On the way back to the house, Peter kept looking solicitously at Rose, breaking now and then into quick regrets.
"What have I done?" he asked her, in his impetuous stammer. "Shouldn't I have written to your father? Rose, what have I done?"
She seemed not to hear him. Her face had a strained expression, the old look he remembered from the days of Tom's illness and her not quite natural grief. Then she had never given way to the irrepressible warmth of sorrow, like a loving wife. She had seemed to harden herself, and that he accounted for by his knowledge of Tom's hideous past. The woman had known him, Peter reflected, from illuminating intercourse, and his death meant chiefly the turning of a blotted page. But now! over her bloom of youth was the same shadowing veil. She was not so much a woman moved by strong emotion as made desperate through hidden causes. Still he besought her to forgive him, finally to look at him. Then she wakened.
"It's all right, Peter," she said absently. "It had to be."
But still he saw no reason for her blight and pain. It was not merely incredible, it was impossible that any one should shrink because Markham MacLeod was coming. At the door she did look at him. He was shocked at the drooping sadness of her face. Yet she was smiling.
"Don't bother, Peter," she said. "You've done nothing wrong, nothing whatever."
Then she went up the stairs, and Peter, after watching the last glimmer of her dress, strode away into the orchard and threw himself on the grass. Thoughts not formulated, emotions one yeast of unrest went surging through him, until he felt himself a riot of forces he could not control. It was youth that moved him, his own ungoverned youth, but it seemed to him life, and that all life was like it. Peter thought he had experienced enormously because he had lived in Paris and painted pictures. Yet he had never governed his course of being. It had been done for him. The greatest impression it had made on him thus far was of the extreme richness of things. There was so much of everything! He was young. There was a great deal of time, and if he did not paint his pictures this year, he could do it next. There were infinite possibilities. He had ease and talent and power. He had, even so far, won laurels enough to be a little careless of them. Since he had by the happy pains of art got so much out of life, he made no doubt that by superlative efforts, which he meant to make in that divine future where the sun was always shining, he should set all the rivers afire. There was money enough, too. He had never lacked it, thanks to old Osmond's thrift, Osmond who did not need it himself in the ordinary ways of man. He found such pure fun in the pleasures money bought that there was a separate luxury in giving it up, turning it in to the sum of things, and living straitly that labor might take some ease.
And here he lay on the grass, youth seething within him and pointing like a drunken guide, a vine-crowned reveler, to a myriad paths, all wonderful. His mind wandered to Rose and settled there in a delighted acquiescence. He had never before given himself wholly up to her spell, but now, whether the summer day beguiled him, or whether her mysterious trouble moved him, he thought of her until they seemed to be alone together on the earth,—and that was happiness. Beauty! that was what she meant to him, he told himself when thought was at last uppermost, and not mere passionate feeling. She was delight and harmony, and allegiance to her was like worship of the world.
When he got out of his dream and went in to dinner with the noon sun upon his burning face, she was on the veranda with grannie, a little pale still, but sweet and responsive in the quiet ways she had for every day. Peter, looking at her, felt the sun go out of his blood, and the mad worship of that hour in the orchard seemed like a past bacchanal rout and triumph when the worshipers go home to feed the flocks. His will, recalled, took him by swift revulsion to Electra, but it could not make the journey welcome. She seemed to be far away on some barren plain at the top of climbing. Rose, too, was far away, but the mountain where she lived was full of springs and blossomy slopes, and at the top the muses and the graces danced and laughed. There were flying feet always, the gleam of draperies, the fall of melody,—always pleasures and the hint of pleasures higher still,—and echoes from old joys tasted by gods and nymphs in the childhood of the world. The way there, too, was hard, but what would the path matter to such blisses of the mind and soul? In his daze he became aware that grannie was looking at him kindly.
"I guess you've been asleep," said she.
"He's been dreaming, too," said Rose, in her intimate kindliness, always the same to him as if he were a boy with whom she had a tender and confident relation.
Peter rubbed his eyes.
"I got lost," he said ruefully. "I went up on the mountain and got lost."
"I guess you dreamed it," said grannie. "Come, let's have our dinner;" and they went in together, both the young things helping her.
Peter reflected that Rose had not even heard what he said. She did not care what the mountain was, or whether he was lost. But at the table, while grannie talked about gardening and the things Osmond meant to do another year, and Rose glanced up with involuntary question in her eyes whenever Osmond's name was mentioned, he seemed to have the vision of the mountain again before him and to hear the laughter and the sound of dancing feet. The picture, little by little, faded and would not be recalled, and by afternoon it had quite gone. Sobered, his feet on the earth again, he went away in the early evening, to see Electra.
Rose waited until the dark had really fallen and evening sounds had begun. Then she stole out of the house and, a black cloak about her, this time, went across the fields to the oak tree. At a little distance from it she paused, her heart too imperious to let her speak and find out whether he was there. But when she was about to venture it, a voice came from under the tree.
"Don't stay there, playmate. Come into the house."
Then she went on.
"Where are you?" she asked. There was an eloquent quiver in her voice.
"Never mind. I'm in the house. Stop where you are. There's a little throne. I made it for you."
She had her hand on the back of a rough chair. At once she seated herself.
"I never heard of a throne in a playhouse," she said, with that new merriment he made for her.
"You never saw a playhouse just like this. That's a beautiful throne. It fits together like a chair. It's here in the playhouse by night, but before daylight I draw it up into the tree and hide it."
"What if somebody finds it?"
"They'll think it's a chair."
"What if they break it?"
"That's easy. We'll make another. There's nothing so easy as to make a throne for a playhouse, if you know the way. Well, playmate, how have you been, all this long time?"
When she came across the field she had meant to tell him how sad she was, how perplexed, how incapable of meeting the ills confronting her. But immediately it became unnecessary, and she only laughed and said,—
"It hasn't been a long time at all."
"Hasn't it? Oh, I thought it had!"
"Have you been here every night?"
"Every night."
"But it rained."
"I know it, outside. It doesn't rain in a playhouse."
"Did you truly come?"
"Of course. What did I tell you? I said 'every night.'"
"Did you have an umbrella?"
"An umbrella in a playhouse? You make me laugh."
"You must have got wet through."
"Not always. Sometimes I climbed up in the branches—in the roof, I mean. You're eclipsed to-night, aren't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"That dark cloak. The other night you were a white goddess sitting there in the moonlight. You were terribly beautiful then. It's almost a shame to be so beautiful. This is better. I rather like the cloak. You're nothing but a voice to-night, coming out of the dark."
Immediately she had a curious jealousy of the white dress that made her beautiful to him when he did not really know her face.
"You have never seen me," she said involuntarily.
"Oh yes, I have. In the shack, that night. Then the day you came. I saw you driving by."
"Where were you?"
"In the yard looking at some grafted trees. Peter was late from the train. I got impatient, so I went round fussing over the trees, to keep myself busy. Then you came up the drive, and I saw you and retreated in good order."
"You needn't have hated me so. You hadn't really seen me."
"I saw enough. I saw your cheek and one ear and the color of your hair. Take care, playmate, you mustn't do that."
"What?"
"You mustn't say I hated you. You know it wasn't hate."
Some daring prompted her to ask, "What was it, then?" but she folded her hands and crossed her feet in great contentment and was still.
"Tell me things," she heard him saying.
"What things? About the house up there? About grannie? About Peter?"
"No, no. I know all about grannie and Peter. Tell me things I never could know unless we were here in the playhouse, in the dark."
Her mind went off, at that, to the wonder of it. She was here in strange circumstances, and of all the occurrences of her life, it seemed the most natural. Immediately she had the warmest curiosity, the desire that he should talk inordinately and tell her all the things he had done to-day, yesterday, all the days.
"You tell," she said. "Begin at the beginning, and tell me about your life."
"Why, playmate!" His voice had even a sorrowful reproach. "There's nothing in it. Nothing at all. I have only dug in the ground and made things grow."
"What people have you known?"
"Grannie."
"She isn't people."
"She's my people. She's all there is, except Peter, and he hasn't been here."
Something like jealousy possessed her. She was stung by her own ignorance.
"But there are lots of years when we didn't meet," she said.
"Lots of them. But I don't care anything about them. I told you so the other night."
"Don't you care about mine?"
"Not a bit."
She was lightheaded with the joy of it. There were things she need not tell him.
"Not the years before we met?" Then because she was a woman, she had to spoil the cup. "Nor the years after I go away?"
"No, not the years when you've gone away. You can't take this night with you, nor the other night."
He had hurt her.
"That's enough, then—a memory."
Osmond laughed a little. It was a tender sound, as if he might scold her, but not meaning it.
"You mustn't be naughty," he said. "There's nothing naughtier in a playhouse than saying what isn't true. You know if you go away you'll come back again. You can't help it. It may be a long time first. You were twenty-five years in coming this time. But you'll have to come. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes," she said gravely, "I know that." Then the memory of her wandering life and the sore straits of it voiced itself in one cry, "I don't want to go. I want to stay."
"Stay, dear playmate," said the other voice. "There never will be a night when I'm not here. Is the playhouse key in your hand, all tight and warm? I wear mine round my neck. We shan't lose them."
Immediately she felt that she must tell him her new trouble.
"My father is coming here," she said, in a low tone.
"Ah!" he answered quickly. "You won't like that."
"How do you know?"
"From what you said the other night. You don't like him."
"Is it dreadful to you, if I don't like my father?"
She put it anxiously, with timidity, and he answered,—
"It's inevitable. He hasn't treated you well."
She was staring at him through the darkness, though she could see nothing.
"You are a wizard," she said, "a wizard. Why do you say he has not treated me well?"
"Because I see how you hate him. You would never hate without reason. You are all gentleness. You know you are. You'd go on your knees to the man that was your father, and beg him to be good enough so you could love him. And if you couldn't—George! that settles him. Why, playmate, you're not crying!"
She was crying softly to herself. But for a little unconsidered sniff he need not have known it.
"I like to cry," she said, in a moment. "I like to cry—like this."
"It's awful," said the other voice, apparently to itself, "to make you cry and not know how to stop you. Don't do it, playmate!"
She laughed then.
"I won't cry," she promised. "But if you knew how pleasant it is when it only means somebody understands and likes you just as well—"
"Better," said the voice. "I always like you better. Whatever you do, that's the effect it has. Now let's talk about your father. We can't stop his coming?"
"No. Nobody ever stopped him yet in anything."
"Then what can we do to him after he gets here?"
"That's what I am trying to think. Sometimes I'm afraid I must run away—before he comes."
"Yes, playmate, if you think so." There was something sharp in the tone: a quick hurt, a premonition of pain, and it was soothing to her.
"But I've so little money." She said that to herself, and his answer shocked her.
"There's money, if that's all. I'll bury it here under a stone, and you shall find it."
"No! no! no! How could you! oh, how could you!"
The voice was hurt indeed now, and willing to be thought so.
"Why, playmate, is that so dreadful? Money's the least important thing there is."
"It is important," said she broodingly. "It seems to me all my miseries, my disgraces have come from that."
"You don't want to tell me about them? You don't think it would make them better?"
"You said you didn't care. You said what we had lived through—what I had—these twenty-five years, made no difference!"
"Not to me. But when it comes to you, why, maybe I could help you."
She thought a while and then answered definitely and coldly,—
"No, I can't do it. I should have to tell—too many things."
"Then we won't think of it," said the voice. "Only you must remember, there's money and there's—Peter to take you off and hide you somewhere. You can trust Peter." Again he seemed ready to break their companionship, and she wondered miserably.
"You seem to think of nothing but my going away."
"I must think of it. Nothing is more likely."
"You don't seem to care!"
"Playmate!" Again the voice reproached her.
"Well!"
"There's but one thing I think of—really. To give you a little bit of happiness while you are here. After that—well, you can make the picture for yourself. I shall come to the playhouse every night—alone."
The one thing perhaps that had been the strongest in guiding her romantic youth had been eternal faithfulness. Her heart beat at the word "forever." Now her gratitude outran his calm.
"Will you do it?" she cried.
"Shall I promise?"
"No! no! I would not have you do it really—only want to do it. Do you think you will remember—to want to come?"
He said the words after her, so slowly that they seemed to come from lips set with some stern emotion.
"I shall remember. I shall want to come."
She rose.
"Good-night," she said. "Shake hands?"
"No," said the voice, "not that. In playhouses you can't shake hands. Good-night—dear lady."
She turned away, and then, because she was silent the voice called after her,—
"Playmate!"
"Yes."
"I shall follow you to the wall and watch you home. You're not afraid?"
"No, I'm not afraid."
"And you're almost happy?"
At the anxiety in his voice, she was unreasonably happy.
"Yes," she called back. "Good-night."
"Got the key safe?"
"All safe. Good-night."
"God bless you, playmate." That was what she thought she heard.
Madam Fulton was at the library table, considering her morning mail, and Billy Stark sat on the veranda just outside the window where she could call to him and be cheerfully answered. Presently Electra came in, a book, a pencil, and some slips of paper in her hand. There was intense consideration on her brow. She had on, her grandmother thought with discouragement, her clubwoman's face. Billy Stark, seeing her, got up and with his cigar and his newspaper wandered away. He had some compassion for Electra and her temperament, though not for that could he abstain from the little observances due his engagement to Madam Fulton. He had a way of bringing in a flower from the garden and presenting it to the old lady with an exaggerated significance. Electra always winced, but Madam Fulton was delighted. He called her "Florrie," prettily, and "Florrie, dear." Again Electra shrank, and then he took the wrinkled hand. One day Madam Fulton looked up at him with a droll mischief in her eyes.
"I suppose it's an awful travesty, isn't it, Billy?"
"Not for me," said Billy loyally. "Can't I be in love with a woman at the end of fifty years? I should smile."
"It's great fun," she owned. Then more than half in earnest, "Billy, do you suppose I shall go to hell?"
This morning Electra had found something to puzzle her.
"I've been working on your book a little, grandmother," she began.
"What book? My soul and body!" The old lady saw the cover and laid down her pen. "That's my 'Recollections.' What are you doing with that?"
"They are extremely interesting," said Electra absorbedly. She sat down and laid her notes aside, to run over a doubtful page. "We are going to have an inquiry meeting on it."
"We? Who?"
"The club. Everybody was deeply disappointed because you've refused to say anything; but it occurred to us we might give an afternoon to classifying data in it, naming people you just refer to, you know. I am doing the Brook Farm section."
Madam Fulton sank back in her chair and looked despairingly from the window for Billy Stark.
"I shall never," she said, "hear the last of that book!"
"Why should you wish to hear the last of it?" asked Electra. "It is a very valuable book. It would be more so if you would only be frank about it. But I can understand that. I told the club it was your extreme delicacy. You simply couldn't mention names."
"No, I couldn't," murmured the old lady. "I couldn't."
"But here is something, grandmother. You must help me out here. Here where you talk about the crazy philanthropist who had the colonization scheme—not Liberia—no, that's farther on—Well, you say he came to grandfather and asked him to give something to the fund." She was regarding Madam Fulton with clear eyes of interrogation.
"No, no, I don't remember," said the old lady impatiently. "Well, go on."
"You don't remember?"
"Yes, yes, of course I remember, in a way. But go on, Electra."
"Well, then the philanthropist asked him to be one of the five men who would guarantee a certain sum at their death, and grandfather was indignant and said, 'Charity begins at home.' Listen." She found her page and read, "'I shall assuredly leave every inch of ground and every cent I possess to my wife, and that, not because she is an advanced woman but because she is not.'"
"Of course!" corroborated the old lady. "Precisely. There's a slap at suffrage. That's what I mean it for, and you can tell 'em so."
Electra did not stop to register her pain at that. She held up one hand to enjoin attention.
"But listen, grandmother. You don't see the bearing of it yet. That was five years after grandfather made his will, leaving this place away from you."
"Well, what of it?"
"Five years after, grandmother! And here, by his expressed intention, he meant to leave it to you—not to his son, but you. Do you see what that implies?"
"I don't know what it implies," said the old lady, "but I know I shall fly all to pieces in about two minutes if you don't stop winding me up and asking me questions."
Electra answered quite solemnly,—
"It means, grandmother, that legally I inherited this place. Ethically it belongs to you. My grandfather meant to make another will. Here is his expressed intention. He neglected doing it, as people are always neglecting things that may be done at any time. It only remains for me to make it over to you."
Madam Fulton lay back in her chair for a moment and stared. She seemed incapable of measuring the irony she felt. But Electra went quietly on,—
"There is simply nothing else for me to do, and I shall do it."
Madam Fulton gasped a little and then gave up speaking. Again she glanced at the window and wished for Billy Stark. Electra was observing her compassionately.
"It excites you, doesn't it?" she was saying. "I don't wonder."
Now the old lady found her tongue, but only to murmur,—
"I can't even laugh. It's too funny; it's too awfully funny."
"Let me get you a little wine." Electra had put her papers together and now she rose.
Then Madam Fulton found her strength.
"Sit down, Electra," she said. "Why, child, you don't realize—I don't know what you'd do if you did—you don't realize I put that in there by the merest impulse."
"Of course," said Electra kindly. "I understand that. You never dreamed of its having any bearing on things as they are now, they have gone on in this way so long. But it would be shocking to me, shocking, to seem to own this house when it is yours—ethically."
"Don't say ethically. I can't stand it. There, Electra! you're a good girl. I know that. But you're conscience gone mad. You've read George Eliot till you're not comfortable unless you're renouncing something. Take things a little more lightly. You can if you give your mind to it. Now this—this is nothing but a joke. You have my word for it."
"It isn't a joke," said Electra firmly, "when grandfather could write that over his own signature and send it to a well-known person. How did it come back into your hands, grandmother?"
But Madam Fulton looked at her, wondering what asylum Electra would put her in, if she knew the truth. She essayed a miserable gayety.
"Very well, Electra," she smiled, "call it so, if you like, but we won't say any more about it. I can't have houses made over to me. I may totter into the grave to-morrow."
Electra's eyes went involuntarily to the garden where Billy Stark was placidly walking up and down, smoking his cigar and stopping now and then to inspect a flower. The old lady interpreted the look.
"I know, I know," she said wickedly; "but that's nothing to do with it. Besides, if I marry Billy Stark, I shall go to London to live. What do I want of houses? Let things be as they are, Electra. You keep the house in your hands and let me visit you, just as I do now. It's all one."
Electra spoke with an unmoved firmness. Her face had the clarity of a great and fixed resolve.
"The house is yours; not legally, I own, but—"
"Don't you say ethically again, Electra," said the old lady. "I told you I couldn't bear it."
She sank back still further into her chair and glared. At last Madam Fulton was afraid of her own emotions. Such amazement possessed her at the foolish irony of things, such desire of laughter, that she dared not yield lest her frail body could not bear the storm. Man's laughter, she realized, shout upon shout of robust roaring, was not too heroic for this folly. Electra was speaking:—
"I insist upon the truth from others," she said, still from a basic resolution that seemed invulnerable. "I must demand it from myself."
"The truth, Electra!" groaned Madam Fulton. "You don't tell the truth."
"I don't tell the truth?"
"You don't know anything about it. You've thought about it so much that now you only tell horrible facts."
This Electra could not fathom, but it was evident that she was putting it away in her consciousness for a thoughtful moment. Madam Fulton was rallying. She felt a little stronger, and she knew she was mentally more vigorous than her young antagonist. It was only in an unchanging will that Electra distanced her.
"Electra," she said, "you've got to be awfully careful of yourself." There was a wistful kindness in her voice. It was as if she spoke to one whom she wished to regard leniently, though she might in reality shower her with that elfin raillery which was the outcome of her own inquietude.
Electra opened her eyes in a candid wonder.
"Careful of myself?" she repeated. "Why, grandmother?"
"You've trained so hard, child. You've trained down to a point where it's dangerous for you to try to live."
"Trained down, grandmother? I am very well."
"I don't mean your body. I mean, you've thought of yourself and your virtues and your tendencies, and tested yourself with tubes and examined yourself under a glass until you're nothing but a bundle of self-conscious virtues. Why, it would be better for you if you were a care-free spontaneous murderess. You'd be less dangerous."
"Suppose we don't talk about it any more," said Electra, in that soothing accent suited to age.
"But I've got to talk about it. I never have done any particular duty by you, but I suppose the duty's there. I've got to tell you when you sail into dangerous latitudes. You mark my words, Electra, assure as you sit there, you've trained so hard that there's got to be a reaction. Some day you'll fly all to pieces and make an idiot of yourself."
Electra had risen.
"Excuse me for a moment, grandmother," she said. "I must get you a glass of wine."
Madam Fulton, too, got up and rested one hand upon the table.
"If you leave the room before I've finished," she cried, "I'll scream it after you." A small red spot had come upon each cheek. She looked like a fairy god-mother, a pinpoint of fury in the eye. "I insist upon your listening. God Almighty meant you for a handsome, well-behaved woman. You're not clever. There's no need of your being. But you've made yourself so intelligent that you're as dull as death. You've cultivated your talents till you've snapped them all in two. You've tried so hard to be a model of conduct that you're a horror, a positive horror. And you mark my words, the reaction will come and you'll do something so idiotic that you won't know yourself. And then when you're disgraced and humble, then will be the time I shall begin to like you."
She was shaking all over, and Electra looked at her in great alarm. She dared not speak lest the paroxysm should come again. A little new gleam sprang into Madam Fulton's eyes. At last she realized that she had, though by ignoble means, quite terrified her granddaughter. That one humorous certainty was enough, for the time, to mitigate her plight. She drew a quick breath, and shrugged her shoulders.
"There!" said she. "It's over. I don't know when I've had such a satisfying time. Run along, Electra. It won't happen again to-day." Then it occurred to her that she was foregoing an advantage, and she added shrewdly, "Though it might at any minute. But if you bring me anything to take, anything quieting or restorative, I'll throw it out of the window."
Electra, relieved slightly at the lulling of the storm, looked delicately away from her and out at the peaceful lawn. She would have been sorry to see again the red of anger in those aged cheeks. Her gaze hung arrested. Inexplicable emotion came into her face. She looked incredulous of what so fired her. Madam Fulton sat down again, breathing relief at the relaxing of her inward tension, and she too looked from the window. A man, very tall and broad, even majestic in his bearing, stood talking with Billy Stark. Billy, with all his air of breeding and general adaptability, looked like comedy in comparison.
"Grandmother!" Electra spoke with a rapid emphasis, "do you know who that is?"
"No, I'm sure I don't."
"It is Markham MacLeod."
"What makes you think that?"
"I know him. I know his picture. I know that bust of him. He is here before Peter expected."
Life and color came into her face. She laid down her book and papers, and went with a sweeping haste to the hall-door. Billy was coming with the stranger up the path, and MacLeod, glancing at the girl's waiting figure, took off his hat and looked at her responsively. Electra's heart was beating as she had never felt it beat before. Greatness was coming to her threshold, and it looked its majesty. MacLeod had a tremendous dignity of bearing added to the gifts nature had endowed him with at the start. He was a giant with the suppleness of the dancer and athlete. His strong profile had beauty, his florid skin was tanned by the sea, his blue eyes were smiling at Electra, and in spite of the whiteness of his thick hair he did not seem to her old. She would have said he had the dower of being perennially young. Meantime Billy Stark, who had known him at once from his portraits, had named him to her, and the great man had taken her hand. He had explained that he was in advance of his time, that he had driven to Peter's and had been told that the young man was probably here. So he had strolled over to find him.
"He is not here," said Electra. "Please come in." She was breathless with the excitement of such notability under her roof. She led the way to the sitting-room, judging hastily that grandmother was too shaken by her mysterious attack to see a stranger, and also even tremblingly anxious to speak with him before any one could share the charm. MacLeod followed her, offering commonplaces in a rich voice that made them memorable, and Billy stayed behind to throw away his cigar, and debate for an instant whether he need go in. Then he heard a voice from the library softly calling him.
"Billy, I want you."
He stepped in through the long window, and there was Madam Fulton, half laughing, half crying, and shaking all over. He ran to her in affectionate alarm.
"Billy," said she, "I've had a temper fit."
Billy put his arm about her and took her to the sofa. There he sat down beside her, and she dropped her head on his shoulder.
"Shoulders are still very strengthening, Billy," said she, laughing more than she cried, "even at our age."
"They're something to lean on," said Billy. "There! there, dear! there!"
Presently she laughed altogether, with no admixture of tears, and Billy got out his handkerchief and wiped her face. But she still shook, from time to time, and he was troubled for her.
"Now," she said presently, withdrawing from him and patting her white hair, "Now I think we've weathered it."
"What was it?" ventured Billy.
"I can't tell you now. I might die a-laughing. But I will." She rested her hand on his shoulder a moment before she went away. "I'll tell you what it is, Billy," she said, "the beauty of you is you're so human. You're neither good nor bad. You're just human."
Markham Macleod's great advantage, after that of his wonderful physique, was his humility. A carping humorist, who saw him dispassionately, the more so that women were devoted to "the chief," said that humility was his long suit. There was his splendid body, instinct with a magnetic charm. He was born, charlatans told him, to be a healer. But he deprecated his own gifts. With a robust humor he disclaimed whatever he had done, and listened to other voices, in specious courtesy. Now, face to face with Electra, he had convinced her in five seconds that it was an illuminating thing to come to America and find her there. This was more than the pliancy of the man of the world. It seemed to her the spontaneous tribute of a sincere and lofty mind. As for her, she was abounding in a tremulous satisfaction.
"You have not been in America for a long time," she was saying.
"Not for years. I have been too busy to come."
"You are needed over there."
She glowed the more, and he looked upon her kindly as a handsome young woman whose enthusiasm became her.
He smiled and shook his head.
"I don't know whether they wanted me so much. I needed them."
"Your brothers, you mean. The units that make your brotherhood."
She was quoting from his last reported speech, and her spirits rose as she felt how glad she was to have been ready. It seemed to her that there were so many things she had to say at once that they would come tumultuously. MacLeod, when his position was assured, was quite willing to let the disciple talk. It was only over ground not yet tilled that his eloquence fell like rain. And Electra, leaning toward him in a brilliant, even a timid expectation, was saying,—
"Tell me about Russia. What do you foresee?"
A reporter had asked him the same question a few hours before, and the answer would be in the evening paper. He smiled at her, and spread out his hands in a disclaiming gesture.
"You know what I foresee. You know what you foresee yourself. It is the same thing."
"Yes," said Electra, "it is the same thing."
But there were times when MacLeod wanted to escape from posturing, even though it brought him adulation.
"I haven't apologized for breaking in on you like this," he said, with his engaging smile. "They told me at Grant's that I should probably find him over here, in the garden. The next house they said. This is the next house?"
"Oh, yes," returned Electra. "He has not been here, but I will send for him. He shall come to luncheon. You must stay."
"Shall I?" He was all good-nature, all readiness and adaptability. Electra excused herself to give the maid an order, and while she stood in the hall, talking to the woman, temptation came upon her. Yet it was not temptation, she told herself. This was the obvious thing to do.
"Tell Mr. Grant I wish him particularly to come to luncheon," she said, "and to bring"—she hesitated at the name and shirked it, "and to bring the young lady,—the lady who is staying there."
Then she returned to MacLeod. But she was not altogether at ease. Electra was accustomed to examine her motives, and she had the disquieting certainty that, this time, though they would do for the literal eye, they had not been entirely pure. Still, was it her fault if Rose, confronted by the newcomer, proved unprepared and showed what was fragile in her testimony? But she was not to be thrown off the scent of public affairs.
"Talk about Russia," she entreated. She had never felt so spontaneously at ease with any one.
MacLeod was used to making that impression, and he smiled on her the more kindly, seeing how the old charm worked.
"I'd rather talk about America," he said, "about this place of yours. It's a bully place."
Electra was devoted to academic language, and to her certainty that all great souls expressed themselves in it. She winced a little but recovered herself when he asked with a new conversational seriousness, "and how is my friend Grant?"
"Well." She found some difficulty in answering more fully, because it somehow became apparent to her that he had not really placed her. Peter was his only clue in the town. It hardly looked as if he expected to find a daughter here.
"Is he painting?" MacLeod went on.
Electra frowned a little. Peter was doing nothing but idling, she suspected, up to yesterday, and then, driving past, she had caught a glimpse of him in the garden before a canvas and of Rose lying before him in her long chair. That had given her a keener, a more bitter curiosity than she was prepared for in herself. She had shrunk back a little from it, timid before the suspicion that she might like Peter more tempestuously and unreasonably than was consonant with self-mastery. But while these thoughts ran through her head she gazed at MacLeod with her clear eyes and answered,—
"I fancy he looks upon this as his vacation. He must have worked very hard in Paris."
MacLeod entered into that with fluency. Peter must have worked hard, he owned, but that was in the days before they met. When they met, Peter's talent was at its blossoming point. It was more than talent. It was genius, it was so free, so strong, so unconsidered. He implied that Peter had everything that belonged to a fortunate youth.
Electra's eyes glowed. Here was some one to justify her choice. The newspapers had done it, but she had not yet heard Peter's praises from the mouth of man.
"You have had an enormous influence over him," she ventured.
He deprecated that.
"He has an enormous affection for me, if you like," he owned, "but influence! My dear young lady, I couldn't influence a nature like that. I'm nowhere beside it. All I could hope for is that it would think some of the things I think, feel some of the things I feel. Then we could get on together."
Billy Stark, coming in at the door, thought that sounded like poppycock, but Electra knew it was the wisdom of the chosen. She rose and indicated Billy.
"You know Mr. Stark?"
The two men recurred humorously to their meeting in the garden, and owned their willingness to continue the acquaintance. At the moment there were steps and MacLeod turned to see Rose coming into the room. Electra's heart beat thickly. She felt choked by it. And there was, she could not help owning, a distinct drop of disappointment when MacLeod, with an exclamation of delighted wonder, went forward and kissed Rose on the cheek. Then he kept her hand while he gave the other one to Peter, and regarded them both with expansive kindliness. Rose was the one who had blenched under the ordeal. Yet she had herself immediately in hand. She let her fingers stay in MacLeod's grasp. She looked at him, not affectionately nor in pride, but with a sad steadfastness, as if he were one of the monumental difficulties of life, not to be ignored. Peter was ecstasy itself.
"How did you get here?" he was insisting. "How did you know I might be over here? You hadn't met Electra."
Then the stranger dropped the hands he held and turned to her.
"I haven't met her yet," he said, with a humorous consideration that stirred her heart. "Is this Electra?" He put out his hand, and she laid hers in the waiting palm. She felt bound to something by the magnetic grasp. The certainty was not weakened by any knowledge that other men and women felt the same.
Madam Fulton came in then. She had removed the traces of past emotion, but with the red still burning in her cheeks she looked very pretty. MacLeod greeted her with an extreme deference, which presently slipped into the ordinary courtesy of man to woman as he found she had no desire to exact any special consideration. They went out to luncheon with that air of accelerated life which contributes to the success of an occasion, and then MacLeod talked. Rose sat silent, looking on with a sad indifference, as at a scene she had witnessed many times before, to no good end, and Madam Fulton listened rather satirically. But Electra and Peter glowed and could hardly eat, and MacLeod addressed himself chiefly to them. Now he did exactly what was expected of him. The brotherhood of man was his theme, and it was no mere effusion of sympathetic propaganda. His memory was his immense storehouse behind emotion, his armory. He could mobilize facts and statistics until the ordinary mind owned itself cowed by them. When they rose from the table, the millennium was imminent, and it had been brought by the sword. At the library door, Peter, beside Electra for an instant, irrepressibly seized her hand, as it hung by her side, and gave it passionate pressure. Instantly she looked at him, responsive. The sympathy they lacked in their personal relation sprang to life under MacLeod's trumpeting. Electra was in a glow, and Peter, with a surprised delight, felt all his old allegiance to his imperial lady.
MacLeod would not sit down.
"I must catch my train," he said.
There was outcry at once from two quarters. He was not to return to the city. He was to stay here, Peter declared. It was absurd, it was unthinkable that he should do anything else. MacLeod took it with a friendly smile and the air of deprecating such undeserved cordiality; but he looked at Electra, who was frankly beseeching him from brilliant eyes. It was settled finally that he should go back to his hotel for a day or two, see some newspaper men and meet a few public engagements, and then return for a little stay.
"Get your hat," he said to Rose, in affectionate suggestion, "and walk with me to the station."
And as it became apparent that father and daughter had had no time for intimate talk, they were allowed to go away together, Peter following them with impetuous stammering adjurations to MacLeod to rattle through his business and come back. When they were out upon the highroad, MacLeod turned to Rose.
"Well," he said, "you don't look very fit."
Rose had one of her frequent impulses to tell him the crude truth: to say now, "I did until you came." But she answered indifferently,—
"I'm very well."
They walked along in silence for a moment, and she felt the return of old aches, old miseries he always summoned for her. In the first moment of seeing him, she always recurred to the other days when to be with him was to be in heaven. Nobody ever had so blest a time as she in the simple charm of his good-will. No matter what she was doing, for him to call her, to hold out a finger, had been enough. She would forsake the world and run, and she never remembered the world again until he loosed the spell. It was broken now, she thought, effectively, but still at these first moments her heart yearned back to the old playgrounds, the old lure.
"What did she call you," he was asking—"Madam Fulton? Mrs. Tom?"
"Yes," said Rose, with a quiet bitterness, "Mrs. Tom."
"Have they accepted you?"
She raised her eyebrows and looked at him.
"You heard," she answered.
"Extraordinary people! Who is Electra? I couldn't call her anything. Everybody was saying Electra."
"She is Madam Fulton's granddaughter. She and Peter are engaged."
"Ah! I'd forgotten that. I rather fancied it was you—with Peter."
She summoned the resolution to meet him bluntly.
"Don't do that, please. Don't assume anything of the sort about me."
He went on with unbroken good humor. She had never seen him angry, but the possibility of it, some hidden force suspected in him, quelled her, of late, when she considered the likelihood of rousing it.
"No, of course not," he said, with his habitual geniality. "Why aren't you staying with them?"
She temporized, only from the general certainty that it was unsafe for him to know too much.
"Peter asked me to stay there. His grandmother is very kind. I like her."
"Ah! Have these people money?"
"What people?"
"Electra. Tom's family in general."
"I don't know."
"They must have. They have the air. Will they do anything for you?"
Her face contracted. The look of youth had fled and left her haggard.
"I have not accepted anything."
"Have they offered it?"
"No."
"There! you see! No doubt they will."
"Why did you come over here?" she cried irrepressibly.
But he ignored the question.
"The prince is much disturbed about you," he volunteered, throwing it into the talk as if it were of no particular validity, but only interesting as one chose to take it.
"Ah! that's why you came!"
"I saw him two weeks ago, in Milan. He was greatly troubled. I had to own that you had left Paris without seeing me, without even telling me your whereabouts."
"Then—" said Rose.
She knew what else had happened. The prince had urged, "Go over to America. Influence her. Bring her back with you." But this she did not say. The unbroken cordiality of his attitude always made his best defense. If she had ever known harshness from him, she might brave it again. But many forces between them were as yet unmeasured. She did not dare.
"You must remember," he said, with the air of talking over reasonably something to which he was not even persuading her, "the prince is exceptionally placed. He could give you a certain position."
"I have a certain position now. Don't forget that, will you?" She seemed to speak from an extremity of distaste.
"He offers a private marriage. He is not likely to set it aside; the elder line is quite assured, so far as anything can be in this world. Besides"—he looked at her winningly—"you believe in love. He loves you."
"I did believe in it," she said haltingly, as if the words were difficult. "I should find it hard now to tell what I believe."
"Well!" He took off his hat to invite the summer breeze. It stirred the hair above his noble forehead, and Rose, in a sickness at old affection dead, knew, without glancing at him, how he looked, and marveled that any one so admirably made could seem to her so persistently ranged with evil forces. Yet, she reflected, it was only because he arrogated power to himself. He put his hands upon the wheels of life and jarred them.
"Well! I believe in it. Isn't that enough for you?"
"Not now, not now!" She had to answer, though it might provoke stern issues. "Once it would have been. There is nothing you could have told me that I would not have believed. But you delivered me over to the snare of the fowler." Grandmother had read those words in her morning chapter, and they had stayed in her ears as meaning precisely this thing. He had known that it was a snare, and he had cast her into it. She turned her moved face upon him. "We mustn't talk about these things. Nobody knows where it will end. And you mustn't talk to me about the prince."
"If it doesn't mean anything to you, wouldn't it move you if I told you it meant something to me?"
"What?"
"It would mean a great deal if you formed an alliance there."
She answered bitterly.
"You are humorous. Alliance! An alliance is for princes. There are other words for these things you propose. I try not to think what they are. I dare say I don't know all of them. But there are words."
"It would make me solid with the prince. He would get several concessions from his brother. They would be slight, but they would mean a great deal to the Brotherhood."
"I see. You would pull a wire or two in Germany. In Russia, too, perhaps? You think you would disarm suspicion, if the prince stood by you. Maybe you'd get into Russia, even. Is that it? It would be dramatic to get into Russia after you'd been warned."
She was following his mind along, as she often did, creeping with doubtful steps where he had taken wing. "But still!" She looked at him, smiling rather wistfully. "Still, you wouldn't throw me to the wolves for that, would you?"
He met her look with one as candid, and little as she believed in the accompanying smile, she felt her heart warmed by it. Now he was gazing about him at the summer prospect.
"I am delighted to find you here," he volunteered. "It's a change. It will do you good—do us both good."
"Are you quite well?" She hesitated slightly in asking that, but he turned upon her as if the words had given him a shock of terror or dismay. In her surprise she even fancied he paled a little.
"What makes you ask that?" he cried. "What do you mean by it?"
"Why, I don't know! You look well, but not quite yourself, perhaps,—somehow different."
MacLeod took off his hat and wiped his forehead beaded with a moisture come on it, he knew, at that moment.
"I should like to ask," he said peevishly, "what in the devil you mean. Have you—heard anything?"
"No," said Rose, entirely amazed. "What is there to hear?"
They had reached the station, and she led him to the bench under a tree where lovers and their lasses assembled at dusk to see the train come in. She sat down, dispirited and still wondering, and he stood before her, all strength, now, and candor, as if he had thrown off his dubious mood and resolved to be himself.
"About the prince," he was saying. "I want you to think of him. He would give you experiences such as I never could. You'd live on velvet. You'd have art, music, a thousand things. He likes your voice. He'd insist on fostering that. You would meet men of rank, men of note—"
She interrupted him.
"Men of rank! I've no doubt of it. How about their wives?"
He shook his head. A look of what seemed noble pain was on his face, impatience at the shallowness of things.
"Rose," he said, "you know how little I respect society as it is. Take out of it what good you can, the play of emotion, the charm, the inspiration. Don't undervalue the structure, my dear. Live, in spite of it."
She looked at him wearily and thought how handsome he was, and that these were platitudes. Then his train came, and he left her with a benedictory grace, standing on the step hat in hand, majestic in his courtesy. But as she watched him, suddenly, an instant before the train was starting she saw him yield and sway. He leaned upon the rail with both hands and then, as if by a quick decision, stepped to the platform again. She hurried to him, and found him with an unfamiliar look on his face. It might have been dread anticipation; it was surely pain.
"What is it?" she asked him. "Tell me."
He did not answer, but involuntarily he stretched out his hand to her.
"Rub it," he said. "Hold it tight. Infernal! oh, infernal!"
As she rubbed the hand he suddenly recovered his old manner. The color came back to his face, and he breathed in a deep relief.
"That's over," he said, almost recklessly, she thought. "Queer how quick it goes!"
"What is it?" She was trembling. It seemed to her that they had each passed through some mysterious crisis.
"Is there another train to town?" he was asking an official, who had kept a curious eye on him. There would be in three minutes, an accommodation crawling after the express he had lost.
"Good-by again," he called to Rose, with a weaker transcript of his usual manner. "I'm to be down in a few days, you know. Good-by."
This time he walked into the car, and she saw him take his seat and lie back against the window-casing. But he recovered himself and smiled, when his eyes met hers. If anything was the matter, she was evidently not to know.
As the two had walked away, Peter turned to Electra, stammering forth,—
"Isn't he a great old boy?"
He was tremendous, she owned, in language better chosen; and this new community of feeling was restful to her.
"Come out into the garden," he said, and as they went along the path to the grape arbor he took her hand and she left it to him. They seemed restored to close relations, as if MacLeod had wrought some spell upon them. By the time they reached the liquid greenness of the arbor light, Peter was sure he loved her. He could turn to her quite passionately.
"Electra," he said, holding both her hands now, "I've missed you all these days."
She smiled a little and that, with her glowing color, made her splendid.
"You have been here every day," she said, conceding him the grace of having done his utmost.
"Yes, but it hasn't been right. There's been something between us—something unexplained."
She knew, so she reflected, what that was. Rose had been between them. But she listened with an attentive gravity.
"We must go back to Paris," Peter was urging. "I shall work there. We will live simply and turn in everything to the Brotherhood. We must be married—dear." He looked direct and manly, not boyish, now, and she felt a sudden pride in him. "Electra, you'll go with me?"
She withdrew from him and sat down, indicating the other chair.
"Something very queer has happened," she said. "I must tell you about it." It had just come to her again as it had been doing at moments through the absorbing hour at luncheon, that she was in a difficult place with grandmother, and that here was the one creature whom she had the right to count upon. Rapidly she told him the facts of the case, ending with her conclusion,—
"The house belongs to grandmother."
Peter was frowning comically. In his effort to think, he looked as if the sun were in his eyes.
"I don't believe I understand," he said, and again she told him.
"You don't mean you are building all this on a casual sentence in a book?" He frowned the harder.
Electra was breathing pleasure at the beauty of the case.
"It is not a casual sentence," she insisted. "It's an extract from a letter."
Peter had no intimate acquaintance with the business of the world, but he knew its elements. He regarded her with tenderness, as a woman attractively ignorant of harsh details.
"But Electra, dear, that isn't legal. It doesn't have the slightest bearing on what you should give or what she could exact from you—if she were that kind."
"No," she said, "it isn't legal. But it is—ethical." She used the large word with a sense of safety, loving the sound of it and conscious that Peter would not choke her off.
"But it isn't that. You don't know how your grandfather wrote that letter. He may have done it in a fit of temper, or malice, or carelessness, or a dozen things, and forgotten it next day. A letter's the idlest thing on earth. There's no reason for your considering it a minute."
"I am bound to consider it," said Electra. "There it is, in black and white. I shall make over the place to grandmother."
"Well!" Peter felt like whistling, and then unpursed his lips because, according to Electra, whistling was not polite. He had no restrictions relative to her giving away her property; but he felt very seriously that she must not be allowed to indulge herself in any form of insanity, however picturesque. A detail occurred to him, and he said quickly, with a look at her,—
"But Electra, you and Tom inherited this place together."
She knew what was coming and her color deepened. Again Rose had stepped between them, and Electra felt herself back in their old atmosphere of constraint.
"I have inherited it from Tom," she rejoined.
"You ignore his wife?"
Electra was silent for a long time. It was a hard struggle. But she spoke at last and in a tone which made the difficulty of speech apparent.
"Since Mr. MacLeod has been here—"
"Well?"
"I must recognize her as his daughter."
"Didn't you believe that, Electra? Not even that?"
"I am forced to believe it now. When he comes back, I shall ask him to corroborate her story. If he does—I shall be obliged to—give her what is just."
"Not otherwise, Electra? You believe him."
"I believe him implicitly." Her tone rang out in an astonishing assurance. She might have been pledging fealty to some adored intimate.
"You believe him. You would not believe me?"
She hedged a little here. "You gave me no proof—only the woman's word."
"Would you believe him without proof?"
She was silent, yet she knew she must.
"But," she said, with the haste of finishing an unwelcome subject, "I shall settle the matter as soon as possible after he comes back. If he tells me his daughter was married to my brother, she shall be paid every cent she is entitled to. But she shall not share this house—not an inch of it."
"Why not?"
Electra seemed to be carried on by a wave. Hurt pride found its voice,—all the revulsion she had felt in these days of Peter's divided allegiance.
"The house is ours. It belongs to the family. I shall make it over to grandmother, but not to that girl. She shall never own a timber in it."
Peter spoke involuntarily, with an unpremeditated wonder:—
"What makes you hate her so?"
Tears came slowly into Electra's eyes. They surprised her as much as they did him. She was not used to crying, and she held them from falling, with a proud restraint. Electra felt very lonely at that moment in a world which would not understand. She was upholding truth and justice, and she was accused of mean personal motives. She had proposed a picturesque sacrifice for the sake of abstract right, and she could not be unconscious that the act ought to look rather beautiful. Yet Peter saw no beauty in it, and grandmother had called her a fool. Peter, seeing the tears, was enormously embarrassed by them. He could only kiss her hand in great humility. He, on his part, put justice cheerfully aside.
"How could I?" he murmured, with the contrition of the male who has learned that tears are to be stanched without delay. "How could I?" But Electra, on her feet, had drawn her hand away from him. She felt only haste, haste to conclude her abnegation, perhaps even to forestall any question of the house by getting the matter out of her hands before MacLeod came back and she had to reckon with his testimony.
"I am not crying," she said proudly. "I must go and talk to grandmother. Promise me this. Don't tell her"—she hesitated.
"Rose?"
"Don't tell her I have spoken of this."
She had gone, and Peter helplessly watched her walking up the path. Then he took his own way home. "My stars!" he muttered from time to time. His chief desire at the moment was to escape from anything so strenuous as Electra's moral life. It made a general and warm-hearted obliquity the only possible condition of conduct in a pretty world. Peter looked round at it admiringly then, as the shadow of Electra's earnestness withdrew into the distance. It was such a darling world, there were such dear shadows and beguiling lights and all things adorable to paint. He cast off the mood that teased him, and walking faster, began to whistle. It seemed to him that there were so many agreeable deeds to do, and so much time to do them in, that he must simply bestir himself to use half the richness of things. But when he got into the garden, the honeysuckle smelled so sweet that he sat down at its foot and breathed it until he went to sleep.
Electra walked into the library, where Madam Fulton sat at her tatting and Billy Stark read aloud to her from an idle book. Electra felt that she could not possibly delay. All her affairs must be settled at once and the ends knit up.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "Grandmother, may I speak to you a moment?"
Madam Fulton laid down her work.
"Is it the same old story?" she inquired.
"Yes, grandmother. I don't feel that I can wait."
"Electra," said the old lady kindly, "I can't listen to you. It's all fudge and nonsense. If we talk about it any more, we shall be insane together. Don't go, Billy."
"I should like to put it before Mr. Stark," said Electra, with her clear gaze upon him, as if she summoned him to some exalted testimony.
Billy stirred uneasily in his chair. He had confided to Florrie the night before that Electra's hypothetical cases made him as nervous as the devil. Madam Fulton cast him a comical look. It had begun to occur to her that a ball, once rolling, is difficult to stop.
"Go ahead, then," she agreed. "I wash my hands of it. Billy, keep a tight grip on yourself. You'll die a-laughing."
Then Electra stated her case; but Billy did not laugh. Like Peter, he looked at her frowningly, and owned he did not understand. Electra stated it again, and this time he repeated the proposition after her. Madam Fulton sat in a composed aloofness and made no comment.
"But, my dear young lady," said Billy Stark, "you quite misunderstand. An extract from a letter has no legal value compared with a document signed and sealed in proper form."
"I know," said Electra, "not legal, but—" She was aware that Madam Fulton's eye was upon her and she dared not finish. "It was at least my grandfather's expressed wish," she concluded firmly. "I shall carry it out."
"But—" Billy sought about for a simile, "my dear child,"—Electra, in the weakness of her lofty reasoning, seemed to him pathetically to be protected,—"don't you see you're putting yourself through all kinds of discomfort for nothing, simply nothing? You've gone and got a big sword—you call it justice—to cut a thread. Why, it's not even that. There's nothing, absolutely nothing there. It's very admirable of you"—Electra's waiting attitude quickened at this—"but it's fantastic."
She spoke decisively.
"It is the thing to do."
Now Madam Fulton entered the field. She looked from one to the other, at Electra with commiseration, at Billy in a community of regret over that young intellect so dethroned.
"Now you see what I told you," she warned them. "Here we are, all crazy together. We've let you say it, and we've addled our own brains listening to it for a minute. I'll tell you what, Electra!" She had discovered. "If you're so anxious to get rid of the place, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy it."
"Buy it, grandmother? what belongs to you already?"
"Don't say that again. It gives me a ringing in my ears. That's what I'll do. You're going to marry Peter Grant and go abroad. I'll take the place off your hands. I've always wanted it. I've made a shocking sum out of my book, shocking. I can well afford it. There's an offer for you!"
Electra shook her head.
"I couldn't," she said gently. "How could I sell you what is yours already? The letter—"
"The letter!" repeated the old lady, as if it were an imprecation. She looked at Billy. He returned the glance with a despairing immobility. She reflected that the case must be worse even than she had thought, since Billy had not smiled. Electra must be madder than she had imagined, and her own culpability was the greater for weaving such a coil. "Shall I tell her, Billy?" she asked faintly.
He nodded.
"I should," he said commiseratingly, and got up to leave the room. It seemed to Billy this summer that he was constantly trying to escape situations with a delicacy which was more than half cowardice, only to be dragged back into the arena. The mandate he had expected promptly came.
"Don't go, Billy," cried the old lady. "Sit down." Madam Fulton continued, in a hesitating humility Electra had never seen in her, "Electra, I don't believe you'll quite understand when I tell you there's something queer about the letter. You see there never was any letter. I—made it up."
The boot was on the other foot. All the values of the scene had shifted. Now it was Electra who doubted the general sanity. Electra was smiling at her.
"No, grandmother," she was saying, with a pretty air of chiding, "you mustn't talk that way. You think that convinces me. It's very dear of you, very dear and generous. But I know why you do it."
"Bless my sinful soul!" ejaculated the old lady. "Oh—you tell her, Billy."
Billy shook his head. He was not going to be dragged as far as that. He was sorry for her, but she had had her whistle and she must pay for it. The old lady was beginning again in a weak voice,—
"You see, Electra, that book isn't what you think. It isn't what anybody thinks. I—I made it up."
Electra was about to speak, but her grandmother forestalled her.
"Don't you go and offer me wine. You get it into your head once and for all that I'm telling you a fact and that you've got to believe it. I made up my book of recollections. They're not true, not one of them. As I remember, there isn't one. The letters I wrote myself."
Electra was staring at her in a neutrality which was not even wonder.
Finally she spoke; her awed voice trembled.
"The Brook Farm letters!"
Perhaps it was this reverent hesitation which restored Madam Fulton to something of her wonted state.
"For heaven's sake, Electra," she fulminated, "what is there so sacred about Brook Farm? If anybody is going to make up letters from anywhere, why shouldn't it be from there?"
Electra was looking at Billy Stark as if she bade him save her from these shocks or tell her the whole world was rocking. But Billy twirled his eyeglass, and watched it twirling. Finally he had to meet her eye.