CHAPTER X

I am glad that you have given me this opportunity to escape from a life that for a long time has been dreadful to me. Ten years ago I made a disaster of my life and yours. Forgive me if you can and let me escape. I will not see you again. Whatever you may have to say, please say it to Woodward. From now on he is my protector. In other matters there are my lawyers. It is absolutely not to be thought of that I should speak to you. I hope never to see you alone. I want you to hate me and this note ought to make it easy for you.Betty

Betty

Jasper stared at the name. He was utterly bewildered, utterly staggered, by the amazing dissimulation practiced by this small, soft-lipped, round-eyed girl who had lived with him for solong, sufficiently pliable, sufficiently agreeable. What was back of it all? Another man, of course. In imagination he was examining the faces of his acquaintances, narrowing his lids as though the real men passed in review before him.

“Perhaps you understand the situation better now?” asked Woodward cruelly.

Jasper’s intense pain and humiliation gave him a sort of calm. He seemed entirely cool when he moved back toward his brother-in-law; his eyes were clear, the heat had gone from his temples. He was even smiling a little, though there was a white, even frame to his lips.

“I shall not write to Betty nor attempt to see her,” he said quietly. “But I shall ask you to take a message to her.”

Woodward assented.

“Tell her she shall have her release, but to get it she will have to walk through the mire and there will be no one waiting for her on the other side. Can you remember that? Not even you will be there.” He was entirely self-assured so that Woodward felt a chill of dismay.

“I shall contest the suit,” went on Jasper, “and I believe that I shall win it. You may tell Betty so if you like or she can wait to hear it from my lawyer.” He put the envelope into hispocket, crossed the room, and held back one of the crimson curtains of the door.

“If you have nothing more to say,” he smiled, “neither have I. Good-bye.”

He bowed slightly, and Woodward found himself passing before him in silence and some confusion. He stood for a moment in the hall and, having stammered his way to a cold “Good-afternoon,” he put on his hat and went out.

Jasper returned to the empty drawing-room and began his weaving march.

Before he could begin his spinning which he hoped would entangle Betty and leave her powerless for him to hold or to release at will, he must go to Jane West and tell her what trick life with his help had played upon her. The prospect was bitterly distasteful. Jasper accused himself of selfishness. Because she cared nothing for the world, was a creature apart, he had let the world think what it would. He knew that an askance look would not hurt her; for himself, secure in innocence, he did not care; for Betty, he had thought her cruelly certain of him.

He went to Jane the day after his interview with Woodward Kane. It was Sunday afternoon. She was out, but came in very soon, and he stood up to meet her with an air of confusion and guilt.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, pulling her gloves from her long hands.

Her quickly observant eyes swept him. She walked to him and stood near. The frosty air was still about her and her face was lightly stung to color with exercise. Her wild eyes were startling under the brim of her smart, tailored hat.

Jasper put a hand on either of her shoulders and bent his head before her. “My poor child—if I’d only left you in your kitchen!”

Joan tightened her lips, then smiled uncertainly. “You’ve got me scared,” she said, stepped back and sat down, her hands in her muff. “What is it?” she asked; and in that moment of waiting she was sickly reminded of other moments in her life—of the nearing sound of Pierre’s webs on a crystal winter night, of the sound of Prosper’s footsteps going away from her up the mountain trail on a swordlike, autumn morning.

Jasper began his pacing. Feeling carefully for delicate phrases, he told her Betty’s accusation, of her purpose.

Joan took off her hat, pushed back the hair from her forehead; then, as he came to the end, she looked up at him. Her pupils were larger than usual and the light, frosty tint of rose had left her cheeks.

“Would you mind telling me that again?” she asked.

He did so, more explicitly.

“She thinks, Betty thinks, that I have been—that we have been—? She thinks that of me? No wonder she hasn’t been coming to see me!” She stopped, staring blindly at him; then, “You must tell her it isn’t true,” she said pitifully, and the quiver of her lips hurt him.

“Ah! But she doesn’t want to believe that, my dear. She wants to believe the worst. It is her opportunity to escape me.”

“Haven’t you loved her? Have you hurt her?” asked Joan.

“God knows I have loved her. I have never hurt her—consciously. Even she cannot think that I have.”

“Why must she blame me? Why do I have to be brought into this, Mr. Morena? Can’t she go away from you? Why do the lawyers have to take it up? You are unhappy, and I am so sorry. But you wouldn’t want her to stay if—if she doesn’t love you?”

“I want her. I mean to keep her or—break her.” He turned his back to say this and went toward the window. Joan, fascinated, watched his fingers working into one another, tightening,crushing. “It’s another man she wants,” he said hoarsely, “and if I can prevent it, she shall not have him. I will force her to keep her vows to me—force her. If it kills her, I’ll break this passion, this fancy. I’ll have her back—” He wheeled round, showing a twitching face. “I’ll prove her infidelity whether she’s been unfaithful or not, and then I’ll take her back, after the world has given her one of its names—”

“You don’t love her,” said Joan, very white. “You want to brand her.”

“By God!” swore the Jew, “and I will brand her. I’ll brand her.”

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out the small envelope Woodward Kane had handed to him the day before. He stood turning the letter about in his hands as though some such meaningless occupation was a necessity to him. Joan’s eyes, falling upon the letter, widened and fixed.

“She has written to me,” said Jasper. “She wants her liberty. She wants it in such a way that she will fly clear and I—yes, and you, too, will be left in the mud. There’s a man somewhere, of course. She thinks she has evidence, witnesses against me. I don’t know what rubbish she has got together. But I’m going to fight her. I’m going to win. I’ll save you if I can, Jane; ifnot, of course I am at your service for any amends—”

He stopped in his halting speech, for Joan had stood up and was moving across the room, her eyes fastened on the letter in his hands. She had the air of a sleep-walker.

She opened a drawer of her desk, took out an old tin box, once used for tobacco, and drew forth a small, gray envelope torn in two. Then she came back to him and said, “Let me see that letter,” and he obeyed as though she had the right to ask.

She took his letter and hers and compared the two, the small, gray squares lying unopened on her knee, and she spoke incomprehensibly.

“Betty is ‘the tall child,’” she said, and laughed with a catch in her breath.

Jasper looked at the envelopes. They were identical; Betty’s gray note-paper crossed by Betty’s angular, upright hand, very bold, very black. The torn envelope was addressed to Prosper Gael. Jasper took it, opened each half, laid the parts together, and read:

Jasper is dying. By the time you get this he will be dead. If you can forgive me for having failed you in courage last year, come back. What I have been to you before I will be again, only, this time, we can love openly. Come back.

“Jane,”—Morena spoke brokenly,—“what does it mean?”

“He built that cabin in Wyoming for her,” said Joan, speaking as though Jasper had seen the cañon hiding-place and known its history, “and she didn’t come. He brought me there on his sled. I was hurt. I was terribly hurt. He took care of me—”

“Prosper?” Jasper thrust in. His face was drawn with excitement.

“Yes. Prosper Gael. I was there with him for months. At first I wasn’t strong enough to go away, and then, after a while, I tried. But I was too lonely and sorrowful. In the spring I loved him. I thought I loved him. He wanted me. I was all alone in the world. I didn’t know that he loved another woman. I thought she was dead—like Pierre. Prosper had clothes for her there. I suppose—I’ve thought it out since—that she was to leave as if for a short journey, and then secretly go on that long one, and she couldn’t take many things with her. So he had beautiful stuffs for her—and a little suit to wear in the snow. That’s how I came to call her ‘the tall child,’ seeing that little suit, long and narrow.... This letter came one morning, one awfully bright morning. He read it and went out and thenext day he went away. Afterwards I found the letter torn in two beside his desk on the floor. I took it and I’ve always kept it. ‘The tall child’! He looked so terrible when I called her that.... And she was your Betty all the time!”

“Yes,” said Morena slowly. “She was my Betty all the time.” He gave her a twisted smile and put the two papers carefully into an inside pocket. “I am going to keep this letter, Jane. Truly the ways of the Lord are past finding out.”

Joan looked at him in growing uneasiness. Her mind, never quick to take in all the bearings and the consequences of her acts, was beginning to work. “What are you going to do with it, Mr. Morena? I don’t want you to do Betty a hurt. She must have loved Prosper Gael. Perhaps she still loves him.”

This odd appeal drew another difficult smile from Betty’s husband. “Quite obviously she still loves him, Jane. She is divorcing me so that she can marry him.”

“But, Mr. Morena, I don’t believe he will marry her now. He is tired of her. He is that kind of lover. He gets tired. Now he would like to marry me. He told me so. Perhaps—if Betty knew that—she might come back to you, without your branding her.”

Jasper was startled out of his vengeful stillness.

“Prosper Gael wants to marry you? He has told you so?”

“Yes.” She was sad and humbled. “Nowhe wants to marry me and once he told me things about marrying. He said”—Joan quoted slowly, her eyes half-closed in Prosper’s manner, her voice a musical echo of his thin, vibrant tone—“‘It’s man’s most studied insult to woman.’”

“Yes. That’s Prosper,” murmured Jasper.

“I wouldn’t marry him, Mr. Morena, even if I could—not if I were to be—burnt for refusing him.”

Jasper looked probingly at her, a new speculation in his eyes. She had begun to fit definitely into his plans. It seemed there might be a way to frustrate Betty and to keep a hold upon his valuable protégée. “Are you so sure of that, Jane?”

“Ah!” she answered; “you doubt it because I once thought I loved him? But you don’t know all about me....”

He stood silent, busy with his weaving. At last he looked at her rather blankly, impersonally. Joan was conscious of a frightened, lonely chill. She put out her hand uncertainly, a wrinkle appearing sharp and deep between her eyes.

“Mr. Morena, please—I haven’t any one but you. I don’t understand very well what this divorcing rightly means. Nor what they will do to me. Will you be thinking of me a little? I wouldn’t ask it, for I know you are unhappy and bothered enough, but, you see—”

He did not notice the hand. “It will come out right, Jane. Don’t worry,” he said with absent gentleness. “Keep your mind on your work. I’ll look out for your best interests. Be sure of that.” He came near to her, his hat in his hand, ready to go. “Try to forget all about it, will you?”

“Oh, I can’t do that. I feel sort of—burnt. Betty thinking—that! But I’ll do my work just the same, of course.”

She sighed heavily and sat, the unnoticed hand clasped in its fellow.

When he had gone she called nervously for her maid. She had a hitherto unknown dread of being alone. But when Mathilde, chosen by Betty, came with her furtive step and treacherous eyes, Joan invented some duty for her. It occurred to her that Mathilde might be one of Betty’s witnesses. For some time the girl’s watchfulness and intrusions had become irritatingly noticeable. And Morena was Joan’s only frequent and informal visitor.

“Mathilde thinks I am—that!” Joan said to herself; and afterwards, with a burst of weeping, “And, of course, that is what I am.” Her past sin pressed upon her and she trembled, remembering Pierre’s wistful, seeking face. If he should find her now, he would find her branded, indeed—now he could never believe that she had indeed been innocent of guilt in the matter of Holliwell. Her father had first put a mark upon her. Since then the world had only deepened his revenge.

There followed a sleepless, dry, and aching night.

CHAPTER XTHE SPIDER

“Hullo. Is this Mrs. Morena?”

Betty held the receiver languidly. Her face had grown very thin and her eyes were patient. They were staring now absently through the front window of Woodward Kane’s sitting-room at a day of driving April rain.

“Yes. This is Mrs. Morena.”

The next speech changed her into a flushed and palpitating girl.

“Mr. Gael wishes to know, madam,”—the man-servant recited his lesson automatically,—“if you have seen the exhibition of Foster’s water-colors, Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. He wants to know if you will be there this afternoon at five o’clock. No. 88 in the inner room is the picture he would especially like you to notice, madam.”

Betty’s hand and voice were trembling.

“No. I haven’t seen it.” She hesitated, looking at the downpour. “Tell him, please, that I will be there.”

Her voice trailed off doubtfully.

The man at the other end clipped out a “Very well, madam,” and hung up.

Betty was puzzled. Why had Prosper sent her this message, made this appointment by his servant? Perhaps because he was afraid that, in her exaggerated caution, she might refuse to meet him if she could explain to him the reason for her refusal, or gauge the importance of his request. With a servant she could do neither, and the very uncertainty would force her to accept. It was a dreadful day. Nobody would be out, certainly not at the tea-hour, to look at Foster’s pictures—an insignificant exhibition. Betty felt triumphant. At last, this far too acquiescent lover had rebelled against her decree of silence and separation.

At five o’clock she stepped out of her taxicab, made a run for shelter, and found herself in the empty exhibition rooms. She checked her wrap and her umbrella, took a catalogue from the little table, chatted for a moment with the man in charge, then moved about, looking carelessly at the pictures. No. 88 in the inner room! Her heart was beating violently, the hand in her muff was cold. She went slowly toward the inner room and saw at once that, under a small canvas at its far end, Prosper stood waiting for her.

He waited even after he had seen her smile and quickening step, and when he did come forward, it was with obvious reluctance. Betty’s smile faded. His face was haggard and grim, unlike itself; his eyes lack-luster as she had never seen them. This was not the face of an impatient lover. It was—she would not name it, but she was conscious of a feeling of angry sickness.

He took her hand and forced a smile.

“Betty, I thought you disapproved of this kind of thing. I think, myself, it’s rather imprudent to arrange a meeting through your maid.”

Betty jerked away her hand, drew a sharp breath. “What do you mean? I didn’t arrange this meeting. It was you—your man.”

They became simultaneously aware of a trap. It had sprung upon them. With the look of trapped things, they stared at each other, and Betty instinctively looked back over her shoulder. There stood Jasper in the doorway of the room. He looked like the most casual of visitors to an art-gallery, he carried a catalogue in his hand. When he saw that he was seen he smiled easily and came over to them.

“You will have to forgive me,” he murmured pleasantly; “you see, it was necessary to see you both together and Betty is not willing to allowme an interview. I am sorry to have chosen a public place and to have used a trick to get you here, but I could not think of any other plan. This is really private enough. I have arranged this exhibition for Foster and it is closed to the public to-day. We got in by special permit—a fact you probably missed. And, after all, civilized people ought to be able to talk about anything without excitement.”

Betty’s eyes glared at him. “I will not stay! This is insufferable!”

But he put out his hand and something in his gesture compelled her. She sat down on the round, plush seat in the middle of the room and looked up at the two men helplessly. Joan had once leaned in a doorway, silent and unconsulted, while two men, her father and Pierre, settled their property rights in her. Betty was, after all, in no better case. She listened, whiter and whiter, till at the last she slowly raised her muff and pressed it against her twisted mouth.

Morena stood with his hand resting on the high back of the circular seat almost directly above Betty’s head. It seemed to hold her there like a bar. But it was at Prosper he looked, to Prosper he spoke. “My friend,” he began, and the accentuation of the Hebraic quality of hisvoice had an instantaneous effect upon his two listeners. Both Prosper and Betty knew he was master of some intense agitation. They were conscious of an increasing rapidity of their pulses. “My friend, I thought that I knew you fairly well, as one man knows another, but I find that there have been certain limits to my knowledge. How extraordinary it is! This inner world of our own lives which we keep closely to ourselves! I have a friend, yes, a very good friend, a very dear friend,”—the ironic insistence upon this word gave Prosper the shock of a repeated blow,—“and I fancy, in the ignorance of my conceit, that this friend’s life is sufficiently open to my understanding. I see him leave college, I see him go out on various adventures. I share with him, by letters and confidences, the excitement of these adventures. I know with regret that he suffers from ill-health and goes West, and there, with a great deal of sympathy, I imagine him living, drearily enough, in some small, health-giving Western town, writing his book and later his play which he has so generously allowed me to produce.”

“What the devil are you after, Jasper?”

“But I do my friend an injustice,” went on the manager, undiverted. “His career is infinitelymore romantic. He has built himself a little log house amongst the mountains, and he has decorated it and laid in a supply of dainty and exquisite stuffs. I believe that there is even an outing suit, small and narrow—”

“My God!” said Prosper, very low.

There was a silence. Jasper moved slightly, and Prosper started, but the Jew stayed in his former place, only that he bent his head a little, half-closed his eyes, and marked time with the hand that was not buried in the plush above Betty’s head. He recited in a heavy voice, and it was here that Betty raised her muff!

Jasper is dying. By the time you get this letter he will be dead. If you can forgive me for having failed in courage last year, come back. What I have been to you before, I will be to you again, only this time we can love openly. Come back.

“I am going mad!” said Prosper harshly, and indeed his face had a pinched, half-crazy look.

The Jew waved his hand. “Oh, no, no, no. It is only that you are making a discovery. Letters should be burnt, my friend, not torn and thrown away, but burnt.” He stood up to his stateliest height and he made a curious and rather terrible gesture of breaking something between his twohands. “I have this letter and I hold you and Betty—so!” he said softly—“so!”

Betty spoke. “I might have told you that I loved him, that I have loved him for years, Jasper. If you use this evidence, if you bring this counter-suit, it will bring about the same, the very same, result. Prosper and I—” She broke off choking.

“Of course. Betty and I will be married at once, as soon as she gets her divorce, or you get yours.” But Prosper’s voice was hollow and strained.

“You will be married, Betty,” went on Jasper as calmly as before; “you, branded in the eyes of the world as an unfaithful wife, will be married to a man who has ceased to love you.”

“That is not true,” said Betty.

“Look at his face, my dear. Look at it carefully. Now, watch it closely. Prosper Gael, if I should tell that with a little patience, a little skill, a little unselfishness, you could win a certain woman who once loved you—eh?—a certain Jane West, could you bring yourself to marry this discarded wife of mine?”

Betty sprang up and caught Prosper’s arm in her small hand.

“He is tired of you, Betty. He loves JaneWest.” Jasper laughed shortly, looking at the tableau they made: Prosper white, caught in the teeth of honor, his face set to hide its secret, Betty reading his eyes, his soul.

“I am entirely yours, in your hands,” said Prosper Gael.

Betty shook his arm and let it go. “You are lying. You love the woman. Do you think I can’t see?”

“It will be a very strange divorce suit,” went on Jasper. “Your lawyers, Betty, will perhaps prove your case. My lawyers will certainly prove mine, and, when we find ourselves free, our—our lovers will then unite in holy matrimony—rather an original outcome.”

“Will you go, Prosper?” asked Betty. It was a command.

He saw that, at that moment, his presence was intolerable to her.

“Of course. If you wish it. Jasper, you know where to find me, and, Betty,”—he turned to her with a weary tenderness,—“forgive me and make use of me, if you will, as you will.”

He went out quickly, feeling himself a coward to leave her, knowing that he would be a coward to stay to watch the anguish of her broken heart and pride. For an instant he did hesitate and lookback. They were standing together, calmly, man and wife. What could he do to help them, he that had broken their lives?

Betty turned to Jasper, still with the muff before her mouth, looking at him above it with her wide, childlike, desperate eyes.

“What do you get out of this, Jasper? I will go to Woodward. I will never come back to you.... Is it revenge?”

“If so,” said Jasper, “it isn’t yet complete. Betty, you have been rash to pit yourself against me. You must have known that I would break you utterly. I will break you, my dear, and I will have you back, and I will be your master instead of your servant, and I will love you—”

“You must be mad. I’m afraid of you. Please let me go.”

“In a moment, when you have learned what home you have to go to. This morning I had an interview with your brother in his office, and he wrote this letter that I have in my pocket and asked me to give it to you.”

Betty laid down her muff, showing at last the pale and twisted mouth. Jasper watched her read her brother’s letter, and his eyes were as patient and observant as the eyes of a skillful doctor who has given a dangerous but necessary draught.

Betty read the small, sharp, careful writing, very familiar to her.

I have instructed your maid to pack your things and to return at once to your husband’s house. He is a much too merciful man. You have treated him shamelessly. I can find no excuse for you. My house is definitely closed to you. I will send you no money, allow you no support, countenance you in no way. This is final. You have only one course, to return humbly and with penitence to your husband, submit yourself to him, and learn to love and honor and obey him as he deserves. The evidence of your guilt is incontrovertible. I utterly disbelieve your story against him. It is part of your sin, and it is easily to be explained in the light of my present knowledge of your real character. Whether you return to Morena or not, I emphatically reassert that I will not see you or speak to you again. You are to my mind a woman of shameless life, such a woman as I should feel justified in turning out of any decent household.Woodward Kane

Woodward Kane

The room turned giddily about Betty. She saw the whole roaring city turn about her, and she knew that there was no home in it for her. She could go to Prosper Gael, but at what horrible sacrifice of pride, and, if Jasper now refused to bring suit, could she ask this man, who no longer loved her, to keep her as his mistress? What could she do? Where could she turn? How could she keep herself alive? For the first time, life, strippedof everything but its hard and ugly bones, faced her. She had always been sheltered, been dependent, been loved. Once before she had lost courage and had failed to venture beyond the familiar shelter of custom and convention. Now, she was again most horribly afraid. Anything was better than this feeling of being lost, alone. She looked at Jasper. At that moment he was nothing but a protector, a means of life, and he knew it.

“Will you come home with me now?” he asked her bitterly.

Betty forced the twisted mouth to speech. “What else is there for me to do?” she said.

CHAPTER XITHE CLEAN WILD THING

“The Reverend Francis Holliwell.” Morena turned the card over and over in his hand. “Holliwell. Holliwell. Frank Holliwell.” Yes. One of the fellows that had dropped out. Big, athletic youngster; left college in his junior year and studied for the ministry. Fine chap. Popular. Especially decent to him when he had begun to play that difficult role of a man without a country. Now here was the card of the Reverend Francis Holliwell and the man himself, no doubt, waiting below. Jasper tried to remember. He’d heard something about Frank. Oh, yes. The young clergyman had given up a fashionable parish in the East—small Norman church, wealthy parishioners, splendid stipend, beautiful stone Norman rectory—thrown it all up to go West on some unheard-of mission in the sagebrush. He was back now, probably for money, donations wanted for a building, church or hospital or library. Jasper in imagination wrote out a generous check. Before going down he glanced at the card again and noticed some lines across the back:

This is to introduce one of my best friends, Pierre Landis, of Wyoming. Please be of service to him. His mission has and deserves to have my full sympathy.

So, after all, it wasn’t Holliwell below and the check-book would not be needed. “Pierre Landis, of Wyoming.” Jasper went down the stairs and on the way he remembered a letter received from Yarnall a long time before. He remembered it with an accession of alarm. “I’ve probably let hell loose for your protégée, Jane; given your address, and incidentally hers, to a fellow who wants her pretty badly. His name’s Pierre Landis. You’re a pretty good judge of white men. Size him up and do what’s best for Jane.”

For some time after receiving this letter, Jasper had expected the appearance of this Pierre Landis, then had forgotten him. The fellow who wanted Jane so badly had been a long while on his way to her. Remembering and wondering, the manager opened the crimson curtains and stepped into the presence of Pierre.

Even if he had had no foreknowledge, Jasper felt that, at sight of his visitor, his fancy would have jumped to Joan. It was the eyes; he had seen no others but hers like them for clarity; far-seeing, grave eyes that held a curious depth oflight. Here was one of Joan’s kindred, one of the clean, wild things.

Then came the gentle Western drawl. “I’m right sorry to trouble you, Mr. Morena.”

Jasper took a brown hand that had the feel of iron. The man’s face, on a level with Jasper’s, was very brown and lean. It had a worn look, a trifle desperate, perhaps, in the lines of lip and the expression of the smoke-colored eyes. Jasper, sensitive to undercurrents, became aware that he stood in some fashion for a forlorn hope in the life of this Pierre. At the same time the manager remembered a confidence of Jane’s. She had been “afraid of some one.” She had been running away. There was one that mustn’t find her, and to run away from him, that was the business of her life. Pierre Landis was this “one,” the something wild and clean that had at last come searching even into this city. It was necessary that Jane’s present protector should be very careful. There must be no running away this time, and Pierre must be warned off. Jasper had plans of his own for his star player. For one thing she must draw Prosper Gael completely out of Betty’s life.

Jasper made his guest comfortable, sat opposite to him, and lighted a cigarette. AlthoughPierre had accepted one, he did not smoke. He was far too disturbed.

“Frank Holliwell gave me a note to you, Mr. Morena. I got your address some years ago from Yarnall, of Lazy-Y Ranch, Middle Fork, Wyoming. I’ve been gettin’ my affairs into shape ever since, so that I could come East. I don’t rightly know whether Yarnall would have wrote to you concernin’ me or no.”

“Yes. He did write—just a line—two years ago.”

Pierre studied his own long, brown hands, turning the soft hat between them. When he lifted his eyes, they were intensely blue. It was as though blue fire had consumed the smoke.

“I’ve been takin’ after a girl. She was called Jane on Yarnall’s ranch an’ she was cook there for the outfit. Nobody knowed her story nor her name. She left the mornin’ I came in an’ I didn’t set eyes on her. You were takin’ her East to teach her to play-act for you. I don’t know whether you done so or not, but I’ve come here to learn where she is so that I can find out if she’s the woman I’m lookin’ for.”

Morena smiled kindly. “You’ve come a long way, Mr. Landis, on an uncertainty.”

“Yes, sir.” Pierre did not smile. He was holdinghimself steady. “But I’m used to uncertainty. There ain’t no uncertainty that can keep me from seekin’ after the person I want.” He paused, the eyes still fixed upon Morena, who, uncomfortable under them, veiled himself thinly in cigarette smoke. “I want to see this Jane,” Pierre ended gently.

“Nothing easier, Landis. I’ll give you a ticket to ‘The Leopardess.’ She is acting the title part. She is my leading lady and a very extraordinary young actress. Of course, it’s none of my business, but in a way I am Miss West’s guardian—”

“Miss West?”

“Yes. That is Jane’s name—Jane West. You think it is an assumed one?”

Pierre stood up. “I’m not thinkin’ on this trip,” he said; “I’m hopin’.”

“I am sorry, but I am afraid you’re on the wrong track. There may be a resemblance, there may even be a marked resemblance, between Miss West and the person you want to find, but—again please forgive me—I am in the place of guardian to her at present and I should like to know something of your business, enough of it, that is, to be sure that your sudden appearance, if you happen to be right in your surmise, won’t frighten my leading lady out of her witsand send her off to Kalamazoo on the next train.”

Pierre evidently resented the fashion of this speech. “I’m sorry,” he said with dignity, “not to be able to tell you anything. I’ll be careful not to frighten Miss West. I can see her first from a distance an’ then—”

“Certainly. Certainly.”

Jasper rang and directed his man to get an envelope from an upstairs table. When it came, he handed it to Pierre.

“That is a ticket for to-morrow night’s performance. It’s the best seat I can give you, though it is not very near the stage. However, you will certainly be able to recognize your—Jane, if she is your Jane.”

Pierre pocketed the ticket. “Thank you,” he murmured. His face was expressionless.

Jasper was making rapid plans. “Oh, by the way,” he said hurriedly, “if you should stand near the stage exit to-night, say at about twelve o’clock, you could see Miss West come out and get into her motor. That would give you a fairly close view. But even if you find you are mistaken, Landis, be sure to see ‘The Leopardess.’ It’s well worth your while. You’re going? Won’t you dine with me to-night?”

“No, thank you. I wouldn’t be carin’ to to-night. I—I reckon I’ve got this matter too much on my mind. Thank you very much, Mr. Morena.”

“Before you go, tell me about Holliwell. He was a good friend of mine.”

“He was a good friend to most every one he knowed. He was more than that to me.”

“Then he’s been a success out there?”

Pierre meditated over the words. “Success? Why, yes, I reckon he’s been all of that.”

“A difficult mission, isn’t it? Trying to bring you fellows to God?”

Pierre smiled. “I reckon we get closer to God out there than you do here. We sure get the fear of Him even if we don’t get nothin’ else. When you fight winter an’ all outdoors an’ come near to death with hosses an’ what-not, why, I guess you’re gettin’ close tosomethin’not quite to be explained. Holliwell, he’s a first-class sin-buster, best I ever knowed.”

Morena laughed. He was beginning to enjoy his visitor. “Sin-buster?”

“That’s one name fer a parson. Well, sir, I guess Holliwell is plumb close to bein’ a prize devil-twister.”

“Tell me how you first met him. It ought to be a good story.”

But the young man’s face grew bleak at this. “It ain’t a good story, sir,” he said grimly. “It ain’t anything like that. I must wish you good-by, an’ thank you kindly.”

“But you’ll let me see you again? Where are you stopping? Holliwell’s friends are mine.”

Pierre gave him the address of a small, downtown hotel, thanked him again, and, standing in the hall, added, “If I’m wrong in the notion that brought me to New York, I’ll be goin’ back again to my ranch, Mr. Morena. I’m goin’ back to ranchin’ on the old homestead. I’ve got it fixed up.” He seemed to look through Jasper into an enormous distance. Morena was almost uncannily aware of the long, long journey by which this man’s spirit had trodden, of the desert he faced ahead of him if the search must fail. Was it wrong to warn Jane? Ought this man to be given his chance? Surely here stood before him Jane’s mate. Jasper wished that he knew more of the history back of Pierre and the girl. A man could do little but look out for his own interests, when he worked in the dark. Which would be the better man for Jane?—this Jane so trained, so educated, so far removed superficially from the ungrammatical, bronzed, clumsily dressed, graceful visitor. In every worldly respect, doubtless,Prosper Gael. Only—there were Pierre’s eyes and the soul looking out of them.

Jasper said good-bye half-absently.

An hour later he went to call on Jane.

He found her done up in an apron and a dust-cap cleaning house with astonishing spirit. She and the Bridget, who had recently been substituted for Mathilde, were merry. Bridget was sitting on the sill, her upper half shut out, her round, brick-colored face laughing through the pane she was polishing. Jane was up a ladder, dusting books.

She came down to greet Morena, and he saw regretfully the sad change in her face and bearing which his arrival caused. Bridget was sent to the kitchen. Jane made apologies, and sitting on the ladder step she looked up at him with the look of some one who expects a blow.

“What is it now, Mr. Morena? Have the lawyers begun to—”

He had purposely kept her in the dark, purposely neglected her, left her to loneliness, in the hope of furthering the purposes of Prosper Gael.

“I haven’t come to discuss that, Jane. Soon I hope to have good news for you. But to-day I’ve come to give you a hint—a warning, in fact—toprepare you for what I am sure will be a shock.”

“Yes?” She was flushed and breathing fast. Her fingers were busy with the feather-duster on her knee and her eyes were still waiting.

“I had a visitor this morning—Pierre Landis, of Wyoming.”

She rose, came to him, and clutched his arm. “Pierre? Pierre?” She looked around her, wild as a captured bird. “Oh, I must go! I must go!”

“Jane, my child,”—he put his arm about her, held her two hands in his,—“you must do nothing of the kind. If you don’t want this Pierre to find you, if you don’t want him to come into your life, there’s an easy, a very simple, way to put an end to his pursuit. Don’t you know that?”

She stared up at him, quivering in his arm. “No. What is it? How can I? Oh, he mustn’t see me! Never, never, never! I made that promise to myself.”

“Jane, you say yourself that you are changed, that you are not the girl he wants to find.”

She shook her head desolately enough. “Oh, no, I’m not.”

“He isn’t sure that Jane West is the woman he’s looking for. He’s following the faintest, the most doubtful, of trails. He heard of you fromYarnall; the description of you and your sudden flight made him fairly sure that it must be—you—” Jasper laughed. “I’m talking quite at random in a sense, because I haven’t a notion, my dear, who you are nor what this Pierre has been in your life. If you could tell me—?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said; “no.”

“Very well. Then I’ll have to go on talking at random. Jane at the Lazy-Y Ranch was a woman who had deliberately disguised herself. Jane West in New York is a different woman altogether; but, unless I’m very wrong, she is even more completely disguised from Pierre Landis. If you can convince Pierre that youareJane West, not any other woman, certainly not the woman he once knew, aren’t you pretty safely rid of him for always?”

She stood still now. He felt that her fingers were cold. “Yes. For always. I suppose so. But how can I do that, Mr. Morena?”

“Nothing easier. You’re an actress, aren’t you? I advised Pierre Landis to stand near the stage exit to-night and watch you get into your motor.”

Again she clutched at him. “Oh, no. Don’t—don’t let him do that!”

“Now, if you will make an effort, look him inthe eyes, refuse to show a single quiver of recognition, speak to some one in the most artificial tone you can manage, pass him by, and drive away, why, wouldn’t that convince him that you aren’t his quarry—eh?”

She thought! then slowly drew herself away and stood, her head bent, her brows drawn sharply together. “Yes. I suppose so. I think I can do it. That is the best plan.” She looked at him wildly again. “Then it will be over for always, won’t it? He’ll go away?”

“Yes, my poor child. He will go away. He told me so. Then, will you try to forget him, to live your life for its own beautiful sake? I’d like to see you happy, Jane.”

“Would you?” She smiled like a pitying mother. “Why, I’ve given up even dreaming of that. That isn’t what keeps me going.”

“What is it, then, Jane?”

“Oh, a queer notion.” She laughed sadly. “A kind of kid’s notion, I guess, that if you live along, some way, some time, you’ll be able to make up for things you’ve done, and that perhaps there’ll be another meeting-place—a kind of a round-up—where you’ll be fit to forgive those you love and to be forgiven by them.”

Jasper walked about. He was touched andtroubled. Some minutes later he said doubtfully, “Then you’ll carry through your purpose of not letting Pierre know you?”

“Yes. I’ve made up my mind to that. That’s what I’ve got to do. He mustn’t find me. We can’t meet here in this life. That’s certain. There are things that come between, things like bars.” She made a strange gesture as of a prisoner running his fingers across the barred window of a cell. “Thank you for warning me. Thank you for telling me what to do.” She smiled faintly. “I think he will know me, anyway,” she said, “but I won’t know him. Never! Never!”

That night the theater was late in emptying itself. Jane West had acted with especial brilliance and she was called out again and again. When she came to her dressing-room she was flushed and breathless. She did not change her costume, but drew her fur coat on over the green evening dress she had worn in the last scene. Then she stood before her mirror, looking herself over carefully, critically. Now that the paint was washed off, and the flush of excitement faded, she looked haggard and white. Her face was very thin, its beautiful bones—long sweep of jaw, wide brow, straight, short nose—sharply accentuated. The round throat rising against the fur collar lookedunnaturally white and long. She sat down before her dressing-table and deliberately painted her cheeks and lips. She even altered the outlines of her mouth, giving it a pursed and doll-like expression, so that her eyes appeared enormous and her nose a little pinched. Then she drew a lock of waved hair down across the middle of her forehead, pressed another at each side close to the corners of her eyes. This took from the unusual breadth of brow and gave her a much more ordinary look. A coat of powder, heavily applied, more nearly produced the effect of a pink-and-white, glassy-eyed doll-baby for which she was trying. Afterwards she turned and smiled doubtfully at the astonished dresser.

“Good gracious, Miss West! You don’t look like yourself at all!”

“Good!”

She said good-night and went rapidly down the draughty passages and the concrete stairs. Jasper was standing inside the outer door and applauded her.

“Well done. If it weren’t for your pose and walk, my dear, I should hardly have known you myself.”

Joan stood beside him, holding her furs close, breathing fast through the parted, painted lips.

“Is he here, do you know?”

“Yes. He’s been waiting. I told him you might be late. Now, keep your head. Everything depends upon that. Can you do it?”

“Oh, yes. Is the car there? I won’t have to stop?”

“Not an instant. But give him a good looking-over so that he’ll be sure, and don’t change the expression of your eyes. Feel, make yourself feelinside, that he’s a stranger. You know what I mean. Good-night, my dear. Good luck. I’ll call you up as soon as you get home—that is, after I’ve seen your pursuer safely back to his rooms.” But this last sentence was addressed to himself.

Joan opened the door and stepped out into the chill dampness of the April night. The white arc of electric light beat down upon her as she came forward and it fell as glaringly upon the figure of Pierre. He had pushed forward from the little crowd of nondescripts always waiting at a stage exit, and stood, bareheaded, just at the door of her motor drawn up by the curb. She saw him instantly and from the first their eyes met. It was a horrible moment for Joan. What it was for him, she could tell by the tense pallor of his keen, bronzed face. The eyes she had not seen for such an agony of years, the strange, deep,iris-colored eyes, there they were now searching her. She stopped her heart in its beating, she stopped her breath, stopped her brain. She became for those few seconds just one thought—“I have never seen you. I have never seen you.” She passed so close to him that her fur touched his hand, and she looked into his face with a cool, half-disdainful glitter of a smile.

“Step aside, please,” she said; “I must get in.” Her voice was unnaturally high and quite unnaturally precise.

Pierre said one word, a hopeless word. “Joan.” It was a prayer. It should have been, “Be Joan.” Then he stepped back and she stumbled into shelter.

At the same instant another man—a man in evening dress—hastily prevented her man from closing the door.

“Miss West, may I see you home?”

Before she could speak, could do more than look, Prosper Gael had jumped in, the door slammed, the car began its whirr, and they were gliding through the crowded, brilliant streets.

Joan had bent forward and was rocking to and fro.

“He called me ‘Joan,’” she gasped over and over. “He called me ‘Joan.’”

“That was Pierre?” Prosper had been forewarned by Jasper and had planned his part.

She kept on rocking, holding her hands on either side of her face.

“I must go away. If I see him again I shall die. I could never do that another time. O God! His hand touched me. He called me ‘Joan’ ... I must go....”

Prosper did not touch her, but his voice, very friendly, very calm, had an instantaneous effect. “I will take you away.”

She laughed shakily. “Again?” she asked, and shamed him into silence.

But after a while he began very reasonably, very patiently:

“I can take you away so that you need not be put through this unnecessary pain. I can arrange it with Morena. If Pierre sees you often enough, he will be sure to recognize you. Joan, I did not deserve that ‘again’ and you know it. I am a changed man. If you don’t know that now I have the heart of—of devotion, of service, toward you, you are indeed a blind and stupid woman. But you do know it. You must.”

She sat silent beside him, the long and slender hand between her face and him.

“I can take you away,” he went on presently,“and keep you from Pierre until he has given up his search and has gone West again. And I can take you at once—in a day or two. Your understudy can fill the part. This engagement is almost at an end. I can make it up to Morena. After all, if we go, we shall be doing Betty and him a service.”

Joan flung out her hands recklessly. “Oh,” she cried, “what does it matter? Of course I’ll go. I’d run into the sea to escape Pierre—” She leaned back against the cushioned seat, rolled her head a little from side to side like a person in pain. “Take me away,” she repeated. “I believe that if I stay I shall go mad. I’ll go anywhere—with any one. Only take me away.”

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