But had not the music and the splendid spectacle before her almost determined her before he had spoken?
Then she came back to the wondrous gentleness which was in his voice, to the amazing change in his eyes. The man who had held her hand was not the worn, cynical man she had feared. He was younger and handsomer, too. She shuddered again, with some powerful emotion at the thought of his calm, compelling, down-thrusting glance into her eyes. His mind appeared to her to have a shoreless sweep.
The music rose to a pounding, blaring climax, and the audience, applauding, began to rise to go home, breaking into streams and pools and whirling masses of color.
"Well, my dear, how have you enjoyed the evening?" asked Mrs. Harvey, cordially.
"Very much, indeed. I never can thank you enough."
"It has been a pleasure to feel your enthusiasm. It makes us all young again. I've asked Dr. Herrick to bring you to see us; I hope you will come."
The hearty clasp of her hand moved the motherless girl deeply, and her voice trembled with emotion as she replied:
"It will be a great pleasure to me, Mrs. Harvey."
Mrs. Harvey clutched her in her arms and kissed her.
"You splendid girl! I wish you were mine," she said, and thereafter Rose felt no fear in her presence.
"I don't care whether she's a genius or not," Mrs. Harvey said to Isabel, as they walked out to the carriage. "She's a good girl, and I like her, and I'll help her. You figure out anything I can properly do and I'll do it. I don't know another girl who could have carried off that cheap little dress the way she did. She made it look like a work of art. She's a wonder! Think of her coming from a Wisconsin farm!"
Isabel rejoiced.
"I knew you'd like her." She leaned over and said in a low voice: "I'd like Elbert to see her."
Mrs. Harvey turned a quick eye upon her.
"Well, if you aren't a matchmaker!"
As they came out in the throng it seemed as if everybody knew the Harveys and Isabel. Out in the street the cabs had gathered, like huge beetles, standing in patient rows in the gaslight.
The bellowing of numbers, the slam of carriage doors, the grind of wheels, the shouts of drivers, made a pandemonium to Rose, but Mr. Harvey, with the same gentle smile on his face, presented his ticket to the gigantic negro, who roared enormously:
"Ninety-two! Ninety-two!"
"Here we are!" Mr. Harvey called finally, and handed the women in with the same unhurried action, and the homeward ride began. There was little chance for talk, though Mrs. Harvey did talk.
Rose sat in silence. This had been another great period of growth. She could still feel the heat and turmoil in her brain. It was as if upon a seed-bed of quick-shooting plants a bright, warm light had been turned, resulting in instant, magical activity. At her door they put her down, and once more she thanked them.
"It's nothing at all, my dear; we hope to do more for you," said Mrs. Harvey. "I want you to come to dinner soon. You'll come?"
"With pleasure," Rose responded, quite as a man might have done.
When Rose reached her room, she found the packet of poems lying on her desk. It had come in the afternoon mail.
She sat down by the toilet table with a burning flush on her face. A world seemed some way to lie between her present self and the writer of those imitative verses. She wished to see, yet feared to see what he had written, and taking up the packet she fingered the string while she meditated. She had not absolutely promised not to read the letter, though she had pledged herself to burn the poems.
Her life was so suddenly filled with new emotions and impulses, that she was bewildered by them. The music, the audience-room, the splendid assemblage, and some compelling power in Mason—all of these (or he alone) had changed her point of view. It was a little thing to the great city, a little thing to him probably, but to her it was like unto the war of life and death.
What, indeed, was the use of being an echo of passion, a copy? She had always hated conformity; she hated to dress like other girls; why should she be without individuality in her verse, the very part where, as Mason had intimated, she should be most herself?
She had the chance to succeed. The people seemed ready to listen to her if she had something to say; and she had something to say—why not say it?
She arose, tense and white with resolution, and opened the stove door and dropped the packet in, and closed the door and held it as if she feared the packet might explode in her face, or cry out at her. In her poems she would have had the heroine fling it in the grate and snatch it out again, but having no grate the stove must serve, and there could be no snatching at the packet, no remorseful kisses of the charred body. It was gone in a dull roar.
She sat down and waited till the flame died out, and then drew up to her desk and wrote swiftly for an hour. She grew sleepy at last, as the tumult of her brain grew quieter. Just before she went to sleep all her lovers came before her: Carl, in the strawberry-scented glade; William de Lisle, shining of limb, courtesying under the lifting canvas roof; Dr. Thatcher, as he looked that afternoon in the school-room; then Forest Darnlee, with the physical beauty of William De Lisle, but vain and careless; then Professor Ellis, seated at his desk in the chalk-laden air, or perched on the ladder beneath the great telescope, a man who lived in abstract regions far from sense and sound; then Tom Harris, lithe, graceful, always smiling—Tom, who had the songs of birds, the smell of flowers, the gleam of sunset-water leagued with him—who almost conquered, but who passed on like a dapple of purple shadow over the lake.
And now she faced two others, for she could see that Owen was turning to her from Mary, and he had great charm. He was one of the cleanest-souled men she had ever known; he had, also, a strange touch of paganism, of mystery, as of free spaces and savage, unstained wildernesses, and he could give her a home, and he would allow her freedom. He would be her subject, not her master.
Then there was Mason—of him what? She did not know. He was outside her knowledge of men. She could neither read his face nor understand his voice. He scared her with a look or a phrase. Sometimes he looked old and cynical, but tonight how tenderly and sympathetically he had spoken! How considerately silent he had been!
When she awoke, Mary was standing looking down at her.
"If you're going to have any breakfast, Rose, you'd better be stirring. It's nine o'clock, and everything's ready to clear away. What kind of time did you have?"
Rose resented her question, but forced herself to answer:
"Beautiful!"
"I saw you in the box. Owen and I were in the second balcony. You were just scrumptious! I wanted to throw a kiss at you." She fell upon Rose and squeezed her, quilt and all, in her long arms. "My stars! I wish I was lovely and a poet."
She had nothing but joy over her idol's good fortune, and it made Rose feel guilty to think how resentful and secretive she had become. There was coming into her friendship with Mary a feeling which prevented further confidence—a feeling that Mary was not a suitable confidant, and could not understand the subtleties of her position, in which Rose was quite correct.
With Mary, procedure was always plain sailing. Either she was in love and wanted to marry, or she wasn't. Her ideals changed comparatively little, and were healthily commonplace. Her friendships were quick, warm and stable. She was the country girl in the city, and would be so until death. If she felt disposed, she chewed gum or ate an apple on the street like a boy, and she walked on the Lake Shore Sunday evening with Owen, unconscious (and uncaring) of the servant-girls and their lovers seated on every bench.
So Rose had grown away from her friend. She felt it dimly the first week. She felt it vividly on the morning after the concert, and it troubled her. Her life was too subtle, too complicated and too problematic for honest, freckle-faced, broad-cheeked Mary to analyze.
Then, too, there was the question of Owen. Soon Mary must see how he set face toward her, but she felt quite equal to answering him when Owen came to speak, because his appeal to her was not in the slightest degree sensuous, as Tom Harris' had been.
She spent the day in deep thought, writing some lines which came to her, and writing a letter home. She filled it full of love and praise for "pappa John," as if in remorse for growing so far away from him.
That done she fell back upon her group of friends; upon the concert, upon thought of that wonderful promenade with Mason.
The world of art seemed so secure and reposeful, so filled with splendor of human endeavor. She drew her breath in a mighty inspiration, and resolved to be a part of it. Art had always seemed to her so far off, something European, and now she seemed to be in immediate contact with it, and soared into exultation for a day, falling soon into dreary doubt.
Her literary ideals were so hopelessly confused. She had lost the desire to write as she had been writing, and there seemed nothing left for her to do. She had so few convictions and so little experience! The door had closed upon her old forms of action, and yet the way Mason had pointed out to her was dark and utterly bewildering. She felt great things moving around her; themes, deeds that were enormous but not defined. She could not quite lay hold upon them.
She went down the street to Dr. Herrick's house, feeling that she was committing herself to something. She knew that Isabel had taken her case in hand, and that she was to meet other young men there. She could not resent it, for the zeal of her new-found friend was manifestly from the heart—it could not be otherwise. Of what advantage to Dr. Herrick could it be to take her up—a poor country girl?
In fact, she was puzzled by this overpowering kindness. There was so little apparent reason for it all. She could not, of course, understand the keen delight of introducing a powerful and fresh young mind to the wonders of the city. She had not grown weary of "sets" and "circles," and of meeting the same commonplace people again and again, as Mrs. Harvey had. Isabel's position was different, but she had an equal delight, more subtle and lasting, in seeing the genius (as she believed) of the girl win its way, and besides, the girl, herself, pleased her mightily.
Isabel Herrick's life was one of deep earnestness and high aims. She was the daughter of a physician in an interior city. She had worked her way up from the bottom in the usual American fashion by plucky efforts constantly directed to one end, and was the head of the house of Herrick, which consisted of her young sister, a brother at college and her aged mother, now an invalid.
She had been one of the first three girls to enter the medical school, and she had been their shield and fortress in the storm which followed their entrance into the dissecting room. The battle was short but decisive. Her little head was lifted and her face white as she said:
"Men—I won't say gentlemen—I'm here for business, and I'm here to stay. If you're afraid of competition from a woman you'd better get out of the profession."
In the dead silence which followed a lank country fellow stepped out and raised his voice.
"She's right, and I'm ready to stand by her, and I'll see she's let alone."
Others shouted: "Of course she's right!" by which it appeared the disturbance was of the few and not the mass of students, a fact which Isabel inferred. She spoke a grateful word to the lanky student, and Dr. Sanborn found his wife right there.
There was little for Isabel to learn of the sordid and vicious side of men. She knew them for what they were, polygamous by instinct, insatiable as animals, and yet she had been treated on the whole with courteous—often too courteous—kindness. Her dainty color and her petite figure won over-gallant footway everywhere, though she often said:
"Gentlemen, I have studied my part. I know what I am doing and I ask only a fair field and no favors."
Thatcher and Sanborn had been her close companions in the stern, hard course they set themselves; each had said with vast resolution to the other: "I'm not to be left behind." And each had sworn to take no mediocre position. Thatcher had made apparently the least mark in the world, but he was writing a monograph which was expected to give important facts to the medical profession. He had written to Sanborn several times: "You have the advantage of association with the 'Little Corporal.'"
They called her "Little Corporal" among themselves. Her sternly sweet face had a suggestion of Napoleon in it, and then she ordered them about so naturally and led them so inevitably in everything she undertook.
It was into the hands of the "Little Corporal" that Rose had fallen, and all Isabel's enthusiasm was roused in her behalf. Her own little sister was a sweet, placid little thing, who had inherited the body, and spirit as well, of her mother, while Isabel had inherited the mind of her father in the body of her mother.
Something of this Thatcher had told Rose, part of it Isabel had told, and it made only one definite impression on Rose—this, that a woman could succeed if she set her teeth hard and did not waste time.
She found Isabel already surrounded by company. She made every other Sunday evening an informal "at home," and certain well-known artists and professional people dropped in to talk awhile, or to sit at her generous table. It was a good place to be and Rose had perception enough to feel that.
"O, you dear child! I'm glad to see you. There's some one here you'll be glad to see."
Rose flushed a little, thinking of Mason.
"It's an old friend—Dr. Thatcher."
Rose clapped her hands: "O, is he? I'm so glad; it's almost like seeing the folks."
"I've asked Elbert Harvey and Mr. Mason also; I didn't want you to think I had no friends but doctors. It must seem to you as if the world is made up of doctors. But it isn't."
Thatcher greeted Rose quietly but with a pressure of the hand which made up for his impassivity of countenance. He trembled a little as he sat down and watched her greeting Sanborn and Mason.
Fear and admiration were both present in her heart as Mason took her hand.
She forced herself to look into his face, and started to find his eyes so terribly penetrating.
"I burned the packet," she said with a constrained smile.
His eyes grew softer and a little humorous.
"Did you indeed. Without opening it?"
"Yes."
"Heroic girl!"
"Am I not?" she said over her shoulder as Isabel dragged her toward a tall, smooth-faced young fellow who stood talking with Etta.
"Elbert, this is Miss Dutcher—Rose, young Mr. Harvey, son of our hostess at the concert."
Young Harvey seemed much taken back as he faced Rose, and shook hands in current angular fashion. His mind formulated these opinions:
"She's a stunner! Caroline was dead right!" By "Caroline" he meant his mother.
Rose placed him at once. He was another college man. Paul and Etta joined them and they made a fine group. They were soon as free as schoolmates, laughing, telling stories, and fighting over the East and the West.
Rose stoutly defended the western colleges; they had their place, she said.
"So they have," Elbert said, "but let them keep it."
"Their place is at the head, and that's where we'll put them soon," she said.
Elbert told a story about hazing a western boy at Yale. He grew excited and sprang up to dramatize it. He stood on one foot and screwed up his face, while the rest shrieked with laughter, all except Rose, who thought it unjust.
Mason looked on from his low chair with a revealing touch of envious sadness. He had gone past that life—past the land of youth and love—past the islands of mirth and minstrelsy. He was facing a cold, gray sea, with only here and there a grim granite reef gnawing the water into foam.
It made him long to be part of that again, therefore he valued Rose more at that moment than ever before. "The girl has imagination, she has variety. She is not a simple personality. At the concert she was exalted, rapt, her eyes deep. Tonight she is a school-girl. Then it was Wagner—now it is college horse-play."
Isabel came up to sit a moment by him.
"Isn't she fine? I think I surprised young Harvey. I thought I'd like to have her meet him—he's such a fine fellow. She should meet someone else beside us old fogies."
Mason winced a little.
"Well now, that's pleasant! Do you call me an old fogy?"
She laughed:
"O, we're not old in years, but we're old in experience. The bloom of the grape is lost."
"But the grape is ripe, and we still have that. The bloom—what is it? A nest for bacteria."
"But it is so beautiful with the bloom on," she said wistfully. "I'd take it again, bacteria and all. See those young people! The meeting of their eyes is great as fame, and the touch—the accidental touch of their hands or shoulders, like a return of lost ships. I am thirty-three years of age and I've missed that somewhere."
Mason lifted his eye-brows:
"Do you mean to say that the touch of Sanborn's hand does not hasten your blood?"
"I do—and yet I love him as much as I shall ever love anybody—now."
Mason studied her, and then chanted softly:
"'Another came in the days that were golden,One that was fair, in the days of the oldenTime, long ago!'
"'Another came in the days that were golden,One that was fair, in the days of the oldenTime, long ago!'
You've never told me about that."
She smiled. "No, but I will some time—perhaps."
She led the way out to supper with Dr. Thatcher, and the rest followed without quite breaking off conversation, a merry, witty procession.
Rose was conscious of a readjustment of values. Dr. Thatcher had less weight in the presence of these people, but Mason—Mason easily dominated the table without effort. Indeed, he was singularly silent, but there was something in the poise of his head, in the glance of his eyes, which showed power and insight into life.
The young folks, led by young Harvey took possession of the table, and laughter rippled from silence to silence like a mountain stream. Young Harvey aided at the chafing-dish with the air of an adept, and Isabel was almost as light-hearted in laughter as he.
Thatcher and Mason seemed to sit apart from it, and so it was Mason found opportunity to say:
"You knew our young friend of the coulé—discovered her, in fact?"
"Yes, as much as any one could discover her. It's a little early to talk of her as if she had achieved fame."
"Dr. Herrick thinks she's on the instant of going up higher, and so we're all hanging to her skirts in hopes of getting a rise."
Thatcher didn't like Mason's tone.
"Rose is a hard worker. If she rises any higher it will be by the same methods which put her through college." He spoke with a little air of proprietorship.
Mason felt the rebuff, but he was seeking information about Rose, therefore he ignored it.
"She's an only child, I believe."
"Yes; her father is a hard-working, well-to-do farmer in a little 'coolly' in Wisconsin."
"It's the same old story, I suppose; he doesn't realize that he's lost his daughter to the city of Chicago. We gain at his expense."
Mason's mind had something feminine about it, and he saw as never before how attractive to a girl a fine young fellow like Harvey could be. Being rich he was lifted above worry. His activity was merely wholesome exercise, and his flesh was clean and velvety as a girl's. He was strong, too, as it was the fashion of college men of his day to be. He had never known want or care in his beautiful life. He was, moreover, a clean boy. Money had not spoiled his sterling nature. It was no wonder that Rose's eyes grew wide and dark as they rested on him. They were physically a beautiful pair and their union seemed the most inevitable thing in the world.
Isabel leaned over to say:
"Aren't they enjoying themselves? I wish Mrs. Harvey could see them."
After they had returned to the sitting room a couple of young artists came in with John Coburg, Mason's room-mate on theStar. He was a smooth-faced fellow of extra-solemn visage, relieved by twinkling black eyes. The artists were keen, alert-looking fellows, with nothing to indicate their profession save their pointed beards. One of them being lately from Paris turned his moustaches up devilishly; the other had fallen away from his idols sufficiently to wear his moustaches turned down and an extra width to his beard.
Rose was glad Mr. Davidson twisted his mustache; there was so little else about him to indicate his high calling.
Their coming turned the current of talk upon matters of art, which made Rose feel perfectly certain she was getting at the heart of Chicago artistic life.
Mr. Davidson inveighed against America, and Chicago especially, for its "lack of art atmosphere."
"If you've got the creative power you can make your own art atmosphere," his companion hotly said. "You always start up on that thing." Evidently it was a source of violent argument between them.
"The trouble is you fellows who paint, want to make a living too easy," Mason remarked.
"You ought to stay and do pioneer work among us," said Isabel.
"I don't consider it worth while so far as I am concerned. I prefer Paris."
"You're not very patriotic."
"There is no patriotism in art."
"That's the regular Parisian jabber," returned his friend. "I talked all that myself. What you need is a touch of poverty. I'd like to see your people drop you in a small town where you had to make your living for a little while."
"All the hard conditions of Chicago are changing," Isabel interposed, with peaceful intent. "All that was true a few years ago is not true now. The materialism you war against, no longer dominates us. We are giving a little time to art and literature."
Davidson twisted his mustache point. "It isn't noticeable yet—O, there's a little band of fellows starving here like rats in a garret—but what general recognition of art have you?"
"What could you expect?"
"Well, you might buy pictures."
"We do—old masters and salon pictures," said Mills, with a relenting acknowledgment of the city's weakness.
"That's it exactly!" said Davidson. "You've no judgment here. You are obliged to take your judgment from somebody else."
So the talk proceeded. To Rose it was illuminating and epoch-making. She read in it the city's developing thought. Paris and the Rocky Mountains met here with Chicago and the most modern types of men and women.
Meanwhile Mason found opportunity to say to Thatcher, who seemed a little ill at ease:
"These little informal Sunday suppers and free-for-alls are increasing in number, and they are signs of civilization. Of course a few of the women still go to church in the morning, but that will wear off, except at new-bonnet time."
Thatcher did not reply; he thought Mason a little flippant.
Rose sought opportunity to talk about Mrs. Thatcher and Josephine.
"They're quite well."
"I wish I could see them both."
"We should be glad to welcome you back to Madison any time. But I hardly expect to see you, except on a vacation, possibly. You're a city dweller already. I can see that." He seemed sadder than she had ever known him, and his look troubled her a little.
At ten o'clock she rose to go, and young Harvey sprang up:
"Are you going? If you are I hope you'll give me the pleasure—my carriage—"
"Thank you very much," she answered quickly. "I've a friend coming for me." Thatcher rose as if to go with her, but sat down again with a level line of resolution on his lips.
Mason and Harvey both wondered a little about that friend. Mason took a certain delight in young Harvey's defeat, and analyzed his pulse to find out why he was delighted. "We should mob that friend," he said to Sanborn. "He is an impertinence, at this time."
Rose felt Isabel's arm around her as she entered the cloakroom.
"Isn't he fine?"
"Who?"
"Mr. Harvey."
"O—yes—so are the artists." Rose began to wonder if Isabel were not a matchmaker as well as a promoter of genius.
Isabel had a suspicion of Rose's thought and she laughingly said:
"Don't think I'm so terrible! I do like to bring the right people together. I see so many people wrongly mated, but I don't mean—I only want you to know nice people. You're to do your own choosing," she said with sudden gravity. "No one can choose for you. There are some things I want to talk about when I can venture it."
Mason and Sanborn were the last to go and when Isabel returned from the door, where she had speeded the last guest, she dropped into a chair and sighed.
"It's splendid good fun, but it does tire me so! Talk to me now while I rest."
"Sanborn, talk!" Mason commanded.
Sanborn drew a chair near Isabel and put his arm about her. She leaned her head on his shoulder.
Mason rose in mock confusion.
"I beg your pardon! I should have gone before."
Isabel smiled. "Don't go; we're not disturbed."
"I was considering myself."
"O, you were!"
"Such things shock me, but if I may smoke I may be able—"
"Of course. Smoke and tell me what you think of Rose. Isn't it strange how that girl gets on? She's one of the women born to win her way without effort. It isn't true to say it is physical; that's only part of it—it's temperament."
Mason got his cigar well alight before he said:
"She has the prime virtue—imagination."
"Is that a woman's prime virtue?"
"To me it is. Of course there are other domestic and conjugal virtues which are commonly ranked higher, but they are really subordinate. Sappho and Helen and Mary of the Scots were not beautiful nor virtuous, as such terms go; they had imagination, and imagination gave them variety, and variety means endless charm. It is decidedly impossible to keep up your interest in a woman who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow—whose orbit can be predicted, whose radiance is without the shadow of turning."
"Should he be stopped?" Isabel asked of Sanborn.
"I shouldn't like the job," Sanborn replied. "When he strikes that line of soliloquy he's out of my control."
Rose found Owen waiting in the hall, and she accepted his escort with the frankness of a sister.
"Have you waited long?"
"No, I was just going to ring the bell when I heard your voice."
They walked on in silence. At last he asked:
"Did you have a good time?"
"Splendid!" she answered.
"We missed you," he said.
Rose felt something tender in his voice and remained silent.
"I heard from my partners today." He went on after a little: "They're feeling mighty good. Struck another vein that promises better than the one we have. I ought to go out, but I——" He paused abruptly. "Did you ever see the Rockies in late fall? O, they're mighty, mighty as the sky! I wish you'd—I wish we could make up a party some time and go out. I'd take a car——"
She faced the situation.
"I'll tell you what would be nice: When you and Mary take your wedding trip I'll go along to take care of you both."
Owen fairly staggered under the import of that speech, and could find nothing to say for some time.
"Did you have a good time tonight?" he asked again.
"Splendid! I always do when I go to Isabel's." Thereafter they walked in silence.
Rose fell to thinking of young Harvey in the days which followed. There was allurement in his presence quite different from that of any other. She could not remember anything he had said, only he had made her laugh and his eyes were frank and boyish. She felt his grace and the charm that comes from security of position and freedom from care.
He brought up to her mind by force of contrast, her father, with his eyes dimmed with harsh winds and dust and glowing sun. He was now spending long, dull days wandering about the house and barn, going to bed early in order to rise with the sun, to begin the same grind of duties the day following. Young Harvey's life was the opposite from this.
He admired her, she felt that as distinctly as if he had spoken to her. He wanted to be near her. He had asked her to help him with the chafing-dish that night, and to pour the beer while he stirred the gluey mass of cheese. All the little things by which a young man expresses his admiration he had used almost artlessly, certainly boyishly.
There was nothing there but a vista of pleasures, certain relief from toil and worry. What a marvelous thing to be suddenly relieved from all fear of hunger and every harassing thought about the future! And it was not a question of an old man of wealth, or a man of repulsive appearance; it was a question of taking a bright, handsome, clean-souled man, together with his money. She felt the power to put out her hand and claim him as her own.
She liked him, too; he amused her and interested her. She admired his splendid flesh and his clear, laughing eyes. It seemed the easiest thing in the world—to an outsider. She felt that Isabel was working hard to have her see young Harvey at his best, and she felt, too, that Mrs. Harvey was taking unusual interest in her, and in her secret heart she knew she could marry into that fine family, but—
Liking was not love. She did not shiver when he clasped her hand, as she did when Mason greeted her. She feared Mason. When he came by, her judgment blurred and her eyes fell. She couldn't tell what his traits were, and she didn't know whether he was a good man or not. She hungered to see him, to hear his voice; beyond that she hardly dared consciously go.
His attitude toward her she could not understand. Sometimes he seemed anxious to please her, sometimes he seemed equally determined that she should understand how inconsequential she was in his life—and always he dominated her.
She did not once think it might be indecision in his mind, after the usual stupidity of love's victims. She thought his changes of manner due in some way to her. She had acted foolishly, or she was looking so badly he was ashamed of her.
In this condition of mind, it may be imagined, she did not do much studying or writing. She went to the library regularly, but she could not concentrate her thoughts upon her book. She grew surly and changeable with Mary, who no longer dared to talk unguardedly with her.
Mary's eyes were not glass marbles; she could see things with them, and she said gleefully to Owen one night:
"She's in love, that's what is the matter with her. I don't mind it. She'll be all right after a while. She's short as pie-crust with me, but I know how it is myself. She's in love with some high-flyer she's met at Dr. Herrick's house."
Then she wondered why Owen made no reply.
Not seeing Mason for some days, Sanborn took a walk one night, and turned up about nine o'clock at his rooms. He found him sitting before his open grate fire, smoking meditatively.
"Hello, Sanborn! Glad you came over." He did not rise, but Sanborn was untroubled by that.
"Got another chapter turned off?"
"Possibly. Fill up and draw up."
Sanborn obediently filled a pipe and drew up a chair.
"You look tired."
"I am. I have written a column editorial on the labor question, one on the Chinese treaty, a special article on irrigation for the Sunday issue, not counting odd paragraphs on silver, anarchy, and other little chores of my daily grind."
"That's not as bad as poulticing people."
"Bad! There's nothing any worse, and my novelistic friends are always saying, 'Why don't you turn in and finish up your novel?' What can an intellectual prostitute do?"
"Get out of the business, one would suppose."
"Well, now, that brings me to the point. In the midst of all my other worriments, I am debating whether to marry a rich girl and escape work, or a poor girl and work harder, or to give the whole matter of marriage up forever."
"These are actual cases, not hypothetical, this time?"
Mason turned a slow eye upon him.
"I have no need to fly to hypothetical cases," he said, dryly. "In the first place, my hero—if you incline tonight to that theory of the case—my hero is equally interested in two young women. This is contrary to the story books, but then only an occasional novelist tells the truth. I'm to be that one."
He seemed to be going off upon some other line of thought, and Sanborn hauled him back by asking a pertinent question:
"You mean to say both of these young ladies have that glamour?"
"O, not at all! They did have, but it has faded in both cases, as in all previous cases, yet more seems to have remained, or else I am getting a little less exacting. In the case of the sculptress—she's the poor girl, of course—she's a genius. The first time I saw her she read a paper on 'The Modern in Sculpture' (it was good, too). She was dressed beautifully, in cheese-cloth, for all I know—I only know she put to shame her sculptured copies of Hope and Ariadne. The glamour was around her like rose-colored flame. It was about her still when I stepped up to her. She was tall, and strong as a young lioness. Her clean, sweet eyes were level with mine, and she made me ashamed of every mean thing I had uttered in my whole life."
"Well, well!" exclaimed Sanborn.
"She was flattered and exalted to think 'the editor' was pleased with her essay, and the rest was easy. I went to call on her a day or two later——"
"And the glamour—the glamour?"
Mason shook his head. "Faint! She was in her study, and the hard, cold light was merciless. She was handsome, even then, but her face had a pinched look, and there was a heavy droop to her lips. The color so beautiful that night when flushed with excitement had faded from her cheeks, and gathered in some unfortunate way about her eyes and nose. She was a fine woman, but—the glamour was gone."
"What an eye for symptoms! you should have been a physician," Sanborn put in.
"At the same time she grew upon me. She's an artist. She has the creative hand—no doubt of that. She has dreams, beautiful dreams of art. She glows, and dilates, and sings with the joy of it. She could bring into my life something of the dreams I myself had as a youth. She's going to make a name for herself, without question."
"Why, that's glorious, Warren, old man; she's just the wife for you! And she really inclines toward you?"
"She does." Then his self-crucifying humor came in. "That's really her most questionable virtue. However, if Love can laugh at locksmiths, I suppose he can laugh at a bald head. But this is only one phase of the matter. Like all spectators, you are informed of only one side of the banner. Let's look at the other.
"I manage to live here and support this fire, which is my only extravagance. I keep the establishment going, and a little more. I'll anticipate the usual arguments. Suppose, for a little while, it would not increase expenses. It would not do to bring a woman here, it would not be right. When children came—and I should hope for children—they should have a home in the suburbs; I don't believe in raising children in a flat. That would mean an establishment which would take every cent I could hook on to, and it would mean that the whole glittering fabric would be built upon my own personal palm."
"But she might earn something—you say she's a genius."
"She is, that's the reason she'll never make money. Holding the view I do, I could not require her to toil. I do not believe marriage confers any authority on the husband—you understand my position there?"
"Perfectly—and agree with it, to a limited extent, of course."
"Going back, therefore—I do not believe I can assume the risk involved. I'm not capable of twenty years' work at my present rate. I'd break down, some fine day, and then my little home, upheld upon my Atlas palm, would tumble. No, I can't take the risk. I'm getting too foxy; I haven't the bounce I once had. Besides, her career is to be considered. I don't believe I can afford to let her marry me."
"That's mighty kind of you," Sanborn dryly remarked.
"Thank you. I think it is an error of judgment on her part. She is younger, and as her adviser I think I must interfere and save her from the power of a vivid imagination and abounding vitality. You see, there are a great many considerations involved."
"Real love, I must repeat, would not consider."
"I wish you wouldn't repeat it, it does you an injustice. The animal passion of youth would not consider. With youth, it is marry—marry, even if within the year you are picked up by the patrol wagon, a vagrant in the streets. The love of my time is not so heedless nor so selfish; it extends to the question of the other party to the transaction."
"I suppose that should be so, but as a physician I doubt it. My observations do not run that way. Age grows like a child again, thoroughly selfish."
"Then there is the question of the 'possible woman,'" Mason resumed, and his tone was cynically humorous again. "I can't give her up. There she stands in a radiant mist always just before me like the rainbow of our childhood. I can't promise any woman to love her till death. I don't know as it would be safe to promise it even to the woman with glamour. Another might come with a subtler glory, and a better fitting glamour, and then—"
"What then?"
"It would all be up with the first woman," he said with a gravity of tone of which the words gave no hint.
"I'm afraid some one has already come to make pale the beauty of the sculptress. What about the other, the rich girl you set over against the sculptress at the beginning? Mind you, I believe the whole situation is fictitious, but I'll humor you in it."
"Well, Aurelia—we'll call her Aurelia—brings up a far-reaching train of reflections, and, if you've got a patient waiting, you'd better come again."
"I'm the only patient waiting."
Mason ignored the lame old pun and proceeded:
"Aurelia lives in Springfield. You know the kind of home the wealthy politician builds in a western town—combination of jail and court-house. I attended a reception there last winter and saw Aurelia for the first time. She was as beautiful as an acrobat—"
"I don't want to interrupt, Mason, but I notice all your heroines are beautiful."
"They must be; my taste will not permit me to tolerate unsymmetrical heroines. I started in as an architect and I've done a little paddling in clay, and my heroines must be harmonious of structure—glamour comes only with beauty, to me."
"Largely physical, then."
"Certainly! I believe in the physical, the healthy, wholesome physical. In the splendor of the tiger's wooing is no disease."
"Well, well, she was beautiful as an acrobat—"
Mason looked sour. "One more interruption, and the rest of my heart-tragedy will remain forever alien to your ear."
Sanborn seemed alarmed:
"My lips are glued to my pipe."
Mason mused—("Composed!" Sanborn thought.)
"She looked as if she had been moulded into her gown. The Parisian robe and the hair piled high, were fast—undeniably theatric, but her little face was sweet and girlish, almost childish. Well, she had glamour, largely physical as you say. But like the heroes of E. P. Roe's novels, I aspired to awaken her soul. She was pleased with me apparently. I called soon after the reception—I always follow up each case of glamour. I knew she was rich but I did not realize she commanded such an establishment.
"It was enormous. Her mother was a faded little hen of a woman, who had been a very humble person in youth, and who continued a very humble person in middle-life. The court-house in which she was forced to live continually over-awed her, but the girl used it, entertained in it as if she had a string of palace-dwelling ancestors straggling clear back to Charlemagne."
"That's the American idea, the power of adaptation. Our women have it better developed than—"
"She was a gracious and charming hostess, and I admit the sight of her in command of such an establishment was impressive. I thought how easily a tired editor could be absorbed into that institution and be at rest—a kind of life hospital, so to say. She was interested in me—that was certain."
"Now, Mason, I must protest. You know how high Isabel and I both hold you, but we never quite considered you in the light of a ladies' man. Your Springfield girl must have had dozens of brilliant and handsome young men about her."
Mason smoked in silence, waiting till Sanborn's buzz ceased.
"Well, she came to the city last month, and I've been to see her a number of times; the last time I saw her she proposed to me."
Sanborn stared, with fallen jaw gaping, while Mason continued in easy flow.
"And I have the matter under consideration. I saw the coming storm in her eyes. Last night as we sat together at the piano she turned suddenly and faced me, very tense and very white.
"'Mr. Mason, why can't you—I mean—what do you think of me?'
"I couldn't tell her that night what I thought of her, for she had seemed more minutely commonplace than ever. She had trotted round her little well-worn circle of graces and accomplishments, even to playing her favorite selection on the piano. I equivocated. I professed it was not very easy to say what I thought of her, and added:
"'I think you're a fine, wholesome girl,' as she is, of course.
"'But you don't think I'm beautiful?' That was a woman's question, wasn't it. 'Yes,' I said in reply, 'I think you are very attractive. Nature has been lavish with you.'
"Then she flamed red and stammered a little:
"'Then why don't you like me?'
"'I do,' I said.
"'You know what I mean,' she hurried on to say—'I want you to like me better than any other woman.'
"'That's impossible,' I replied. It was pitiful to see her sitting there like a beggar in the midst of all her splendor. 'I like you very much. I think you're very sweet and kind and girlish.'
"She seemed to react from her boldness. Her eyes filled with tears. 'I know you think I'mterribleto say these things.'
"'No. I feel that I do not deserve such trust on your part.' Then she defended me. 'Yes, you do. I couldn't have spoken to any one else so. You're so kind and gentle.'"
"Did she say that of you?"
"She said that."
"I wish I could reach that phase of your character," sighed Sanborn. "What did you say in reply?"
Mason apparently showed deep feeling at last.
"I told her that I was like the average man. I was taking credit to myself for not devouring her like a wolf! She didn't listen to that. 'What can I do to make you like me?' she asked. She leaned toward me, her chin in her palm, thinking and suffering as her sweet little soul had never suffered before. 'I'm too simple,' she said, with a flash of startling insight. 'I don't know enough. I feel that. Can't I study and change that?'
"'You're changing that now,' I replied.
"She grew radiant for a moment."
"'O youdolike me a little!'"
As he went on, Mason's tone grew sweet and solemn. It had singular power of suggestion. It developed more of his nature than he knew; his real gravity, and tenderness and purity.
"There you have it," he ended. He struck the ashes out of his pipe and rose.
"I could marry her, but it wouldn't make her happy. It would make her suffer. It is not a light thing to decide. It is a very grave thing. As in the case of the sculptress I thought it an error of judgment on her part, and on my own it would be criminal."
"That's a fine bit of fiction," said Sanborn. "You're too rough on yourself, for you could do the girl a deal of good by marrying her."
"Possibly. In the case of the sculptress the problem is different. She is moving past me like a queen—splendid, supple, a smile of conscious power on her lips, the light of success in her eyes. It's a terrible temptation, I admit, this power to stretch out my hand and stay her. It makes my blood leap, but my sense of justice will not allow of it. I shall let her pass on, beautiful and rapt."
"To marry some confounded pin-head, who will make her a domestic animal, and degrade her into 'my wife, gents'?"
"Possibly. However, my responsibility ends where I say good-bye."
"Don't shirk—don't shirk."
Mason turned on him. His voice lost a little of its coldness.
"Is a man to have no credit for letting such a glorious creature pass him, unharmed and free?"
"Why yes, certainly. But the world of art will not satisfy that girl. She's sure to marry—shemustmarry—and she is entitled to more consideration. You've got to look ahead to the time when she regrets the lack of husband and children."
"Ah, but it's a frightful thing, Sanborn, to arrest that girl, to make her a wife and mother, to watch her grow distorted, stiffened, heavy with child-bearing. I prefer to see her pass me, in order that I may remember her, lithe, radiant, moving like music and light."
"That's fine, Mason, I honor you for that spirit," said Sanborn, deeply moved. "But you must remember I am about to be married to a beautiful woman myself, a woman who knows both sexes, knows their vices and passions. She tells me, and it fits in with what I know myself, that the woman's nature moves on from this beautiful state you've described so well, into the pain and responsibility of marriage not merely willingly, but eagerly. Half the girl's joy, which we men see in her face, is the smile of anticipated motherhood—it must be so. Isabel, as you know, is no sentimentalist; she's a woman you can talk these things to, freely. I can't state it as she did, but the substance of it was this: if the girl knew she was to be always young and childish, her youth and beauty would be of no value to her—that it is the untried pain and pleasures of other years and conditions which make the beauty so radiant now."
"All of which merely means she makes the best of an irresistible and tragic impulse, a force which she does not originate and cannot control. Therefore I say it is a sorrowful business to hew down a temple or tear a lily in pieces."
The two men were silent again. They had reached fundamentals in their talk. Sanborn considered the whole matter an allegory, which Mason was using to veil his design to win Rose if possible. He knew the ease of Mason's invention, as well as his power to present a case dramatically, and while he was moved by the expression of his friend's noble thought, he could not think that there was any exact truth contained in the story.
Mason resumed a moment later:
"There are certain other material, minor and prosaic considerations which must be kept in mind. Suppose I announce my engagement to Miss Aurelia; the newspapers would have a pleasant paragraph or two. Some people would say 'what a very appropriate match.' Others would say very knowingly, 'Well, Mason has feathered his nest.' The newspaper boys who really wish me well would say, 'Good for Mason; now he can take time to finish that great American novel he's had on hand so long!' A few shrewd fellows would say, 'Well, that ends Mason! He's naturally lazy, and with a wife and home like that he'll never do another stroke of work. Mason's like Coleridge in one thing: he dreams great things, but never writes them. He's out of the race!'"
"There's something in that," Sanborn admitted.
"I know there is," Mason replied without offense. "Now we'll suppose I scrape a little money together for immediate use. The old railway Baron is kind. He tolerates me for the daughter's sake. I come in contact with the relatives; already I have had a touch of them! A girl like that is not like a pebble on the sea-shore; she's a thread in a web of cloth, a silken thread in a breadth of shoddy, maybe. You can't marry her and have her to yourself. You come into new relations with her people as herfiancé. They cannot be escaped. They swarm around you. They question your motives and they comment on your person: 'He's getting bent and bald;' 'He's lazy;' 'What did she ever see in him?' They vulgarize everything they touch. They are as tiresome as the squeal of a pump, but there you are, you must meet them. The old gentleman is a man who deals in millions, reliable and conscientious. He talks to you about his business, till you say, 'business be damned.' He thereafter meets you in heavy silence. The mother is a timid soul, with an exaggerated idea of your importance as an editor. The aunts and uncles variously sniff and tremble before you."
"Meanwhile your wife has talked all she knows, and all she says thereafter has a familiar sound. She delights in stories with many repetitions in them. Her little brain travels from the pantry to the table, from the tea table to the children's bath tub; its widest circuit is the millinery store and the bargain counter. She gets fat, that's another distressing phase of my trouble, let me say. I seem to be gifted with a prophetic eye in the midst of my transports—"
"Think of you in a transport!"
"I am able to see just how each one will change, how this pretty plumpness will get fat, how this delicate slimness will get bony. I see how this beautiful alert face will get beakish. In other words I am troubled about the future, when I should be involved only in the ecstasy of the present. In this latest case I see excessive plumpness and chatter in ten years. I see myself bored to death with her within ten months. She is at her best now; in striving to win me she is like a female bird, her plumage is at its best; she will grow dowdy when the incentive is gone.
"There are other considerations. Aurelia, too, has exaggerated notions of my power to earn money. She may expect me to maintain an expensive establishment. I can't ask anything of the political pirate, her father; I can only put my income into the treasury. If my power to earn money decreases, as it may, then I become an object of contempt on the part of the old savage, who considers money the measure of ability. Suppose at last I come to the point of borrowing money, of going to the old man humbly, twisting my hat in my hand: 'My dear sir, Aurelia and the children'—Pah!"
He uttered a sound of disgust and anger and fell silent.
Sanborn mused, "I wonder if the lovers of any other age had any such scruples about marriage. I guess you're right about Aurelia, but I don't believe you are about the sculptress. I think she would make you happy."
Mason mused a moment and then went on:
"Well, now, as to that—marry her and we plunge, inside of two years, into a squalid struggle for bread and coal and a roof. I elect myself at once into the ranks of dray-horses, and, as I said before, I chain a genius to the neck-yoke with me. That is also out of the question."
Sanborn sought his hat.
"Well, Mason, this has been a season of plain speaking. I'd feel pretty bad over it if I thought it was real. When you get the whole thing typewritten I should like to read it to Isabel and Rose."
Mason's face did not change, but he failed to look at his friend. He said quietly:
"Isabel wouldn't read it; the girl might possibly find something in it of value. Good night; you've listened like a martyr."
"Don't fail to write that out while it's fresh in your mind. Good night," said Sanborn.
His last glance as he closed the door fell upon a lonely figure lying in a low chair before the fire, and he pitied him. Mason seemed "the great irresolute" which Isabel believed him to be; helpless to do, patient to suffer.
The social world seemed about to open to the coulé girl. At Mrs. Harvey's she called, and behold! her house was but one street removed from the Lake Shore Drive, on which she had stood that September day. It was a home of comfort rather than of wealth, not at all ostentatious, and yet its elegance troubled Rose not a little.
She knew values by instinct, and she knew there was nothing shoddy and nothing carelessly purchased in the room. The Harveys were envied by some of their wealthier neighbors for the harmoniousness of their house. They contrived to make their furniture distinguish itself from a down-town stock—which requires taste in selection, and arrangement as well.
Rose heard voices above, and soon Mrs. Harvey and Isabel came down together. Rose was glad of her friend's presence—it made it easier for her.
After hearty greetings from Mrs. Harvey they all sat down and Mrs. Harvey said:
"I'm glad you came over. We—Isabel and I—feel that we should do something for you socially. I would like to have you come over some Wednesday and pour tea for me. It's just my afternoon at home, and friends drop in and chatter a little while; perhaps you'd enjoy it."
"O, you're very kind!" Rose said, dimly divining that this was a valuable privilege, "but I really couldn't do it. I—I'm not up to that."
"O, yes, you are. You'd look like a painting by Boldini up against that tapestry, with your hair brought low, the way you wore it concert night."
Isabel put in a word. "It isn't anything to scare you, Rose. It's hardly more formal than at college, only there won't be any men. It will introduce you to some nice girls, and we'll make it as easy for you as we can."
"O, yes, indeed; you can sit at the table with Isabel."
"O, it isn't that," Rose said, looking down. "I haven't anything suitable to wear." She went on quickly, as if to put an end to the whole matter. "I'm a farmer's girl living on five hundred dollars a year, and I can't afford fifty dollar dresses. I haven't found out any way to earn money, and I can't ask my father to buy me clothes to wear at teas. You all are very kind to me, but I must tell you that it's all out of my reach."
The other women looked at each other while Rose hurried through this. Mrs. Harvey was prepared at the close:
"There, now, my dear! don't let that trouble you. Any simple little gown will do."
"It's out of the question, Mrs. Harvey, until I can buy my own dresses. I can't ask my father to buy anything more than is strictly necessary."
There was a note in her voice which seemed to settle the matter.
Isabel said, "Perhaps you have something made up that will do. Won't you let me see what you have? Certainly the dress you wore at the concert became you well."
"If you have anything that could be altered," Mrs. Harvey said, "I have a dressmaker in the house now. She could easily do what you need. She's looking over my wardrobe."
Rose shook her head, and the tears came to her eyes.
"You're very, very kind, but it wouldn't do any good. Suppose I got a dress suitable for this afternoon, it wouldn't help much. It's impossible. I'd better keep in the background where I belong."
She stubbornly held to this position and Mrs. Harvey reluctantly gave up her plans to do something for her socially.
Rose had come to see how impossible it was for her to take part in the society world, which Isabel and Mrs. Harvey made possible to her. The winter was thickening with balls and parties; the society columns of the Sunday papers were full of "events past," and "events to come." Sometimes she wished she might see that life, at other times she cared little. One day, when calling upon Isabel, she said suddenly:
"Do you know how my father earned the money which I spend for board? He gets up in the morning, before any one else, to feed the cattle and work in the garden and take care of the horses. He wears old, faded clothes, and his hands are hard and crooked, and tremble when he raises his tea——"
She stopped and broke into a moan—"O, it makes my heart ache to think of him alone up there! If you can help me to earn a living I will bless you. What can I do? I thought I was right, but Mr. Mason made me feel all wrong. I'm discouraged now; why was I born?"
Isabel waited until her storm of emotion passed, then she said:
"Don't be discouraged yet, and don't be in haste to succeed. You are only beginning to think about your place in the economy of things. You are costing your father but little now, and he does not grudge it; besides, all this is a part of your education. Wait a year and then we will see what you had better do to earn a living."
They were in her library and Rose sat with her hat on ready to go back to her boarding house. Isabel went on, after a time spent in thought:
"Now the social question is not so hopeless as you think. There are plenty of select fine places for you to go without a swagger gown. Of course, there is a very small circle here in Chicago which tries to be ultra-fashionable, but it's rather difficult because Chicago men have something else to do and won't be dragooned into studying Ward McAllister. You'll find the people here mostly good, sensible people, like the Harveys, who'll enjoy you in any nice, quiet dress. You can meet them informally at dinner or at their little Sunday evening in. So don't you take any more trouble about it," she ended, "and you needn't pay me for the lecture either."
Rose answered her with smiles:
"I wish I could feel—I wish I didn't care a cent about it, but I do. I don't like to feel shut out of any place. I feel the equal of any one; I was brought up that way, and I don't like to be on the outside of anything. That's a dreadful thing to say, I suppose, but that's the way I feel."
"I'm not going to quarrel with you about the depth of your depravity; but I assure you there is no circle in Chicago worth knowing which will shut you out because you are a poor girl. Thank heaven, we have not reached to that point yet. And now about your writing. I believe in you. I liked those verses, though I may not be an acute critic—Mr. Mason says I'm a conservative, and he's probably right. He says you should write as you talk. He told me you had remarkable power in suggesting images to the mind, but in your verse the images were all second-hand. He believes you'll come to your own themes and style soon."
"I hope so." Her answer was rather spiritless in tone.
"There's another thing, Rose. You're going to have suitors here in Chicago, and fine ones too. May I talk with you about that?"
Rose flushed deeply and her eyes fell; she was a little incoherent.
"Why, yes—I don't see any reason—there isn't any need of secrecy."
Isabel studied her from a little distance.
"Rose, tell me: how is it that you didn't marry young, as so many poor girls do?"
Rose considered a moment:
"I hardly know myself."
"You had lovers, always?"
"Yes, always."
"And you had fancies, too?"
"O yes, as all girls do, I suppose."
"Why didn't you marry one of these?"
"Well, for one reason, they didn't please me well enough—I meanlongenough. They grew tiresome after awhile; and then I was ambitious, I wanted to get out into the world. I couldn't marry some one who would bind me down to the cook-stove all my life, and then I had my ideals of what a man should be—and, some way, the boys didn't interest me after awhile."
"I think I understand that. You're going to marry some time, of course."
Rose looked down: "Why, yes, I suppose so—most girls do."
"Don't think I'm impertinent, will you, but is there any—are you bound to any one?"
Rose lifted her face.
"No, I am as free as any woman."
"I'm glad of that, Rose. I was afraid you might be half-engaged to some one in the college or back in the valley. It makes it very fine and simple if you can enter your wider life here, free. You are sure to marry, and you ought to marry well."
Rose replied a little disgustedly:
"I hate to think of marrying for a home, and I hate to think of marrying as a profession. Writers accuse us of thinking of nothing else, and I get sick and tired of the whole thing. I wish I was just a plain animal or had no sex at all. Sometimes I think it is a curse to be a woman." She ended fierce and sullen.
Isabel shrank a little:
"O don't be too hard on me, Rose! I didn't mean to anger you."
"I'm not angry; the things I want to say I can't seem to say. It isn't your fault or mine. It's just fate. I hate to think of 'marrying well'—"
"I think I understand," Isabel said, a little appalled at the storm she had raised. "I haven't been troubled by that question because I have a profession, and have something to think about besides marriage, and still we must think about it enough to prepare for it. The world must have its wives and mothers. You are to be a wife and mother, you are fitted for it by nature. Men see that—that is the reason you are never without suitors. All I was going to say, dear, was this: you are worthy the finest and truest man, for you have a great career, I feel sure of it—and so—but no, I'll not lecture you another minute. You're a stronger woman than I ever was, and I feel you can take care of yourself."
"That's just it. I don't feel sure of that yet. I feel dependent upon my father and I ought not to be; I'm out of school, I'm twenty-three years of age, and I want to do something. I must do something—and I don't want to marry as a—as a—because I am a failure."
"Nobody wants you to do that, Rose. But you didn't mean that exactly. You mean you didn't want to come to any man dependent. I don't think you will; you'll find out your best holt, as the men say, and you'll succeed."
Rose looked at her in silence a moment:
"I'm going to confess something," she finally said with a little laugh. "I hate to keep house. I hate to sew, and I can't marry a man who wants me to do the way other women do. I must be intended for something else than a housewife, because I never do a bit of cooking or sewing without groaning. I like to paint fences and paper walls; but I'm not in the least domestic."
Isabel was amused at the serious tone in which Rose spoke.
"There is one primal event which can change all that. I've seen it transform a score of women. It will make you domestic and will turn sewing into a delight."
"What do you mean?" asked Rose, though more than half guessing.
"I mean motherhood."
The girl shrank, and sat silent, as if a doom had been pronounced upon her.
"That is what marriage must mean to you and to me," Isabel said, and her face had an exultant light in it. "I love my profession—I am ambitious in it, but I could bear to give it all up a hundred times over, rather than my hope of being a mother."
The girl was awed almost into whispering.
"Does it mean that—will it take away your power as a physician?"
"No, that's the best of it these days. If a woman has brains and a good man for a husband, it broadens her powers. I feel that Dr. Sanborn and I will be better physicians by being father and mother. O, those are great words, Rose! Let me tell you they are broader than poet or painter, deeper than wife or husband. I've wanted to say these things to you, Rose. You've escaped reckless marriage someway, now let me warn you against an ambitious marriage—"
She broke off suddenly. "No, I'll stop. You've taken care of yourself so far; it would be strange if you couldn't now." She turned quickly and went to Rose. "I love you," she said. "We are spiritual sisters, I felt that the day you crushed me. I like women who do not cry. I want you to forgive me for lecturing you, and I want you to go on following the lead of your mysterious guide; I don't know what it is or, rather, who he is—"
She stopped suddenly, and seating herself on the arm of Rose's chair, smiled.
"I believe it is a man, somewhere. Come now, confess—who is he?"
Quick as light the form and face of William De Lisle came into Rose's thought, and she said:
"He's a circus rider."
Isabel unclasped Rose's arm and faced her.
"A circus rider!"
Rose colored hotly and looked away.
"I—can't tell you about it—you'd laugh and—well, I don't care to explain."
Isabel looked at her with comical gravity.
"Do you know what you've done, 'coolly' girl? You know the common opinion of woman's curiosity? I don't believe a woman is a bit more curious than a man, only a woman is curious about things he isn't. I'm suffering agonies this minute. You know I'm an alienist. I've studied mad people so much I know just what sends them off. You've started me. If you don't explain at once—" She went to the door and called, "Etta! Don't disturb me, no matter who comes."
"Now tell me about it," she said, as she sat down beside Rose and studied her with avid eyes.
"Why, it's nothing," Rose began. "I never spoke to him, and he never even saw me, and I never saw him but once—"