t wish you to be too sure of me.
You made me love you far too easily to suit my feminine complacency.”

“Wasn’t it inevitable, dear?” he asked, so seriously that the girl
laughed again.

“Of course, blaming destiny softens the shameful fact that I no sooner
beheld you than I seized you.”

Her eyes sparkled, her colour glowed, her hair seemed a living flame
enveloping the dainty head lowered above her embroidery, where the
needle flashed in her white fingers.

Presently her expression altered; she said gravely:

“Love,” she said, “necessarily originates in propinquity. But I do not
believe I ever could have loved any other man.”

Then, with a swift upward glance, and laughing again: “So you see,
dear, lumber merchant or prince of the blood, it made no difference in
my destiny. It was to be _you_. It _is_ you. And I think you’d better
tell me something about your pine trees and your business so that I may
enjoy it with you.”

He remained silent and preoccupied for a while, then: “Gilda, I’ve got
to go to Heron Nest for a few days. Will you come as my guest?”

“Darling! I couldn’t, in your parents’ absence.”

“Aren’t we engaged?” he insisted stubbornly.

“How can we be when I’m already married?”

“I don’t see why you can’t come.”

“It wouldn’t be well for me if I ever marry you. It isn’t going to be
easy, anyway. I realise that.”

He shrugged his indifference and impatience. The least conceited of
men thinks himself sufficient compensation for troubles shared.

The girl looked at him sweetly but very soberly, her needle idle: the
boy, boy-like, was busy thinking how he could have his way.

“It isn’t your house, yet; it’s your father’s and mother’s,” she
reminded him.

“And I’m going to marry you! What of it? If I wait a million years I’m
going to marry you.”

She shook her head: “It doesn’t alter things.”

“I want you to see the place----”

“I want to see it.”

“Really, Gilda, it’s rather nice in its way--nothing very grand, you
know--but homelike. All my childhood, boyhood, was centered there....
Oh, come on up! There are only a few snuffy old servants at Heron
Nest----”

“I’ll go up with you if you like, but it wouldn’t do for me to stay
overnight.”

“Why not! Good Lord, if we’d wanted to get into mischief----”

“I know. But I shall not sleep at Heron Nest until the master of the
house asks me.... Even if I were unmarried I ought not to. But probably
I would,” she added.

“Do you mean to leave me there and come back alone to town?”

“There is nothing else for me to do, dear.”

“I wonder,” he mused, “if I hadn’t better telegraph dad and mother that
I’m engaged to you----”

“_Can’t_ you remember that I’m married!” she exclaimed in dismay.

“Oh, the devil! Well----” he drew a long, unhappy breath; “Well then,
Gilda, I’ll wire Heron Nest to expect us for lunch----”

“No, no, no! I won’t touch your father’s bread and salt in his absence
and without his knowledge. Don’t ask me, Stuart. A roof means something
definitely personal to me.... My father’s roof meant it.... The roofs
of relatives offered to me as shelter mean more to me than I am willing
to give for offered sanctuary. No! I’ll go anywhere else with you. If
it’s indiscreet, reckless, nevertheless I’m not afraid. But eat and
sleep, unasked, under your father’s roof, I will not.”

Again he remained silent, busy with another train of ideas.

“All right, Gilda. I know what we’ll do. We’ll go to Heron Nest, look
over things, take the train that same evening for our timber lands, and
have a wonderful two weeks together in the wilds!”

The girl gazed at him amazed and disconcerted, but enthusiasm was
firing him; he was ravished by the idea, and he painted an enchanted
picture of the trip.

“Why not?” he exclaimed. “I’ve got to go anyway. We know we’re quite
all right together. Nobody can misunderstand us because there’ll be
nobody there except lumber-jacks, bosses, river-drivers--a lot of
Indians, Kanucks, native mountaineers.

“I tell you it will be heavenly,” he cried, “--just you and I, Gilda,
and the forest. I’ll choose your outfit for you; I’ll wire ahead and
make arrangements. I’ll have Leggett put up a brand new log camp for us
and stock it from the store.”

“You are inviting me to disappear with you?” she asked, bewildered.

“For ten days, dearest. Can you stand me ten days?”

The girl nodded. “It isn’t that I don’t want to go. I do. I’m going
with you. I’m just trying to comprehend our doing it.”

“It _is_ like an enchanting dream, isn’t it?” he said, delighted. “I’ve
been dreading it--not the work, but being away from you. It never
occurred to me to ask you to go.”

“Probably,” she said, with faint sarcasm, “it would have occurred to
me. All our improprieties seem to originate with me----”

He caught her in his arms.

“They _do_,” she insisted, breathlessly. “So I’m rather glad that this
imprudence originated in your own blond head.... Darling, be careful of
my needle----”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was something new to wait for, to plan for as the winter drew toward
its end.

On Saturday afternoons they haunted those fascinating shops on Fifth
Avenue and Madison which are devoted to sporting outfits--new and
wondrous sources of delight to Gilda, who stood in ecstasy before
racks full of skis and snow-shoes, hung over glass cases brilliant
with troutflies, glittering with reels and lures of metal and
mother-of-pearl.

With Stuart she pored over the mechanism of guns, or compared fashions
in hunting knives, or switched delicate rods of lance-wood or
split-cane to test their stiffness, limberness, resiliency.

They looked at everything whether needed by them or not--at saddles,
stirrups, polo mallets, golf-clubs. And as for sport clothes, he would
have given her more costumes than the Empress of India, so adorable was
she in knickers, in rough kilts and sleeveless jackets, in the hundred
and one delightful confections invented for the outdoor convenience and
adornment of healthy girlhood.

       *       *       *       *       *

Those were sparkling, halcyon afternoons when he came uptown early and
met her at the Ritz for luncheon.

Nothing untoward marred them; of weather they were scarcely conscious,
and it might rain or snow, or the sun might shine for all those two
noticed such eccentricities of Mama Nature.

In those days late in winter another matter became apparent--more so
every day they dared believe. And finally it became certain that longer
and longer periods of time were elapsing between those dreaded hours
when the dark change came over the girl and all the old unreal terror
and bewilderment and despair overwhelmed them and left them exhausted,
crushed, spiritually prostrate under the vast menace of destruction.

Such trouble seldom threatened them now. And, thinking of it, half
fearfully, sometimes the boy wondered whether the grim vitality, now
burning low in Sadoul, had anything to do with its infrequency--whether
the will to suggest was becoming impaired.

For it was plain to him that Sadoul was ill. Even had he not witnessed
that scene in the laboratory earlier in the winter, the physical
alteration in Sadoul’s features had now become sufficiently ominous.

Gilda noticed it, but attributed it to Sadoul’s habits, not surmising
the truth. She expressed her concern to Sadoul in a guarded, aloof way,
never certain that her sympathy might not be mistaken by him and his
ever smouldering and passionate tyranny blaze out anew.

But in these days she found Sadoul unusually silent, less saturnine,
and frequently so tired that the weariness in voice and manner seemed
a sort of gentleness which she was scarcely able to associate with the
man.

But she soon learned of her mistake when she ventured an appeal to his
generosity in behalf of their common and unhappy marital situation. For
instantly the old passion flamed in his ravaged face and he swore that
he would tolerate no legal separation, no other man as far as she ever
could be concerned.

“You will come back to me some day,” he said. “There is no other
destiny for you. It matters nothing if we die. Ultimately you will come
back.... Or I’ll fetch you.”

“You never had me, Sadoul.”

“I shall have you absolutely. You’ll come of your own accord or I’ll go
and get you.... Wherever you are.... Wherever I am.”

“I am sorry you believe that,” she said gently.

He muttered unintelligibly. He seemed suddenly fatigued. She had been
writing automatically for him, sheet after sheet of matter which proved
meaningless to her in a normal state.

For half an hour or more she had been sitting there at his desk in the
part of the laboratory reserved for him, her head resting on a pillow
laid on the desk, her right hand flying over the pad from which he
removed each sheet as it was covered.

He, now that she was awake, had been reading over what she had written,
striving to identify the controlling intelligence, certain that the
written matter never originated in her or in himself.

Gilda never displayed any curiosity concerning what her subconscious
self did for him. She displayed none now, tranquilly satisfied that she
had helped him in accumulating data for future research.

Resting in her chair, idly playing with her pencil, she looked at the
changed face of the man rather sadly. Already he was growing gray at
the temples; his face, always thin, had grown unpleasantly bony; and
his waxen hands were the hands of a big skeleton under a drawn membrane
of colourless skin.

He continued to look over the sheets she had written, making marginal
notes now and then. His under lip sagged. Noticing it, she also saw a
fleck of blood on it.

Catching her eye, made suspicious perhaps, he wiped his mouth with a
handkerchief already spotted with dark stains.

“Have you hurt yourself?” she asked.

He said he had bitten his lip, and went on reading, holding the
handkerchief to his face.

Gilda consulted her wrist watch.

“I have a vocal lesson in half an hour,” she said, rising.

“You mean an engagement with Sutton,” he sneered.

“I mean a lesson,” she retorted, disdainfully.

“A love-lesson?”

“No. But suppose I had,” she said with cold resentment.

“It wouldn’t do you any good. Or him. You’re married and he’s a snob.”

“I am wondering,” she said, exasperated, “whether I shall trouble
myself any further to help your research work.... I need not sacrifice
my time by coming here and enduring your bad temper. I don’t know why I
do it, either.”

“I do. You belong to me and you know it.”

The very devil gleamed in her eyes:

“I know to whom I belong,” she said in a sort of whisper, “and he
can have me any time--a word, a touch--a look from him is enough....
I don’t know why I have any pity left for you, any feeling except
indifference.”

“You feel the tie,” he said.

“That civil ceremony--when you confused me, used your power of
suggestion on a bewildered, subconscious mind? Do you think that
mockery of a marriage ceremony is any tie?”

“It is one strand in the occult bond.”

“There is no bond!” she said violently, “--no accord, no sympathy, not
a wisp or shred to tie me to you except brief memories of a brilliant
mind perverted--rare intervals of mental pleasure--pity for you who
might have been a friend and who so ruthlessly plotted my destruction!”

She turned and went to the door. He sat looking at her.

“I am deeply sorry for you,” she said. “Good-bye.”

He said in a weary voice: “So you must go to your love-lesson.”

“That will be later, I hope,” she flashed.

He nodded: “Later. Much later.... After you and I are dead.... Then,
the first lesson. A lesson in love.... Our first.... Good-night, Gilda.”




                             CHAPTER XXXIV


The Talkers were talking at the Fireside Club. The Talkers were talking
of women. Fairless quoted Lombroso, Kraft-Ebbing, and Havelock-Ellis.
Harry Stayr, who had been for years “half-way” in a “_new_ novel,” and
who, like all Talkers, was taking out the remaining “half” in talk,
laid down axioms, hard boiled, for his listeners to digest at leisure.

“_Si duo sunt idem_,” he insisted in dog-Latin, “_non sunt idem_.
But it’s only in detail they differ,” he added, “--finger-prints are
still the prints of fingers. Like abhors like. There always is a
latent antipathy between women. It is not so between men. Toward men
women unconsciously but always cherish sex antipathy. There is no such
fundamental instinct in men.

“Woman is a poor specimen of the species--if, indeed, she be not a
sub-species. She is perfectly equipped to be the worst possible comrade
for man. The normal woman is originally conservative, practically
passionless. That is why it became necessary to invent the convention
of marriage. That is why men are polygamous.

“In marriage she remains the congenital egotist. Necessity for beauty
having passed, she becomes a slut. Like all animals she nourishes her
young; fights for them. So do rats.

“What in God’s name is there admirable about a woman except her beauty?

“Because she is soft, graceful, fine skinned, delicately limbed, men
ascribe to her a sensitiveness which she is absolutely without.

“She is less sensitive physically than men; bears pain more easily.

“She suffers less spiritually than men. She has less capacity for real
emotion, less mental potentiality, less physical sensibility.

“I’m sick listening to the cant of poets and novelists. They
describe themselves and their own sensations when they try to write
realistically about women. They ascribe qualities to her of which
she is ignorant, virtues of which, constitutionally, she is utterly
incapable; vices to which she is too lazy and indifferent to fall a
victim.

“I tell you she’s a tenth rate imitation of man, and man is a bum
chromo of Christ.

“Now, go and tell that to the Great American Boob! Tell it to the
American Aunty. Tell it to the Demagogue, the sissy sentimentalist, the
pastoral crape-hanger, the national hypocrite, the dog-town fanatic!”

“Why don’t you tell ’em yourself in your great novel, Harry?” asked
Fairless.

Sam Warne said: “If you’d stop stuffing yourself, Harry, you’d reverse
your argument. Your perversely sordid theories originate in that
paté-de-fois-gras which you think is your liver.”

The shrill cackle of Derring left Stayr with his mouth opening to speak.

“That’s it,” he said, “--livers talk, not brains! If you’d ever had a
dear old mother you couldn’t talk that way. Even a guy in Sing-Sing
will admit that. Ask Lyken what they say when they’re bumped off! Every
damned one of ’em cries for his dear old mother. Isn’t she a woman?
Aren’t there billions of mothers? Almost every man has had one. You
ought to be ashamed, Harry----”

“Can’t you love a thing that’s imperfect?” growled Stayr. “It’s the
only thing man can love. If you’re crazy about a girl it’s because, in
the back of your head, you know she’s imperfect.”

“Why don’t the damned novelists say so?”

“Who cares,” sneered Pockman, “what a novelist says? It never matters.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, old Holbein,” retorted Stayr. “Look what
these slops have done to the country! Look what the ‘good woman’ stuff
has done to the Middle West. Why, they’re a race of chipmunks out
there. ‘The good woman’ is running the country, knocking cigarettes
out of your mouth, scaring a poltroon nation into prohibition,
planning blue laws, re-gilding the old god Bunk to trot him out and
scare a boob republic into Sabbath superstition again. That’s what
your women-praising novelists are doing. That’s why the fanatics are
raising the slogan of Christ and Kansas! Can you beat the blasphemous
vulgarity? No, nor anybody else, including a Hottentot!”

Sutton, rather red, got up and started for the door.

“Am I right, Stuart?” cried Stayr. “Is there any difference in chickens
except the colour of their feathers?”

Sutton said: “If we men really believed what you say, Harry, I think
the decent ones among us would blow out our brains.”

After he had gone, Stayr said: “What can you expect? He’s acting up
to the little Greenway girl as though he meant to marry her. He’s
the sort that would. There’s your congenital celibate. There’s your
woman-worshiper for you! Why, Joseph was a lounge-lizard compared to
that hick! Hell! He’s spoiled as good a little sport as ever danced at
Derring’s!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Sutton, nauseated with talk, and now, for the first time, utterly
loathing the Talkers, shook the dust of the Fireside from his heels and
drew in a lung-full of outside air.

All the pretense, tinsel logic, shabby intellectuality,
pseudo-deduction--all the squalid impotence of these men who created
nothing, produced nothing, meant nothing to the world, was becoming
apparent to a young man who knew no more of modernism than to wish to
be a decent member of the human family.

What was fundamentally right and what was wrong concerned him less than
tradition regarding right and wrong--the tradition which had preserved
the world through its development--the tradition which had proved
wholesome to the human race, which had safeguarded his country, his
family.

Whoever had framed the Decalogue, God or man, was the father of men.
The records of the New Testament were chronicles of a God and his
archangels, human or immortal.

Gradually he had been sickening of the Talkers. Now he was utterly
sickened. Pockman had said they were mostly mouth and the remainder
only an intestine.

More clearly, now, this boy whose business in life was to grow, cut,
and sell timber, began to understand that there are only two kinds of
men--Talkers and Doers. Some Doers are talkative; no Talkers ever do
anything.

This great gabbling Mouth was the plague of the working world. It was
the parasite of the people, a hook-worm to energy, a louse to humanity,
breeding bacteria that poisoned all mankind.

He wondered, now, how the Talkers of the world had contrived to loosen
his grip on Truth; how they had managed to emasculate his belief in
God. Why, what pitiable imitations they were!--what mental dwarfs! And
he thought of Vathek, and the “noise of the storks and the dwarfs.” And
he thought of the little daughter of Jairus, too. And of Gilda lying
dead in her green mask.

       *       *       *       *       *

The long, open New York winter had come to end. In the Park the grass
was intensely green. Grackle and starling walked amid dandelions;
thorns were white, yellow bell-flowers in bloom; some trees in sunny
hollows and along the east wall were exquisitely green.

The gilded bronze General now rode his delivery-wagon nag behind a
limestone balustrade--which he, his horse, and the winged servant-girl
would be obliged to leap if they insisted on continuing down Fifth
Avenue.

Proudly the expensive marble buildings looked down upon a new limestone
quarry. Saucily the naked bronze jade across the way inspected the grim
old warrior--who knew a pretty lass when he saw one, they say, and must
have been bored to death with the winged domestic at his stirrup.

Sutton glanced up at the most classically uninteresting mansion in
Manhattan, soon to be converted to business uses. Opposite, another
and interesting commercial structure was rising almost over night.
Farther down, the most beautiful private residence in Gotham, doomed
to pay tribute to Hermes, flanked the most lovely of all metropolitan
churches--cool, calm, silver-grey façades in the feverish riot of
architecture roystering away southward toward the tawdry horrors of
Broadway.

What a city! What would it become if Faith died within its grotesque
walls; on its crazy heights? What would these milling swarms turn into
if belief withered--if conformation to custom, trust in tradition,
perished?

If it were true, as Stayr said, that there are only two parties in
the world--Conservatives, who are women; Liberals, who are men; then
the salvation of the world is due to its conservatism--to woman, the
perfect egotist, born respecter of custom and tradition--and not to
Liberal man whose atavistic instinct is for an informality that would
bring the temples of the earth crashing about his ears.

       *       *       *       *       *

Stuart turned into Thirty-fifth Street. He was thinking: “The thing
to do, the thing to believe, is what your father did, and what he
believed. And _his_ father. And _his_.... Not, of course, going too far
back.... When they burnt witches....”

He ascended the stairs, stood a moment at Gilda’s door.

“The thing to do,” he concluded, “is to take what’s coming to you
within the law. Or fight it.... But always fight _inside_ the law. You
stand no show out of bounds.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Freda admitted him. He found Gilda pale, silent, seated at her
satin-wood desk, a few sheets of scored music-paper before her--some
task in transposition set her; the ink still wet on the heavily penned
sixteenth notes.

“Are you all right, dear?” he asked uneasily.

She nodded, lifted her childish face; the long line of the neck so
lovely that he kissed her throat.

“I have our transportation,” he said happily. “Your luggage is checked
and so is mine. Leggett wires that our shanty is ready----” He
hesitated, looking at her. “What is the matter, Gilda? You _are_ all
right, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am all right.”

“Anything to worry you?”

“No.”

“You haven’t had any unpleasant experience with Sadoul?”

“Not recently.... He’s been decent since I relented and went back to
help him. He looks so ill, Stuart--so emaciated.”

The boy kept his counsel, sombrely, playing square with the man who was
slowly losing out. For a while he sat gazing absently at the sheets of
ruled paper, darkly lost in a mental maze. After a little he looked up;
regarded her more intently:

“Gilda, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing serious. I’m silly to be upset.... The surprise ... unexpected
... kindly intended, no doubt----”

He waited, perplexed.

She leaned over and blotted the wet score: “Fancy,” she said. “I was in
my bedroom--combing out my hair, I believe--when Freda came with her
card!”

“Whose card?”

“A--woman’s. A relative of mine.”

Gilda drummed on the desk with nervous fingers.

“I supposed she was in England. I didn’t know she was coming. And there
she was.... In this room!”

“Was it not agreeable to have her come to see you?”

“I hadn’t asked her. I have declined to visit her. Or any of them. I
reply to their letters. I am civil. That seemed sufficient.”

“Why does it upset you?”

“I don’t know why it does.... For one thing, your sport-coat and stick
were on the lounge where you left them this morning.”

“Oh, Lord!” he said.

“It was all right. Being British she took them for mine. It wasn’t
that.”

“What, then?”

“Oh, everything, Stuart. It was all well meant, you see, but I’d
avoided it.... Didn’t I once tell you that I couldn’t endure being
accounted for by my respectable relatives? Well, she is one of them and
that was it.”

“What did she wish of you?”

“She desired me to accept the respectable shelter of herself and the
common family tree.... It’s full enough of foliage without me. Also,
she’d have to explain me.... No, no, no! A thousand, thousand times no!
To explain me is to reflect on my parents. The British are not reticent
in family matters. If they don’t like anybody in their own family they
don’t hesitate to say so. I know how they regarded my mother. It’s no
use; they have nothing to offer that I could accept.”

“She wished to take you back to England?” he asked, worried.

“To California first. She’s travelling.”

“And afterward?”

“She goes to Italy. Constantinople, too; and China and India, I
believe. Ultimately to England. I couldn’t endure it.” She looked up
at the boy: “Not that she’s not presentable. I didn’t mean it that way.
There’s nothing queer about her. You’d probably like her--” she smiled
faintly--“your parents would quite approve, Stuart.”

“That’s just it,” he said seriously. “It would make things so easy for
us----”

“But _darling_! Can’t you ever recollect that I’m married? I’d have to
tell my relatives and your parents. How could I account for you to my
aunt? How could you account for me to your mother?”

“Isn’t it rotten luck?” he said fiercely.

“Yes, but listen, dear. Even if there were any prospects for my
freedom, do you imagine my aunt and your mother would tolerate our
companionship until the law unmarried me?”

“I suppose not,” he said.

“Your supposition is painfully correct, monsieur.... I fancy that
your people are rather conservative. My relatives are quite as rigid.
They’ve had their nets and lines out angling for me from the day
my father died. I thought they’d never notice me again when, after
fulfilling legal requirements in London, I refused to remain to be
cherished and explained.

“But my father was their idol. He died in battle. They continue writing
to my dead father’s only child--as in duty bound--or bound, perhaps, by
something that may be more vital still to such gentle-folk as they.”

“I can understand,” said the boy.

“That is why I mentioned it--because you can understand.”

An odd consciousness of the subtle but complete reversal of roles
preoccupied him. This girl was, unconsciously, accounting to herself
for him, a Hudson River Sutton. Evidently she expected, ultimately, to
account to her relatives for him.

And what had always caused him anxiety for the future was that he must
account for her to a family and a circle which was entirely equipped to
make them miserable at will.

It seemed funny. He smiled, then looked worried.

“How long does your aunt remain in New York?”

“Oh, she left this afternoon for Denver.”

“Then it won’t make any difference about your going to the Forest?”

“No, darling. I said I’d go.”

“But if you think----”

“I don’t think! I won’t think. There’s no harm in it if we’re not
caught. I want to go; and I’m going to marry you sometime, anyway. And,
oh! my beautiful sportclothes, and my trout-rod, and you--_you_--O
wonderful clairvoyant who looked into a muddy crystal and saw love on
his knees to you!”

She looked at him humourously, tenderly, studying his features with the
enigmatical smile hovering on her lips.

“At first,” she said, “you naturally thought me depraved. I was merely
queer. Not as queer as you very reasonably supposed. Not wanton.
When you comprehended that you were sweet. Then I scared you....
And myself.... And went to pieces. You picked them up. You glued
me together. I’m almost as good as new. I’ll be quite new when we
marry.... Your brand new toy.”

After a moment he asked her if she had told Pockman and Sadoul that she
was going away.

“Yes,” she said, “I had to. Of course, I did not say I was going with
you.”

“Did they object?”

“Dr. Pockman grumbled. But I told him very gently that I didn’t expect
to be under observation indefinitely.”

“Was Sadoul unpleasant?”

“No. He merely asked me to let him know when I returned.”

“That’s not like him, is it?”

“It’s made me a little uneasy,” she admitted. “But what could he do to
us?”

Freda appeared to announce dinner.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late when the boy took his coat and stick, walked with his arm
around Gilda to the hall, took her into his arms, then with a happy
good-night put on his hat and went out.

She waited till she heard the upper door slam, then locked herself in
for the night.

Stuart crossed the lower landing. The place was rather dark. Half way
down the stairs a tall shadow detached itself from the wall. The boy
halted, instinctively. There was a moment’s silence.

“Sadoul!” he said sharply.

Sadoul’s first shot deafened him; then the pistol crashed again; but
Stuart was already jerking the weapon upward, wrenching it free.

The bitter smoke strangled them both; he hurled Sadoul at the lower
door, kicked him through it, kicked him across the sidewalk, saw him
stumble, collapse, roll over on the asphalt.

He stood looking on as Sadoul got up on hands and knees, then staggered
to his feet. His chin and collar and shirt were all over blood.

Stuart was still breathing hard. “Go home, you lunatic!” he managed to
say. “Do you want a cop to butt in?”

Sadoul stood swaying slightly, fumbling toward his handkerchief. A
passing taxi slowed up, interested. Stuart took Sadoul by the arm and
looked into his deathly face.

“Where do you want to go?” he said in an altered voice. “Home?”

“Yes,” whispered Sadoul.

To the driver: “This gentleman has fallen and hurt himself.”

“I get you,” returned the driver.

“Hadn’t I better go with you?” asked the boy.

Sadoul, lying back in the cab, shook his head.

“I think I’d better see you safe, Sadoul. That was a nasty fall.”

He got into the cab. It started with a buck and a jerk, ran skittishly
to Fifth Avenue, rolled rapidly uptown.

Sadoul seemed exhausted, but when they arrived at the laboratory he
descended from the cab without aid.

At the door of the building Stuart took the pistol out of his pocket,
pulled out and threw away the clip, and handed the weapon to Sadoul.

“Here’s your gun,” he said in a low voice. “It wouldn’t have solved our
problem.”

“Where are you going with her?” whispered Sadoul hoarsely.

“Only to look over our Forest. I’m playing square with you both,
Sadoul.”

“You’ll bring her back?”

“Of course.”

“When?”

“Oh, in a week or ten days.”

Sadoul touched his bloody lips with his handkerchief:

“In--in ten days?”

“Not longer.”

“No.... Don’t stay longer.... I am--ill, Sutton.”

He went up the steps, his shoulders sagging, carrying the empty pistol
in his hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What the hell did you hand that guy?” inquired the driver as Sutton
went slowly back to the cab.

“What do you think it was, a ham sandwich? Drive back to Thirty-fifth
Street and step on the tack!”




                              CHAPTER XXXV


It was the most wonderful week in Gilda’s life.

They had stopped for an hour at Heron Nest. She would not cross the
threshold; but inspected the big, dowdy old mansion from every outside
angle, and the poor boy pointed out to her endless unwashed windows,
describing eagerly what lay behind each. His room, his mother’s, his
father’s, all were identified by windows; library, dining room, the two
parlours--he spared her not a square inch of his natal roof.

But the girl adored it, tenderly desirous of making up for his
disappointment at her refusal to enter the abode of the Suttons.

However, she went through the gardens with him, finding them quaint and
lovely in the fresh brilliance of spring flowers.

Some young fruit trees still remained in blossom; hedges wore unsullied
green, the warm aroma of newly turned earth where gardeners were
working blended deliciously with the perfume of new blossoms.

There was an acre of glass. She went with him into two or three
greenhouses, the grapery, melon shed--glimpsed the carnations, now
in the sere and withered finis, accepted the violets that a gardener
brought her, and then walked to the low, grey wall which overlooked the
valley and its famous river.

Far below a train rushed by toward the metropolis, leaving writhing
coils of smoke in the green ravine. Beyond, the Hudson sparkled under a
blinding sun. Haze veiled the rolling heights to westward. Lagoon-like
backwaters and bays were brimming with the flood-tide. From the south
came a grey Destroyer speeding upstream.

The boy had possession of the girl’s hand. He had a story to tell her
of every inch of ground along the grey stone wall.

Here he had shot his first hawk; in yonder oak his first squirrel;
among the distant reeds across that inlet he had pursued black duck and
coots in a punt.

If she sighted along his levelled arm she could see a great blue heron
wading out there in the shallows.

She laid her soft cheek against his shoulder and took aim with
beguiling eyes. When, finally, she had discovered the dignified wader,
she softly kissed her lover’s sleeve. He touched her hair with his lips.

A squirrel derided them from the fatal oak.

       *       *       *       *       *

That was her confused recollection of Heron Nest--the scent of spring,
a squirrel shrilling in a lofty tree, miles of sunlit river, and her
lover’s cheek against her own.

And now they were on their way northward once more, thundering through
short tunnels, roaring along rock-ribbed cuts, out into blinding
sunshine again with the river a blinding waste of light quivering away
into the magic North.

Sunset reddened the cars at Albany; starlight silvered their berths at
Utica.

The boy lay awake, too thrilled to sleep. The girl, in her berth
opposite, slept dreamlessly in supreme surrender to a destiny no longer
questioned.

       *       *       *       *       *

At ten o’clock the next morning the train stopped on signal at
Fisher-cat Dam.

Dan Leggett, planting superintendent, awaited them in a Ford.

The road was awful; the flivver crawled as a dog negotiates an unsteady
bridge, on its belly.

Pink-cheeked, glad of her fur coat, astonished to find the springtime
just beginning here, excited by the heady air and the aroma of the
pines, Gilda clung to Stuart and gazed fearfully from the pitching car.

She was full of breathless exclamations--now enchanted by a tumbling
mountain brook, now in ecstasy as the blue view widened away over acres
of forests accented by ridges of hard wood and set with steep little
tree-clad hills.

Once, ahead in the bed of the brook which Leggett spoke of as “the
road,” a burly woodchuck scrambled over the stones and out of sight.
And Gilda’s excitement knew no bounds.

She stood straight up in the car when a ruffed grouse, “dusting,” got
up, leisurely, and walked on ahead with an irritated, reproachful air.

Wild birds called wistfully from thin depths of newborn foliage; pale
blossoms starred the woods, clotted the twigs of slim grey shrubs.

In Gilda’s breath the wine of the pines sweetened, intoxicating her; in
her veins the fire of youth ran moulten. Solitude, and her lover! There
was nothing else in the world. Nothing more to desire, beyond.

And all the while Stuart was talking--explaining trees, identifying
pine, hemlock, spruce, and balsam, instructing her in the differences
characterising each species, estimating “markets,” guessing at
“calipers,” pointing out “ripe” growths, “cruising” in his mind’s eyes
as the creaking flivver crawled upward.

She only heard his voice as a celestial melody without words. Clinging
to him in their lurching craft, her girl’s eyes were as remotely lost
as the rim of misty blue-green mountains on the horizon.

Once, in a gorge below, a stony river leaped into sight. But the
river-driving was ended; the run of log was over. A few lay stranded
here and there, or, caught between boulders crossways in mid-stream,
lay massive and black, drenched with snowy spray.

A haze filled one valley where men were sawing. The wicked whine of the
steam-saw came thinly to their ears.

Beyond, men were busy with slashings, preparing lumbered areas for
reforestation.

After a while they began to pass panels of red pine and Norway
spruce--the trees in various panels varying from eighteen inches to ten
feet in height.

Acres of beautiful silvery grey-green trees were in sight, now--Scotch
pines, soft as pyramids of moss to the eye, and prickly as briers to
the touch.

He told her all about it. The weevil, curse of white pine and Norway
spruce, also attacked these Scotch pines. It remained to be seen
whether they were worth the planting.

Acres of emerald green, bushy, broom-like young evergreens clothed the
hills ahead.

“Red pines,” he explained, “immune to weevil and blister.”

“So far,” drawled Leggett.

“So far,” echoed Stuart gloomily.

Gilda dreamed on blissfully, their voices vague as in a trance. A
heavenly rapture possessed her through which her soul floated, drifted,
slumbered on the wing, or swept the green earth below like the shadow
of a sky-lark.

The sun’s heat, waxing intense, distilled aromatic nectar from every
stem and leaf and blossom, and delicate wild perfumes arose from black
mould and rotting leaves.

“Hey, Mike!” shouted Leggett, as the car rattled across a log bridge.

Gilda opened bewildered eyes. Stuart was laughing at her.

On the edge of a flashing stream she saw twin log houses, and a faded
man in formless, faded garments standing between them.

On a board over the door of one was painted _Villa Gilda_; over the
other, _Hotel Sutton_.

In her ears was the golden melody of the stream; in her eyes the glory
of the sun.

Eden!

“This is Mike Hanford, Gilda, who is going to look out for us. He
tosses the finest flap-jack in the North Woods.”

Mr. Hanford removed his cap and scratched his head to atone for such
servility.

“Reckon you’ll eat a snack,” he surmised. And spat to readjust social
conditions throughout the earth.




                             CHAPTER XXXVI


Never had Gilda known such delight.

Their Eden was guarded by two sign-boards on the wood-road a hundred
yards north and south of the log bridge.

The signs were painted and erected by Mr. Hanford. One read: “Keep offn
this here privut rode. Ladies presunt.” The other: “Don’t go into them
woods; there is ladies loose.”

A cordon of infantry with machine guns might have failed to impress the
sauntering timber-cruiser and lowly lumber-jack. But these signs routed
them. Only the squirrel and the grouse invaded their leafy solitude.

The weather was perfect. The wonder-days waxed and waned.

Neither dawn nor the wild birds’ choral awoke these two.

But when the sun gold-plated their glazed windows the boy and the girl
stirred and awoke, and heard the fire roaring in the sheet-iron stoves
behind the closed door of the only other room.

In bathing-dress, blanket-coated, they hailed each other from windows
opposite. Gilda came out of her shanty, Stuart emerged from his. Hands
touching they picked their way to the edge of the brook where Mike had
dammed it.

Here spread a long, green, transparent pool--“ungodly cold,” they
agreed--but if it was hell to go into it, it was heaven the next minute.

The thickets of bank ferns trembled under the rain of spray they
dashed into the air. Outraged squirrels protested overhead; blue-jays
exchanged malicious gossip regarding these shameless intruders; the
affrighted trout fled upstream.

The girl’s laughter echoed through the woods; distant wild birds
answered. The boy dived and dived like a halcyon.

Then they ran glowing and dripping to their shanties, continuing
conversation through open windows while preparing for the day.

When Gilda was ready, Stuart went out and dingled a cow-bell. Mr.
Hanford, lurking within earshot, presently rambled into sight, bearing
food.

“Mornin’, ma’am. Mornin’, Mr. Sutton. I jess heard some’n a-dribblin’
onto a cow-bell, so, thinks I, I’ll jess run over a spell an’ help cook
breakfast--_if_ I’m wanted.”

He always said this; always appeared uncertain that he was needed,
always belittled his own culinary efforts, and hinted darkly of
metropolitan gastronomic orgies in which, doubtless, they were daily
accustomed to indulge.

Thus spake Mr. Hanford while tossing flap-jacks and frying brook-trout.

But he was secretly aghast at their capacity, and never before had two
people compelled him to toss flap-jacks so fast.

His summons to breakfast was, “Coffee’s bilin’, ma’am.” And that was
the signal for him to toss with all his agility and skill against the
rapid inroads on the brown and fragrant stack of cakes.

       *       *       *       *       *

“My conscience,” he said to Leggett, “I’ve seen feedin’ in Kanuck
lumber camps but I hain’t never seen nothin’ like them two.” He added
irrelevantly: “Ain’t she pretty, Dan? Say, when she sets curled up
on the moss eatin’ onto a hunk o’ fried fish, I never seen nothin’
prettier. She’s cunnin’ as a suckin’ caaf, she is.”

Halcyon days!--ecstatic hours along the stream, struggling to lift fat,
heavy, lustily resisting trout from icy, foaming deeps; hours on the
broader river with silk lines whistling out across pool and shallow,
and the virgin wind blowing, and the fat trout splashing with a glint
of rose and silver.

All day, all night the interminable song of the pines filled their ears.

In a depthless blue vault the sun glittered; stars jewelled the dark;
and always the endless anthem of the pines.

       *       *       *       *       *

She accompanied him when he went on tours of inspection. Everything in
this utterly new world enchanted her.

She wandered through the seedling nursery, where rows and rows of
oblong beds, raised and rounded above the trodden paths, bloomed like
delicately tinted mosses. This flower-bed covered with pale blue velvet
contained thousands of Coster’s seedling spruces. This blue-green moss
was composed of thousands of seedling white pines. Here were panels of
silver-grey-green Scotch pines, panels of leafgreen red pines, misty
stretches of spruce.

She saw acres of one year, two year, three years’ transplants; acres of
three foot, four, five, six foot trees; acres of new forests, ten foot
trees, thirty foot trees.

Over the plowed “rides” she plodded, her hand on Stuart’s arm. Once,
dizzy, but trusting to him, she climbed a fire-tower, where the stolid
look-out sat chewing tobacco and nursing a telescope.

She went afield with him after weevils, and saw the green terminal
shoots ominously a-droop, or still upright clotted with white, or rusty
and bent.

He peeled for her a terminal shoot and showed her the fat grey-white
larvae in the heart of it, packed like cartridges in a rod-magazine.

Everywhere in some plantations men were severing and burning infected
shoots. She heard Stuart swearing under his breath.

Another day she went with him on a graver errand.

No “blister” had appeared in the Sutton forests, and Stuart was
determined that the leprous curse should never gain a foothold in the
domain of his forebears. Yet, across the border, New England festered
with it in certain districts.

She saw men in the woods working with grub-hoe, pick, and bush-hook;
saw green fires burning.

Stuart showed her a sneaking growth of wild currant--tested the
infernal toughness and resistance of the wretched shrub, turned the
coarse leaves to search for the deadly rusty spores, and thanked God
that he discovered none.

So she learned that the leprosy called “pine blister” begins as a rusty
stain on the under side of a currant or gooseberry leaf. It can not
originate on the doomed pine itself; it must have its loathsome birth
on currant or gooseberry.

Winds or birds carry it to a pine. But the hellish spores must work
quickly because ten minutes is their span of life unless they reach a
white pine tree.

When they do the tree is as good as dead. Yet the diseased tree can not
infect others of its species. Only spores from currant or gooseberry
can do that.

       *       *       *       *       *

Days came when Stuart remained in seemingly incessant consultation with
Mr. Leggett. There were maps and deeds to consult, letter files to
inspect--a never-ending mass of detail.

Gilda desired to listen, was gratefully encouraged by Stuart,
understood as well as anybody could who had not been conversant with
the operations of Sutton & Company for the last decade.

But there were intervals when clerical details formed the subject under
discussion. And at such times the girl literally took to the tall
timber.

The wild flowers of the Northland were a never-ending surprise and
delight to her. She picked few, but was on her knees to every one--to
the pink moccasin flowers on tall, slender stalks, to the white
trilliums, to the violets, blue, white, yellow; to the scented wild
lilies-of-the-valley, like patches of snowy foam in the woods.

Everywhere spread carpets of bloom, straw-yellow, purple, green-white.

The dull strawberry red of another trillium clotted the still places
with an odour of death and decay--gloomy, unlovely flowers which drew
carrion flies.

But the silvery shad-bush was in flower; witch-hopple, viburnum,
squaw-berry, moss and fern were gay and lovely in their resurrection.

Into sunny glades flitted the Beauty of Camberwell on cream-edged
brown-velvet wings, embroidered with violet-blue. Comma butterflies
flashed to a resting spot on treetrunks glowing like dull spots of
fire; green-clouded swallowtails in floppy but rapid flight winnowed
the dusk through wet woods.

She lay by the stream in grey shirt and knickers, pillowing her head
on both arms crossed behind, and looked up through new leaves into a
sky as blue as a cat-bird’s egg; and saw squirrels in tiny silhouette,
running along highways of tangled branches.

She rolled over on her stomach and looked down into amber water where
trout lay stemming the current, their tails all waving like wind-blown
banners above the golden bottom-gravel.

Strange little bluish grey birds creeked and cheeped and whined as they
crept up and down mossy tree-trunks; chickadees found her and lingered,
conversing with her in friendly levity; near by, low in the sky, two
hawks mewed querulously, and their broad shadows swept the trees.

       *       *       *       *       *

But there were not many hours alone, for Gilda Greenway. Her lover was
never far away, and he never left her long in solitude--if the forest
silence could be called that--for forest solitude is in the soul, not
in the still places of the earth--never in wilderness or desert or upon
the grey waste of waters until man brings it with him into the silent
places.

       *       *       *       *       *

A week was gone before they realised it had fairly begun.

It worried them both. Gilda was washing out underclothes below the
dam. Her full yet slender hands bore scratches where the little Ladies
of the Briers had caressed her, and they were tanned to a creamy
tint--which seemed to be the limit of sunburn on skins like hers.

They had mentioned the horrifying speed of Time that morning, surprised
and disgusted that day and night should have played them so treacherous
a trick.

Now, soberly soaping her intimate attire, Gilda felt inclined to mingle
a tear or two with the suds as she watched the iridescent bubbles dance
away on the amber current.

Never, never had she been so happy and free from care. Never for an
instant had the dark change threatened her; never had the shadow of
the _Other One_ stirred in sunlight or lamplight or in the witch-light
of the stars. Care slept; memory was kind; life an enchanted vision
through which days burned like fire and every second was a flaming
jewel.

She lived and moved in a sort of passionless ecstasy; the forest,
the sunlight, her lover were impersonal miracles; and she herself a
blessed, unreal, unfamiliar thing, born of the magic that enveloped all.

       *       *       *       *       *

She had spread her wet and immaculate attire on bushes in the sun.
Then she got up, slim as a boy and graceful as a girl in her shirt
and knickers; and was carrying the soap to her cabin when Stuart came
across the bridge waving a telegram.

“I’ve got to stay here!” he cried joyously. “They sent in a runner from
Fisher-cat Dam. The office wires me that our deal has gone through; we
take over the Lamsden tract; the lawyers are to meet at Chazy, and the
surveyors are leaving Utica tonight!”

She flung the soap upon the moss and her wet arms around his neck.

“Oh, how divine!” she cried. “I never want to go back!--never, never.
Tell me how long we have?”

“Nearly three more weeks. Can your linen stand it?”

“If it doesn’t, I’ll play Eve,” she said, kissing him with abandon.
Then she freed her sagging hair of the last pin, flung it wide and
flashing, and danced away over the log bridge.

“Good-bye,” she called, waving one hand behind her. “I’m going to dance
through the woods until I fall down! Good-bye--good-bye--good-bye!”

He was after her now; she dodged like a squirrel; and off she sped, a
glimmering shape among the trees. He caught her at last and tossed her
up into his arms, where she lay panting--her face a pink flower in a
shower of gold-red hair.

And so he carried her back to Gilda’s Villa, slowly through the wood,
his blond head bent, his lips resting on hers.




                             CHAPTER XXXVII


The hemlock wore its honey-pale tassels; the white pine its waxen
candelabra; the spruce its tender terminals; the balsam was veiled in
misty blue. June had begun magnificently in the forest; but the dweller
in the Villa Gilda and the boy with the blond head had taken their last
dip in Mr. Hanford’s pool, swallowed the last mound of Mr. Hanford’s
flap-jacks.

The only fishers in the pools were mink and otter; the only frolickers
in the forest the red squirrels. In the Villa Gilda, wood-mice prepared
to nest; a porcupine promenaded the porch of the Hotel Sutton.

They had come for a week and had remained a month. Not one shadow had
fallen across their Eden. Yet, in that month the girl had learned
definitely what manner of man she had to deal with; the youth began to
discover in the girl her genius for comradeship.

She found that she had to do with the average American man, inartistic,
unimaginative, capable, chaste by habit, law-abiding through custom,
kind by inclination, brave through heredity.

There was no glimmer about him. The qualities he had, shone. To her
they formed a steady aureole. His instinctive cleanliness of mind and
person fascinated her. He was 28 but utterly a boy. Only the restlessly
intellectual mature and age early, not this average, crisp-blond type
with little imagination to worry it, no excesses to over-ripen it,
nothing morbid to regret.

The boy-man was normal. He knew his mate when he saw her. And she knew
hers. Subtler than he, she had realised it at their first encounter.
Perhaps that was why, conscious of non-fulfilment, she had passionately
returned his kiss.

Well, their destiny was clear to her now. Earth held for her only this
man.

As for Stuart, her unfeigned interest in what interested him was a
thrilling revelation.

Timber, the growing of timber, its cutting, its selling--these
things had been the principal, the vital interest in his family for
generations. It was his principal interest. He wished it to be his
son’s. And now, when his lips rested on this young girl’s soft hand, he
felt that it would be.

Mentally, to her, he accredited all that was to be intellectually
sensitive and imaginatively fine in the visionary family which he so
vaguely evoked.

Hers the aspiration of talent and cultivation. She the source of mental
exhilaration, the medium through which he was to understand and care
for those things of the mind to which he had been unresponsive.

But even so, what a stimulating and delicious comrade had he found to
walk with him on his own plane, listen to him, understand him, labour
with him, play with him upon the common playground of the average man.

Men of his race loved but once, married fairly early or never. There
was _no_ other woman for him. There had been none before her. His
ability to love could not survive her. His only chance was this girl.
And he must take that chance if it lasted a lifetime.

Thus their mutual conclusion after a month together.

But their journey back to town was not entirely a gay one. There
was reaction, defiant, pleasurable, piqued by a sort of indefinable
apprehension.

That they had shattered all canons of convention had something to
do with their rather excited state of mind, no doubt. That they had
nothing else to regret ought to have been a balm.

She said, laughingly, when they reached the Mohawk Valley: “I have a
plaguey premonition that we’re going to hear from this escapade.”

“I don’t see how,” he said, forcing a smile but feeling a trifle
uncomfortable.

“I don’t, either. Gossip can’t travel through a wilderness. Anyway,
those nice men thought no harm of us.”

“Fancy Leggett or Mike thinking scandal,” he said, smiling at her.

“And there wasn’t any,” she added.

They ought to have been mutually reassured.

“I don’t suppose your aunt came back to town?” he ventured.

“I don’t imagine so. But she’ll be coming very soon. She sails from New
York.... I never thought to speak to Freda. Do you suppose that woman
would tell anybody that I went away for a month with you?”

“Good heavens, no,” he said, a little startled.

Gilda remained silent, her eyes gravely absent.

“What is on your mind, dear?” he inquired uneasily.

“Nothing. I was wondering, for the first time, what that woman really
thinks of us.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I suppose not.... Still, if she’s got a mind she thinks with it....
I’ve had to write her. I’ve had to send her wages.... I wasn’t
concerned at the time but I suppose it would have been more sensible if
we hadn’t had the expressman check our hand-luggage from my apartment.”

“Nothing will happen,” he said, more carelessly than he felt.

“No.... Your people are not in town, are they, Stuart?”

“They’re on their way back, I believe----”

A white clad negro bent ceremoniously beside her: “Dinner is served
in the dining car, madam,” he murmured; bowed again to Stuart, and
continued his ceremonious progress through the car.

       *       *       *       *       *

They arrived in town at noon on a cloudless day in early June.

Gilda had telegraphed Freda to prepare luncheon for two. No trace of
uneasiness remained to cloud the gay excitement of their home-coming.
Red-caps piled their taxi with luggage; their vehicle swung into
Madison Avenue. It was but a five-minute drive.

Stuart and the driver carried up the baggage. Freda welcomed them with
a pale Scandinavian smile.

“Oh, Stuart!” cried the girl, “it _does_ look nice!”

She stood by the piled luggage in the sitting-room, unpinning her hat
and looking happily about at the familiar place.

“It looks jolly comfortable,” he admitted, tossing hat and light coat
on the sofa. Gilda flung her hat after them, caught his hand, and
walked him slowly about the apartment.

“Why shouldn’t we like it?” she murmured. “You told me you loved me in
this room. Every thing means you, here.”

They looked soberly at the four walls which had witnessed already so
much that had been happy and tragic in their brief existence together.
They walked into her bedroom and she seated herself before her mirror
and began to unpin her ruddy hair.

“Scrub first, if you like, darling,” she said; “and try to remember
which tooth-brush is yours.”

       *       *       *       *       *

At luncheon it was arranged that he should go down town to the office,
stop at his own house on the way back and dress, call for her and take
her to the Ritz for dinner.

“I’ll leave my luggage now, and carry it home tonight,” he said. “I’m
going to take the subway to the office.... You look wonderfully fit,
Gilda,” he added, lingering sentimentally.

“I’ll have a fit if you don’t go,” she said. “I’ve simply _got_ to look
over my wardrobe if you expect me to dine out with you, darling.”

But when he opened the door to go she detained him, wound her arms
tightly around his neck.

“You have given me the most beautiful month in my life,” she said.
“I hope God will let me make it up to you--a year for every day of
happiness you gave me....”

       *       *       *       *       *

At the office of Sutton & Sons he nodded smilingly right and left in
return for greetings.

In the outer office Miss Tower smiled primly upon him.

“Mr. Sutton senior is here,” she said.

“What!” he exclaimed.

“Your father is here, Mr. Stuart.”

“Where?”

“In the private office, sir.”

He found his father there talking with Mr. Connolly, department chief.
Amenities were exchanged; Mr. Connolly left.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, dad! I didn’t expect you and mother until
Thursday.”

“We came on. We got here day before yesterday. When did you arrive from
the forest, Stuart?”

“Just now. We--I got in about noon.”

“Oh. You lunched at home.”

“No----”

“Oh. You haven’t seen your mother?”

“I had no idea she was home.”

“She’ll know you are by your luggage,” remarked his father.

Stuart reddened violently, went over to his desk and fumbled the mail.

“Well,” said his father, “you put over the new deal, I hear.”

“I did. How did you hear, dad?”

“One of their surveyors from Chazy was in here a little while ago.”

“Which?” asked the boy involuntarily.

“Anderson.”

Stuart’s face pulsated with hot, surging colour as he bent lower over
the papers on the desk. His father, twirling his eyeglasses by the silk
cord, was looking out of the window.

“Did you and mother have a good time in California?” the boy managed to
inquire.

“Very.... Who did you take to the Forest, Stuart?”

“What?”

“Who was it you had up there?” repeated his father, not looking at him.

“I’m not quite sure I understand you,” said the boy.

“Didn’t you have some people as guests up there?” inquired Sutton
senior, glancing casually at his only son.

“Yes.”

“Do you mind saying who they were?”

“There was only one.”

“Oh. I thought you had a girl or two in the party.”

Silence was too nearly a lie. The boy said: “There was a girl.”

“So I heard from Jock Anderson. Is she anybody your mother and I know?”

“No.”

His father said carelessly: “All right. No doubt she was well looked
after.”

Silence, again, was conniving at untruth.

“There was nobody else,” said the boy, “--no other woman.”

After a silence:

“Well, old chap, wasn’t that rather idiotic?” suggested his father
calmly.

“It really wasn’t, dad.”

“It really _was_,” retorted Sutton senior. “Do you care to talk about
it, Stuart?”

“Yes.... Not now.”

“At your convenience, my son.”

He got up: “Glad to see you back, Stuart. Glad to be back. Heron Nest
must be charming. I think your mother and I will go up this week. Will
you be home to dinner?”

“I’ll see mother. I’m dining out.”

“Come in for tea then. We have a guest. It would be civil to speak to
her.”

“All right, dad; I’ll be home by five.”

They shook hands--his father dropped one hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Don’t ever be afraid of me, Stuart.”

“No.... Besides, dad, I have nothing to be afraid of.... I was going to
tell you all about it anyway ... when the proper time arrived.... I’m
all right, you know.”

“Yes, I do know.... And if you’d been an ass, you’re my son.... Also,
you are Sutton & Son.... You talk to me when you’re ready. That’s what
I’m for.”

“You’re a corker, dad.... What did Anderson say?”

“Well, to be plain, he said you had a very pretty girl up there named
Miss Greenway, occupying the shanty next to yours.”

“It sounds rather awful, doesn’t it?” said the boy.

“Well----”

“Don’t mention it to mother, will you?”

“I didn’t intend to,” replied his father drily.

“I’ll tell her myself some day. It’ll be all right. Don’t worry, dad.”

They exchanged a hand-grip. His father went out.

Stuart tried to read his mail, but couldn’t. This business was going to
worry Gilda. Not that it could matter, ultimately. But there had been
obstacles enough without adding this one.

There seemed to be no point in telephoning her about the episode.
They’d dine, then he’d tell her.

He turned again to his letters but the depression persisted. He was
sorry his father had first learned about Gilda in that way. He felt a
hot animosity toward Anderson. Probably the fool meant no mischief--yet
he might have, too. He was just one of the vast brotherhood of
Talkers--low in the scale because he had only petty gossip to
detail--low enough to be stupid--too low to know, instinctively, when
to hold his gabbling tongue.

       *       *       *       *       *

He went up town about five and walked across to his own house, using
his latch-key to enter.

From the east drawing-room came social noises--modulated voices, the
clink of the tea cup.

He laid his hat on the console and walked in.

There were a number of people there. He kissed his mother, paid his
compliments to her friends. One woman he had not met, but approached in
his friendly, boyish way.

“My son, Stuart,” said his mother, smilingly; and, to him: “Lady
Glyndale, Stuart, with whom we came East.”

He took a cup of tea beside Lady Glyndale.

“Do you like California?” he asked politely.

“Yes, excepting the natives,” she replied with British frankness.

“I thought them rather nice,” he said, smiling.

“I daresay there are few nice ones. The natives are a poor lot, poor
farmers, slothful, stupid. The Japanese are far more interesting,
better farmers, better tenants. It’s rather extraordinary your wishing
to get rid of them.”

“I don’t know very much about the squabble between California and
Japan,” he admitted.

“You should,” she remarked.

Which was perfectly true, and the young man winced.

He talked to others, exchanged a few words with his mother, when
opportunity offered.

Sideways he inspected Lady Glyndale and found her typical--arched
eyebrows and small, flat feet; high bridged nose and little gouty
hands; high-coloured and flat as a board at the back; and with that
indefinable something that slightly irritates, slightly amuses, and
wholly commands respect--the unmistakable aura of race and breeding.

He thought: “Whatever you think of them you can count on them every
time.”

He asked her if she’d had any tuna fishing at Catalina.

She did not warm but became seriously animated. They discussed tuna and
tarpon.

Then, having to dress, he made his adieux, regretted his inability to
dine at home, and expressed his pleasure that Lady Glyndale was to be
their guest.

“You shall tell me more about your tuna,” she said. “I read late in
your climate. I don’t know how anybody sleeps at all in your American
air.”

       *       *       *       *       *

When he was dressed he went out into the June evening and hailed a
taxi. All the western streets were bathed in the rosy glory of the
setting sun.

In dinner coat and straw hat he felt the happy relaxation of informal
summer; lay back in the open vehicle to savour a cigarette and gaze at
the familiar streets in their new June setting.

At the door of Gilda’s abode he got out and told the driver to wait.

Freda admitted him. He caught sight of Gilda on the sofa, and went to
her. She gave him a rather pale smile and a listless hand.

“Are you all right, dear?” came his invariable and anxious question.

“Yes.... Sit here near me.” She took his hand again, absently, the
faint smile still on her lips.

“You’re tired from the journey,” he concluded.

“No.... My aunt came in somewhat unexpectedly.”

“When?”

“About two o’clock.”

There was a silence.

“Well--did it upset you?” he asked.

“A little.... Our luggage lay there where we left it. Your overcoat,
too.”

“Oh, Lord!”

She touched his palm, lightly, reflectively, with each finger-tip in
turn.

“It _was_ awkward.... I had a bath. I was still in my bath-robe. The
bell rang and I heard Freda go.... It was too late to instruct her.

“She showed my aunt in and brought me her card.... So I got into a
boudoir robe.... There she sat--with all that damning luggage under her
very nose--and your overcoat and stick.... I’d forgotten it. I turned
scarlet-hot to my toes.”

“What happened?” he asked, miserably.

“Nothing much. She’d arrived here three days ago. She’d been here every
day. Freda forgot to mention it. But yesterday she told my aunt that a
telegram had come and I was to arrive today.”

“What did your aunt say?”

“She asked me where I’d been.”

“Did you tell her?”

“Yes. But I didn’t go into details.”

“What did she say about the luggage?”

“Nothing. But I knew she had noticed it.... Stuart, she wants me to
sail with her on the 6th.”

He forced a smile: “Are you going to?”

“I was wondering.... I’d like to consult an attorney.”

“Why?”

“About securing my freedom.... If it would help any for me to go
abroad----”

The telephone rang on the table beside her. She picked up the receiver.

“Yes?... Yes, this is Miss Greenway.... Oh, I didn’t recognise your
voice, Dr. Pockman.... Yes, I have been away nearly a month....
_What?_.... No, I had no means of knowing it.... Is he seriously
ill?... Do you mean he is not going to recover!!!”

For a full minute she sat with the receiver pressed to her ear,
terribly intent on what she heard. Then:

“Yes, I’ll come.... Who?... Did he ask for him?... He is here now....
You had better speak to him yourself, Dr. Pockman.”

She passed the receiver to Stuart. Her hand trembled slightly.

“Sadoul is dying,” she said.




                            CHAPTER XXXVIII


They had gone to the laboratory as they were, not delaying to dine,
Gilda in her black dinner-gown, Stuart wearing his dinner jacket. For
Pockman had advised haste.

They both were a little dazed--even Sutton, who knew what Gilda had not
known. But he had looked for nothing like this--nothing swift--even
nothing deadly, perhaps.

“Why does he want me,” he said, partly to himself. “I can understand
that he would desire to see _you_.”

Her ungloved hand crept into his but she remained silent.

The June night was cool and spangled with big stars. It was deliciously
cool near the river where a breeze was blowing from the Sound.

As they descended, Stuart said to the driver: “We will be here for some
time. Don’t go.”

Miss Cross met them in the hall. She took Gilda’s hand and caressed it;
spoke pleasantly to Stuart.

“He’s in his own room. The doctor is there, expecting you.”

They followed her. Pockman rose and came forward in the subdued
lamplight.

Sadoul, lying on his bed near the open window, did not open his eyes.

Pockman said to Gilda: “I’ve called up your house every day for a week.”

“When did this happen?” she asked.

At the sound of her voice Sadoul’s eyes unclosed.

“Is that you, Gilda?”

“Yes.” She went forward, slowly; laid one slender hand on the
bed-clothes over his chest.

They looked at each other for a little while in silence.

“If you don’t come back to me, I’ll have to go after you,” he murmured.

He closed his sunken eyes, opened them presently, looked up at her.

“Gilda, _t’en souviens tu_?----

    ‘--_Et quand, dernier témoin de ces scènes funèbres,
    Entouré du chaos, de la mort, des ténèbres,
    Seul, je serais debout; seul malgré mon effroi,
    Etre infaillible et bon, j’espérerais en toi,
    Et, certain du retour de l’éternelle aurore,
    Sur les mondes détruits je t’attendrais--encore--_’”

His breath came harsh, laboriously, obstructing the voice.

“Gilda, Gilda,” he sighed.

She said nothing. He stared at her out of burning eyes, then, as his
gaze wandered, he caught sight of Sutton.

“You damned liar,” he said in a stronger voice.

“Is that what you wished to say to me, Sadoul?”

“It’s one of the things. You told me you’d remain away only a week or
ten days. You’ve been gone long enough to find me dying.”

“I’m sorry.... I expected nothing like this. Business detained me
longer than I expected.”

“The business of making love to another man’s wife,” said Sadoul.
And, to Gilda: “Well, what do you think of my marksmanship with an
automatic, Gilda?”

“What?”

“My endeavours to--shoot up--your young man,” he gasped, suddenly husky
and shaken by his laboured breathing.

“What?” she repeated, bewildered.

“Do you mean to say he didn’t tell you?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sadoul.”

Sadoul looked at Sutton: “Didn’t you tell her?” he barked.

“No.”

The sick man lay gasping and fumbling at the covers, his fevered eyes
roving from Gilda to Sutton.

“I guess you didn’t mean to lie about coming back,” he panted. “Sit
down. I once showed you something. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll show you something better than that. You’ll be surprised.” To
Gilda: “Sit down. Are you in a hurry?”

“No.”

“Have you a little time?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I want to show Sutton something. But you’ll have to make
him see it.”

“What is it you wish him to see?” she asked gently.

“I’m going to die,” he panted, “and I want him to see me do it.”

Pockman approached and looked down at him with a reassuring smirk:
“While there’s life there’s----”

“Tell it to Sweeny,” whispered Sadoul with a pallid sneer. “You know
damned well I’m dying.”

Pockman laughed: “You’ve plenty of vitality yet, I notice----”

“You tell ’em,” barked Sadoul. And, to Gilda, with an effort: “I’m
going after you when the time comes, if you don’t come back of your own
accord.” To Sutton: “I want you to see what you’ll be up against--some
day----”

A terrible spasm of coughing overwhelmed him. Pockman and Miss Cross,
beside him, supported his head. The nurse, presently, carried basin and
towels away.

Pockman seated himself and placed his hand on Sadoul’s pulse.

For a long while the room was very quiet. A river breeze blew the
curtains. Stars looked in.

“Gilda,” whispered the dying man.

“I am here, Sadoul.”

“Is _he_ here, too?”

“Yes.”

“I want him to see. Will you let him?”

“See--what?” she faltered.

Sadoul’s voice burst from him with startling violence: “I want you to
let him see what you are going to see.... What you’ll both have to
reckon with some day.... The indestructible I! The surviving identity
which is _I_ myself!... And always will be--eternal, deathless----”

He struggled to sit up, his eyes glittering with fever: “Will you do
that last thing for me, Gilda?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, deathly pale. And to her lover: “He asks
me to let you see his soul, when it leaves him.”

“Sutton! Are you afraid to look!” gasped Sadoul.

“Not if you wish it.”

Sadoul’s glazing eyes were fixed on him: “I--want you to see--for
yourself--what you’ll be up against--some day--” ...The hemorrhage was
strangling him.... “On ne--meurt--pas--” he whispered.... “Je ne fais
que--mon début----”

His voice failed; Miss Cross eased him back to the stained pillow.
After a silence, Pockman turned partly around, his hand still on
Sadoul’s wrist.

“He’s going,” he said in a low voice.

After ten minutes: “He’s nearly gone.... It isn’t his lungs, either.
It’s that cobra serum.... I told him so. Hell! Cobra virus will kill
Koch’s bacilli. So will dynamite. So will jumping off the Woolworth
building.”

He released the pulse; laid his hand on Sadoul’s heart. Miss Cross
handed him a mirror and turned up the lights.

“He’s gone,” said Pockman.

Gilda, very pale, rose, walked to the bedside, sank to her knees.

After a while she averted her head, covered both eyes with her
handkerchief, held out one hand, blindly, to her lover.

He lifted her, drew her back to their seats by the wall, retaining her
hand.

Pockman drew the sheet over the dead man’s face, nodded dismissal to
Miss Cross, turned out all lights, teetered over to an arm-chair and
sat down.

“Do you want a couch?” he asked Gilda.

“No.”

“All right. Can you include me in this affair?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.... Whenever you are ready.”

The girl turned, rested her right hand on her lover’s shoulder, palm
upward; laid her cheek in the hollowed hand.

Sutton gazed at the bed. Over Sadoul’s shadowy, sheeted face a faint
light shone--starlight, he supposed.

After a few minutes he realised it was not starlight.

He gazed at the bony outline of Sadoul’s face beneath the sheet,
remembering what this dead man had said concerning the post-mortem
persistence of consciousness.

Was Sadoul lying there dead, still conscious? The brain died last
of all. Was Sadoul’s brain still alive? What was that pale light,
imperceptibly increasing above the shrouded head?

The girl resting on his shoulder was now breathing softly, regularly as
a sleeping child.

He dared not stir; his eyes were fixed upon the outlined figure on the
bed.

Suddenly the covered head became visible in silhouette, as though an
electric bulb had been turned on under the bed sheet.

Steadily the glow spread to a radio-activity so intense that Sadoul’s
head itself seemed translucent, revealing the shadowy cerebrum and
cerebellum slowly expanding within the skull.

The Senate of the body was preparing to adjourn _sine die_.

Now, the preparations for the spirit’s departure from its worn out
tenement were fully completed. The intense brilliancy of the head began
to fade. A softly luminous atmosphere grew above the covered head,
slowly assuming the contours of another head.

This new head developed more and more distinctly, more compactly,
indescribably brilliant.

All around it spread a luminous atmosphere, seemingly in great
commotion. This agitated pool of light penetrated like the white fire
of an aurora; but, as the new head became more perfect, it waned,
faded, disappeared.

Steadily, harmoniously, the neck, shoulders, chest, were developed in
their natural progressive order.

The etheric body was slowly rising over the head and at right angles to
the deserted body.

Now, about the feet of the etheric shape, a blinding vital light played
like electricity, linking it with the sheeted head. For a few minutes
this lasted, then the natal cord grew thin, fine as a luminous thread,
parted.

All light died out on the dark bed. In the starlight a tall, greyish
shape stood beside the dead--a figure like Sadoul, not quite as
tall, with no mark of sickness on body or face; younger, tranquil of
carriage, with vague, untroubled eyes that rested on the living without
emotion, without surprise.

Leisurely, without effort, the figure moved to the open window and
stood there gazing out into the starlight for a while. Then, turning,
it passed Pockman, noticing him; passed before Gilda, sleeping on
Sutton’s shoulder, quietly observant, moved on to the open door, into
the corridor beyond, where lights were burning on the whitewashed wall.

Here it became perfectly distinct, differing in no way from a living
being.

The street door was open; the aged door-keeper sat in his box reading
an evening paper.

Sadoul looked at him as he passed, smiled, and went out into the street.

In the death chamber Pockman got up on his rickety legs, pulled out his
watch.

“Two hours, thirty-three minutes, nine and a fraction seconds,” he
said; smirked, wiped his sweating features, picked up a pencil and
wrote down his observation on the chart.

On Stuart’s shoulder Gilda was stirring. Presently she sighed lightly,
opened her eyes, drew a deeper breath, sat upright.

For a few moments she sat gazing at the bed, her left hand still
resting on her lover’s shoulder.

Pockman came teetering across the room, holding out something that
glittered in the dim radiance of the stars.

“He wanted me to give you this,” he said with a sort of ghostly snigger.

She took the shining object. It was the gold-hilted misericordia.

The girl slowly stood up. There was a white rose at her sash. She drew
it out, walked to the bed and placed it on Sadoul’s breast. Beside it
she laid the misericordia.

“Bury these with him,” she said to Pockman. And to the still figure
under the sheet: “Good-bye, Sadoul.”

Pockman accompanied them to the street door, his arms twitching and
jerking, the vague, habitual grin stamped on his flat and pallid face.

“He could have euchred old man Death in New Mexico or Arizona,” he said
with a mechanical snicker. “He preferred to take a chance with that
snake. Hell!”

Sutton guided Gilda down the battered steps.

“I think,” he said in a low voice, “that we’d better drive to the house
and see my father and mother. I think we ought to set matters straight
without delay.”

“If you think it best.... What time is it?”

“A quarter to ten.”

She stood for a moment close against him. He could feel her whole body
trembling. Then she slowly moved forward, leaning on his arm.

He gave the driver directions, stepped into the taxi behind her and
drew her icy hands into his.

The girl’s eyes were glimmering with unshed tears.

       *       *       *       *       *

Pockman, in his own lamplit study, touched the bell on his desk.

To an orderly who appeared, he said: “Send that damned snake to the
Bronx tomorrow.”

After the orderly had retired he sat thinking, mopping up the
perspiration that drenched his hair. Then he opened a locked drawer in
his desk, drew out a packet of blue-prints, examined them one by one,
and, one by one, tore each into minute pieces.

There was a handful of these. He sat sifting them from one hand to the
other for a long while. Finally he rose, went to the open window and
scattered them in the pale lustre of the stars.




                             CHAPTER XXXIX


There were lights in both drawing-rooms when Stuart let in Gilda and
himself with his latch-key. She let slip her evening wrap; he laid it
on a chair by the console, with his hat and stick.

There were no traces of tears on Gilda’s face, but she was rather
colourless.

“It’s dreadfully late,” she whispered to Stuart; “do you think you
should have brought me?”

“Father knows there was a girl with me as my guest in the Forest. That
ass Anderson--do you remember I introduced him when we walked over to
Fisher-cat Dam? Well, he’s here and he mentioned my being there with a
‘pretty girl.’ That’s why I don’t care to lose any time about it.”

Gilda’s colour came back quickly. “No,” she said, “it’s better not to
delay.”

“I’m sorry I had to tell you,” he said. “I hope it won’t disconcert
you.”

She seemed a trifle surprised that the prospect of meeting his family
under any circumstances should disconcert her.

“They’re really not formidable,” he added, seriously.

She regarded him blankly, suddenly melted into a bewitching smile.

“You’re so sweet,” she murmured, “and so entirely all that you should
be. Take me to your parents and explain me, darling, and I’ll try to be
scared to death.”

He was too nervous himself to notice her adorable but saucy levity.
He glanced into the west drawing-room and saw his mother there alone,
playing solitaire.

“Is it you, Stuart?” she said, busy with her cards. “I thought I heard
your key in the door.”

He took Gilda’s soft hand and went in. When his mother raised her
abstracted eyes she saw them standing before her in an odd, faintly
smiling silence.

“Mother,” he said, “this is Gilda Greenway. I’m madly in love with
her. She has consented to marry me. We haven’t thought much about the
date--in fact, we haven’t talked about it--but if she is willing I
can’t see any use in waiting----”

The flushed astonishment on his mother’s face checked his nervous
eloquence.

His mother arose. The manners of all the Suttons were perfect when they
chose.

She held out a gemmed hand to Gilda. When the girl laid her own on it:
“My child, what is this young man of mine trying to tell me?” asked his
mother.

Under the calm scrutiny the girl’s colour heightened to a lovely tint,
but she smiled.

“He’s trying to say to you that we are very much in love, Mrs. Sutton.
We met this last winter. I’m sure it was love at sight with me.”

She bent her charming head, hesitated:

“We have been spending the evening together. Stuart thought that
perhaps this was the best way----”

“Mother,” said the boy earnestly, “she’s a perfect darling!----”

This is the moment in the lives of two young people when what is said
and done by parents determines the future relations of all concerned.

These children did not know it, but the boy’s mother did. She knew
she could lose her son to this girl by a word or look--lose him in
bitterness which never could be entirely forgotten. Every instinct
in her was antagonistic to this departure from rule-of-thumb, from
immemorial routine, from inherited conformation to convention.

Slowly she looked from her only son to this stranger. The girl was
lovely to look upon.

She started to speak, waited to control her voice--the tremor of sudden
tears in her throat--a throat all a-quiver with the protest of offended
pride--of resentment, revolt indescribable.

But all the time she realised what this moment would mean to her and to
her son, and to their future relationship.

She had her voice under control. She said to Gilda:

“If you love as I do, you understand Stuart’s mother at this moment
better than he can.”

Gilda’s face became beautifully grave.

“I do understand. It wasn’t fair for me to come--I didn’t realise how
unfair, until now----”

She turned impulsively toward her lover, but his mother retained her
hand:

“Don’t go. My son’s guests are welcome.... I think you would be welcome
anyway. And if he is to marry you, this is your proper place, my child.”

Gilda’s eyes became suddenly misty: she averted them, turned her head
slightly:

“It was not the thing to do,” she said. “It was your right to be told,
first--to talk to your son undisturbed. I--I’ve made a rather ghastly
faux pas----”

“_I_ have!” said Stuart. “I dragged you here----”

His eyes fell on his father who, hearing voices, had come from a game
of chess in the other drawing-room.

With Sutton senior was his chess-antagonist, Lady Glyndale, wearing the
complacent expression of the victor.

But when Lady Glyndale’s satisfied gaze encountered Gilda, it altered
radically.

Stuart, nervously retaining command of the situation, or supposing he
commanded it, had already presented his father and Gilda to each other,
and had begun in a determined voice:

“Lady Glyndale, my fiancée, Miss Greenway----” when his affianced
interrupted calmly:

“Lady Glyndale is my aunt, Stuart. And how on earth we’ve managed to
encounter each other here----”

“Are you engaged to be married, Gilda?” demanded Lady Glyndale grimly.

“Yes, I am, Aunt Constance.... If--I am--approved----” She looked at
Sutton senior in a bewildered way--turned to Stuart’s mother with the
naïve, involuntary impulse of a child seeking refuge.

In an overwhelming rush of relief that lady fully retained her aplomb.

“It appears,” she said to Lady Glyndale, “that your niece and my son
have chosen to surprise us.”

She looked at Gilda. The girl went to her, took both her hands,
pressing them convulsively.

“You odd, sweet child,” murmured her lover’s mother. “It’s perfectly
clear to me that this absurd, rattle-headed son of mine is to blame.”

Lady Glyndale, looking at Gilda, said grimly: “So _that’s_ the reason
you have declined to travel with me. Why didn’t you say so?”

The girl’s lips were quivering: “I don’t know, Aunt Constance.... I
seem to be a--a mindless sort----”

“You’ve no monopoly of mindlessness,” said Sutton senior, staring hard
at Sutton junior.

“For heaven’s sake, dad----”

“Yes, for heaven’s sake,” said his father.

There was a silence. Then the boy’s mother drew the girl to her, and
the girl’s red head dropped on her shoulder.

Sutton senior walked over, obviously pulling himself together.

“I’d like to have a look at my own daughter-in-law,” he said to Gilda.
“I’d like to see her smile, once----”

“Don’t bother the child now,” said his wife.

But Gilda lifted her head smiling, with wet lashes, and held out her
hand.

“Good girl,” said Sutton senior, and shook it gravely. And turned and
shook the hand of his only son:

“It’s easy to see she’s much too good for you.”

“Thank you, dad.”

His mother smiled at him. He drew a swift, happy breath, went over to
Lady Glyndale.

That lady was in two minds about this business:

“Your mother and father are charming people,” she said frankly. “I hope
you are.”

The boy laughed: “I hope I am,” he said, “and I’m sure you can be if
you care to, Lady Glyndale.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m not at all sure. It quite depends, you see. Come
and talk to me tomorrow.”

“I shall, indeed,” he said, fervently pressing her half-extended hand.

Then Lady Glyndale went over and resolutely kissed Gilda.

“Don’t you think,” she inquired with some sarcasm, “that you could find
a few moments to talk over matters with me before I sail?”

“Yes, Aunt Constance,” said the girl meekly.

Lady Glyndale took a brief, comprehensive sweep of the situation, the
people, their environment. And into her absolutely British visage came
an expression which seemed to mean: “Most certainly this is America and
nowhere else, because these things never happen anywhere else on earth.”

But aloud she said amiably: “Good night. I’m going to bed.”

The men accompanied her to the lift. She graciously declined further
politeness, got into the lift, started it, and hoisted herself bedward.

Sutton senior and Stuart exchanged an unpremeditated and crushing grip.

“Isn’t Gilda wonderful?” said the boy.

“Absolutely,” replied his father with every symptom of conviction. “So
are you, by the way.”

They laughed. Stuart went back to the west drawing-room. Gilda saw him,
would have stepped back, but his mother retained her by the hand.

To her son she said: “Dear, I’m so glad you’re happy.” And held him
wistfully a moment after they had kissed.

Then, smiling, she kissed Gilda, and went leisurely from the room,
leaving her boy to his new love as must all mothers who bear a
man-child in pain and travail and gratitude to God.


                                THE END




_Novels by_ ROBERT W. CHAMBERS


  THE TALKERS
  ERIS
  THE FLAMING JEWEL
  THE LITTLE RED FOOT
  THE SLAYER OF SOULS
  THE CRIMSON TIDE
  THE LAUGHING GIRL
  THE RESTLESS SEX
  BARBARIANS
  THE DARK STAR
  THE GIRL PHILIPPA
  WHO GOES THERE!
  ATHALIE
  THE BUSINESS OF LIFE
  THE GAY REBELLION
  THE STREETS OF ASCALON
  THE COMMON LAW
  THE FIGHTING CHANCE
  THE YOUNGER SET
  THE DANGER MARK
  THE FIRING LINE
  JAPONETTE
  QUICK ACTION
  THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN
  ANNE’S BRIDGE
  BETWEEN FRIENDS
  THE BETTER MAN
  POLICE!!!
  SOME LADIES IN HASTE
  THE TREE OF HEAVEN
  THE MOONLIT WAY
  IN SECRET
  CARDIGAN
  THE RECKONING
  THE MAID-AT-ARMS
  AILSA PAIGE
  SPECIAL MESSENGER
  THE HAUNTS OF MEN
  LORRAINE
  MAIDS OF PARADISE
  ASHES OF EMPIRE
  THE RED REPUBLIC
  BLUE-BIRD WEATHER
  A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY
  THE GREEN MOUSE
  IOLE
  THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE
  THE CAMBRIC MASK
  THE MAKER OF MOONS
  THE KING IN YELLOW
  IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN
  THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS
  THE CONSPIRATORS
  A KING AND A FEW DUKES
  THE HIDDEN CHILDREN
  IN THE QUARTER
  OUTSIDERS




Transcriber’s Note:


Punctuation errors have been silently fixed. Archaic forms and minor
inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling have been retained as
printed.

The list of novels by Robert W. Chambers has been moved to the
end of the book.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.

The following changes have been made:

  On page 218: current to currant
  On page 274: a to are



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