XXVAt nine the next morning she appeared at the laboratory as usual. As she was passing through Dick's room, he glanced up. Their eyes did not meet. "Good morning," she said without pausing. She was in the rear room and out of view when his cold answering "Good morning" came. She went about her work, and several times she carried in to him the things she finished. He was absorbed, seemed as unconscious of his surroundings as had been his wont. It was the rule there never to interrupt; she did not break the rule. Toward noon the quiet was disturbed by the telephone buzzer. She answered. In Lizzie's voice came, "The grocery over to Wenona wants to speak to you." She knew at once that it was Basil. "Ask them to call up again about four," replied she and went back to her table. At noon she stopped work and left for the house. At the usual time Richard appeared, had dinner with them all, sat calm and silent and aloof, acting much as he always did.In the warm part of the year, with the gardens to look after, it was her habit to spend only the mornings at the laboratory. She sent Helen to the Donaldsons with Winchie about three. When the telephone bell rang she herself answered. First came the voice of some clerk, then Basil's—"Is that you?""Yes," replied she."I'm at Fenton.""Go to New York.""Are you—well?""Never better. Some one may be listening along the wire.""I understand. You aresureall's well?""Sure. Wait in New York.""I understand. Good-by.""Good-by."As she hung up the receiver and turned round, she startled guiltily. There was Richard, just stepping from lawn to veranda, his eyes upon her. She felt as if she had been caught violating in stealth an implied compact not to communicate with Basil. Dick's expression told her that he was reading in her eyes with whom she had been talking. When they were face to face, he on the veranda, she one step up in the doorway, she said: "He wanted to reassure himself before starting East."Dick's lips curled slightly."It isn't fair for me to let you think him a coward. I made him see so clearly that——""You were right," he interrupted. "I wish to hear no more about it."Her eyes flashed at his peremptory tone, reminiscent of his habit of brushing her aside as merely woman. But the thought of Winchie was a talisman against any attack of temper."You said last night," he went on, "that this is between you and me only. You were right. So—I've wiped him off the slate."As they crossed the lawn toward the water's edge, she felt a fear of him deeper than any that physical force could inspire. If he had threatened—had reviled—had done her physical violence, she would have met him with contempt, with a sense of her own superiority. But how deal with this intelligence? She had always known it was an intelligence; she was realizing that it was an intelligence she did not understand, was therefore superior to her own. When they reached the benches near the landing and sat, she was so weak that she could not have walked many steps farther."I think," he began, a quiet sarcasm in his tone that did not lessen her uneasiness, "you rather misunderstood me last night. In such circumstances, I believe, a man is expected to tear his hair and paw the ground and do violent things. I confess—" He hesitated an instant before going on—"I've had that inclination several times since I recovered from my stupor. Tradition and instinct and—vanity—are strong. I'll have to ask you to be a little careful what you say to me—not for your own sake but for mine. I have some emotional dynamite in my nature. I don't wish it to be set off. To mention only one thing, there's Winchie to be thought of. I have no desire to punish you. I feel too human myself, to play the part of judge or executioner. But, most of all, I'm determined that Winchie shall never know—which means that the world must never know."Her clenched hands relaxed as she drew the first free breath since Lizzie told her where he had gone. Now, she felt she could face him for the struggle for Winchie on less unequal terms—not on equal terms, for he had the power to take Winchie away from her—had the power and—Howcould she prevent his using it?"But when you came into the laboratory this morning as if nothing had happened," he proceeded, "you showed that you misunderstood me." He looked away reflectively. "I don't know just how I restrained myself.""You were mistaken," said she. "I went because it's been my habit to go. I went just as you did."He fixed his gaze upon her, danger in it. "You count too much on your success in deceiving me thus far," he said. "I must ask you not to do so—not to try to deceive me. Do you suppose I don't know now why you've been coming to the laboratory?"His menacing gaze did not daunt her. She met it fearlessly. "That was the reason for a while—at first. But for a long time I've been going because I liked the work."He studied her with those eyes that saw into everything, once they were focused properly. "I beg your pardon," he said with formal courtesy. "It's true you couldn't have worked so well if you hadn't liked the work.""I've loved it." And her tone put her sincerity beyond question.He glanced away. After a pause he said, "To go to the point—the future. I thought at first that I'd decide alone what should be done. Then it seemed to me I hadn't the right to act—about Winchie—without at least finding out what your ideas were."He waited long; she did not speak."You feel, I suppose," he said gently, "that you've forfeited the right to speak."She did not venture to contradict him. Anything she would say, however guarded, might anger him—and Winchie was at stake."As I told you last night, I know you are somehow not a bad woman. Until yesterday, I'd have said there were just two classes of women—the good and the bad. But I'd also have said that I'd have killed both you and him. I find I've got to revise many ideas I had. Just how, I don't know. I'm realizing in regard to my grandfather what I've long realized about everything else—that nothing from the past is trustworthy. The wisdom of yesterday is the folly of to-day." He roused himself from his half abstraction, said, "So—you need not be afraid to speak out whatever is in your mind."On impulse of response to this breadth—an impulse that was yet, perhaps, not without quick feminine wit to see and seize advantage—she said, "You make me feel that I can trust to your sense of justice."He smiled satirically. "I see you still don't understand. You fancy I'm more than human because I don't act as if I were less than human. I know you are a woman, but women have been given mind enough to distinguish between right and wrong, between honor and dishonor. And— Is it necessary that I give its plain name to what you've done—to what you are?""No," she said in a suffocating voice. Only her boy was saving her from bursting out."Then—don't try to cajole me with talk about my sense of justice. What do you ask?"All in an instant—whether because her natural bent was for the frank and courageous or because instinct told her it was the only hopeful course with him—she resolved to act as she felt, to speak her thoughts. "What do I ask?" she repeated. "First, that you stop posing."He flushed."If you really mean," she hastened on, "that you're acting as you have thus far because it's the right way to act, because the way men usually act is wrong and degrades them, why, you'll stop trying to convince me that you're giving a wonderful exhibition of gracious generosity.""I had no such intention.""Then why do you treat me as if I were an object of charity?""You can hardly expect me to treat you as if you had done something noble.""You say I'm not a bad woman."They looked at each other in silence. "No, you are not," he said. "You have acted like a bad woman, but you are not a bad woman.""Then," she went on slowly, never taking her grave, earnest eyes from his, "I want you to ask yourself how it happens that the girl who, you said last night, was good, the girl who loved you when she married you, has become the woman you are condemning?"A long silence. He looked away, looked again—and his gaze remained fixed upon her face. Then, in a low, hesitating voice: "Well—how did it happen?""Because you did not love me.""You know better than that," he cried. "I've never given any woman but you a thought. I've never—" He broke off abruptly, grew angry. "But you're simply trying to improve your position by putting me on the defensive. And I ask you again not to goad me——""Because you did not love me," she repeated. "Your anger shows that you are trying to deny the truth to yourself. You married me on an impulse of passion. Oh, you had the usual romantic deceptive names for it—the words that make the man feel spiritual and tickle the girl's vanity. But you've shown what it really was by giving me only an incidental—carnal thought now and then. That's been our married life.""Why did you not tell me you had these false, unjust ideas?""But they're not false, not unjust," she rejoined. "What do you know of me except my outside? What's my mind like? What's my heart like? What do I, a human being like yourself, think and feel? You don't know. You've lived on your grandfather's pompous old-fashioned ideal—that lust is love, if the preacher has christened it—that a woman's whole life is the good pleasure of her husband's various appetites."She paused for breath. She was not so carried away by the tempest of her emotions that she did not note that he was listening and thinking. He presently said: "Even so, how does that excuseyou?—you, the mother of Winchie."She paled, and her hands clasped convulsively in her lap. But she went boldly on. "I had a heart and a mind, like you. How could a human being live the life you assigned me? When I pleaded for a share in your life you refused. When I begged for freedom you refused. What I did was my compromise between the woman and the mother. A mother isn't less a woman, Richard, but more."He rose in his excitement; for, his keen mind penetrated to her purpose. "You want your freedom and you want my son!" he cried.Her gaze was steady but her deep voice trembled as she answered, "I want my freedom and I want my child—the child I brought into the world—the child I've watched over from birth. Be fair—be just, Richard. What have you done for him except provide the home the law would have compelled? You've amused yourself playing with him a few minutes now and then. You've asked me to buy him a present now and then. And never even inquired whether I'd done it. Do you know his birthday? Do you know how old he is? Do you know anything about him? Why then do you call him your son?"He had been in such struggle with his fury that he was unable to check her torrent of half-defiant half-piteous appeal. He now mastered himself sufficiently to say, "How dare you talk to me like this?""Because," replied she, quick as a flash, "I respect your intelligence, even if you don't respect mine. You asked me to speak freely. I've done it. Would you have preferred me to lie to you?"He walked away from her to the edge of the lake, immediately returned and sat again at the other end of the bench. He eyed her passive figure—hands quiet in her lap, gaze upon the town across the lake. Her face was quiet, but all the intelligence and character which her gayety and small stature and young loveliness veiled from unobservant eyes were clearly revealed now. "It's a succession of blows, these discoveries that you are so different from what I imagined," said he. With bitter reproach, "When I think how I exalted, how I idealized you!""Did I ask you to do it? Did I tempt you by hypocrisy? ... Whenever I'd try to show you what I was, didn't you stop me or refuse to listen? And—is it true that you idealized me? Is woman as mere female—mere flesh an ideal?""I have told you——""But," she interrupted appealingly, suddenly all animation, "you spoke without thinking. Think of me as you'd think of one of your problems of chemistry. Don't let your grandfather do your thinking—or the hypocritical world—or the shallow people round us."He was silent. Presently he rose to pace the retaining wall. As she watched him there was no outward sign of the dread that was licking at her heart like a flame at living flesh. "And what of me?" he said, wheeling abruptly upon her. "You say it was my fault that you did what you've done. Do you mean to tell me you think you're not to blame at all?""No, I don't think that," she answered. "If I'd been brought up brave and independent, instead of to be a cowardly dependent— Oh, the crime of it! To take a being with a mind and a heart and, simply because it's female instead of male, to bring it up so that it's unfit really to live—to forbid it to live—to make it afraid to live! If I'd been brave I'd have spoken out frankly. I'd have demanded my freedom—I'd have taken it. As it was—I broke my marriage promises—as you broke yours. It was chiefly your fault." And she went on, with flushed cheeks and accusing eyes: "I don't say it because I wish to shirk, but because I must tell the whole truth so that you won't do a cruel injustice. You promised me love and care and you gave me lust and neglect. We were joined in equal marriage. You treated me much as if I were a slave you'd bought. And I had to submit. For, I really was a kind of slave, and I hadn't the courage and the skill to go out and make my own living—and anyhow, you could and would have taken Winchie away from me, if I'd tried to do it. Isn't that so?"She saw that he was impressed. Again he reflected a long time pacing up and down the wall. When he turned toward her once more he said: "But listen while I state plainly what you ask. You ask me to reward your treachery by letting you marry the man who betrayed me—and you cap it by asking me to let you make my son his!""No, Richard," she protested. "I simply ask you to let me keep my child on any condition you make. I'll promise not to see—him. I'll take Winchie and live on the farm with my people until he's old enough to go away to school. I know the law puts me at your mercy. But I don't believe you'll use your power to crush me." She was choking, was fighting back the tears.He turned to the retaining wall, gazed into the water until she should fight down the evidences of weakness which he could not but see she was ashamed of. When he joined her again, it was to say in a voice that reassured her: "I want to do what's best for us all—especially for Winchie. It's very difficult.... When I think of the misery I might have caused, if I had believed Nanny and hadn't had time to reflect—I must not act until I've seen every side—Winchie's—yours—mine——"The sound of the supper gong came floating across the lawn. Courtney rose mechanically and in silence they returned to the house. Helen and Winchie had enjoyed themselves at the Donaldsons, and told all about it. The strain between Dick and Courtney passed unnoticed. When Winchie went up, Courtney accompanied him. Toward ten she left the book she had been pretending to read and sat in the hammock on the balcony. The moon, huge and ruddy through an opening among the boughs, poured its flood of elfin light over lake and lawns and gardens. The soft shadows, the vague vistas, the overpowering perfume of honeysuckle and jasmine and rose combined to beguile her out of all sense of reality. "I've been dreaming—dreaming," she murmured. And what an incredible dream! No man—least of all Richard, the prejudiced, the domineering—would have acted so in real life. "A dream—a dream." It was impossible, this experience of hers that belied all she had read, all she had been taught, about the relations of men and women. She, a married woman, had taken a lover—and, instead of its degrading her, it had made her better than she had been when she thrust love out of her life and tried to live by rule of duty to husband. And now—instead of her husband's killing her or of her killing herself or of any of the various kinds of violence prescribed for such situations, her husband had acted like a civilized human being, gently, considerately, at the dictates of humanity and not at the dictates of vanity. And instead of abysm below abysm of disaster and death in punishment for religion's scarlet sin of sins for woman, there was prospect of a life in which she could profit by the experience she had gained. "A dream—a dream." Or, was a new world dawning?—a new way of living that made the old way seem a grotesque carnival of the beast in man?As she was dressing next morning, in came Winchie. "Has papa gone away?" he asked at the threshold.She paused with the eye of her belt at the prong of its buckle. "Why?" said she."I don't know whether I dreamed it. I thought it was so. I thought I waked up and there was papa kissing me. And I thought it made me sad. And he said, 'Good-by, Winchie. Take care of your mother and do what she says, and don't forget me.' And I kissed him and said, 'Can't Mamma Courtney and I go too?' And he said, 'No, dear.' And I said, 'All right. Bring me a gun, like Charlie Donaldson's.' And then I fell asleep again."In the mirror she saw him run to the door into the hall, pick up a letter which had evidently been thrust through the crack. She turned and held out her hand. He brought it to her, spelling out the "Courtney" written on it as he came. "Go take Aunt Helen down to breakfast," she said. When he was gone, she opened the envelope and read:"The important point is Winchie. I am going away to try to think it out. However, one thing is certain. There must be a divorce. In a few days I shall send you a formal notice of abandonment, and you will begin an action at once. Until we are free—perhaps so long as you are alone—it is best that Winchie stay with you. I leave him on one condition—that you keep him here, carrying on everything exactly as usual. He must see no sign of change."Please let me know whether you accept. A line, in care of my lawyers, James & Vandegrift, will reach me."R.V.""So long as you are alone." Courtney felt as if the air had suddenly changed from the leaden oppressiveness of before the storm to the buoyant freshness afterwards. With the paralyzing dread about Winchie removed, she could think of the rest of the situation. She read the letter again and again. The regularity of line and word, the precision of phrasing indicated a carefully copied final draft. There was not the faintest clue to the feelings of the writer. She recalled those last two talks with him. At both she was in no condition to observe him, so absorbed was she in the things immediately at issue. But now, as she went over his words, looks, manner, she saw a personality wholly different from the Richard Vaughan she had known—or had fancied she knew. That Richard Vaughan really had no personality beyond a chemical intelligence, was an abstraction like an algebraic formula. This Richard Vaughan was a flesh-and-blood man; but—what sort of a man? And his conduct toward her, did it not mean that he had eliminated her as one empties out a test tube when the experiment ends—in failure? Did it not mean supreme indifference? Yes—it must be so. Still, no ordinary man, however indifferent to wife and child, could act in such circumstances so absolutely without personal vanity, with such obvious determination to do nothing small or revengeful. On any theory, there must be behind those curiously unemotional lines a character big, generous, incapable of meanness.She looked at this newly revealed large personality, with a depressing sense of her own contrasting smallness. In the last few years of widening intelligence her sex vanity, so diligently fostered throughout her childhood and girlhood, had received many a rude shock from within as well as from without. But none so rude, so demolishing as this. "He's a man really worth while," thought she. "And women are too insignificant either to be loved by such a man or to love him."She had been bred in and to the American feminine ideal—the woman graciously deigning to permit some man to support her in idleness; the man more than repaid by the honor of being allowed to support her; whatever further he might get, a voluntary largess from his royal guest, to be given or withdrawn at her good pleasure. This delusion was a distorted tradition from a bygone era—an era of conditions around the relations of the sexes that are forever past. In that "woman's paradise" women were scarce and men plenty; and there was the constancy that is natural in a narrow life of severe toil, with the intelligence too little developed to be restless or critical, with the passions undisputedly in the ascendant. This feminine tradition had been dying hard, as delusions flattering to vanity, encouraging to laziness, ever do. She had tried to keep on believing the lies she heard and read everywhere—especially novelists and preachers dependent on unthinking women for a living—the romantic exaltation of woman's love as of value star spaces beyond the value of man's love. She had tried to suppress her sense of humor and to be impressed when she heard women speak of kissing a man in reward for some service as if one of their kisses made an archangel's diadem, in comparison, a cheap bauble. She had tried not to see how intelligent men scarcely restrained the grin of insincerity as they poured out extravagances to some woman whom their whimsical passions chanced to covet. She had struggled against the disillusionizing thoughts about her own sex's private opinion of itself that would arise as she noted how often women treated lightly the man who took them seriously and all but offered themselves to him who winked as he bought or passed on untempted or cynically inquired for the inside price.Step by step she had been thrust out into the truth that the whole feminist cult was a colossal fiction, that in the actualities of the life of this new era woman's value was precisely like man's—the usefulness of the particular combination of mind and heart, intellect and character, that made up the personality. She began to suspect that woman's ability to sway man through his passion was more often a handicap to her, and to him, than a help to either. She began to realize that learning how to use that ability wisely was the supreme hard problem the life of to-day set for woman to solve or perish. While passion sometimes had made one man for a moment slave to some one woman, or a few men slaves to any woman, it had through all time made womankind slave to mankind. And in the new era, while the slave was still willing, the master was becoming weary, was demanding something less burdensome, more companionable.As she stood at the bureau, buckle still unfastened, eyes and mind upon those few calm, precisely pruned lines of Dick's, there came a thought that dealt a deathblow to her long dying femininefolie de grandeur. While it was true she had not sought nor wished Dick's interest of any kind, the fact remained that he, after living in daily contact with her for six years, had been so little affected by her personality that he was letting her go without any sign of emotion. "But I am as indifferent to him as he to me." she urged upon herself in hope of some slight consolation. She instantly remembered that it was he, not she, who had begun the indifference. And then came the stinging, blood-heating recollection that he had used at his pleasure the only part of her that had been able to impress him as valuable to a man of purpose and achievement. Nor could she dismiss him with a contemptuous "low minded and unworthy," for she knew he was neither. Squirm how she would, she could not get away from the humiliating fact—"six years of me, and not even enough physical value to make his jealousy for a single moment triumph over his sense of self-respect!"Winchie had finished breakfast and was playing with his wagon on the veranda. Helen was still at table. "Has Mr. Gallatin gone East with Dick?" she inquired, turning rosy red."No," replied Courtney, not noting Helen's color. If she had, she would have suspected nothing. When Helen came home in good spirits from that visit to Saint X, after the Chicago shopping trip, and was no longer ill at ease with Basil, Courtney—eager, as we all are, to seize the first pretext to be relieved of a weight upon conscience—assumed that she had got completely over her fancy. As for Basil, Courtney trusted him absolutely."But he's away, isn't he?" persisted Helen, after a pause. "Lizzie tells me his rooms haven't been disturbed for two nights.""He went day before yesterday, I believe," said Courtney. "Did you see Richard this morning?""Just a minute. He was hurrying for the train when I came down.""I thought he didn't look very well, last night," pursued Courtney.Helen, absorbed in her own agitating thoughts, failed to respond to this lead; so she put the question direct. "How did he look this morning?""About as usual," replied Helen. "I didn't notice any change. He had on that new gray suit. It's very becoming. When's he coming back?"Courtney seemed not to have heard. "He forgot to give me his address. Did he leave it with you?""The Willard in Washington, then the Astor in New York.""It may be I'll want to write him or something.""I should think so!" cried Helen. "You and he write every day, don't you?""Not to each other," said Courtney dryly. "We never did establish the daily letter. That's one of the dreariest farces in married life. It belongs to the kind of people who think they're happy because they're too stupid or too bored to quarrel."When she had eaten the tip end of a roll and drunk a little coffee, she went out on the veranda, sent Winchie to the lawn and asked Helen to sit with her at the western end where no one could hear or overhear. "You asked me when Richard was coming back," she began."It was simply a chance question," apologized Helen."He's not coming back.""Not coming back!" echoed Helen. "You're going to move East?"The emerald eyes met Helen's excited glance placidly. "We are going to get a divorce," she said.Helen's big brown eyes opened wide. With lips ajar she stared at Courtney. Then she gave a little laugh that sounded as if the shock had unbalanced her mind and reduced her to imbecility. "A divorce," she murmured feebly."We both wish to be free," continued Courtney, talking in the matter-of-fact way that was the surest preventive of hysteria in herself or in Helen. "So, he's gone away. I'll stay here a while, then— But I haven't made any plans. There's plenty of time."A long silence, Helen gazing at Courtney, at Winchie racing along the paths with his red-striped wagon, at Courtney again, at trees and lake, as if she doubted the reality of all things. "I don't know what to say!" she exclaimed at last."Naturally," replied Courtney, "since there's nothing to say.""I can't believe it!""Why not?""There aren't two people better suited to each other. Why, you never quarreled.""That's it. I love contention. He wouldn't give it to me. So—pop goes the weasel.""How can you! When your heart must be breaking." Helen put aside her stupefaction and brought the tears to her soft brown eyes in tardy conformity to the etiquette for nearest female friend on such occasions."Now, dear, please don't cry. You know that I know how easy it is for women to cry, and how little it means."Helen hastily dried her eyes. "Oh, dear! It must be fixed up!" she said in a more natural tone, genuinely sympathetic and friendly. "He doesn't mean it. I'm sure he doesn't."Courtney laughed—rather disagreeably. Helen was confirming her own newly formed, anything but exalted opinion of herself as a human value. "I suppose it'll never for an instant occur to anyone that I might be the discontented one.""Well, you know, yourself, Courtney," stammered Helen, "it doesn't seem likely a woman'd give up a good husband and a good home——"Courtney's arresting smile was bitterly ironic. "Indeed it doesn't," assented she. "Give up what she married for? Not unless she was sure of a better living. Men think they marry for love—but it's really to—I'm not equal to saying why men marry. You can find the reason in Ben Franklin's autobiography, if you care to look it up. As for us women—it's the living.""It's not true of me!" cried Helen, who had in all its amusing, or exasperating, efflorescence the universal feminine passion for drawing everything down to the personal, for seeking a compliment to herself or a reflection upon herself in any and every remark addressed to her by man or woman. "Poor as I am, I'm——""Never mind, dear," said Courtney with good-humored raillery. "At your age I was talking the same way. You'll find out some day that the hardest person in the world to get acquainted with is your real self. Why, there isn't one human being in ten million who'd know his real self if they met in the street." She rose to inspect the thick mat of morning-glories trellised up the end of the veranda. "And most of us, if we were introduced to our real selves, would refuse to speak to such low creatures—especially the romantic people.""IknowI'd not marry foranythingbut love!"Courtney, her back to Helen, was busy with the morning-glories. "Of course," said she. "One may eat because one is fond of the dinner—of the dishes, of the way it's served, of the company, and so on, and so on. But what's therealreason?" She turned on Helen with a mocking smile. "Why, because to live one must eat. That makes the rest incidental. A sensible person tries to take the most favorable view of the food he has to eat or go without. A sensible woman does her best to love the man that asks her.""I wish you wouldn't say that sort of things, Courtney," Helen cried. "I know illusions are illusions, but I want to keep them."Courtney's expression changed abruptly. The deep-green eyes looked dreamily away. "If only onecouldkeep them!" she said. "But one can't." She shook her head sadly. "One can't." Then her face brightened. "My dear, it's better to throw them away oneself and get—perhaps something better—certainly something truer—in place of them. Sooner or later life will snatch them away, anyhow—and leave one quite naked." She turned sad, mysterious eyes on the girl. "You don't know," she went on, "what it has cost me, this being bred in illusions. Illusions—everywhere! Illusions for and about everything and everybody! Oh, Helen—Helen—that's what's the matter with us women. That's why we're such poor creatures—why we make such bad marriages, why we're such imperfect wives and mothers. We don't think. We purr or scratch."A long pause, then Helen sighed. "And I believed you and Richard were happy!""No," replied Courtney, her smile mocking, but pain in her eyes. "But we're going to be—if we can get over what our illusions have cost us and can set our feet on the solid earth. No more lies! And the biggest lie of all is that lying can ever bring real happiness." She was standing in the long, open window. She thought a moment, then said with an energy that frightened the girl: "And I'm sick—sick—sick of perfumes that end in a stench!"That afternoon she sent an acceptance of Richard's proposition—a "line" as he had suggested: "Winchie and I will stay on here until the divorce—and, if you so wish, so long as I am alone. I will keep Helen here, too." On the fourth morning after the dispatch of this, there came a letter from James & Vandegrift, inclosing one, unsealed, from Richard. She read the inclosure first:"MADAM: From this date I cease to be your husband. You may take such legal action as this may suggest."RICHARD VAUGHAN."She understood that Dick was simply meeting the legal requirements. But, these curt words made her tremble, made her skin burn, made her eyes sink with shame, though she was alone. A few moments and she glanced at the accompanying note from the lawyers. This sentence in it caught her eye: "As two years is the legal period in this State in actions on the ground of abandonment, you will observe that the date of Mr. Vaughan's letter enables you shortly to begin suit." She took up Dick's letter, looked at the date—August 17th, two years before. Then in a few weeks she could sue; in a few weeks more, she would be free. Free! That charmed word had no spell of exultation for her. She sank down by the window with heart suddenly faint and terror-stricken. She had been looking forward to a long time in which to plan—about Winchie, about her future, about Basil. And she would have only a few weeks. A few weeks—and her whole future to be decided—and she without experience, without anyone she could rely upon or even consult, without resources.August 17th—why had he chosen that date? With so many serious things to think of, her mind kept swinging back to that triviality—why August 17th? All at once it flashed upon her. August 17th—that was the date when Nanny had spied on her and Basil at the summerhouse. She covered her face, and the blood surged in hot billows against her scorching skin.Helen came, crying: "Oh, there you are. Winchie wants ice cream for supper. Don't you think— Why, Courtney, how solemn you look!""And you would, too," said Courtney, "if your hair had been falling out the way mine has lately.""Don't be so foolish," reassured Helen. "You could lose half of what you've got, and still have more than most women.... Perhaps it's worry that's making it fall?""I—worry? How absurd.""No, I don't believe you ever do.""Let's have the ice cream. Chocolate. And I feel just like jelly roll."XXVIThe pause before the first decisive step toward freedom—and perhaps away from Winchie—had shrunk to a day less than two weeks.It is mercifully not in human nature vividly to anticipate catastrophe. Death is the absolute certainty; yet no living being can imagine himself dead. And it was anything but certain that Dick would ever assert his legal right and take away her child. In her anxiety about Winchie, she had been giving much thought to Dick's character, which would be the deciding factor. And she was surprised at the knowledge of it she had unconsciously absorbed. Except among fools—who, whether they look within or without, see nothing—it is a commonplace of experience to discover that what we fancied we thought about a certain person or thing is precisely the opposite of what we really think when compelled to interrogate ourselves honestly. That is why the whole world can live and die by formulas in which it has not the least actual belief. These discoveries of our self-ignorance always astonish us, no matter how often they occur. Courtney had got many surprises of this kind in the past two years; yet this find—her intimate knowledge of her "abstract" husband's character—seemed incredible.It wasn't strange that she should know how he took his coffee, his favorite brand of cigarettes and of whisky, that he detested cold baths and would not wear underclothes with silk in them, or, if it could possibly be avoided, starched shirts—that he hated low shoes and high collars. As a "dutiful wife" she had made it her chief business, after Winchie, to see to her legal husband's material comfort, so far as he would permit it. But how had she come by a deep conviction of his honesty, of his truthfulness, of his incapacity for meanness of any kind? Where had she got her confidence in his sense of justice—he who had alienated her by his stubborn and tyrannical injustices to her? Why did she summarily dismiss as absurd the suggestion that his recent conduct was dictated merely by indifference to her or selfish consideration for his own comfort? These high ideas of him certainly did not date from their courtship and honeymoon; for, then she had no more interest or discrimination as to character than the next young person. There was no accounting for it. She simply found that these beliefs were immovably lodged under the opinion of him she had supposed was hers—the opinion that had made her love for Basil seem as right as if she had been a girl. So, while she feared he would take Winchie away from her, with a fear dark enough to shadow her days and make many a night uneasy, she was always saying to herself believingly, "He could not do anything unjust."One evening she fell into a somber mood. It wasn't so clear as usual that Dick would see the to her obvious injustice of separating mother and child. She left Helen, went up and stole in to sit by Winchie's bed—a habit she had formed lately. She got so low spirited that, when she heard Helen go along the hall toward the upstairs sitting room, she slipped downstairs and out into the air to wander among the flowers and beneath the scented trees. There was a thin moon and one of those faint, soft, intermittent breezes that give the disquieting yet fascinating sense of spirit companionship. She strolled to the edge of the lake; the fireflies seemed the eyes of the breeze spirits that were whispering and friendlily touching her. She saw a boat with a single occupant a few yards down the lake, close in shore. Even as she glanced, a low voice—Basil's—came from the boat: "Courtney—may I come?"She was not startled. Before the voice she had thought, "Basil will probably be trying to see me before long." She answered in the same undertone, "Helen may be looking this way.""If you sit on the bench down here, I can come to you. The shadow's deep enough."She hesitated, went to the bench he indicated. The press of the immediate had been all but keeping him out of her mind. But whenever she did think of him it was as her lover. With a nature as tenacious as hers habit is not dethroned in a day or demolished all at once by any convulsion however violent. Also, the more she suffered and the lonelier she felt—not a soul about to whom she could speak or hint any part of what was harassing her—the more tender grew her thoughts of the man in whom she had invested so much. Throwing good love after bad is not a rare human weakness—and Courtney was by no means certain in those depressed days that her investment had been bad, as such investments go in a world of human beings.He soon had his boat opposite the bench, made it fast. He sprang to her, seized her hands and was kissing them. "No—no. You mustn't," she protested, drawing away."Tell me all about it!" he cried. "How I suffered till I heard your voice on the telephone! I was watching the house with a glass all afternoon until dark. I was in the boat, lying a few rods up there all night. And from dawn I was across the lake watching with the glass again. So, I knew everything was quiet. But until your voice came, I was mad with dread—though I had seen you, just like your usual self, in the grounds and on the veranda hours before. But—tell me all about it.""There's nothing to tell," said she. His recital had seemed to her as if it were of something in which she had neither part nor interest."He knows, doesn't he?"Yes—he knows." And there she stopped because she never had discussed and never would discuss with anyone what happened between her and her husband."What is he going to do?""I don't know.""But— Don't keep me in suspense, dear. Is he going to get a divorce?""No. I'm to get it.""Your voice is very queer. Aren't you—glad?""I'm afraid about Winchie.""Oh—of course. Does he threaten to—" Basil halted."No. But— Basil, you must go.""Go? It's perfectly safe here.""Yes. But I've no right to see you, after the way he has acted—until I'm free." All true enough; yet she could not make her voice sound right to herself. "It isn't wise and it isn't honorable," she ended haltingly.She saw, or rather felt, him eying her somberly. "When will you be free?" he asked in a constrained tone."In a few months—I think.""And then we shall marry at once." He said it in the tone a man uses when he wishes to convince himself and another that what he is saying is the matter of course.She did not answer.He laughed unpleasantly. "You don't seem overjoyed at the prospect.""I'm thinking of Winchie.""Oh!" A pause; then he asked, "As soon as you've got Winchie safely, we'll marry?"This was a question she had not faced alone, yet. She was far from ready to face it with him. She found one of those phrases that come easily and naturally to women, ever compelled to be diplomatic. "If we both wish it then." Lightly, "You see, as I'm escaping with reputation intact, you're not bound to marry me.""Bound?" he exclaimed. "Courtney, please don't joke about this.""I'm quite serious—though I don't act as funereally as you do when you think you're serious.""We love each other, and——""Do we?" An impulse of honesty, of impatience at her own yielding to the temptation to temporize forced her to say it, "Do we, Basil?""Courtney, have you—changed? Can't you forgive me for——""It isn't that," she interrupted, and she thought she was telling the truth. "Let's never speak of that. No—it's— Could anyone go through what we have without being—sobered?""That's true. It has made me love you more intensely, more earnestly than ever. What we've suffered has made us like—like the two pieces of metal the fire fuses into one.""Thatsoundsnice. But—is it so?""You know it is!" he cried angrily."No, I don't," she replied, as if she were weighing every word. "I've made up my mind not to tell any more lies, especially to myself. I don't feel as I used to feel. There's—some one between us.""Vaughan?""Yes. I've a sense of obligation to him. If you had seen what I saw—how far above the little men who go in for cheap theatricals or act like mad dogs——"To his sensitiveness it seemed for an instant that she was hitting at him, was slyly reminding him of his own conduct. But he soon felt that he was mistaken—that there was another reason why her words stung him. "It sounds as if you were falling in love with him," he said in a grotesque attempt at a voice of raillery."No," replied she, and her voice satisfied him. "That part of my life is over. It could no more be brought back than last year's summer.""Winter," he corrected."It wasn't all winter, to be fair," said she, and changed the subject with, "But—remember, you are free—free as I am. We shan't see each other or hear from each other for a long time. It may be that you'll fall in love with somebody else——""Courtney, do you love me? ... Look at me. Answer."She continued to gaze out over the lake. "Honestly, I do not know. Sometimes I think I do. Again I wonder, did I love you or was I only in love with love? It's so easy to fool oneself when one wants any thing as much as I wanted love.""If you knew how you were—hurting me you'd not say these things.""Would you rather I lied to you?" she asked gently."Yes! For, I love you and I can't live without you. You've made yourself necessary to me. We must marry as soon as you are free and have Winchie.""Yes—we will marry, I suppose. There isn't anybody so near to me.""Except Winchie.""Winchieisme.""I understand," he said. "It's—beautiful. Ah, Courtney, we must marry as soon as we can.""No. I must—" She paused."Go on, dear. What is it that's to keep us apart?""I must be independent as well as free." The truth was out at last—the truth her nature as a woman of sheltered breeding was always dodging, but which her intelligence and pride were forcing her to face. "I must be independent.""There couldn't be any question of that kind between us.""There shan't be," replied she with energy that startled him."I'll settle any amount you say on you. I'll make myself your dependent if you wish."She laughed in a sweet, tender way. Whatever his faults and failings, he certainly was generous. "Basil!" she murmured. Then: "As if that would help matters. Why, anything I got from you would only increase my dependence. No, I must be really free—so neither of us could think for an instant I was your wife because I had to be supported—or you were my husband because you felt I was helpless. We women have got to stop being canary birds if we're to get real self-respect—or real consideration.""What queer notions you do get," said he with man's tolerant amusement at the fantasies of the women and the children. "Think of wasting such a night—and our few minutes together—discussing theories—and sordid ones!""Sordid! Basil, we're made out of earth and we've got to live on the ground. I'm done forever with the kind of romance and idealism we were brought up on. I'm going to build as high as I can, but I'm going to build on the ground. No more cloud castles that vanish when the wind changes. I'm going to use romance for decoration not for building stone, and cakes for dessert, not in place of bread."He laughed appreciatively. "How clever you are! We'll get on beautifully," he said. "You're the sort of woman that never bores a man or makes him feel like looking about.""Are you the sort of man that never bores a woman or makes her feel like looking about?""That's not for me to say," answered he with a careless laugh."It doesn't strike you as important—what a woman might think about such matters, does it?" said she, good-humored in her mockery."Oh, yes—if the woman's you. But let's not bother about such things. It seems such a waste of time. One kiss?"She shook her head. "Not with Richard looking on.""Do youwantme to kiss you—dear?" he said passionately.With a nervous glance toward the house she rose. "Please!" she said, in vague entreaty. "You must go.""You haven't told me—anything—yet." He cast hurriedly about for some way to detain her. "There are your plans for being independent.""I haven't any.""Do sit down. I'll not touch you again.""It isn't that, Basil. It's for the same reason that I didn't write and can't. Hasn't what he's done pledged us both to——""Don't say any more, Courtney," he interrupted; for he saw how profoundly in earnest she was, and respected her for it. "You're right. I'm going." He took her hand, pressed it. "Dear," he said, "do you know what it was that nearly drove me insane after you sent me away? As soon as I thought about it, I knew no harm would come to you. He's neither a coward nor a beast. But I was afraid you'd—kill yourself.""I never thought of it," laughed she. "I'm too healthy. You ought to build your romance round some lady with the morbid ideas that go with addled insides—the kind they write novels about—only they call it soul."He was amused in spite of himself. "It's lucky for you," said he, "that you look like a romance. If you didn't, your way of talking would discourage terribly.""Is lying the only romance?" said she. "Can't you enjoy the perfume of a flower unless you make a silly pretense that perfume and flower are a fairy queen and her breath?"She went with him to the retaining wall, gave him her hand, tried to respond to his loving pressure. He got into the boat. His expression in that odorous, enchantment-like dimness thrilled her. The feeling that he was going—leaving her to face the lowering future alone—saddened her, moved her to an emotion very like the love that had so often agitated her in these very shadows. And when he murmured, "Soon—my love!" she echoed "Soon!" in a voice melodious with the meaningless, impulsive sentiment of the moment. It sent him away believing. He pushed off. She watched the boat glide deeper and deeper into the shadow. A few seconds and the darkness had effaced it. She went slowly up the lawn. Before she reached the house, Winchie was again uppermost in her thoughts; to think of Basil involved puzzling over too many problems she was not yet ready to face.
XXV
At nine the next morning she appeared at the laboratory as usual. As she was passing through Dick's room, he glanced up. Their eyes did not meet. "Good morning," she said without pausing. She was in the rear room and out of view when his cold answering "Good morning" came. She went about her work, and several times she carried in to him the things she finished. He was absorbed, seemed as unconscious of his surroundings as had been his wont. It was the rule there never to interrupt; she did not break the rule. Toward noon the quiet was disturbed by the telephone buzzer. She answered. In Lizzie's voice came, "The grocery over to Wenona wants to speak to you." She knew at once that it was Basil. "Ask them to call up again about four," replied she and went back to her table. At noon she stopped work and left for the house. At the usual time Richard appeared, had dinner with them all, sat calm and silent and aloof, acting much as he always did.
In the warm part of the year, with the gardens to look after, it was her habit to spend only the mornings at the laboratory. She sent Helen to the Donaldsons with Winchie about three. When the telephone bell rang she herself answered. First came the voice of some clerk, then Basil's—"Is that you?"
"Yes," replied she.
"I'm at Fenton."
"Go to New York."
"Are you—well?"
"Never better. Some one may be listening along the wire."
"I understand. You aresureall's well?"
"Sure. Wait in New York."
"I understand. Good-by."
"Good-by."
As she hung up the receiver and turned round, she startled guiltily. There was Richard, just stepping from lawn to veranda, his eyes upon her. She felt as if she had been caught violating in stealth an implied compact not to communicate with Basil. Dick's expression told her that he was reading in her eyes with whom she had been talking. When they were face to face, he on the veranda, she one step up in the doorway, she said: "He wanted to reassure himself before starting East."
Dick's lips curled slightly.
"It isn't fair for me to let you think him a coward. I made him see so clearly that——"
"You were right," he interrupted. "I wish to hear no more about it."
Her eyes flashed at his peremptory tone, reminiscent of his habit of brushing her aside as merely woman. But the thought of Winchie was a talisman against any attack of temper.
"You said last night," he went on, "that this is between you and me only. You were right. So—I've wiped him off the slate."
As they crossed the lawn toward the water's edge, she felt a fear of him deeper than any that physical force could inspire. If he had threatened—had reviled—had done her physical violence, she would have met him with contempt, with a sense of her own superiority. But how deal with this intelligence? She had always known it was an intelligence; she was realizing that it was an intelligence she did not understand, was therefore superior to her own. When they reached the benches near the landing and sat, she was so weak that she could not have walked many steps farther.
"I think," he began, a quiet sarcasm in his tone that did not lessen her uneasiness, "you rather misunderstood me last night. In such circumstances, I believe, a man is expected to tear his hair and paw the ground and do violent things. I confess—" He hesitated an instant before going on—"I've had that inclination several times since I recovered from my stupor. Tradition and instinct and—vanity—are strong. I'll have to ask you to be a little careful what you say to me—not for your own sake but for mine. I have some emotional dynamite in my nature. I don't wish it to be set off. To mention only one thing, there's Winchie to be thought of. I have no desire to punish you. I feel too human myself, to play the part of judge or executioner. But, most of all, I'm determined that Winchie shall never know—which means that the world must never know."
Her clenched hands relaxed as she drew the first free breath since Lizzie told her where he had gone. Now, she felt she could face him for the struggle for Winchie on less unequal terms—not on equal terms, for he had the power to take Winchie away from her—had the power and—Howcould she prevent his using it?
"But when you came into the laboratory this morning as if nothing had happened," he proceeded, "you showed that you misunderstood me." He looked away reflectively. "I don't know just how I restrained myself."
"You were mistaken," said she. "I went because it's been my habit to go. I went just as you did."
He fixed his gaze upon her, danger in it. "You count too much on your success in deceiving me thus far," he said. "I must ask you not to do so—not to try to deceive me. Do you suppose I don't know now why you've been coming to the laboratory?"
His menacing gaze did not daunt her. She met it fearlessly. "That was the reason for a while—at first. But for a long time I've been going because I liked the work."
He studied her with those eyes that saw into everything, once they were focused properly. "I beg your pardon," he said with formal courtesy. "It's true you couldn't have worked so well if you hadn't liked the work."
"I've loved it." And her tone put her sincerity beyond question.
He glanced away. After a pause he said, "To go to the point—the future. I thought at first that I'd decide alone what should be done. Then it seemed to me I hadn't the right to act—about Winchie—without at least finding out what your ideas were."
He waited long; she did not speak.
"You feel, I suppose," he said gently, "that you've forfeited the right to speak."
She did not venture to contradict him. Anything she would say, however guarded, might anger him—and Winchie was at stake.
"As I told you last night, I know you are somehow not a bad woman. Until yesterday, I'd have said there were just two classes of women—the good and the bad. But I'd also have said that I'd have killed both you and him. I find I've got to revise many ideas I had. Just how, I don't know. I'm realizing in regard to my grandfather what I've long realized about everything else—that nothing from the past is trustworthy. The wisdom of yesterday is the folly of to-day." He roused himself from his half abstraction, said, "So—you need not be afraid to speak out whatever is in your mind."
On impulse of response to this breadth—an impulse that was yet, perhaps, not without quick feminine wit to see and seize advantage—she said, "You make me feel that I can trust to your sense of justice."
He smiled satirically. "I see you still don't understand. You fancy I'm more than human because I don't act as if I were less than human. I know you are a woman, but women have been given mind enough to distinguish between right and wrong, between honor and dishonor. And— Is it necessary that I give its plain name to what you've done—to what you are?"
"No," she said in a suffocating voice. Only her boy was saving her from bursting out.
"Then—don't try to cajole me with talk about my sense of justice. What do you ask?"
All in an instant—whether because her natural bent was for the frank and courageous or because instinct told her it was the only hopeful course with him—she resolved to act as she felt, to speak her thoughts. "What do I ask?" she repeated. "First, that you stop posing."
He flushed.
"If you really mean," she hastened on, "that you're acting as you have thus far because it's the right way to act, because the way men usually act is wrong and degrades them, why, you'll stop trying to convince me that you're giving a wonderful exhibition of gracious generosity."
"I had no such intention."
"Then why do you treat me as if I were an object of charity?"
"You can hardly expect me to treat you as if you had done something noble."
"You say I'm not a bad woman."
They looked at each other in silence. "No, you are not," he said. "You have acted like a bad woman, but you are not a bad woman."
"Then," she went on slowly, never taking her grave, earnest eyes from his, "I want you to ask yourself how it happens that the girl who, you said last night, was good, the girl who loved you when she married you, has become the woman you are condemning?"
A long silence. He looked away, looked again—and his gaze remained fixed upon her face. Then, in a low, hesitating voice: "Well—how did it happen?"
"Because you did not love me."
"You know better than that," he cried. "I've never given any woman but you a thought. I've never—" He broke off abruptly, grew angry. "But you're simply trying to improve your position by putting me on the defensive. And I ask you again not to goad me——"
"Because you did not love me," she repeated. "Your anger shows that you are trying to deny the truth to yourself. You married me on an impulse of passion. Oh, you had the usual romantic deceptive names for it—the words that make the man feel spiritual and tickle the girl's vanity. But you've shown what it really was by giving me only an incidental—carnal thought now and then. That's been our married life."
"Why did you not tell me you had these false, unjust ideas?"
"But they're not false, not unjust," she rejoined. "What do you know of me except my outside? What's my mind like? What's my heart like? What do I, a human being like yourself, think and feel? You don't know. You've lived on your grandfather's pompous old-fashioned ideal—that lust is love, if the preacher has christened it—that a woman's whole life is the good pleasure of her husband's various appetites."
She paused for breath. She was not so carried away by the tempest of her emotions that she did not note that he was listening and thinking. He presently said: "Even so, how does that excuseyou?—you, the mother of Winchie."
She paled, and her hands clasped convulsively in her lap. But she went boldly on. "I had a heart and a mind, like you. How could a human being live the life you assigned me? When I pleaded for a share in your life you refused. When I begged for freedom you refused. What I did was my compromise between the woman and the mother. A mother isn't less a woman, Richard, but more."
He rose in his excitement; for, his keen mind penetrated to her purpose. "You want your freedom and you want my son!" he cried.
Her gaze was steady but her deep voice trembled as she answered, "I want my freedom and I want my child—the child I brought into the world—the child I've watched over from birth. Be fair—be just, Richard. What have you done for him except provide the home the law would have compelled? You've amused yourself playing with him a few minutes now and then. You've asked me to buy him a present now and then. And never even inquired whether I'd done it. Do you know his birthday? Do you know how old he is? Do you know anything about him? Why then do you call him your son?"
He had been in such struggle with his fury that he was unable to check her torrent of half-defiant half-piteous appeal. He now mastered himself sufficiently to say, "How dare you talk to me like this?"
"Because," replied she, quick as a flash, "I respect your intelligence, even if you don't respect mine. You asked me to speak freely. I've done it. Would you have preferred me to lie to you?"
He walked away from her to the edge of the lake, immediately returned and sat again at the other end of the bench. He eyed her passive figure—hands quiet in her lap, gaze upon the town across the lake. Her face was quiet, but all the intelligence and character which her gayety and small stature and young loveliness veiled from unobservant eyes were clearly revealed now. "It's a succession of blows, these discoveries that you are so different from what I imagined," said he. With bitter reproach, "When I think how I exalted, how I idealized you!"
"Did I ask you to do it? Did I tempt you by hypocrisy? ... Whenever I'd try to show you what I was, didn't you stop me or refuse to listen? And—is it true that you idealized me? Is woman as mere female—mere flesh an ideal?"
"I have told you——"
"But," she interrupted appealingly, suddenly all animation, "you spoke without thinking. Think of me as you'd think of one of your problems of chemistry. Don't let your grandfather do your thinking—or the hypocritical world—or the shallow people round us."
He was silent. Presently he rose to pace the retaining wall. As she watched him there was no outward sign of the dread that was licking at her heart like a flame at living flesh. "And what of me?" he said, wheeling abruptly upon her. "You say it was my fault that you did what you've done. Do you mean to tell me you think you're not to blame at all?"
"No, I don't think that," she answered. "If I'd been brought up brave and independent, instead of to be a cowardly dependent— Oh, the crime of it! To take a being with a mind and a heart and, simply because it's female instead of male, to bring it up so that it's unfit really to live—to forbid it to live—to make it afraid to live! If I'd been brave I'd have spoken out frankly. I'd have demanded my freedom—I'd have taken it. As it was—I broke my marriage promises—as you broke yours. It was chiefly your fault." And she went on, with flushed cheeks and accusing eyes: "I don't say it because I wish to shirk, but because I must tell the whole truth so that you won't do a cruel injustice. You promised me love and care and you gave me lust and neglect. We were joined in equal marriage. You treated me much as if I were a slave you'd bought. And I had to submit. For, I really was a kind of slave, and I hadn't the courage and the skill to go out and make my own living—and anyhow, you could and would have taken Winchie away from me, if I'd tried to do it. Isn't that so?"
She saw that he was impressed. Again he reflected a long time pacing up and down the wall. When he turned toward her once more he said: "But listen while I state plainly what you ask. You ask me to reward your treachery by letting you marry the man who betrayed me—and you cap it by asking me to let you make my son his!"
"No, Richard," she protested. "I simply ask you to let me keep my child on any condition you make. I'll promise not to see—him. I'll take Winchie and live on the farm with my people until he's old enough to go away to school. I know the law puts me at your mercy. But I don't believe you'll use your power to crush me." She was choking, was fighting back the tears.
He turned to the retaining wall, gazed into the water until she should fight down the evidences of weakness which he could not but see she was ashamed of. When he joined her again, it was to say in a voice that reassured her: "I want to do what's best for us all—especially for Winchie. It's very difficult.... When I think of the misery I might have caused, if I had believed Nanny and hadn't had time to reflect—I must not act until I've seen every side—Winchie's—yours—mine——"
The sound of the supper gong came floating across the lawn. Courtney rose mechanically and in silence they returned to the house. Helen and Winchie had enjoyed themselves at the Donaldsons, and told all about it. The strain between Dick and Courtney passed unnoticed. When Winchie went up, Courtney accompanied him. Toward ten she left the book she had been pretending to read and sat in the hammock on the balcony. The moon, huge and ruddy through an opening among the boughs, poured its flood of elfin light over lake and lawns and gardens. The soft shadows, the vague vistas, the overpowering perfume of honeysuckle and jasmine and rose combined to beguile her out of all sense of reality. "I've been dreaming—dreaming," she murmured. And what an incredible dream! No man—least of all Richard, the prejudiced, the domineering—would have acted so in real life. "A dream—a dream." It was impossible, this experience of hers that belied all she had read, all she had been taught, about the relations of men and women. She, a married woman, had taken a lover—and, instead of its degrading her, it had made her better than she had been when she thrust love out of her life and tried to live by rule of duty to husband. And now—instead of her husband's killing her or of her killing herself or of any of the various kinds of violence prescribed for such situations, her husband had acted like a civilized human being, gently, considerately, at the dictates of humanity and not at the dictates of vanity. And instead of abysm below abysm of disaster and death in punishment for religion's scarlet sin of sins for woman, there was prospect of a life in which she could profit by the experience she had gained. "A dream—a dream." Or, was a new world dawning?—a new way of living that made the old way seem a grotesque carnival of the beast in man?
As she was dressing next morning, in came Winchie. "Has papa gone away?" he asked at the threshold.
She paused with the eye of her belt at the prong of its buckle. "Why?" said she.
"I don't know whether I dreamed it. I thought it was so. I thought I waked up and there was papa kissing me. And I thought it made me sad. And he said, 'Good-by, Winchie. Take care of your mother and do what she says, and don't forget me.' And I kissed him and said, 'Can't Mamma Courtney and I go too?' And he said, 'No, dear.' And I said, 'All right. Bring me a gun, like Charlie Donaldson's.' And then I fell asleep again."
In the mirror she saw him run to the door into the hall, pick up a letter which had evidently been thrust through the crack. She turned and held out her hand. He brought it to her, spelling out the "Courtney" written on it as he came. "Go take Aunt Helen down to breakfast," she said. When he was gone, she opened the envelope and read:
"The important point is Winchie. I am going away to try to think it out. However, one thing is certain. There must be a divorce. In a few days I shall send you a formal notice of abandonment, and you will begin an action at once. Until we are free—perhaps so long as you are alone—it is best that Winchie stay with you. I leave him on one condition—that you keep him here, carrying on everything exactly as usual. He must see no sign of change.
"Please let me know whether you accept. A line, in care of my lawyers, James & Vandegrift, will reach me.
"R.V."
"So long as you are alone." Courtney felt as if the air had suddenly changed from the leaden oppressiveness of before the storm to the buoyant freshness afterwards. With the paralyzing dread about Winchie removed, she could think of the rest of the situation. She read the letter again and again. The regularity of line and word, the precision of phrasing indicated a carefully copied final draft. There was not the faintest clue to the feelings of the writer. She recalled those last two talks with him. At both she was in no condition to observe him, so absorbed was she in the things immediately at issue. But now, as she went over his words, looks, manner, she saw a personality wholly different from the Richard Vaughan she had known—or had fancied she knew. That Richard Vaughan really had no personality beyond a chemical intelligence, was an abstraction like an algebraic formula. This Richard Vaughan was a flesh-and-blood man; but—what sort of a man? And his conduct toward her, did it not mean that he had eliminated her as one empties out a test tube when the experiment ends—in failure? Did it not mean supreme indifference? Yes—it must be so. Still, no ordinary man, however indifferent to wife and child, could act in such circumstances so absolutely without personal vanity, with such obvious determination to do nothing small or revengeful. On any theory, there must be behind those curiously unemotional lines a character big, generous, incapable of meanness.
She looked at this newly revealed large personality, with a depressing sense of her own contrasting smallness. In the last few years of widening intelligence her sex vanity, so diligently fostered throughout her childhood and girlhood, had received many a rude shock from within as well as from without. But none so rude, so demolishing as this. "He's a man really worth while," thought she. "And women are too insignificant either to be loved by such a man or to love him."
She had been bred in and to the American feminine ideal—the woman graciously deigning to permit some man to support her in idleness; the man more than repaid by the honor of being allowed to support her; whatever further he might get, a voluntary largess from his royal guest, to be given or withdrawn at her good pleasure. This delusion was a distorted tradition from a bygone era—an era of conditions around the relations of the sexes that are forever past. In that "woman's paradise" women were scarce and men plenty; and there was the constancy that is natural in a narrow life of severe toil, with the intelligence too little developed to be restless or critical, with the passions undisputedly in the ascendant. This feminine tradition had been dying hard, as delusions flattering to vanity, encouraging to laziness, ever do. She had tried to keep on believing the lies she heard and read everywhere—especially novelists and preachers dependent on unthinking women for a living—the romantic exaltation of woman's love as of value star spaces beyond the value of man's love. She had tried to suppress her sense of humor and to be impressed when she heard women speak of kissing a man in reward for some service as if one of their kisses made an archangel's diadem, in comparison, a cheap bauble. She had tried not to see how intelligent men scarcely restrained the grin of insincerity as they poured out extravagances to some woman whom their whimsical passions chanced to covet. She had struggled against the disillusionizing thoughts about her own sex's private opinion of itself that would arise as she noted how often women treated lightly the man who took them seriously and all but offered themselves to him who winked as he bought or passed on untempted or cynically inquired for the inside price.
Step by step she had been thrust out into the truth that the whole feminist cult was a colossal fiction, that in the actualities of the life of this new era woman's value was precisely like man's—the usefulness of the particular combination of mind and heart, intellect and character, that made up the personality. She began to suspect that woman's ability to sway man through his passion was more often a handicap to her, and to him, than a help to either. She began to realize that learning how to use that ability wisely was the supreme hard problem the life of to-day set for woman to solve or perish. While passion sometimes had made one man for a moment slave to some one woman, or a few men slaves to any woman, it had through all time made womankind slave to mankind. And in the new era, while the slave was still willing, the master was becoming weary, was demanding something less burdensome, more companionable.
As she stood at the bureau, buckle still unfastened, eyes and mind upon those few calm, precisely pruned lines of Dick's, there came a thought that dealt a deathblow to her long dying femininefolie de grandeur. While it was true she had not sought nor wished Dick's interest of any kind, the fact remained that he, after living in daily contact with her for six years, had been so little affected by her personality that he was letting her go without any sign of emotion. "But I am as indifferent to him as he to me." she urged upon herself in hope of some slight consolation. She instantly remembered that it was he, not she, who had begun the indifference. And then came the stinging, blood-heating recollection that he had used at his pleasure the only part of her that had been able to impress him as valuable to a man of purpose and achievement. Nor could she dismiss him with a contemptuous "low minded and unworthy," for she knew he was neither. Squirm how she would, she could not get away from the humiliating fact—"six years of me, and not even enough physical value to make his jealousy for a single moment triumph over his sense of self-respect!"
Winchie had finished breakfast and was playing with his wagon on the veranda. Helen was still at table. "Has Mr. Gallatin gone East with Dick?" she inquired, turning rosy red.
"No," replied Courtney, not noting Helen's color. If she had, she would have suspected nothing. When Helen came home in good spirits from that visit to Saint X, after the Chicago shopping trip, and was no longer ill at ease with Basil, Courtney—eager, as we all are, to seize the first pretext to be relieved of a weight upon conscience—assumed that she had got completely over her fancy. As for Basil, Courtney trusted him absolutely.
"But he's away, isn't he?" persisted Helen, after a pause. "Lizzie tells me his rooms haven't been disturbed for two nights."
"He went day before yesterday, I believe," said Courtney. "Did you see Richard this morning?"
"Just a minute. He was hurrying for the train when I came down."
"I thought he didn't look very well, last night," pursued Courtney.
Helen, absorbed in her own agitating thoughts, failed to respond to this lead; so she put the question direct. "How did he look this morning?"
"About as usual," replied Helen. "I didn't notice any change. He had on that new gray suit. It's very becoming. When's he coming back?"
Courtney seemed not to have heard. "He forgot to give me his address. Did he leave it with you?"
"The Willard in Washington, then the Astor in New York."
"It may be I'll want to write him or something."
"I should think so!" cried Helen. "You and he write every day, don't you?"
"Not to each other," said Courtney dryly. "We never did establish the daily letter. That's one of the dreariest farces in married life. It belongs to the kind of people who think they're happy because they're too stupid or too bored to quarrel."
When she had eaten the tip end of a roll and drunk a little coffee, she went out on the veranda, sent Winchie to the lawn and asked Helen to sit with her at the western end where no one could hear or overhear. "You asked me when Richard was coming back," she began.
"It was simply a chance question," apologized Helen.
"He's not coming back."
"Not coming back!" echoed Helen. "You're going to move East?"
The emerald eyes met Helen's excited glance placidly. "We are going to get a divorce," she said.
Helen's big brown eyes opened wide. With lips ajar she stared at Courtney. Then she gave a little laugh that sounded as if the shock had unbalanced her mind and reduced her to imbecility. "A divorce," she murmured feebly.
"We both wish to be free," continued Courtney, talking in the matter-of-fact way that was the surest preventive of hysteria in herself or in Helen. "So, he's gone away. I'll stay here a while, then— But I haven't made any plans. There's plenty of time."
A long silence, Helen gazing at Courtney, at Winchie racing along the paths with his red-striped wagon, at Courtney again, at trees and lake, as if she doubted the reality of all things. "I don't know what to say!" she exclaimed at last.
"Naturally," replied Courtney, "since there's nothing to say."
"I can't believe it!"
"Why not?"
"There aren't two people better suited to each other. Why, you never quarreled."
"That's it. I love contention. He wouldn't give it to me. So—pop goes the weasel."
"How can you! When your heart must be breaking." Helen put aside her stupefaction and brought the tears to her soft brown eyes in tardy conformity to the etiquette for nearest female friend on such occasions.
"Now, dear, please don't cry. You know that I know how easy it is for women to cry, and how little it means."
Helen hastily dried her eyes. "Oh, dear! It must be fixed up!" she said in a more natural tone, genuinely sympathetic and friendly. "He doesn't mean it. I'm sure he doesn't."
Courtney laughed—rather disagreeably. Helen was confirming her own newly formed, anything but exalted opinion of herself as a human value. "I suppose it'll never for an instant occur to anyone that I might be the discontented one."
"Well, you know, yourself, Courtney," stammered Helen, "it doesn't seem likely a woman'd give up a good husband and a good home——"
Courtney's arresting smile was bitterly ironic. "Indeed it doesn't," assented she. "Give up what she married for? Not unless she was sure of a better living. Men think they marry for love—but it's really to—I'm not equal to saying why men marry. You can find the reason in Ben Franklin's autobiography, if you care to look it up. As for us women—it's the living."
"It's not true of me!" cried Helen, who had in all its amusing, or exasperating, efflorescence the universal feminine passion for drawing everything down to the personal, for seeking a compliment to herself or a reflection upon herself in any and every remark addressed to her by man or woman. "Poor as I am, I'm——"
"Never mind, dear," said Courtney with good-humored raillery. "At your age I was talking the same way. You'll find out some day that the hardest person in the world to get acquainted with is your real self. Why, there isn't one human being in ten million who'd know his real self if they met in the street." She rose to inspect the thick mat of morning-glories trellised up the end of the veranda. "And most of us, if we were introduced to our real selves, would refuse to speak to such low creatures—especially the romantic people."
"IknowI'd not marry foranythingbut love!"
Courtney, her back to Helen, was busy with the morning-glories. "Of course," said she. "One may eat because one is fond of the dinner—of the dishes, of the way it's served, of the company, and so on, and so on. But what's therealreason?" She turned on Helen with a mocking smile. "Why, because to live one must eat. That makes the rest incidental. A sensible person tries to take the most favorable view of the food he has to eat or go without. A sensible woman does her best to love the man that asks her."
"I wish you wouldn't say that sort of things, Courtney," Helen cried. "I know illusions are illusions, but I want to keep them."
Courtney's expression changed abruptly. The deep-green eyes looked dreamily away. "If only onecouldkeep them!" she said. "But one can't." She shook her head sadly. "One can't." Then her face brightened. "My dear, it's better to throw them away oneself and get—perhaps something better—certainly something truer—in place of them. Sooner or later life will snatch them away, anyhow—and leave one quite naked." She turned sad, mysterious eyes on the girl. "You don't know," she went on, "what it has cost me, this being bred in illusions. Illusions—everywhere! Illusions for and about everything and everybody! Oh, Helen—Helen—that's what's the matter with us women. That's why we're such poor creatures—why we make such bad marriages, why we're such imperfect wives and mothers. We don't think. We purr or scratch."
A long pause, then Helen sighed. "And I believed you and Richard were happy!"
"No," replied Courtney, her smile mocking, but pain in her eyes. "But we're going to be—if we can get over what our illusions have cost us and can set our feet on the solid earth. No more lies! And the biggest lie of all is that lying can ever bring real happiness." She was standing in the long, open window. She thought a moment, then said with an energy that frightened the girl: "And I'm sick—sick—sick of perfumes that end in a stench!"
That afternoon she sent an acceptance of Richard's proposition—a "line" as he had suggested: "Winchie and I will stay on here until the divorce—and, if you so wish, so long as I am alone. I will keep Helen here, too." On the fourth morning after the dispatch of this, there came a letter from James & Vandegrift, inclosing one, unsealed, from Richard. She read the inclosure first:
"MADAM: From this date I cease to be your husband. You may take such legal action as this may suggest.
"RICHARD VAUGHAN."
She understood that Dick was simply meeting the legal requirements. But, these curt words made her tremble, made her skin burn, made her eyes sink with shame, though she was alone. A few moments and she glanced at the accompanying note from the lawyers. This sentence in it caught her eye: "As two years is the legal period in this State in actions on the ground of abandonment, you will observe that the date of Mr. Vaughan's letter enables you shortly to begin suit." She took up Dick's letter, looked at the date—August 17th, two years before. Then in a few weeks she could sue; in a few weeks more, she would be free. Free! That charmed word had no spell of exultation for her. She sank down by the window with heart suddenly faint and terror-stricken. She had been looking forward to a long time in which to plan—about Winchie, about her future, about Basil. And she would have only a few weeks. A few weeks—and her whole future to be decided—and she without experience, without anyone she could rely upon or even consult, without resources.
August 17th—why had he chosen that date? With so many serious things to think of, her mind kept swinging back to that triviality—why August 17th? All at once it flashed upon her. August 17th—that was the date when Nanny had spied on her and Basil at the summerhouse. She covered her face, and the blood surged in hot billows against her scorching skin.
Helen came, crying: "Oh, there you are. Winchie wants ice cream for supper. Don't you think— Why, Courtney, how solemn you look!"
"And you would, too," said Courtney, "if your hair had been falling out the way mine has lately."
"Don't be so foolish," reassured Helen. "You could lose half of what you've got, and still have more than most women.... Perhaps it's worry that's making it fall?"
"I—worry? How absurd."
"No, I don't believe you ever do."
"Let's have the ice cream. Chocolate. And I feel just like jelly roll."
XXVI
The pause before the first decisive step toward freedom—and perhaps away from Winchie—had shrunk to a day less than two weeks.
It is mercifully not in human nature vividly to anticipate catastrophe. Death is the absolute certainty; yet no living being can imagine himself dead. And it was anything but certain that Dick would ever assert his legal right and take away her child. In her anxiety about Winchie, she had been giving much thought to Dick's character, which would be the deciding factor. And she was surprised at the knowledge of it she had unconsciously absorbed. Except among fools—who, whether they look within or without, see nothing—it is a commonplace of experience to discover that what we fancied we thought about a certain person or thing is precisely the opposite of what we really think when compelled to interrogate ourselves honestly. That is why the whole world can live and die by formulas in which it has not the least actual belief. These discoveries of our self-ignorance always astonish us, no matter how often they occur. Courtney had got many surprises of this kind in the past two years; yet this find—her intimate knowledge of her "abstract" husband's character—seemed incredible.
It wasn't strange that she should know how he took his coffee, his favorite brand of cigarettes and of whisky, that he detested cold baths and would not wear underclothes with silk in them, or, if it could possibly be avoided, starched shirts—that he hated low shoes and high collars. As a "dutiful wife" she had made it her chief business, after Winchie, to see to her legal husband's material comfort, so far as he would permit it. But how had she come by a deep conviction of his honesty, of his truthfulness, of his incapacity for meanness of any kind? Where had she got her confidence in his sense of justice—he who had alienated her by his stubborn and tyrannical injustices to her? Why did she summarily dismiss as absurd the suggestion that his recent conduct was dictated merely by indifference to her or selfish consideration for his own comfort? These high ideas of him certainly did not date from their courtship and honeymoon; for, then she had no more interest or discrimination as to character than the next young person. There was no accounting for it. She simply found that these beliefs were immovably lodged under the opinion of him she had supposed was hers—the opinion that had made her love for Basil seem as right as if she had been a girl. So, while she feared he would take Winchie away from her, with a fear dark enough to shadow her days and make many a night uneasy, she was always saying to herself believingly, "He could not do anything unjust."
One evening she fell into a somber mood. It wasn't so clear as usual that Dick would see the to her obvious injustice of separating mother and child. She left Helen, went up and stole in to sit by Winchie's bed—a habit she had formed lately. She got so low spirited that, when she heard Helen go along the hall toward the upstairs sitting room, she slipped downstairs and out into the air to wander among the flowers and beneath the scented trees. There was a thin moon and one of those faint, soft, intermittent breezes that give the disquieting yet fascinating sense of spirit companionship. She strolled to the edge of the lake; the fireflies seemed the eyes of the breeze spirits that were whispering and friendlily touching her. She saw a boat with a single occupant a few yards down the lake, close in shore. Even as she glanced, a low voice—Basil's—came from the boat: "Courtney—may I come?"
She was not startled. Before the voice she had thought, "Basil will probably be trying to see me before long." She answered in the same undertone, "Helen may be looking this way."
"If you sit on the bench down here, I can come to you. The shadow's deep enough."
She hesitated, went to the bench he indicated. The press of the immediate had been all but keeping him out of her mind. But whenever she did think of him it was as her lover. With a nature as tenacious as hers habit is not dethroned in a day or demolished all at once by any convulsion however violent. Also, the more she suffered and the lonelier she felt—not a soul about to whom she could speak or hint any part of what was harassing her—the more tender grew her thoughts of the man in whom she had invested so much. Throwing good love after bad is not a rare human weakness—and Courtney was by no means certain in those depressed days that her investment had been bad, as such investments go in a world of human beings.
He soon had his boat opposite the bench, made it fast. He sprang to her, seized her hands and was kissing them. "No—no. You mustn't," she protested, drawing away.
"Tell me all about it!" he cried. "How I suffered till I heard your voice on the telephone! I was watching the house with a glass all afternoon until dark. I was in the boat, lying a few rods up there all night. And from dawn I was across the lake watching with the glass again. So, I knew everything was quiet. But until your voice came, I was mad with dread—though I had seen you, just like your usual self, in the grounds and on the veranda hours before. But—tell me all about it."
"There's nothing to tell," said she. His recital had seemed to her as if it were of something in which she had neither part nor interest.
"He knows, doesn't he?
"Yes—he knows." And there she stopped because she never had discussed and never would discuss with anyone what happened between her and her husband.
"What is he going to do?"
"I don't know."
"But— Don't keep me in suspense, dear. Is he going to get a divorce?"
"No. I'm to get it."
"Your voice is very queer. Aren't you—glad?"
"I'm afraid about Winchie."
"Oh—of course. Does he threaten to—" Basil halted.
"No. But— Basil, you must go."
"Go? It's perfectly safe here."
"Yes. But I've no right to see you, after the way he has acted—until I'm free." All true enough; yet she could not make her voice sound right to herself. "It isn't wise and it isn't honorable," she ended haltingly.
She saw, or rather felt, him eying her somberly. "When will you be free?" he asked in a constrained tone.
"In a few months—I think."
"And then we shall marry at once." He said it in the tone a man uses when he wishes to convince himself and another that what he is saying is the matter of course.
She did not answer.
He laughed unpleasantly. "You don't seem overjoyed at the prospect."
"I'm thinking of Winchie."
"Oh!" A pause; then he asked, "As soon as you've got Winchie safely, we'll marry?"
This was a question she had not faced alone, yet. She was far from ready to face it with him. She found one of those phrases that come easily and naturally to women, ever compelled to be diplomatic. "If we both wish it then." Lightly, "You see, as I'm escaping with reputation intact, you're not bound to marry me."
"Bound?" he exclaimed. "Courtney, please don't joke about this."
"I'm quite serious—though I don't act as funereally as you do when you think you're serious."
"We love each other, and——"
"Do we?" An impulse of honesty, of impatience at her own yielding to the temptation to temporize forced her to say it, "Do we, Basil?"
"Courtney, have you—changed? Can't you forgive me for——"
"It isn't that," she interrupted, and she thought she was telling the truth. "Let's never speak of that. No—it's— Could anyone go through what we have without being—sobered?"
"That's true. It has made me love you more intensely, more earnestly than ever. What we've suffered has made us like—like the two pieces of metal the fire fuses into one."
"Thatsoundsnice. But—is it so?"
"You know it is!" he cried angrily.
"No, I don't," she replied, as if she were weighing every word. "I've made up my mind not to tell any more lies, especially to myself. I don't feel as I used to feel. There's—some one between us."
"Vaughan?"
"Yes. I've a sense of obligation to him. If you had seen what I saw—how far above the little men who go in for cheap theatricals or act like mad dogs——"
To his sensitiveness it seemed for an instant that she was hitting at him, was slyly reminding him of his own conduct. But he soon felt that he was mistaken—that there was another reason why her words stung him. "It sounds as if you were falling in love with him," he said in a grotesque attempt at a voice of raillery.
"No," replied she, and her voice satisfied him. "That part of my life is over. It could no more be brought back than last year's summer."
"Winter," he corrected.
"It wasn't all winter, to be fair," said she, and changed the subject with, "But—remember, you are free—free as I am. We shan't see each other or hear from each other for a long time. It may be that you'll fall in love with somebody else——"
"Courtney, do you love me? ... Look at me. Answer."
She continued to gaze out over the lake. "Honestly, I do not know. Sometimes I think I do. Again I wonder, did I love you or was I only in love with love? It's so easy to fool oneself when one wants any thing as much as I wanted love."
"If you knew how you were—hurting me you'd not say these things."
"Would you rather I lied to you?" she asked gently.
"Yes! For, I love you and I can't live without you. You've made yourself necessary to me. We must marry as soon as you are free and have Winchie."
"Yes—we will marry, I suppose. There isn't anybody so near to me."
"Except Winchie."
"Winchieisme."
"I understand," he said. "It's—beautiful. Ah, Courtney, we must marry as soon as we can."
"No. I must—" She paused.
"Go on, dear. What is it that's to keep us apart?"
"I must be independent as well as free." The truth was out at last—the truth her nature as a woman of sheltered breeding was always dodging, but which her intelligence and pride were forcing her to face. "I must be independent."
"There couldn't be any question of that kind between us."
"There shan't be," replied she with energy that startled him.
"I'll settle any amount you say on you. I'll make myself your dependent if you wish."
She laughed in a sweet, tender way. Whatever his faults and failings, he certainly was generous. "Basil!" she murmured. Then: "As if that would help matters. Why, anything I got from you would only increase my dependence. No, I must be really free—so neither of us could think for an instant I was your wife because I had to be supported—or you were my husband because you felt I was helpless. We women have got to stop being canary birds if we're to get real self-respect—or real consideration."
"What queer notions you do get," said he with man's tolerant amusement at the fantasies of the women and the children. "Think of wasting such a night—and our few minutes together—discussing theories—and sordid ones!"
"Sordid! Basil, we're made out of earth and we've got to live on the ground. I'm done forever with the kind of romance and idealism we were brought up on. I'm going to build as high as I can, but I'm going to build on the ground. No more cloud castles that vanish when the wind changes. I'm going to use romance for decoration not for building stone, and cakes for dessert, not in place of bread."
He laughed appreciatively. "How clever you are! We'll get on beautifully," he said. "You're the sort of woman that never bores a man or makes him feel like looking about."
"Are you the sort of man that never bores a woman or makes her feel like looking about?"
"That's not for me to say," answered he with a careless laugh.
"It doesn't strike you as important—what a woman might think about such matters, does it?" said she, good-humored in her mockery.
"Oh, yes—if the woman's you. But let's not bother about such things. It seems such a waste of time. One kiss?"
She shook her head. "Not with Richard looking on."
"Do youwantme to kiss you—dear?" he said passionately.
With a nervous glance toward the house she rose. "Please!" she said, in vague entreaty. "You must go."
"You haven't told me—anything—yet." He cast hurriedly about for some way to detain her. "There are your plans for being independent."
"I haven't any."
"Do sit down. I'll not touch you again."
"It isn't that, Basil. It's for the same reason that I didn't write and can't. Hasn't what he's done pledged us both to——"
"Don't say any more, Courtney," he interrupted; for he saw how profoundly in earnest she was, and respected her for it. "You're right. I'm going." He took her hand, pressed it. "Dear," he said, "do you know what it was that nearly drove me insane after you sent me away? As soon as I thought about it, I knew no harm would come to you. He's neither a coward nor a beast. But I was afraid you'd—kill yourself."
"I never thought of it," laughed she. "I'm too healthy. You ought to build your romance round some lady with the morbid ideas that go with addled insides—the kind they write novels about—only they call it soul."
He was amused in spite of himself. "It's lucky for you," said he, "that you look like a romance. If you didn't, your way of talking would discourage terribly."
"Is lying the only romance?" said she. "Can't you enjoy the perfume of a flower unless you make a silly pretense that perfume and flower are a fairy queen and her breath?"
She went with him to the retaining wall, gave him her hand, tried to respond to his loving pressure. He got into the boat. His expression in that odorous, enchantment-like dimness thrilled her. The feeling that he was going—leaving her to face the lowering future alone—saddened her, moved her to an emotion very like the love that had so often agitated her in these very shadows. And when he murmured, "Soon—my love!" she echoed "Soon!" in a voice melodious with the meaningless, impulsive sentiment of the moment. It sent him away believing. He pushed off. She watched the boat glide deeper and deeper into the shadow. A few seconds and the darkness had effaced it. She went slowly up the lawn. Before she reached the house, Winchie was again uppermost in her thoughts; to think of Basil involved puzzling over too many problems she was not yet ready to face.