"Yes.... But for a long time he and Rosalie made me perfectly wretched.... I didn't know I was in love with him, either.... And I couldn't sleep very much, and I—I simply couldn't tell you how unhappy they were making me—and I—sometimes—now and then—in fact, very often, I—formed the custom of—doing what I ought not to have done—to steady my nerves—in fact, I simply let myself go—badly."
"Oh, my darling! My darling! Couldn't you have told me—let me sit with you, talk, read to you—loveyou to sleep? Why did you do this, Geraldine?"
"Nothing—very disgraceful—ever happened. It only helped me to sleep when I was excited and miserable.... I—I didn't care what I did—Duane and Rosalie made me so wretched. And there seemed no use in my trying to be different from others, and I thought I might as well be as rotten as everybody. But I tried and couldn't—I tried, for instance, to misbehave with Jack Dysart, but I couldn't—and I only hated myself and him and Rosalie and Duane!"
She sat up, flushed, dishevelled, lips quivering. "I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week! I gambled with the Pink 'uns and swore as fashionably as I knew how! I scorched my tongue with cigarettes; I sat in Bunny Gray's room with the door bolted and let him teach me how to make silver fizzes and Chinese juleps out of Rose wine and saki! I let Jack Dysart retain my hand—and try to kiss me—several times——"
"Geraldine!"
"Idid. I wanted to be horrid."
She sat there breathing fast, her big brown eyes looking defiantly at Kathleen, but the child's mouth quivered beyond control and the nervous hands tightened and relaxed.
"How bad have I been, Kathleen? It sounds pretty bad to tell it. But Muriel says 'damn!' and Rosalie says 'the devil!' and when anything goes wrong and I say, 'Oh, fluff!' I mean swearing, so I thought I'd do it.... And almost every woman I know smokes and has her favourite cocktail, and they all bet and play for stakes; and from what I hear talked about, nobody's conduct is modified because anybody happens to be married——"
The horror in Kathleen's blue eyes checked her; she hid her face in her hands for a moment, then flung out her arms and crushed Kathleen to her breast.
"I'm going to tell Duane how I've behaved. I couldn't rest until he knows the very worst ... how fearfully common and bad a girl I can be. Darling, don't break down. I don't want to go any closer to the danger line than I've been. And, oh, I'm so ashamed, so humiliated—I—I wish I could go to Duane as—as clean and sweet and innocent as he would have me. For he is the dearest boy—and I love him so, Kathleen. I'm so silly about him.... I've got to tell him how I behaved, haven't I?"
"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'""'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"
"'I want to confess! I've been horribly depraved for a week!'"
"Are—are you going to?"
"Of course I am!" ... She drew away and sat up very straight in bed, serious, sombre-eyed, hands clasped tightly about her knees.
"Do you know," she said, as though to herself, "it is curious that a trivial desire for anything like that"—pointing to Rosalie's gift—"should make me restless—annoy me, cause me discomfort. I can't understand why it should actually torment me. It really does, sometimes."
"That is the terrible part of it," faltered Kathleen. "For God's sake, keep clear of anything with even the faintest odour of alcohol about it.... Where did you find that cut-glass thing?"
"Rosalie gave it to me."
"What is in it?"
"I don't know—crême de something or other."
Kathleen took the girl's tightly clasped hands in hers:
"Geraldine, you've got to be square to Duane. You can't marry him until you cleanse yourself, until you scour yourself free of this terrible inclination for stimulants."
"H-how can I? I don't intend, ever again, to——"
"Prove it then. Let sufficient time elapse——"
"How long? A—year?"
"Dear, if you will show a clean record of self-control for a year I ask no more. It ought not to be difficult for you to dominate this silly weakness. Your will-power is scarcely tainted. What fills me with fear is this habit you have formed of caressing danger—this childish trifling with something which is still asleep in you—with all that is weak and ignoble. It is there—it is in all of us—in you, too. Don't rouse it; it is still asleep—merely a little restless in its slumber—but, oh, Geraldine! Geraldine!—if you ever awake it!—if you ever arouse it to its full, fierce consciousness——"
"I won't," said the girl hastily. "Oh, I won't, I won't, Kathleen, darling. I do know it's in me—I feel that if I ever let myself go I could be reckless and wicked. But truly, truly, I won't. I—darling, you mustn't cry—please, don't—because you are making me cry. I cried in my sleep, too.... I ought to be very happy—" She forced a laugh through the bright tears fringing her lashes, bent forward swiftly, kissed Kathleen, and sprang from the bed.
"I want my bath and breakfast!" she cried. "If I'm to be a Louis XVI doll this week, it's time my face was washed and my sawdust reinforced. Do fix my tray, dear, while I'm in the bath—and ring for my maid.... And when you go down you may tell Duane to wait for me on the stairs. It's good discipline; he'll find it stupid because I'll be a long time—but, oh, Kathleen, it is perfectly heavenly to bully him!"
Later she sent a note to him by her maid:
"To the Only Man in the World,On the Stairs."Patient Sir: If you will go to the large beech-tree beyond Hurryon Gate and busy yourself by carving upon it certain initials intertwined within the circumscribed outlines of a symbol popularly supposed to represent a human heart, your industry will be presently and miraculously rewarded by the apparition of her who presumably occupies no inconsiderable place in your affections."
"To the Only Man in the World,On the Stairs.
"Patient Sir: If you will go to the large beech-tree beyond Hurryon Gate and busy yourself by carving upon it certain initials intertwined within the circumscribed outlines of a symbol popularly supposed to represent a human heart, your industry will be presently and miraculously rewarded by the apparition of her who presumably occupies no inconsiderable place in your affections."
At the Hurryon Gate Duane found Rosalie trying to unlock it, a dainty, smiling Rosalie, fresh as a blossom, and absurdly like a schoolgirl with her low-cut collar, snowy neck, and the thick braid of hair. Under her arm she carried her bathing-dress.
"I'm going for a swim; I nearly perished with the heat last night.... Did you sleep well, Duane?"
"Rather well."
She hesitated, looked up: "Are you coming with me?"
"I have an appointment."
"Oh!... Are you going to let me go alone?"
He laughed: "I've no choice; I really have an appointment this morning."
She inspected him, drew a step nearer, laid both hands lightly on his shoulders.
"Duane, dear," she said, "are you really going to let me drift past you out to sea—after all?"
"What else can I do? Besides, you are not going to drift."
"Yes, I am. You were very nice to me yesterday."
"It was you who were very sweet to me.... But I told you how matters stand. You care for your husband."
"Yes, you did tell me. But it is not true. I thought about it all night long; I find that I do not care for him—as you told me I did."
He said, smiling: "Nor do you really care for me."
"I could care."
Her hands still lay lightly on his shoulders; he smilingly disengaged them, saluted the finger tips, and swung them free.
"No, you couldn't," he said—"nor could I."
She clasped her hands behind her, confronting him with that gaily audacious allure which he knew so well:
"Does a man really care whether or not he is in love with a woman before he makes love to her?"
"Do you want an honest answer?"
"Please."
"Well, then—if she is sufficiently attractive, a man doesn't usually care."
"Am I sufficiently attractive?"
"Yes."
"Then—why do you hesitate?... I know the rules of the game. When one wearies, the other must pretend to.... And then they make their adieux very amiably.... Isn't that a man's ideal of an affair with a pretty woman?"
He laughed: "I suppose so."
"So do I. You are no novice, are you—as I am?"
"Are you a novice, Rosalie?"
"Yes, I am. You probably don't believe it. It is absurd, isn't it, considering these lonely years—considering what he has done—that I haven't anything with which to reproach myself."
"It is very admirable," he said.
"Oh, yes, theoretically. I was too fastidious—perhaps a little bit too decent. It's curious how inculcated morals and early precepts make mountains out of what is really very simple travelling. If a woman ceases to love her husband, she is going to miss too much in life if she's afraid to love anybody else.... I suppose I have been afraid."
"It's rather a wholesome sort of fear," he said.
"Wholesome as breakfast-food. I hate it. Besides, the fear doesn't exist any more," shaking her head. "Like the pretty girls in a very popular and profoundly philosophical entertainment, I've simply got to love somebody"—she smiled at him—"and I'd prefer to fall honestly and disgracefully in love with you—if you'd give me the opportunity." There was a pause. "Otherwise," she concluded, "I shall content myself with doing a mischief to your sex where I can. I give you the choice, Duane—I give you the disposal of myself. Am I to love—you?—or be loved by God knows whom—and make him suffer for it"—she set her little even teeth—"and pay back to men what man has done to me?"
"Nonsense," he said good-humouredly; "isn't there anything except playing at love that counts in the world?"
"Nothing counts without it. I've learned that much."
"Some people have done pretty well without it."
"You haven't. You might have been a really good painter if you cared for a woman who cared for you. There's no tenderness in your work; it's all technique and biceps."
He said gravely: "You are right."
"Am I?... Do you think you could try to care for me—even for that reason, Duane—to become a better painter?"
"I'm afraid not," he said pleasantly.
There was a silence; her expression changed subtly, then the colour came back and she smiled and nodded adieu.
"Good-bye," she said; "I'm going to get into all sorts of mischief. The black flag is hoisted.Malheur aux hommes!"
"There's one now," said Duane, laughing as Delancy Grandcourt's bulk appeared among the trees along Hurryon Water. "Lord! what a bungler he is on a trout-stream!"
Rosalie turned and gazed at the big, clumsy young man who was fishing with earnestness and method every unlikely pool in sight.
"Does he belong to anybody?" she asked, considering him. "I want to do real damage. He is usually at Geraldine's heels, isn't he?"
"Oh, let him alone," said Duane; "he's an awfully decent fellow. If a man of that slow, plodding, faithful species ever is thoroughly aroused by a woman, it will be a lively day for his tormentor."
Rosalie's blue eyes sparkled: "Will it?"
"Yes, it will. You had better not play hob with Delancy. Are you intending to?"
"I don't know. Look at the man! That's the fourth time he's landed his line in a bush! He'll fall into that pool if he's not—mercy!—there he goes! Did you ever see such a genius for clumsiness?"
She was moving forward through the trees as she spoke; Duane called after her in a warning voice:
"Don't try to do anything to disturb him. It's not good sport; he's a mighty decent sort, I tell you."
"I won't play any tricks on your good young man," she said with a shrug of contempt, and sauntered off toward the Gray Water. Her path, however, crossed Grandcourt's, and as she stepped upon the footbridge she glanced down, where, wading gingerly in mid-stream, Delancy floundered and panted and barely contrived to maintain a precarious footing, while sending his flies sprawling down the rapids.
"Good-morning," she nodded, as he caught sight of her. He attempted to take off his cap, slipped, wallowed, and recovered his balance by miracle alone.
"There's a thumping big trout under that bridge," he informed her eagerly; "he ran downstream just now, but I can't seem to raise him."
"You splash too much. You'd probably raise him if you raised less of something else."
"Is that it?" he inquired innocently. "I try not to, but I generally manage to raise hell with every pool before I get a chance to fish it. I'll show you just where he lies. Watch!"
His cast of flies whistled wildly; there was a quick pang of pain in her shoulder and she gave a frightened cry.
"Good Lord! Have I gotyou?" he exclaimed, aghast.
"You certainly have," she retorted, exasperated, "and you had better come up and get this hook out! You'll need it if you want to fish any more."
Dripping and horrified, he scrambled up the bank to the footbridge; she flinched, but made no sound, as he freed her from the hook; a red stain appeared on the sleeve of her waist, above the elbow.
"It's fortunate that it was a b-barbless hook," he stammered, horribly embarrassed and contemplating with dismay the damage he had accomplished; "otherwise," he added, "we would have had to cut out the hook. We're rather lucky, I think. Is it very painful?"
"Sufficiently," she said, disgusted. "But I suppose this sort of thing is nothing unusual for you."
"I've hooked one or two people," he admitted, reddening. "I suppose you won't bother to forgive me, but I'm terribly sorry. If you'll let me put a little mud on it——"
She disdained to reply. He hovered about her, clumsily solicitous, and whichever way she turned, he managed to get underfoot, until, thoroughly vexed, she stood stock-still and opened her arms with a hopeless gesture:
"Whatareyou trying to do, Delancy? Do you want to embrace me? I wish you wouldn't leap about me like a great Dane puppy!"
The red surged up into his face anew:
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm very sorry."
She looked at him curiously: "I beg yours—you big, silly boy. Don't blush at me. Great Danes are exceedingly desirable property, you know.... Did you wish to be forgiven for anything? What on earth are you doing with that horrid fistful of muck?"
"I only want to put some mud on that wound, if you'll let me. It's good for hornet stings——"
She laughed and backed away: "Do you believe there is any virtue in mud, Delancy?—good, deep mire—when one is bruised and sore and lonely and desperate? Oh, don't try to understand—what a funny, confused, stupid way you have of looking at me! I remember you used to look at me that way sometimes—oh, long ago—before I was married, I think."
The heavy colour which surged so readily to his temples began to amuse her; she leaned back against the bridge rail and contemplated him with smiling disdain.
"Do you know," she said, "years ago, I had a slight, healthy suspicion that you were on the verge of falling in love with me."
He tried to smile, but the colour died out in his face.
"Yes, I was on the verge," he contrived to answer.
"Why didn't you fall over?"
"I suppose it was because you married Jack Dysart," he said simply.
"Wasthatall?"
"All?" He thought he perceived the jest, and managed to laugh again.
"Really, I am perfectly serious," repeated Rosalie. "Was that all that prevented you from falling in love with me—because I was married?"
"I think so," he said. "Wasn't it reason enough?"
"I didn't know it was enough for a man. I don't believe I know exactly how men consider such matters.... You've managed to hook that fly into my gown again! And now you've torn the skirt hopelessly! What a devastating sort of creature you are, Delancy! You used to step on my slippers at dancing school, and, oh, Heaven! how I hated you.... Where are you going?" for he had begun to walk away, reeling in his wet line as he moved, his grave, highly coloured face lowered, troubled eyes intent on what he was doing.
When she spoke, he halted and raised his head, and she saw the muscles flexed under the bronze skin of the jaw—saw the lines of pain appear where his mouth tightened. All of the clumsy boy in him had vanished; she had never troubled herself to look at him very closely, and it surprised her to see how worn his face really was under the eyes and cheek-bones—really surprised her that there was much of dignity, even of a certain nobility, in his quiet gaze.
"I asked you where you are going?" she repeated with a faint smile.
"Nowhere in particular."
"But you are goingsomewhere, I suppose."
"I suppose so."
"In my direction?"
"I think not."
"That is very rude of you, Delancy—when you don't even know where my direction lies. Do you think," she demanded, amused, "that it is particularly civil of a man to terminate an interview with a woman before she offers him his congé?"
He finished reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly turned around and inspected Mrs. Dysart.
"I want to tell you something," he said. "I have never, even as a boy, had from you a single word which did not in some vague manner convey a hint of your contempt for me. Do you realise that?"
"W-what!" she faltered, bewildered.
"I don't suppose you do realise it. People generally feel toward me as you feel; it has always been the fashion to tolerate me. It is a legend that I am thick-skinned and stupidly slow to take offence. I am not offended now.... Because I could not be with you.... But I am tired of it, and I thought it better that you should know it—after all these years."
Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a stinging flush deepened over her pretty face.
"Had you anything else to say to me?" he asked, without embarrassment.
"N-no."
"Then may I take my departure?"
She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and intense curiosity.
"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you?" she asked. "Because I haven't meant to."
He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly smile fascinated her.
"You haven't intended to," he said. "It's all right, Rosalie——"
"But—have I been horrid and disagreeable? Tell me."
In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men. What, after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt? His clumsy manner? His awkwardness? His very slowness to exact anything for himself? Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude?
She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life—that is, she had neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the curiosity and interest now stirring her.
"Were you really ever in love with me?" she asked, so frankly that the painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins.
"But—good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am thinking about it with—with a certain re—" She was going to say regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting to him.
She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of the awkwardness with which he moved—a great, big powerful machine, continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of his awkwardness—unskilful self-control—a vague consciousness of the latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, and controlled unskilfully.
She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm, listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun, with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the water in their ears—a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure, sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond.
"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the undisturbed accord.
"Wood-ibis—do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her, warmed her.
"Let me look at your book?"
He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him between forefinger and thumb.
"Shall we try it?"
"Certainly," he said.
Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his head and looked after them.
"That's a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and continued his carving.
So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be made somehow; Geraldine and Naïda Mallett doubled up; twin beds were installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient to last over from the winter.
The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier, gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter—he of the rambling and casual legs—more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his studio at Hurryon Lodge.
The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun; tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter.
As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism—quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before, now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has sanctioned.
Kathleen had never realised what a really sweet and charming fellow he was until that morning, when he took her aside and told her of his engagement.
"Do you know," he said, "it is as though life had stopped for me many years ago when Geraldine and I were playmates; it's exactly as though all the interval of years in between counted less than a dream, and now, at last, I am awake and taking up real life again.... You see, Kathleen, as a matter of fact, I'm incomplete by myself. I'm only half of a suit of clothes; Geraldine always wore the rest of me."
"However," said Kathleen mischievously, "you've been very tireless in trying on, they say. It's astonishing you never found a good fit——"
"That was all part of the dream interval," he interrupted, a little out of countenance, "everything was absurdly unreal. Are you going to be nice to me, Kathleen?"
"Of course I am, you blessed boy!" she said, taking him in her vigorous young arms and kissing him squarely and thoroughly. Then she held him at arms' length and looked him very gravely in the eyes:
"Love her a great deal, Duane," she said in a low voice; "she needs it."
"I could not help doing it."
But Kathleen repeated:
"Love her enough. She will be yours to make—yours to unmake, to mould, fashion, remould—with God's good help. Love her enough."
"Yes," he said, very soberly.
A slight constraint fell between them; they spoke of the fête, and Kathleen presently left to superintend details which never worried her, never disturbed the gay and youthful confidence which had always from the beginning marked her successful superintendence of the house of Seagrave.
Geraldine and Scott were very busy playing hostess and host, receiving new-comers, renewing friendships interrupted by half a summer's separation; but there was very little to do except to be affable, for Kathleen's staff of domestics was perfectly adequate—the old servants of the house of Seagrave, who were quite able by themselves to maintain the household traditions and whip into line of duty the new and less conscientious recruits below stairs.
A great many people were gathered on the terrace when Duane descended the stairs, on his way to inspect his temporary quarters in Miller's loft, at Hurryon Lodge.
He stopped and spoke to many, greeted Delancy Grandcourt's loquacious and rotund mother, politely listened to her scandalous budget of gossip, shook hands cordially with her big, handsome daughter, Catharine, a strapping girl, with the shyly honest eyes of her brother and the rather heavy but shapely body and limbs of an indolent Juno. A harsh voice pronounced his name; old Mr. Tappan extended a dry hand and bored him through with eyes like holes burnt in a blanket.
"And do you still cultiwate the fine arts, young man?" he inquired, as sternly as though he privately suspected Duane of maltreating them.
Duane shook hands with him.
"The school of the indiwidool," continued Mr. Tappan, "is what artists need. Woo the muses in solitude; cultiwate 'em in isolation. Didn't Benjamin West live out in the backwoods? And I guess he managed to make good without raising hell in the Eekole di Boze Arts with a lot of dissipated wagabonds at his elbow, inculcating immoral precepts and wasting his time and his father's money."
And he looked very hard at Duane, who winced, but agreed with him solemnly.
Geraldine, on the edge of a circle of newly arrived guests, leaned over and whispered mischievously:
"Is that whatyoudid at the Ecole des Beaux Arts? Did you behave like all that or did you cultivate the indiwidool?"
He shook hands again, solemnly, with Mr. Tappan, stepped back, and joined her.
"Where on earth have you been hiding?" she inquired.
"You said that if I carved certain cabalistic signs on the big beech-tree you would presently appear to me in a pink cloud—you faithless little wretch!"
"How could I? Three motor-loads arrived from Iron Hill before I was half dressed, and ever since I've been doing my traditional duty; and," in a lower voice, "I was perfectly crazy to go to the beech-tree all the time. Did you wait long, you poor boy?"
"Man is born to wait. I came back just now to find you.... I told Kathleen," he added, radiant.
"What?" she whispered, flushing deliciously. "Oh, pooh! I told her about it this morning—the very first thing. We both snivelled. I didn't sleep at all last night.... There's something I wish to tell you——"
The gay smile suddenly died out in her eyes; a strange, wistful tenderness softened them, touching her lips, too, which always gave that very young, almost childish pathos to her expression. She put out her hand instinctively and touched him.
"I want to be alone with you, Duane—for a little while."
"Shall I go to the beech-tree and wait?"
She glanced around with a hopeless gesture:
"You see? Other people are arriving and I've simply got to be here. I don't see how I can get away before luncheon. Where were you going just now?"
"I thought I'd step over to the studio to see what sort of a shake-down you've given me to repose on."
"I wish you would. Poor child, I do hope you will be comfortable. It's perfectly horrid to send you out of the house——"
"Oh, I don't mind," he nodded, laughing, and she gave him a shy glance of adieu and turned to receive another guest.
In his extemporized studio at Hurryon Lodge he found that old Miller had already provided him with a washstand and accessories, a new tin tub and a very comfortable iron bed.
The place was aromatic with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in turpentine and black soap.
Confronting him on a big improvised easel was the full-length, half-reclining portrait of Rosalie Dysart—a gay, fascinating, fly-away thing after the deliberately artificial manner of the French court painters who simpered and painted a hundred and fifty years ago. Ribbons fluttered from the throat and shoulder of this demure, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed creature, who was so palpably playing at masquerade. A silken parody of a shepherdess—a laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky—this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the flowered petticoat.
The unholy ease with which he had done it gave him a secret thrill of admiration. It was apparently all surface—the exquisite masquerader, the surrounding detail, the technical graciousness and flow of line and contour, the effortless brush-work. Yet, with an ease which demanded very respectful consideration, he had absorbed and transmitted the frivolous spirit of the old French masters, which they themselves took so seriously; the portrait was also a likeness, yet delightfully permeated with the charm of a light-minded epoch; and somehow, behind and underneath it all, a brilliant mockery sparkled—the half-amused, half-indifferent brilliancy of the painter himself. It was there for any who could appreciate it, and it was quite irresistible, particularly since he had, after a dazzling preliminary study or two from a gamekeeper's small, chubby son, added, fluttering in mid-air, a pair of white-winged Loves, chubby as cherubs but much more Gallic.
Nobody excepting Rosalie and himself had seen the picture. What he meant to do with it he did not know, half ashamed as he was of its satiric cleverness. Painters would hate it—stand hypnotised, spellbound the while—and hate it, for they are a serious sort, your painters of pictures, and they couldn't appreciate an art which made fun of art; they would execrate the uncanny mastery and utterly miss the gay perversity of the performance, and Duane knew it and laughed wickedly. What a shock! What would sober, seriously inclined people think if an actor who was eminently fitted to playLear, should bow to his audience and earnestly perform a very complicated and perfect flip-flap?
Amused with his own disrespectful reflections, he stood before the picture, turning from it with a grin from time to time to compare it with some dozen vigorous canvases hanging along the studio wall—studies that he knew would instantly command the owlish respect of the truly earnest—connoisseurs, critics, and academicians in this very earnest land of ours.
There was a Sargent-like portrait of old Miller, with something of that great master's raucous colouring and perhaps intentional discords, and all of his technical effrontery; and here, too, lurked that shadow of mockery ever latent in the young man's brush—something far more subtle than caricature or parody—deeper than the imitation of manner—something like the evanescent caprice of a strong hand, which seems to threaten for a second, then passes on lightly, surely, transforming its menace into a caress.
There were two adorable nude studies of Miller's granddaughters, aged six and seven—quaintly and engagingly formal in their naïve astonishment at finding themselves quite naked. There was a fine sketch of Howker, wrinkled, dim-eyed, every inch a butler, every fibre in him the dignified and self-respecting, old-time servant, who added his dignity to that of the house he had served so long and well. The latter picture was masterly, recalling Gandara's earlier simplicity and Whistler's single-minded concentration without that gentleman's rickety drawing and harmonious arrangements in mud.
For in Duane's work, from somewhere deep within, there radiated outward something of that internal glow which never entirely fades from the canvases of the old masters—which survives mould and age, the opacity of varnish, and the well-intentioned maltreatment of unbaked curators.
There was no mystery about it; he prepared his canvas with white-lead, gave it a long sun-bath, modelled in bone-black and an earth-red, gave it another bath in the sun, and then glazed. This, a choice of permanent colours, and oil as a medium, was the mechanical technique.
Standing there, thoughts remote, idly sorting and re-sorting his brushes, he heard the birds singing on the forest's edge, heard the wind in the pines blowing, with the sound of flowing water, felt the warmth of the sun, breathed the mounting freshness from the fields. Life was still very, very young; it had only begun since love had come, and that was yesterday.
And as he stood there, happy, a trifle awed as he began to understand what life might hold for him, there came quick steps on the stair, a knock, her voice outside his door:
"Duane! May I come in?"
He sprang to the door; she stepped inside, breathing rapidly, delicately flushed from her haste.
"I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Scott to scrape and bow and pull his forelock. I've got to go back in a few minutes. Are you glad to see me?"
He took her in his arms.
"Dearest, dearest!" she murmured, looking at him with all her heart in her brown eyes.
So they stood for a little while, her mouth and body acquiescent to his embrace.
"Such a long, long time since I saw you. Nearly half an hour," he said.
"Yes." She drew away a little:
"Do you know," she said, looking about her, over his shoulder, "I have never been here since you took it as a studio."
She caught a glimpse of the picture on the easel, freed herself, and, retaining his hand in both of hers, gazed curiously at Rosalie's portrait.
"How perfectly charming!" she said. "But, Duane, there's a sort of exquisite impudence about what you've done! Did you mean to gently and disrespectfully jeer at our mincing friends, Boucher, Nattier,et al.?"
"I knew you'd understand!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Oh, you wonderful little thing—you darling!" He caught her to him again, but she twisted away and tucked one arm under his:
"Don't, Duane; I want to see these things. What a perfectly dear study of Miller's kiddies! Oh, it is too lovable, too adorable! You wouldn't sell that—would you?"
"Of course not; it's yours, Geraldine."
After a moment she looked up at him:
"Ours?" she asked; but the smile faded once more from eyes and lips; she suffered him to lead her from canvas to canvas, approved them or remained silent, and presently turned and glanced toward the small iron bed. Manner and gaze had become distrait.
"You think this will be comfortable, Duane?" she inquired listlessly.
"Perfectly," he said.
She disengaged her hand from his, walked over to the lounge, turned, and signed for him to seat himself. Then she dropped to her knees and settled down on the rug at his feet, laying her soft cheek against his arm.
"I have some things to tell you," she said in a low voice.
"Very serious things?" he asked, smiling.
"Very."
"All right; I am listening."
"Very serious things," she repeated, gazing through the window, where green tree-tops swayed in the breezy sunlight; and she pressed her cheek closer to his arm.
"I have not been very—good," she said.
He looked at her, suppressed the smile that twitched at his mouth, and waited.
"I wish I could give myself to you as clean and sweet and untainted as—as you deserve.... I can't; and before we go any further I must tell you——"
"Why, you blessed child," he exclaimed, half laughing, half serious. "You are not going to confess to me, are you?"
"Duane, I've got to tell you everything. I couldn't rest unless I was perfectly honest with you."
"But, dear," he said, a trifle dismayed, "such confidences are not necessary. Nor am I fit to hear your list of innocent transgressions——"
"Oh, they are not very innocent. Let me tell you; let me cleanse myself as much as I can. I don't want to have any secrets from you, Duane. I want to go to you as guiltless as confession can make me. I want to begin clean. Let me tell you. Couldn't you let me tell you, Duane?"
"And I, dear? Do—do you expect me to tellyou? Do you expect me to do as you do?"
She looked up at him surprised; she had expected it. Something in his face warned her of her own ignorance.
"I don't know very much about men, Duane. Are there things you cannot say to me?"
"One or two, dear."
"Do you mean until after we are married?"
"Not even then. There is no use in your knowing."
She had never considered that, either.
"ButoughtI to know, Duane?"
"No," he said miserably, "you ought not."
She sat upright for a few seconds longer, gazing thoughtfully at space, then pressed her pale face against his knee again in silent faith and confidence.
"Anyway, I know you will be fair to me in your own way," she said. "There is only one way that I know how to be fair to you. Listen."
And in a shamed voice she forced herself to recite her list of sins; repeating them as she had confessed them to Kathleen. She told him everything; her silly and common imprudence with Dysart, which, she believed, had bordered the danger mark; her ignoble descent to what she had always held aloof from, meaning demoralisation in regard to betting and gambling and foolish language; and last, but most shameful, her secret and perilous temporising with a habit which already was making self-denial very difficult for her. She did not spare herself; she told him everything, searching the secret recesses of her heart for some small sin in hiding, some fault, perhaps, overlooked or forgotten. All that she held unworthy in her she told this man; and the man, being an average man, listened, head bowed over her fragrant hair, adoring her, wretched in heart and soul with the heavy knowledge of all he dare not tell or forget or cleanse from him, kneeling repentant, in the sanctuary of her love and confidence.
She told him everything—sins of omission, childish depravities, made real only by the decalogue. Of indolence, selfishness, unkindness, she accused herself; strove to count the times when she had yielded to temptation.
He was reading the first human heart he had ever known—a heart still strangely untainted, amid a society where innocence was the exception, doubtful wisdom the rule, and where curiosity was seldom left very long in doubt.
His hands fell over hers as her voice ceased, but he did not speak.
She waited a little while, then, with a slight nestling movement, turned and hid her face on his knees.
"With God's help," she whispered, "I will subdue what threatens me. But I am afraid of it! Oh, Duane, I am afraid."
He managed to steady his voice.
"What is it, darling, that seems to tempt you," he asked; "is it the taste—the effect?"
"The—effect. If I could only forget it—but I can't help thinking about it—I suppose just because it's forbidden—For days, sometimes, there is not the slightest desire; then something stirs it up in me, begins to annoy me; or the desire comes sometimes when I am excited or very happy, or very miserable. There seems to be some degraded instinct in me that seeks for it whenever my emotions are aroused.... I must be honest with you; I—I feel that waynow—because, I suppose, I am a little excited."
He raised her and took her in his arms.
"But you won't, will you? Simply tell me that you won't."
She looked at him, appalled by her own hesitation. Was it possible, after the words she had just uttered, the exaltation of confession still thrilling her, that she could hesitate? Was it morbid over-conscientiousness in the horror of a broken promise to him that struck her silent?
"Say it, Geraldine."
"Oh, Duane! I've said it so often to Kathleen and myself! Let me promise myself again—and keep my word. Let me try that way, dear, before I—I promise you?"
There was a feverish colour in her face; she spoke rapidly, like one who temporises, trying to convince others and over-ride the inward voice; her slender hands were restless on his shoulders, her eyes lowered, avoiding his.
"Perhaps if you and Kathleen, and I, myself, were not so afraid—perhaps if I were not forbidden—if I had your confidence and my own that I would not abuse my liberty, it might be easier to refrain. Shall we try it that way, Duane?"
"Do you think it best?"
"I think—I might try that way. Dear, I have so much to sustain me now—so much more at stake! Because there is the dread of losing you—for, Duane, until I am mistress of myself, I will never, never marry you—and do you suppose I am going to risk our happiness? Only leave me free, dear; don't attempt to wall me in at first, and I will surely find my way."
She sprang up, trying to smile, hesitated, then slowly came back to where he was standing and put her arms around his neck.
"Good-bye until luncheon," she said. "I must go back to my neglected guests—I am going to run all the way as fast as my legs can carry me! Kathleen will be dreadfully mortified. Do you love me?... Even after my horrid confessions?... Oh, you darling!... Now that you know the very worst, I begin to feel as clean and fresh as though I had just stepped from the bath.... And Iwilltry to be what you would have me, dear.... Because I am quite crazy about you—oh, completely mad!"
She bent impulsively and kissed his hands, freed herself with a breathless laugh, and turned and fled.
For a long time her lover stood there, motionless, downcast, clenched fists in his pockets, face to face with the past. And that which lay behind him was that which lies behind what is commonly known to the world as the average man.
The Masked Dance was to begin at ten that evening; for that reason dinner had been served early at scores of small tables on the terrace, a hilarious and topsy-turvy, but somewhat rapid affair, because everybody required time for dressing, and already throughout the house maids and valets were scurrying around, unpacking masks and wigs and dainty costumes for the adorning of the guests at Roya-Neh.
Toward nine o'clock the bustle and confusion became distracting; corridors were haunted by graceful flitting figures in various stages of deshabille, in quest of paraphernalia feminine and maids to adjust the same. A continual chatter filled the halls, punctuated by smothered laughter and subdued but insistent appeals for aid in the devious complications of intimate attire.
On the men's side of the house there was less hubbub and some quiet swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders recently arrived from the city.
The talk was money, summer shows, and club gossip, but financial rumours ruled.
Young Ellis, in pale blue silk and wig, perched airily, on a table, became gloomily prophetic concerning the steady retirement of capital from philanthropic enterprises hatched in Wall Street; Peter Tappan saw in the endlessly sagging market dire disaster for the future digestions of wealthy owners of undistributed securities.
"Marble columns and gold ceilings don't make a trust company," he sneered. "There are a few billionaire gamblers from the West who seem to think Wall Street is Coney Island. There'll be a shindy, don't make any mistake; we're going to have one hell of a time; but when it's over the corpses will all be shipped—ahem!—west."
Several men laughed uneasily; one or two old line trust companies were mentioned; then somebody spoke of the Minnisink, lately taken over by the Algonquin.
Duane lighted a cigarette and, watching the match still burning, said:
"Dysart is a director. You can't ask for any more conservative citizen than Dysart, can you?"
Several men looked around for Dysart, but he had stepped out of the room.
Ellis said, after a silence:
"That gambling outfit from the West has bedevilled one or two good citizens in Gotham town."
Dr. Bailey shrugged his big, fat shoulders.
"It's no secret, I suppose, that the Minnisink crowd is being talked about," he grunted.
Ellis said in a low but perfectly distinct voice:
"Neither is it any secret that Jack Dysart has been hit hard in National Ice."
Peter Tappan slipped from his seat on the table and threw away his cigarette:
"One thing is sure as soubrettes," he observed; "the Clearing House means to get rid of certain false prophets. The game law is off prophets—in the fall. There'll be some good gunning—under the laws of New Jersey."
"I hope they'll be careful not to injure any marble columns or ruin the gold-leaf on the ceilings," sneered Ellis. "Come on, some of you fellows, and fix the buckle in this cursed stock of mine."
"I thought fixing stocks was rather in your own line," said Duane to the foxy-visaged and celebrated manipulator, who joined very heartily in the general and unscrupulous laugh.
A moment later, Dysart, who had heard every word from the doorway, walked silently back to his own room and sat down, resting his temples between his closed fists.
The well-cut head was already silvery gray at the temples; one month had done it. When animated, his features still appeared firm and of good colour; relaxed, they were loose and pallid, and around the mouth fine lines appeared. Often a man's hands indicate his age, and his betrayed him, giving the lie to his lithe, straight, graceful figure. The man had aged amazingly in a month or two.
Matters were not going very well with him. For one thing, the Half-Moon Trust Company had finally terminated all dealings with the gorgeous marble-pillared temple of high finance of which he was a director. For another, he had met the men of the West, and for them he had done things which he did not always care to think about. For another, money was becoming disturbingly scarce, and the time was already past for selling securities.
During the last year he had been vaguely aware of some occult hostility to himself and his enterprises—not the normal hostility of business aggression—but something indefinable—merely negative at first, then more disturbing, sinister, foreboding; something in the very air to which he was growing more sensitive every day.
By all laws of finance, by all signs and omens, a serious reaction from the saturnalia of the last few years was already over-due. He had felt it, without alarm at first, for the men of the West laughed him to scorn and refused to shorten sail. They still refused. Perhaps they could not. One thing was certain: he could scarcely manage to take in a single reef on his own account. He was beginning to realise that the men with whom rumour was busy were men marked down by their letters; and they either would not or could not aid him in shortening sail.
For a month, now, under his bland and graceful learning among the intimates of his set, Dysart had been slowly but steadily going to pieces. At such moments as this it showed on the surface. It showed now in his loose jaw and flaccid cheeks; in the stare of the quenched eyes.
He was going to pieces, and he was aware of it. For one thing, he recognised the physical change setting in; for another, his cool, selfish, self-centred equanimity was being broken down; the rigorous bodily régime from which he had never heretofore swerved and which alone enabled him to perform the exacting social duties expected of him, he had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation, the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable excesses utterly foreign to his habitual self-control.
Dissolute heretofore only in the negative form, whatever it was that impended threatening him, seemed also to be driving him into an utter and monstrous lack of caution, and—God alone knew how—he had at last done the one thing that he never dreamed of doing. And the knowledge of it, and the fear of it, bit deeper into his shallow soul every hour of the day and night. And over all, vague, indefinite, hung something that menaced all that he cared for most on earth, held most sacred—his social position in the Borough of Manhattan and his father's pride in him and it.
After a while he stood up in his pale blue silken costume of that mincing, smirking century which valued a straight back and a well-turned leg, and very slowly, as though tired, he walked to the door separating his wife's dressing-room from his own.
"May I come in?" he asked.
A maid opened the door, saying that Mrs. Dysart had gone to Miss Quest's room to have her hair powdered. He seated himself; the maid retired.
For a while he sat there, absently playing with his gilt-hilted sword, sombre-eyed, preoccupied, listening to the distant joyous tumult in the house, until quick, light steps and a breezy flurry of satin at the door announced his wife's return.
"Oh," she said coolly; "you?"
That was her greeting; his was a briefer nod.
She went to her mirror and studied her face, trying a patch here, a hint of vermilion there, touching up brow and lashes and the sweet, curling corners of her mouth.
"Well?" she inquired, over her shoulder, insolently.
He got up out of the chair, shut the door, and returned to his seat again.
"Have you made up your mind about theDandPsecurities?" he asked.
"I told you I'd let you know when I came to any conclusion," she replied drily.
"Yes, I know what you said, Rosalie. But the time is shortening. I've got to meet certain awkward obligations——"
"So you intimated before."
He nodded and went on amiably: "All I ask of you is to deposit those securities with us for a few months. They are as safe with us as they are with the Half-Moon. Do you think I'd let you do it if I were not certain?"
She turned and scrutinised him insultingly:
"I don't know," she said, "how many kinds of treachery you are capable of."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say. Frankly, I don't know what you are capable of doing with my money. If I can judge by what you've done with my married life, I scarcely feel inclined to confide in you financially."
"There is no use in going over that again," he said patiently. "We differ little from ordinary people, I fancy. I think our house is as united as the usual New York domicile. The main thing is to keep it so. And in a time of some slight apprehension and financial uneasiness—perhaps even of possible future stress—you and I, for our own sakes, should stand firmly together to weather any possible gale."
"I think I am able to weather whatever I am responsible for," she said. "If you do the same, we can get on as well as we ever have."
"I don't believe you understand," he persisted, forcing a patient smile. "All business in the world is conducted upon borrowed capital. I merely——"
"Do you need more capital?" she inquired, so bluntly that he winced.
"Yes, for a few months. I may require a little additional collateral——"
"Why don't you borrow it, then?"
"There is no necessity if you will temporarily transfer——"
"Canyou borrow it? Or is the ice in your trust company too rotten to stand the strain?"
He flushed darkly and the temper began to escape in his voice:
"Has anybody hinted that I couldn't? Have you been discussing my personal business affairs with any of the pups whom you drag about at your heels? No matter what your personal attitude toward me may be, only a fool would undermine the very house that——"
"I don't believe you understand, Jack," she said quietly; "I care absolutely nothing about your house."
"Well, you care about your own social status, I suppose!" he retorted sharply.
"Not very much."
"That's an imbecile thing to say!"
"Is it?" She turned to the mirror and touched her powdered hair lightly with both hands, and continued speaking with her back turned toward him:
"I married you for love. Remember that. There was even something of it alive in the roots, I think, until within a few days—in spite of what you are, what you have done to me. Now the thing is dead. I can tell you when it died, if you like."
And as he said nothing:
"It died when I came in late one evening, and, passing my corridor and a certain locked door, I heard a young girl sobbing. Then it died."
She turned on him, contemptuously indifferent, and surveyed him at her leisure:
"Your conduct to me has been such as to deliberately incite me to evil. Your attitude has been a constant occult force, driving me toward it. By the life you have led, and compelled me to lead, you have virtually set a premium upon my infidelity. What you may have done, I don't know; what you have done, even recently, I am not sure of. But I know this: you took my life and made a parody of it. I never lived; I have been tempted to. If the opportunity comes, I will."
Dysart rose, his face red and distorted:
"I thought young Mallett had taught you to live pretty rapidly!" he said.
"No," she replied, "you only thought other people thought so. That is why you resented it. Your jealousy is of that sort—you don't care what I am, but you do care what the world thinks I am. And that is all there ever was to you—all there ever will be: desperate devotion to your wretched little social status, which includes sufficient money and a chaste wife to make it secure."
She laughed; fastened a gardenia in her hair:
"I don't know about your money, and I don't care. As for your wife, she will remain chaste as long as it suits her, and not one fraction of a second longer."
"Are you crazy?" he demanded.
"Why, it does seem crazy to you, I suppose—that a woman should have no regard for the sacredness of your social status. I have no regard for it. As for your honour"—she laughed unpleasantly—"I've never had it to guard, Jack. And I'll be responsible for my own, and the tarnishing of it. I think that is all I have to say."
She walked leisurely toward the door, passing him with a civil nod of dismissal, and left him standing there in his flower-embroidered court-dress, the electric light shining full on the thin gray hair at his temples.
In the corridor she met Naïda, charming in her blossom-embroidered panniers; and she took both her hands and kissed her, saying:
"Perhaps you won't care to have me caress you some day, so I'll take this opportunity, dear. Where is your brother?"
"Duane is dressing," she said. "What did you mean by my not wishing to kiss you some day?"
"Nothing, silly." And she passed on, turned to the right, and met Sylvia Quest, looking very frail and delicate in her bath-robe and powdered hair. The girl passed her with the same timid, almost embarrassed little inclination with which she now invariably greeted her, and Rosalie turned and caught her, turning her around with a laugh. "What is the matter, dear?"
"M-matter?" stammered Sylvia, trembling under the reaction.
"Yes. You are not very friendly, and I've always liked you. Have I offended you, Sylvia?"
She was looking smilingly straight into the blue eyes.
"No—oh, no!" said the girl hastily. "How can you think that, Mrs. Dysart?"
"Then I don't think it," replied Rosalie, laughing. "You are a trifle pale, dear. Touch up your lips a bit. It's very Louis XVI. See mine?... Will you kiss me, Sylvia?"
Again a strange look flickered in the girl's eyes; Rosalie kissed her gently; she had turned very white.
"What is your costume?" asked Mrs. Dysart.
"Flame colour and gold."
"Hell's own combination, dear," laughed Rosalie. "You will make an exquisite little demon shepherdess."
And she went on, smiling back at the girl in friendly fashion, then turned and lightly descended the stairway, snapping on her loup-mask before the jolly crowd below could identify her.
Masked figures here and there detained her, addressing her in disguised voices, but she eluded them, slipped through the throngs on terrace and lawn, ran down the western slope and entered the rose-garden. A man in mask and violet-gray court costume rose from a marble seat under the pergola and advanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly balanced on his gilded hilt.
"So you did get my note, Duane?" she said, laying her pretty hand on his arm.
"I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?"
"I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?"
He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated.
The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against the foliage.
The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were crossed and recrossed.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
"Life. It's all so very wrong."
"Oh," he said, smiling, "so it's life that is amiss, not we!"
"I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane"—she turned and looked at him—"I haven't had much of a chance yet—to go very right or very wrong."
"You've had chances enough for the latter," he said with an unpleasant laugh. "In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance."
"There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it."
"Yes, and I mean to take her out," said Duane grimly. "Do you think I want Naïda to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?"
"Where can you take her?"
"Where I'm going in future myself—among people whose brains are not as obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and old-fashioned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror of the Decalogue!"
"Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?" she asked curiously.
"Even we are, but some of us are more afraid of ennui. Fire and fear are the greatest purifiers in the world; it's fear of some sort or other, and only fear, that keeps the world as decent as it is."
"I'm not afraid," she said, playing with her fan. "I'm only afraid of dying before I have lived at all."
"What do you call living?"
"Being loved," she said, and looked up at him.
"You poor little thing!" he said, only partly in earnest.
"Yes, I'm sorry for the girl I was.... I was rather a nice girl, Duane. You remember me before I married."
"Yes, I do. You were a corker. You are still."
She nodded: "Yes, outwardly. Within is—nothing. I am very, very old; very tired."
He said no more. She sat listlessly watching the dusk-moths hovering among the pinks. Far away in the darkness rockets were rising, spraying the sky with fire; faint strains of music came from the forest.
"Their Fête Galante has begun," she said. "Am I detaining you too long, Duane?"
"No."
She smiled: "It is rather amusing," she observed, "my coming to you for my morals—to you, Duane, who were once supposed to possess so few."
"Never mind what I possess," he said, irritated. "What sort of advice do you expect?"
"Why, moral advice, of course."
"Oh! Are you on the verge of demoralisation?"
"I don't know. Am I?... There is a man——"
"Of course," he said, coming as near a sneer as he was capable. "I know what you've done. You've nearly twisted poor Grandcourt's head off his honest neck. If you want to know what I think of it, it's an abominable thing to do. Why, anybody can see that the man is in love with you, and desperately unhappy already, I told you to let him alone. You promised, too."
He spoke rapidly, sharply; she bent her fair head in silence until he ended.
"May I defend myself?" she asked.
"Of course."
"Then—I did not mean to make him care for me."
"You all say that."
"Yes; we are not always as innocent as I happen to be this time. I really did not try, did not think, that he was taking a little unaccustomed kindness on my part so seriously ... I overdid it; I'd been beastly to him—most women are rude to Delancy Grandcourt, somehow or other. I always was. And one day—that day in the forest—somehow something he said opened my eyes—hurt me.... And women are fools to believe him one. Why, Duane, he's every inch a man—high-minded, sensitive, proud, generous, forbearing."
Duane turned and stared at her; and to her annoyance the blood mounted to her cheeks, but she went on:
"Of course he has affected me. I don't know how it might have been with me if I were not so—so utterly starved."
"You mean to say you are beginning to care for Delancy Grandcourt?"
"Care? Yes—in a perfectly nice way——"
"And otherwise?"
"I—don't know. I am honest with you, Duane; I don't know. A—a little devotion of that kind"—she tried to laugh—"goes to my head, perhaps. I've been so long without it.... I don't know. And I came here to tell you. I came here to ask you what I ought to do."
"Good Lord!" said Duane, "do you already care enough for him to worry about your effect on him?"
"I—do not wish him to be unhappy."
"Oh. But you are willing to be unhappy in order to save him any uneasiness. See here, Rosalie, you'd better pull up sharp."
"Had I?"
"Certainly," he said brutally. "Not many days ago you were adrift. Don't cut your cable again."
A vivid colour mounted to her temples:
"That is all over," she said. "Have I not come to you again in spite of the folly that sent me drifting to you before? And can I pay you a truer compliment, Duane, than to ask the hospitality of your forbearance and the shelter of your friendship?"
"Youarea trump, Rosalie," he said, after a moment's scowling. "You're all right.... I don't know what to say.... If it's going to give you a little happiness to care for this man——"
"But what will it do to him, Duane?"
"It ought to do him good if such a girl as you gives him all of herself that she decently can. I don't know whether I'm right or wrong!" he added almost angrily. "Confound it! there seems no end to conjugal infelicity around us these days. I don't know where the line is—how close to the danger mark an unhappy woman may drift and do no harm to anybody. All I know is that I'm sorry—terribly sorry for you. You're a corker."