"Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise.""Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise."
"Oh, the horror of it!—the shame, the agonised surprise."
"Oh, don't,don't!" she whimpered. "It is too terrible! It ruined your father and your grandfather! Darling, I couldn't bear to tell you this before, but now I've got to tell you! It is in your blood. Seagraves die of it! Do you understand?"
"W-what?" stammered the girl.
"That all their lives they did what—what you have done to-day—that you have inherited their terrible inclinations. Even as a little child you frightened me. Have you forgotten what you and I talked over and cried over after your first party?"
The girl said slowly: "I don't know how—it—happened, Kathleen. Duane came in.... I tasted what he had in his glass.... I don't know why I did it. I wish I were dead!"
"There is only one thing to do—never to touch anything—anything——"
"Y-yes, I know that I must not. But how was I to know before? Will you tell me?"
"You understandnow, thank God!"
"N-not exactly.... Other girls seem to do as they please without danger.... It is amazing that such a horrible thing should happen to me——"
"It is a shameful thing that it should happen to any woman. And the horror of it is that almost every hostess in town lets girls of your age run the risk. Darling, don't you know that the only chance a woman has with the world is in her self-control? When that goes, her chances go, every one of them! Dear—we have latent in us much the same vices that men have. We have within us the same possibilities of temptations, the same capacity for excesses, the same capabilities for resistance. Because you are a girl, you are not immune from unworthy desires."
"I know it. The—the dreadful thing about it is that I do desire such things. Perhaps I had better not even nibble sugar scented with cologne——"
"Do you dothat?" faltered Kathleen.
"I did not know there was any danger in it," sobbed the girl. "You have scared me terribly, Kathleen."
"Is that true about the cologne?"
"Y-yes."
"You don't do it now, do you?"
"Yes."
"You don't do it every day, do you?"
"Yes, several times."
"How long"—Kathleen's lips almost refused to move—"how long have you done this?"
"For a long time. I've been ashamed of it. It's—it's the alcohol in it that I like, isn't it? I never thought of it in that way till now."
Kathleen, on her knees by the bedside, was crying silently. The girl slipped from her arms, turned partly over, and lying on her back, stared upward through the darkness.
So this was the secret reason that, unsuspected, had long been stirring her to instinctive uneasiness, which had made her half ashamed, half impatient with this silly habit which already inconvenienced her. Yet even now she could not feel any real alarm; she could not understand that the fangs of a habit can poison when plucked out. Of course there was now only one thing to do—keep aloof from everything. That would be easy. The tingling warmth of the perfume was certainly agreeable, but she must not risk even such a silly indulgence as that. Really, it was a very simple matter. She sat up, supporting her weight on one arm.
"Kathleen, darling," she whispered, bending forward and drawing the elder woman up onto the bed, "you mustn't be frightened about me. I've learned some things I didn't know. Do you think Duane—" In the darkness the blood scorched her face, the humiliation almost crushed her. But she went on: "Do you think Duane suspects that—that——"
"I don't think Duane suspects anything," said Kathleen, striving to steady her voice. "You came in here as soon as you felt—ill; didn't you?"
"I—yes——"
She could say no more. How she came to be on her bed in her own room she could not remember. It seemed to her as though she had fallen asleep on the lounge. Somehow, after Duane had gone, she must have waked and gone to her own room. But she could not recollect doing it.
Now she realised that she was tired, wretched, feverish. She suffered Kathleen to undress her, comb her hair, bathe her, and dry the white, slender body and limbs in which the veins still burned and throbbed.
When at length she lay between the cool sheets, silent, limp, heavy-lidded, Kathleen turned out the electric brackets and lighted the candle.
"Dear," she said, trying to speak cheerfully, "do you know what your brother has done?"
"What?" asked Geraldine drowsily.
"He has bought Roya-Neh, if you please, and he invites you to draw a check for half of it and to move there next week. As for me, I was furious with him. What do you think?"
Her voice softened to a whisper; she bent over the girl, looking closely at the closed lids. Under them a faint bluish tint faded into the whiteness of the cheek.
"Darling, darling!" whispered Kathleen, bending closer over the sleeping girl, "I love you so—I love you so!" And even as she said it, between the sleeper's features and her own floated the vision of Scott's youthfully earnest face; and she straightened suddenly to her full height and laid her hand on her breast in consternation. Under the fingers' soft pressure her heart beat faster. Again, with new dismay, this incredible sensation was stealing upon her, threatening to transform itself into something real, something definite, something not to be stifled or ignored.
She extinguished the candle; as she felt her way out of the darkness, arms extended, far away in the house she heard a door open and shut, and she bent over the balustrade to listen.
"Is that you, Scott?" she called softly.
"Yes; Duane and I did some billiards at the club." He looked up at her, the same slight pucker between his brows, boyishly slender in his evening dress. "You're not going to bed at once, are you, Kathleen, dear?"
"Yes, I am," she said briefly, backing into her own room, but holding the door ajar so that she could look out at him.
"Oh, come out and talk to a fellow," he urged; "I'm quite excited about this Roya-Neh business——"
"You're a perfect wretch, Scott. I don't want to talk about your unholy extravagance."
The boy laughed and stood at ease looking at the pretty face partly disclosed between door and wall with darkness for a velvety background.
"Just come out into the library while I smoke one cigarette," he began in his wheedling way. "I'm dying to talk to you about the game-preserve——"
"I can't; I'm not attired for a tête-à-tête with anything except my pillow."
"Then put on one of those fetching affairs you wear sometimes——"
"Oh, Scott, you are a nuisance!"
When, a few moments later, she came into the library in a delicate shimmering thing and little slippers of the same elusive tint, Scott jumped up and dragged a big chair forward.
"You certainly are stunning, Kathleen," he said frankly; "you look twenty with all the charm of thirty. Sit here; I've a map of the Roya-Neh forest to show you."
He drew up a chair for himself, lifted a big map from the table, and, unrolling it, laid it across her knees. Then he began to talk enthusiastically about lake and stream and mountain, and about wild boar and deer and keepers and lodges; and she bent her pretty head over the map, following his moving pencil with her eyes, sometimes asking a question, sometimes tracing a road with her own delicate finger.
Once or twice it happened that their hands touched en passant; and at the light contact, she was vaguely aware that somewhere, deep within her, the same faint dismay awoke; that in her, buried in depths unsuspected, something incredible existed, stirred, threatened.
"Scott, dear," she said quietly, "I am glad you are happy over Roya-Neh forest, but itwastoo expensive, and it troubles me; so I'm going to sleep to dream over it."
"You sweet little goose!" laughed the boy impulsively, passing his arm around her. He had done it so often to this nurse and mother.
They both rose abruptly; the map dropped; his arm fell away from her warm, yielding body.
He gazed at her flushed face rather stupidly, not realising yet that the mother and nurse and elder sister had vanished like a tinted bubble in that strange instant—that Kathleen was gone—that, in her calm, sweet, familiar guise stood a woman—a stranger, exquisite, youthful, with troubled violet eyes and vivid lips, looking at him as though for the first time she had met his gaze across the world.
She recovered her composure instantly.
"I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm too sleepy to talk any more. Besides, Geraldine isn't very well, and I'm going to doze with one eye open. Good-night, dear."
"Good-night," said the boy vacantly, not offering the dutiful embrace to which he and she had so long and so lightly been accustomed.
Late on a fragrant mid-June afternoon young Seagrave stood on the Long Terrace to welcome a guest whose advent completed a small house-party of twelve at Roya-Neh.
"Hello, Duane!" cried the youthful landowner in all the pride of new possession, as Mallett emerged from the motor; "frightfully glad to see you, old fellow! How is it in town? Did you bring your own rods? There are plenty here. What do you think of my view? Isn't that rather fine?"—looking down through the trees at the lake below. "There are bass in it. Those things standing around under the oaks are only silly English fallow deer. Sorry I got 'em. What do you think of my house? It's merely a modern affair worked up to look old and colonial.... Yes, it certainly does resemble the real thing, but it isn't. No Seagraves fit and bled here. Those are Geraldine's quarters up there behind the leaded windows. Those are Kathleen's where the dinky woodbine twineth. Mine face the east, and yours are next. Come on out into the park——"
"Not much!" returned young Mallett. "I want a bath!"
"The park," interrupted Scott excitedly, "is the largest fenced game-preserve in America! It's only ten minutes to the Sachem's Gate, if we walk fast."
"I want a bath and fresh linen."
"Don't you care to see the trout? Don't you want to try to catch a glimpse of a wild boar? I should think you'd be crazy to see——"
"I'm crazy about almost any old thing when I'm well scrubbed; otherwise, I'm merely crazy. That was a wild trip up. I'm all over cinders."
A woman came quietly out onto the terrace, and Duane instantly divined it, though his back was toward her and her skirts made no sound.
"Oh, is that you, Kathleen?" he cried, pivoting. "How d'ye do?" with a vigorous handshake. "Every time I see you you're three times as pretty as I thought you were when I last saw you."
"Neat but involved," said Kathleen Severn. "You have a streak of cinder across that otherwise fascinating nose."
"I don't doubt it! I'm going. Where's Geraldine?"
"Having her hair done in your honour; return the compliment by washing your face. There's a maid inside to show you."
"Show me how to wash my face!" exclaimed Duane, delighted. "This is luxury——"
"I want him to see the Gray Water before it's too late, with the sunlight on the trees and the big trout jumping," protested Scott.
"I'll do my own jumping if you'll furnish the tub," observed Duane. "Where's that agreeable maid who washes your guests' faces?"
Kathleen nodded an amused dismissal to them. Arm in arm they entered the house, which was built out of squared blocks of field stone. Scott motioned the servants aside and did the piloting himself up a broad stone stairs, east along a wide sunny corridor full of nooks and angles and antique sofas and potted flowers.
"Not that way," he said; "Dysart is in there taking a nap. Turn to the left."
"Dysart?" repeated Duane. "I didn't know there was to be anybody else here."
"I asked Jack Dysart because he's a good rod. Kathleen raised the deuce about it when I told her, but it was too late. Anyway, I didn't know she had no use for him. He's certainly clever at dry-fly casting. He uses pneumatic bodies, not cork or paraffine."
"Is his wife here?" asked Duane carelessly.
"Yes. Geraldine asked her as soon as she heard I'd written to Jack. But when I told her the next day that I expected you, too, she got mad all over, and we had a lively talk-fest. What was there wrong in my having you and the Dysarts here at the same time? Don't you get on?"
"Charmingly," replied Duane airily.... "It will be very interesting, I think. Is there anybody else here?"
"Delancy Grandcourt. Isn't he the dead one? But Geraldine wanted him. And there's that stick of a Quest girl, and Bunbury Gray. Naïda came over this afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill—thank goodness——"
"I didn't know my sister was to be here."
"Yes; and you make twelve, counting Geraldine and me and the Pink 'uns."
"You didn't tell me it was to be a round-up," repeated Duane, absently surveying his chintz-hung quarters. "This is a pretty place you've given me. Where do you get all your electric lights? Where do you get fancy plumbing in this wilderness?"
"Our own plant," explained the boy proudly. "Isn't that corking water? Look at it—heavenly cold and clear, or hot as hell, whichever way you're inclined—" turning on a silver spigot chiselled like a cherub. "That water comes from Cloudy Lake, up there on that dome-shaped mountain. Here, stand here beside me, Duane, and you can see it from your window. That's the Gilded Dome—that big peak. It's in our park. There are a few elk on it, not many, because they'd starve out the deer. As it is, we have to cut browse in winter. For Heaven's sake, hurry, man! Get into your bath and out again, or we'll miss the trout jumping along Gray Water and Hurryon Brook."
"Let 'em jump!" retorted Duane, forcibly ejecting his host from the room and locking the door. Then, lighting a cigarette, he strolled into the bath room and started the water running into the porcelain tub.
He was in excellent spirits, quite undisturbed by the unexpected proximity of Rosalie Dysart or the possible renewal of their hitherto slightly hazardous friendship. He laid his cigarette aside for the express purpose of whistling while undressing.
Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and sartorially freshened, he selected a blue corn-flower from the rural bouquet on his dresser, drew it through his buttonhole, gave a last alluring twist to his tie, surveyed himself in the mirror, whistled a few bars, was perfectly satisfied with himself, then, unlocking the door, strolled out into the corridor. Having no memory for direction, he took the wrong turn.
A distractingly pretty maid laid aside her sewing and rose from her chair to set him right; he bestowed upon her his most courtly thanks. She was unusually pretty, so he thanked her again, and she dimpled, one hand fingering her apron's edge.
"My child," said he gravely, "are you by any fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?"
She replied that she thought she was.
"In that case," he said, "this is one of those rare occasions in a thankless world where goodness is amply and instantly rewarded."
She made a perfunctory resistance, but looked after him, smiling, as he sauntered off down the hallway, rearranging the blue corn-flower in his button-hole. At the turn by the window, where potted posies stood, he encountered Rosalie Dysart in canoe costume—sleeves rolled up, hair loosened, becomingly tanned, and entirely captivating in her thoughtfully arranged disarray.
"Why, Duane!" she exclaimed, offering both her hands with that impulsively unstudied gesture she carefully cultivated for such occasions.
He took them; he always took what women offered.
"This is very jolly," he said, retaining the hands and examining her with unfeigned admiration. "Tell me, Mrs. Dysart, are you by any fortunate chance as good as you are ornamental?"
"I heard you ask that of the maid around the corner," said Rosalie coolly. "Don't let the bucolic go to your head, Mr. Mallett." And she disengaged her hands, crossed them behind her, and smiled back at him. It was his punishment. Her hands were very pretty hands, and well worth holding.
"That maid," he said gravely, "has excellent manners. I merely complimented her upon them.... What else did you—ah—hear, Mrs. Dysart?"
"What one might expect to hear wherever you are concerned. I don't mind. The things you do rather gracefully seem only offensive when other men do them.... Have you just arrived?"
"An hour ago. Did you know I was coming?"
"Geraldine mentioned it to everybody, but I don't think anybody swooned at the news.... My husband is here."
She still confronted him, hands behind her, with an audacity which challenged—her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared arms with a rose light.
"Well?" she asked.
"If only youwereas good as you are ornamental," he said, looking at her impudently. "But I'm afraid you're not."
"What would happen to me if I were?"
"Why," he said with innocent enthusiasm, "you would haveyourreward, too, Mrs. Dysart."
"The sort of reward which I heard you bestow a few moments ago upon that maid? I'm no longer the latter, so I suppose I'm not entitled to it, am I?"
The smile still edged her pretty mouth; there was an instant when matters looked dubious for her; but a door opened somewhere, and, still smiling, she slipped by him and vanished into a neighbouring corridor.
Howker, the old butler, met him at the foot of the stairs.
"Tea is served on the Long Terrace, sir. Mr. Seagrave wishes to know whether you would care to see the trout jumping on the Gray Water this evening? If so, you are please not to stop for tea, but go directly to the Sachem's Gate. Redmond will guide you, sir."
"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.'""'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.'"
"'This is one of those rare occasions ... where goodness is amply ... rewarded.'"
"All right, Howker," said Duane absently; and strolled on along the hall, thinking of Mrs. Dysart.
The front doors swung wide, opening on the Long Terrace, which looked out across a valley a hundred feet below, where a small lake glimmered as still as a mirror against a background of golden willows and low green mountains.
There were a number of young people pretending to take tea on the terrace; and some took it, and others took other things. He knew them all, and went forward to greet them. Geraldine Seagrave, a new and bewitching coat of tan tinting cheek and neck, held out her hand with all the engaging frankness of earlier days. Her clasp was firm, cool, and nervously cordial—the old confident affection of childhood once more.
"I amsoglad you came, Duane. I've really missed you." And sweeping the little circle with an eager glance; "You know everybody, I think. The Dysarts have not yet appeared, and Scott is down at the Gate Lodge. Come and sit by me, Duane."
Two or three girls extended their hands to him—Sylvia Quest, shy and quiet; Muriel Wye, white-skinned, black-haired, red-lipped, red-cheeked, with eyes like melted sapphires and the expression of a reckless saint; and his blond sister, Naïda, who had arrived that afternoon from the Tappans' at Iron Hill, across the mountain.
Delancy Grandcourt, uncouth and highly coloured, stood up to shake hands; Bunbury Gray, a wiry, bronzed little polo-playing squadron man, hailed Duane with enthusiasm.
"Awfully glad to see you, Bunny," said Duane, who liked him immensely—"oh, how are you?" offering his hand to Reginald Wye, a hard-riding, hard-drinking, straight-shooting young man, who knew nothing on earth except what concerned sport and the drama. He and his sister of the sapphire eyes and brilliant cheeks were popularly known as the Pink 'uns.
Jack Dysart arrived presently, graceful, supple, always smilingly, elaborate of manner, apparently unconscious that he was not cordially admired by the men who returned his greeting. Later, Rosalie, came, enchantingly demure in her Greuze-like beauty. Chardin might have made her; possibly Fragonard. She did not resemble the Creator's technique. Dresden teacups tinkled, ice clattered in tall glasses, the two fountains splashed away bravely, prettily modulated voices made agreeable harmony on the terrace, blending with the murmur of leaves overhead as the wind stirred them to gossip. Over all spread a calm evening sky.
"Tea, dear?" asked Geraldine, glancing up at Mrs. Dysart. Rosalie shook her head with a smile.
Lang, the second man, was flitting about, busy with a decanter of Scotch. A moment later Rosalie signified her preference for it with a slight nod. Geraldine, who sat watching indifferently the filling of Mrs. Dysart's glass, suddenly leaned back and turned her head sharply, as though the aroma from glass and decanter were distasteful to her. In a few minutes she rose, walked over to the parapet, and stood leaning against the coping, apparently absorbed in the landscape.
The sun hung low over the flat little tree-clad mountains, which the lake, now inlaid with pink and gold, reflected. A few fallow deer moved quietly down there, ruddy spots against the turf.
Duane, carrying his glass with him, rose and stepped across the strip of grass to her side, and, glancing askance at her, was on the point of speaking when he discovered that her eyes were shut and her face colourless and rigid.
"What is it?" he asked surprised. "Are you feeling faint, Geraldine?"
She opened her eyes, velvet dark and troubled, but did not turn around.
"It's nothing," she answered calmly. "I was thinking of several things."
"You look so white——"
"I am perfectly well. Bend over the parapet with me, Duane. Look at those rocks down there. What a tumble! What a death!"
He placed his glass between them on the coping, and leaned over. She did not notice the glass for a moment. Suddenly she wheeled, as though he had spoken, and her eyes fell on the glass.
"Whatisthe matter?" he demanded, as she turned on her heel and moved away.
"I'm a trifle nervous, I believe. If you want to see the big trout breaking on Hurryon, you'd better come with me."
She was walking swiftly down the drive to the south of the house. He overtook her and fell into slower step beside her.
The sun had almost disappeared behind the mountains; bluish haze veiled the valley; a horizon of dazzling yellow flecked with violet faded upward to palest turquoise. High overhead a feathered cloud hung, tinged with rose.
The south drive was bordered deep in syringas, all over snowy bloom; and as they passed they inhaled the full fragrance of the flowers with every breath.
"It's like heaven," said Duane; "and you are not incongruous in the landscape, either."
She looked around at him; the smile that curved her mouth had the faintest suspicion of tenderness about it.
She said slowly:
"Do you realise that I am genuinely glad to see you? I've been horrid to you. I don't yet really believe in you, Duane. I detest some of the things you are and say and do; but, after all, I've missed you. Incredible as it sounds, I've been a little lonely without you."
He said gaily: "When a woman becomes accustomed to chasing the family cat out of the parlour with the broom, she misses the sport when the cat migrates permanently."
"Have you migrated—permanently? O Duane! I thought youdidcare for me—in your own careless fashion——"
"I do. But I'm not hopelessly enamoured of your broom-stick!"
Her laugh was a little less spontaneous, as she answered:
"I know I have been rather free with my broom. I'm sorry."
"Youhavemade some sweeping charges on that cat!" he said, laughing.
"I know I have. That was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I'd be easier on anything now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to me.... After all, you're the oldest friend I have except Kathleen."
"I'll be as nice as you'll let me," he said. They turned from the driveway and entered a broad wood road. "As nice as you'll let me," he repeated.
"I won't let you be sentimental, if that's what you mean," she observed.
"Why?"
"Because you are you."
"In a derogatory sense?"
"Somewhat. I might be like you if I were a man, and had your easy, airy, inconsequential way with women. But I won't let you have it with me, my casual friend. Don't hope for it."
"What have I ever done——"
"Exactly what you're doing now to Rosalie—what you did to a dozen women this winter—what you did to me"—she turned and looked at him—"the first time I ever set eyes on you since we were children together. I know you are not to be taken seriously; almost everybody knows that! And all the same, Duane, I've thought about you a lot in these two months up here, and—I'm happy that you've come at last.... You won't mistake me and try to be sentimental with me, will you?"
She laid her slim, sun-tanned hand on his arm; they walked on together through the woodland where green bramble sprays glimmered through clustering tree trunks and the fading light turned foliage and undergrowth to that vivid emerald which heralds dusk.
"Duane," she said, "I'm dreadfully restless and I cannot account for it.... Perhaps motherless girls are never quite normal; I don't know. But, lately, the world has seemed very big and threatening around me.... Scott is nice to me, usually; Kathleen adorable.... I—I don't know what I want, what it is I miss."
Her hand still rested lightly on his arm as they walked forward. She was speaking at intervals almost as though talking in an undertone to herself:
"I'm in—perplexity. I've been troubled. Perhaps that is what makes me tolerant of you; perhaps that's why I'm glad to see you.... Trouble is a new thing to me. I thought I had troubles—perhaps I had as a child. But this is deeper, different, disquieting."
"Are you in love?" he asked.
"No."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Then what——"
"I can't tell you. Anyway, it won't last. It can't, ... Can it?"
She looked around at him, and they both laughed a little at her inconsequence.
"I feel better for pretending to tell you, anyway," she said, as they halted before high iron gates hung between two granite posts from which the woven wire fence of the game park, ten feet high, stretched away into the darkening woods on either hand.
"This is the Sachem's Gate," she said; "here is the key; unlock it, please."
Inside they crossed a stream dashing between tanks set with fern and tall silver birches.
"Hurryon Brook," she said. "Isn't it a beauty? It pours into the Gray Water a little farther ahead. We must hasten, or it will be too dark to see the trout."
Twice again they crossed the rushing brook on log bridges. Then through the trees stretching out before them they caught sight of the Gray Water, crinkling like a flattened sheet of hammered silver.
Everywhere the surface was starred and ringed and spattered by the jumping fish; and now they could hear them far out, splash! slap! clip-clap! splash!—hundreds and hundreds jumping incessantly, so that the surface of the water was constantly broken over the entire expanse.
Now and then some great trout, dark against the glimmer, leaped full length into the air; everywhere fish broke, swirled, or rolled over, showing "colour."
"There is Scott," she whispered, attuning her voice to the forest quiet—"out there in that canoe. No, he hasn't taken his rod; he seldom does; he's perfectly crazy over things of this sort. All day and half the night he's out prowling about the woods, not fishing, not shooting, just mousing around and listening and looking. And for all his dreadfully expensive collection of arms and rods, he uses them very little. See him out there drifting about with the fish breaking all around—some within a foot of his canoe! He'll never come in to dress for dinner unless we call him."
And she framed her mouth with both hands and sent a long, clear call floating out across the Gray Water.
"All right; I'll come!" shouted her brother. "Wait a moment!"
They waited many moments. Dusk, lurking in the forest, peered out, casting a gray net over shore and water. A star quivered, another, then ten, and scores and myriads.
They had found a seat on a fallen log; neither seemed to have very much to say. For a while the steady splashing of the fish sounded like the uninterrupted music of a distant woodland waterfall. Suddenly it ceased as if by magic. Not another trout rose; the quiet was absolute.
"Is not this stillness delicious?" she breathed.
"It is sweeter when you break it."
"Please don't say such things....Can'tyou understand how much I want you to be sincere to me? Lately, I don't know why, I've seemed to feel so isolated. When you talk that way I feel more so. I—just want—a friend."
There was a silence; then he said lightly:
"I've felt that way myself. The more friends I make the more solitary I seem to be. Some people are fashioned for a self-imprisonment from which they can't break out, and through which no one can penetrate. But I never thought of you as one of those."
"I seem to be at times—not exactly isolated, but unable to get close to—to Kathleen, for example. Do you know, Duane, it might be very good for me to have you to talk to."
"People usually like to talk to me. I've noticed it. But the curious part of it is that they have nothing to give me in exchange for my attention."
"What do you mean?"
He laughed. "Oh, nothing. I amuse people; I know it. You—and everybody—say I am all cleverness and froth—not to be taken seriously. But did it ever occur to you that what you see in me you evoke. Shallowness provokes shallowness, levity, lightness, inconsequence—all are answered by their own echo.... And you and the others think it is I who answer."
He laughed, not looking at her:
"And it happens that you—and the others—are mistaken. If I appear to be what you say I am, it is merely a form of self-defence. Do you think I could endure the empty nonsense of a New York winter if I did not present to it a surface like a sounding-board and let Folly converse with its own echo—while, behind it, underneath it, Duane Mallett goes about his own business."
Astonished, not clearly understanding, she listened in absolute silence. Never in all her life had she heard him speak in such a manner. She could not make out whether bitterness lay under his light and easy speech, whether a maliciously perverse humour lurked there, whether it was some new mockery.
He said carelessly: "I give what I receive. And I have never received any very serious attention from anybody. I'm only Duane Mallett, identified with the wealthy section of society you inhabit, the son of a wealthy man, who went abroad and dabbled in colour and who paints pictures of pretty women. Everybody and the newspapers know me. What I see of women is a polished coquetry that mirrors my fixed smirk; what I see of men is less interesting."
He looked out through the dusk at the darkening water:
"You say you are beginning to feel isolated. Can anybody with any rudiment of intellect feel otherwise in the social environment you and I inhabit—where distinction and inherited position count for absolutely nothing unless propped up by wealth—where any ass is tolerated whose fortune and lineage pass inspection—where there is no place for intelligence and talent, even when combined with breeding and lineage, unless you are properly ballasted with money enough to forget that you have any?"
He laughed.
"So you feel isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ennui and their neighbour's wives——"
"Duane!"
"Oh, Lord, you're a world-wise graduate at twenty-two! Truth won't shock you, more's the pity.... As for the game—I'm done with it; I can't stand it. The amusement I extract doesn't pay. Good God! and you wonder why I kiss a few of you for distraction's sake, press a finger-tip or two, brush a waist with my sleeve!"
He laughed unpleasantly, and bent forward in the darkness, clasped hands hanging between his knees.
"Duane," she said in astonishment, "what do you mean? Are you trying to quarrel with me, just when, for the first time, something in this new forest country seemed to be drawing us together, making us the comrades we once were?"
"We're too old to be comrades. That's book rubbish. Men and women have nothing in common, intellectually, unless they're in love. For company, for straight conversation, for business, for sport, a man would rather be with men. And either you and I are like everybody else or we're going to really care for each other. Not for your pretty face and figure, or for my grin, my six feet, and thin shanks; I can care for face and figure in any woman. What's the use of marrying for what you'll scarcely notice in a month?... If youare you, Geraldine, under all your attractive surface there's something else which you have never given me."
"Wh—what?" she asked faintly.
"Intelligent interest in me."
"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you think I underestimate you?"
"Not as I am. I don't amount to much; but I might if you cared."
"Cared for you?"
"No, confound it! Cared for what I could be."
"I—I don't think I understand. What could you be?"
"A man, for one thing. I'm a thing that dances. A fashionable portrait painter for another. The combination is horrible."
"You are a successful painter."
"Am I? Geraldine, in all the small talk you and I have indulged in since my return from abroad, have you ever asked me one sincere, intelligent, affectionate question about my work?"
"I—yes—but I don't know anything about——"
He laughed, and it hurt her.
"Don't you understand," she said, "that ordinary people are very shy about talking art to a professional——"
"I don't want you to talk art. Any little thing with blue eyes and blond curls can do it. I wanted you to see what I do, say what you think, like it or damn it—only do something about it! You've never been to my studio except to stand with the perfumed crowd and talk commonplaces in front of a picture."
"I can't go alone."
"Can't you?" he asked, looking closely at her in the dusk, so close that she could see every mocking feature.
"Yes," she said in a low, surprised voice, "I could go alone—anywhere—with you.... I didn't realise it before, Duane."
"You never tried. You once mistook an impulse of genuine passion for the sort of thing I've done since. You made a terrific fuss about being kissed when I saw, as soon as I saw you, that I wanted to win you, if you'd let me. Since then you've chosen the key-note of our relations, not I, and you don't like my interpretation of my part."
For a while she sat silent, preoccupied with this totally new revelation of a man about whom she supposed she had long ago made up her mind.
"I'm glad we've had this talk," she said at last.
"I am, too. I haven't asked you to fall in love with me; I haven't asked for your confidence. I've asked you to take an intelligent, affectionate interest in what I might become, and perhaps you and I won't be so lonely if you do."
He struck a match in the darkness and lighted a cigarette. Close inshore Scott Seagrave's electric torch flashed. They heard the velvety scraping of the canoe, the rattle and thump as he flung it, bottom upward, on the sandy point.
"Hello, you people! Where are you?"—sweeping the wood's edge with his flash-light—"oh, there you are. Isn't this glorious? Did you ever see such a sight as those big fellows jumping?"
"Meanwhile," said his sister, rising, "our guests are doubtless yelling with hunger. What time is it, Duane? Half-past eight? Please hurry, Scott; we've got to get back and dress in five minutes!"
"I can do it easily," announced her brother, going ahead to light the path. And all the way home he discussed aloud upon the stripping, hatching, breeding, care, and diseases of trout, never looking back, and quite confident that they were listening attentively to his woodland lecture.
"Duane," she said, lowering her voice, "do you think all our misunderstandings are ended?"
"Certainly," he replied gaily. "Don't you?"
"But how am I going to make everybody think you are not frivolous?"
"I am frivolous. There's lots of froth to me—on top. You know that sort of foam you see on grass-stems in the fields. Hidden away inside is a very clever and busy little creature. He uses the froth to protect himself."
"Are you going to froth?"
"Yes—until——"
"Until what?"
"You——"
"Go on."
"Shall I say it?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, unless you and I find each other intellectually satisfactory."
"You said only a man—in love with a woman—could find her interesting in that way."
"Yes. What of it?"
"Nothing.... Only I'm afraid you'll have to froth, then," she said, laughing. "I haven't any intention of falling in love with you, Duane, and you'll find me stupid if I don't. Do you know that what you intimate is very horrid?"
"Why?"
"Yes, it is. Besides, it's a sort of threat——"
"A threat?"
"Certainly. You threaten to—you know perfectly well what you threaten to do unless I immediately consider the possibility of our—caring for each other—sentimentally."
"But what do you care if you don't care?"
"I—don't. All the same it's horrid and—and unfair. Suppose I was frothy and behaved——"
"Misbehaved?"
"Yes. Just because you wouldn't agree to take a sentimental interest in me?"
"Iwouldagree! I'll agree now!"
"Suppose you wouldn't?"
"I can't imagine——"
"Oh, Duane, be honest! And I'll tell you flatly—if you do misbehave. Just because I don't particularly desire to rush into your arms——"
"But I haven't threatened to."
Unconsciously she laid her hand on his arm again, slipping it a little way under.
"You're just as you were years ago—just the dearest of playmates. We're not too old to play, are we?"
"I can't with you; it's too dangerous."
"What nonsense! Yes, you can. You like me for my intelligence in spite of what you say about men and women——"
"I wouldn't care for your intelligence if I were not in——"
"Duane, stop, please!"
"In danger," he continued blandly, "of proving my proposition."
"You are insufferable. I am as intelligent as you."
"I know it, but it wouldn't attract me unless——"
"It ought to," she said hastily. "And, Duane, I'm going to make you take me into account. I'm going to exercise a man's privilege with you by—by saying frankly—several things——"
"What things?"
The amused mockery in his voice gave her courage.
"For one thing, I'm going to tell you that people—gossip—that there are—are——"
"Rumours?" he asked in pretended anxiety.
"Yes.... About you and—of course they are silly and contemptible; but what's the use of being attentive enough to a woman—careless enough to give colour to them?"
After an interval he said: "Perhaps you'll tell me who beside myself these rumours concern?"
"You know, don't you?"
"There might be several," he said coolly. "Who is it?"
For a moment a tiny flash of anger made her cheeks hot. Then she said:
"You know perfectly well it's Rosalie. I think we have become good enough comrades for me to use a man's privilege——"
"Men wouldn't permit themselves that sort of privilege," he said, laughing.
"Aren't men frank with their friends?" she demanded hotly.
"About as frank as women."
"I thought—" She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. Then, "I've said it anyhow. I'm trying to show an interest in you—as you asked me to do——"
He turned in the darkness, caught her hand:
"You dear little thing," he whispered, laughing.
During the week the guests at Roya-Neh were left very much to their own devices. Nobody was asked to do anything; there were several good enough horses at their disposal, two motor cars, a power-boat, canoes, rods, and tennis courts and golf links. The chances are they wanted sea-bathing. Inland guests usually do.
Scott Seagrave, however, concerned himself little about his guests. All day long he moused about his new estate, field-glasses dangling, cap on the back of his head, pockets bulging with untidy odds and ends until the increasing carelessness of his attire and manners moved Kathleen Severn to protest.
"I don't know what is the matter with you, Scott," she said. "You were always such a fastidious boy—even dandified. Doesn't anybody ever cut your hair? Doesn't somebody keep your clothes in order?"
"Yes, but I tear 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the ground-floor apartment of a flat stone."
Kathleen craned her dainty neck over the shoulder of his ragged shooting coat.
"He's red enough to be poisonous, isn't he? Oh, do be careful!"
"It's only a young newt. Take him in your hand; he's cool and clammy and rather agreeable."
"Scott, I won't touch him!"
"Yes, you will!" He caught her by the arm; "I'm going to teach you not to be afraid of things outdoors. This lizard-like thing is perfectly harmless. Hold out your hand!"
"Oh, Scott, don't make me——"
"Yes, I will. I thought you and I were going to be in thorough accord and sympathy and everything else."
"Yes, but you mustn't bully me."
"I'm not. I merely want you to get over your absurd fear of live things, so that you and I can really enjoy ourselves. You said you would, Kathleen."
"Can't we be in perfect sympathy and roam about and—and everything, unless I touch such things?"
He said reproachfully, balancing the little creature on his palm: "The fun is in being perfectly confident and fearless. You have no idea how I like all these things. You said you were going to like 'em, too."
"I do—rather."
"Then take this one and pet it."
She glanced at the boy beside her, realising how completely their former relations were changing.
Long ago she had given all her heart to the Seagrave children—all the unspent passion in her had become an unswerving devotion to them. And now, a woman still young, the devotion remained, but time was modifying it in a manner sometimes disquieting. She tried not to remember that now, in Scott, she had a man to deal with, and tried in vain; and dealt with him weakly, and he was beginning to do with her as he pleased.
"You do like to bully me, don't you?" she said.
"I only want you to like to do what I like to do."
She stood silent a moment, then, with a shudder, held out her hand, fingers rigid and wide apart.
"Oh!" she protested, as he placed the small dark-red amphibian on the palm, where it crinkled up and lowered its head.
"That's the idea!" he said, delighted. "Here, I'll take it now. Some day you'll be able to handle snakes if you'll only have patience."
"But I don't want to." She stood holding out the contaminated hand for a moment, then dropped on her knees and scrubbed it vigorously in the brook.
"You see," said Scott, squatting cheerfully beside her, "you and I don't yet begin to realise the pleasure that there is in these woods and streams—hidden and waiting for us to discover it. I wouldn't bother with any other woman, but you've always liked what I like, and its half the fun in having you see these things. Look here, Kathleen, I'm keeping a book of field notes." He extracted from his stuffed pockets a small leather-covered book, fished out a stylograph, and wrote the date while she watched over his shoulder.
"Discovered what seems to be a small dark-red newt under a stone near Hurryon Brook. Couldn't make it bite me, so let Kathleen hold it. Query: Is it a land or water lizard, a salamander, or a newt; and what does it feed on and where does it deposit its eggs?"
Kathleen's violet eyes wandered to the written page opposite.
"Did you really see an otter, Scott?"
"Yes, I did!" he exclaimed. "Out in the Gray Water, swimming like a dog. That was yesterday afternoon. It's a scarce creature here. I'll tell you what, Kathleen; we'll take our luncheon and go out and spend the day watching for it."
"No," she said, drying her hands on her handkerchief, "I can't spend every minute of the day with you. Ask some other woman."
"What other woman?" She was gazing out at the sunlit ripples. A little unquiet thrill leaped through her veins, but she went on carelessly:
"Take some pretty woman out with you. There are several here——"
"Pretty woman," he repeated. "Do you think that's the only reason I want you to come?"
"Only reason? What a silly thing to say, Scott. I am not a pretty woman to you—in that sense——"
"You are the prettiest I ever saw," he said, looking at her; and again the unquiet thrill ran like lightning through her veins. But she only laughed carelessly and said:
"Oh, of course, Geraldine and I expect our big brother to say such things."
"It has nothing to do with Geraldine or with brothers," he said doggedly. She strove to laugh, caught his gaze, and, discountenanced, turned toward the stream.
"We can cross on the stepping stones," she suggested. And after a moment: "Are you coming?"
"See here, Kathleen," he said, "you're not acting squarely with me."
"What do you mean?"
"No, you're not. I'm a man, and you know it."
"Of course you are, Scott."
"Then I wish you'd recognise it. What's the use of mortifying me when I act—speak—behave as any man behaves who—who—is—fond of a—person."
"But I don't mean to—to mortify you. What have I done?"
He dug his hands into the pockets of his riding breeches, took two or three short turns along the bank, came back to where she was standing.
"You probably don't remember," he said, "one night this spring when—when—" He stopped short. The vivid tint in her cheeks was his answer—a swift, disconcerting answer to an incomplete question, the remainder of which he himself had scarcely yet analysed.
"Scott, dear," she said steadily, in spite of her softly burning cheeks, "I will be quite honest with you if you wish. I do know what you've been trying to say. I am conscious that you are no longer the boy I could pet and love and caress without embarrassment to either of us. You are a man, but try to remember that I am several years older——"
"Does that matter!" he burst out.
"Yes, dear, it does.... I care for you—and Geraldine—more than for anybody in the world. I understand your loyalty to me, Scott, and I—I love it. But don't confuse it with any serious sentiment."
"I do care seriously."
"You make me very happy. Care for me very, very seriously; I want you to; I—I need it. But don't mistake the kind of affection that we have for each other for anything deeper, will you?"
"Don't you want to care for me—that way?"
"Notthatway, Scott."
"Why?"
"I've told you. I am so much older——"
"Couldn'tyou, all the same?"
She was trembling inwardly. She leaned against a white birch-tree and passed one hand across her eyes and upward through the thick burnished hair.
"No, I couldn't," she whispered.
The boy walked to the edge of the brook. Past him hurried the sun-tipped ripples; under them, in irregular wedge formation, little ones ahead, big ones in the rear, lay a school of trout, wavering silhouettes of amber against the bottom sands.
One arm encircling the birch-tree, she looked after him in silence, waiting. And after a while he turned and came back to her:
"I suppose you knew I fell in love with you that night when—when—you remember, don't you?"
She did not answer.
"I don't know how it happened," he said: "something about you did it. I want to say that I've loved you ever since. It's made me serious.... I haven't bothered with girls since. You are the only woman who interests me. I think about you most of the time when I'm not doing something else," he explained naïvely. "I know perfectly well I'm in love with you because I don't dare touch you—and I've never thought of—of kissing you good-night as we used to before that night last spring.... You remember that we didn't do it that night, don't you?"
Still no answer, and Kathleen's delicate, blue-veined hands were clenched at her sides and her breath came irregularly.
"That was the reason," he said. "I don't know how I've found courage to tell you. I've often been afraid you would laugh at me if I told you.... If it's only our ages—you seem as young as I do...." He looked up, hopefully; but she made no response.
The boy drew a long breath.
"I love you, anyway," he said. "And that's how it is."
She neither spoke nor stirred.
"I suppose," he went on, "because I was such a beast of a boy, you can never forget it."
"You were the sweetest, the best—" Her voice broke; she swung about, moved away a few paces, stood still. When he halted behind her she turned.
"Dearest," she said tremulously, "let me give you what I can—love, as always—solicitude, companionship, deep sympathy in your pleasures, deep interest in your amusements.... Don't ask for more; don't think that you want more. Don't try to change the loyalty and love you have always had for something you—neither of us understand—neither of us ought to desire—or even think of——"
"Why?"
"Can't you understand? Even if I were not too old in years, I dare not give up what I have of you and Geraldine for this new—for anything more hazardous.... Suppose it were so—that I could venture to think I cared for you that way? What might I put in peril?—Geraldine's affection for me—perhaps her relations with you.... And the world is cynical, Scott, and you are wealthy even among very rich men, and I was your paid guardian—quite penniless—engaged to care for and instruct——"
"Don't say such things!" he said angrily.
"The world would say them—your friends—perhaps Geraldine might be led to doubt—Oh, Scott, dear, I know, I know! And above all—I am afraid. There are too many years between us—too many blessed memories of my children to risk.... Don't try to make me care for you in any other way."
A quick flame leaped in his eyes.
"CouldI?"
"No!" she exclaimed, appalled.
"Then why do you ask me not to try? I believe I could!"
"You cannot! You cannot, believe me. Won't you believe me? It must not happen; it is all wrong—in every way——"
He stood looking at her with a new expression on his face.
"If you are so alarmed," he said slowly, "you must have already thought about it. You'll think about it now, anyway."
"We are both going to forget it. Promise that you will!" She added hurriedly: "Drop my hand, please; there is Geraldine—and Mr. Grandcourt, too!... Tell me—do my eyes look queer? Are they red and horrid?... Don't look at me that way. For goodness' sake, don't display any personal interest in me. Go and turn over some flat rocks and find some lizards!"
Geraldine, bare-armed and short-skirted, came swinging along the woodland path, Delancy Grandcourt dogging her heels, as usual, carrying a pair of rods and catching the artificial flies in the bushes at every step.
"We're all out of trout at the house!" she called across to the stream to her brother. "Jack Dysart is fishing down the creek with Naïda and Sylvia. Where is Duane?"
"Somewhere around, I suppose," replied Scott sulkily. His sister took a running jump, cleared the bank, and alighted on a rock in the stream. Poised there she looked back at Grandcourt, laughed, sprang forward from stone to stone, and leaped to the moss beside Kathleen.
"Hello, dear!" she nodded. "Where did you cross? And where is Duane?"
"We crossed by the log bridge below," replied Kathleen. She added: "Duane left us half an hour ago. Wasn't it half an hour ago, Scott?" with a rising inflection that conveyed something of warning, something of an appeal. But on Scott's face the sullen disconcerted expression had not entirely faded, and his sister inspected him curiously. Then without knowing why, exactly, she turned and looked at Kathleen.
There was a subdued and dewy brilliancy in Kathleen's eyes, a bright freshness to her cheeks, radiantly and absurdly youthful; and something else—something so indefinable, so subtle, that only another woman's instinct might divine it—something invisible and inward, which transfigured her with a youthful loveliness almost startling.
They looked at one another. Geraldine, conscious of something she could not understand, glanced again at her sulky brother.
"What's amiss, Scott?" she asked. "Has anything gone wrong anywhere?"
Scott, pretending to be very busy untangling Grandcourt's cast from the branches of a lusty young birch, said, "No, of course not," and the girl, wondering, turned to Kathleen, who sustained her questioning eyes without a tremor.
"What's the matter with Scott?" asked his sister. "He's the guiltiest-looking man—why, it's absurd, Kathleen! Upon my word, the boy is blushing!"
"What!" exclaimed Scott so furiously that everybody laughed. And presently Geraldine asked again where Duane was.
"Rosalie Dysart is canoeing on the Gray Water, and she hailed him and he left us and went down to the river," said Kathleen carelessly.
"Did Duane join her?"
"I think so—" She hesitated, watching Geraldine's sombre eyes. "I really don't know," she added. And, in a lower voice: "I wish either Duane or Rosalie would go. They certainly are behaving unwisely."
Geraldine turned and looked through the woods toward the Gray Water.
"It's their affair," she said curtly. "I've got to make Delancy fish or we won't have enough trout for luncheon. Scott!" calling to her brother, "your horrid trout won't rise this morning. For goodness' sake, try to catch something beside lizards and water-beetles!"
For a moment she stood looking around her, as though perplexed and preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the daylight seemed to have become duller to her.
She walked up-stream for a little distance before she noticed Grandcourt plodding faithfully at her heels.
"Oh!" she said impatiently, "I thought you were fishing. You must catch something, you know, or we'll all go hungry."
"Nothing bites on these bally flies," he explained.
"Nothing bites because your flies are usually caught in a tree-top. Trout are not arboreal. I'm ashamed of you, Delancy. If you can't keep your line free in the woods"—she hesitated, then reddening a little under her tan—"you had better go and get a canoe and find Duane Mallett and help him catch—something worth while."
"Don't you want me to stay with you?" asked the big, awkward fellow appealingly. "There's no fun in being with Rosalie and Duane."
"No, I don't. Look! Your flies are in that bush! Untangle them and go to the Gray Water."
"Won't you come, too, Miss Seagrave?"
"No; I'm going back to the house.... And don't you dare return without a decent brace of trout."
"All right," he said resignedly. The midges bothered him; he mopped his red face, tugged at the line, but the flies were fast in a hazel bush.
"Damn this sort of thing," he muttered, looking piteously after Geraldine. She was already far away among the trees, skirts wrapped close to avoid briers, big straw hat dangling in one hand.
As she walked toward the Sachem's Gate she was swinging her hat and singing, apparently as unconcernedly as though care rested lightly upon her young shoulders.
Out on the high-road a number of her guests whizzed past in one of Scott's motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, and the car was gone in a whirl of dust. She stood in the road watching it recede, then walked forward again toward the house.
Her accustomed elasticity appeared to have left her; the sun was becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous abruptness.
"What on earth is the matter with me?" she said, half aloud, to herself.
During these last two months, and apparently apropos of nothing at all, an unaccustomed sense of depression sometimes crept upon her.
At first she disregarded it as the purely physical lassitude of spring, but now it was beginning to disquiet her. Once a hazy suspicion took shape—hastily dismissed—that some sense, some temporarily suppressed desire was troubling her. The same idea had awakened again that evening on the terrace when the faint odour from the decanter attracted her. And again she suspected, and shrank away into herself, shocked, frightened, surprised, yet still defiantly incredulous.
Yet her suspicions had been correct. It was habit, disturbed by the tardiness of accustomed tribute, that stirred at moments, demanding recognition.
Since that night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing worse than foolish, twice—at times inadvertently, at times deliberately—she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her girlhood. For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself the restless premonitions of desire. For here, in the sunshine of the forest-bordered highway, that same dull uneasiness was stirring once more.
It was true, other things had stirred her to uneasiness that morning—an indefinable impression concerning Kathleen—a definite one which concerned Rosalie Dysart and Duane, and which began to exasperate her.
All her elasticity was gone now; tired without reason, she plodded on along the road in her little white shoes, head bent, brown eyes brooding, striving to fix her wandering thoughts on Duane Mallett to fight down the threatening murmurs of a peril still scarcely comprehended.
"Anyway," she said half aloud, "even if I ever could care for him, I dare not let myself do it with this absurd inclination always threatening me."
She had said it! Scarcely yet understanding the purport of her own words, yet electrified, glaringly enlightened by them, she halted. A confused sense that something vital had occurred in her life stilled her heart and her breathing together.
After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive.
There was nobody in the terrace except Bunbury Gray in a brilliant waistcoat, who sat smoking a very large faïence pipe and reading a sporting magazine. He got up with alacrity when he saw her, fetched her a big wicker chair, evidently inclined to let her divert him.
"Oh, I'm not going to," she observed, sinking into the cushions. For a moment she felt rather limp, then a quiver passed through her, tightening the relaxed nerves.
"Bunbury," she said, "do you know any men who ever get tired of idleness and clothes and their neighbours' wives?"
"Sure," he said, surprised, "I get tired of those things all right. I've got enough of this tailor, for example," looking at his trousers. "I'm tired of idleness, too. Shall we do something and forget the cut of my clothes?"
"What do you do when you tire of people and things?"
"Change partners or go away. That's easy."
"You can't change yourself—or go away from yourself."
"But I don't get tired of myself," he explained in astonishment. She regarded him curiously from the depths of her wicker chair.
"Bunbury, do you remember when we were engaged?"
He grinned. "Rather. I wouldn't mind being it again."
"Engaged?"
"Sure thing. Will you take me on again, Geraldine?"
"I thought you cared for Sylvia Quest."
"I do, but I can stop it."
She still regarded him with brown-eyed curiosity.
"Didn't you really tire of our engagement?"
"You did. You said that my tailor is the vital part of me."
She laughed. "Well, youareonly a carefully groomed combination of New York good form and good nature, aren't you?"
"I don't know. That's rather rough, isn't it? Or do you really mean it that way?"
"No, Bunny dear. I only mean that you're like the others. All the men I know are about the same sort. You all wear too many ties and waistcoats; you are, and say, and do too many kinds of fashionable things. You play too much tennis, drink too many pegs, gamble too much, ride and drive too much. You all have too much and too many—if you understand that! You ask too much and you give too little; you say too much which means too little. Is there none among you who knows something that amounts to something, and how to say it and do it?"
"What the deuce are you driving at, Geraldine?" he asked, bewildered.
"I'm just tired and irritable, Bunny, and I'm taking it out on you.... Because you were always kind—and even when foolish you were often considerate.... That's a new waistcoat, isn't it?"
"Well—I don't—know," he began, perplexed and suspicious, but she cut him short with a light little laugh and reached out to pat his hand.
"Don't mind me. You know I like you.... I'm only bored with your species. What do you do when you don't know what to do, Bunny?"
"Take a peg," he said, brightening up. "Do you—shall I call somebody——"
"No, please."
She extended her slim limbs and crossed her feet. Lying still there in the sunshine, arms crooked behind her head, she gazed straight out ahead. Light breezes lifted her soft bright hair; the same zephyrs bore from tennis courts on the east the far laughter and calling of the unseen players.
"Who are they?" she inquired.
"The Pink 'uns, Naïda, and Jack Dysart. There's ten up on every set," he added, "and I've side obligations with Rosalie and Duane. Take you on if you like; odds are on the Pink 'uns. Or I'll get a lump of sugar and we can play 'Fly Loo.'"
"No, thanks."
A few moments later she said:
"Do you know, somehow, recently, the forest world—all this pretty place of lakes and trees—" waving her arm toward the horizon—"seems to be tarnished with the hard living and empty thinking of the people I have brought into it.... I include myself. The region is redolent of money and the things it buys. I had a better time before I had any or heard about it."