She was waiting for him in the library with an expression both eager and worried. She crossed the room to meet him, but paused half-way as though really fearful of some change. But she saw only the same kind, tense face, looking perhaps a bit heavy from weariness, the same dark eyes with their strange fires, the same slight droop of the shoulders. There was certainly nothing to fear in him as he stood before her with a tender, quizzical smile about his large mouth. He looked to her now more like a big boy than the cold, stern man she had half expected.
"Are you afraid?" he asked.
"No, not standing here where I can see you. But over the telephone with your strange voice and your half meanings—whatdidyou mean?"
"Nothing you need worry about."
She became suddenly serious.
"I want to tell you now that there is no need of your trying to hide anything at all from me about Ben."
"I am hiding nothing. But," he asked with quick intuition, "areyou?"
She hesitated, met his eyes, and dropped her voice.
"I can tell you nothing—not even you—unless you have learned it."
"I, in my turn, don't know what you mean," he answered. "I have learned nothing new about him. And it is too fair a morning," he concluded abruptly, "to bother over puzzles. Things have happened so rapidly that we are probably both muddled, and if we could spend the time in explanations we should doubtless find that neither of us means anything."
She was clearly relieved, but it raised a new question in Donaldson's mind. Of course she understood nothing of what had taken place last night unless by mental telepathy. But in these days of psychic revelations a man could n't feel secure even in his thoughts. There was apparently some inner secret—she had touched upon it before—relating to the Arsdale curse. Doubtless if one pried carefully enough many another skeleton could be found in the closets of the house of this family half-poisoned now through three generations.
It was early and it suddenly occurred to her that he had probably not yet breakfasted.
She struggled a moment with a conflicting sense of hospitality and propriety, but finally said resolutely, "I should be glad if you would breakfast with me. You ought to try your new cook."
The picture he had of her sitting opposite him at the coffee brought the warm blood to his cheeks.
"I—why—"
"Will you have your chop well done?" she broke in, without giving him time to frame an excuse.
"Yes," he answered.
She left him.
Within a very short time she announced the meal with pretty grace, which concealed all trace of nervousness, save for the heightened color of her cheeks, which, he noted, were as scarlet as though she herself had been bending over a hot stove. She led the way into an exquisite little dining room, which he at once took to be the expression of her own taste. It was in white and apple green, with a large trellised window opening upon the lawn. A small table had been placed in the sun near the window, and was covered with dazzling white linen, polished silver, and cut glass, which, catching the morning beams, reflected a prismatic riot of colors. The chops, lettuce, bread and butter, and coffee were already served. As he seated her, he felt as though he were living out a dream—one of the dreams that as a very young man he had sometimes dreamed when, lying flat upon his back in the sun, he had watched the big cotton clouds wafted, like thistledown, across the blue.
It might have been Italy for the blue of the sky and the caressing warmth of the sun. They threw open the big window and in flooded the perfume of lilacs and the twitter of sparrows, which is the nearest to a bird song one can expect in New York. But after all, this was n't New York; nor Spain; nor even the inner woods; it was just Here. And Here is where the eyes of a man and a woman meet with spring in their blood.
Griefs of loss, bitter, poignant; sorrows of mistakes, bruising, numbing; the ache of disappointments, ingratitudes, betrayals,—Nature surging on to her fulfillment sweeps them away, like fences before a flood, allowing no obstructions to Youth's kinship with Spring. So the young may not mourn long; so, if they do, they become no longer young.
The man and the woman might have been two care-free children for all they were able to resist the magic of this fair morning or the subtler magic of their own emotions.
To the man it suggested more than to the woman because he gave more thought to it, but the woman absorbed more the spirit of it because she more fully surrendered herself.
Donaldson found himself with a good appetite. There was nothing neurotic about him. He was fundamentally normal—fundamentally wholesome—with no trace of mawkishness in his nature. As he sipped the hot golden-brown coffee, he tried to get at just what it was that he felt when he now looked at her. It came to him suddenly and he spoke it aloud,
"I seem to have, this minute, a fresher vision of life than I have known since I was twenty."
It was something different from anything he had experienced up to now. It was saner, clearer.
"It is the morning," she hazarded. "I never saw the grass so green as it is this morning; I never felt the sun so warm."
"It is like the peace of the inner woods,—only brighter," he declared.
"You said such peace never came to any one unless alone."
"Did I?"
She nodded.
"But itislike that," he insisted. "Only more joyous. I think it is the extra joy in it that makes us not want it alone. Queer, too, it seems to be born altogether of this spot, of this moment. Understand what I mean? It does n't seem to go back of the moment we entered this room and—," he hesitated, "it does n't seem to go forward."
"It is as though coming in here we had stepped into a beautiful picture and were living inside the frame for a little," she suggested.
"Exactly. The frame is the hedge; the picture is the sky, the sun, and you."
She laughed, frankly pleased in a childish way, at his conceit.
"Then for me," she answered, "it must be the sun, the sky, andyou."
"We are n't trying to compliment each other, are we?"
"No," she answered seriously. "I hope not."
She went on after a moment's reflection,
"I have been puzzling over the strange chance that brought you into my life at so opportune a time."
"I came because you believed in me and because you needed me. You believed in me because—," he paused, his blood seeming suddenly to run faster, "because I needed you."
"You needed me?"
"Yes," he answered, "I needed you. I needed you long ago."
"But how—why?"
"To show me the joy there is in the sunlight wherever it strikes; to take me with you into this picture."
Their eyes met.
"Have I done that?" she asked.
"Yes."
She shook her head.
"I 'm afraid not," she disclaimed, "because the joy has n't been in my own heart."
"Nor was it in mine—then."
Her eyes turned back to his. The silver in them came to the top like the moon reflection on dark waters through fading clouds. He was leaning a little towards her.
"It seems to be something that we can't get alone," he explained.
"Perhaps it is," she pondered, "perhaps."
She started back a little, as one who, lost in a sunset, leans too far over the balcony. Then she smiled. Donaldson's heart answered the smile.
"Your coffee is cooling," she said. "May I pour you some fresh?"
He passed his cup automatically. But the act was enough to bring him back. A moment gone the room had grown misty. Something had made his throat ache. He felt taut with a great unexpressed yearning. He became conscious of his breakfast again. He sipped his hot coffee.
"I suppose," he reflected, "you ought to know something about me."
"I am interested," she answered, "but I don't think it matters much."
Again he saw in her marvelous eyes that look of complete confidence that had thrilled him first on that mad ride. Again he realized that there is nothing finer in the world. For a moment the room swam before him at the memory of his doom. But her calm gaze steadied him at once. He must cling to the Now.
"I have n't much I can tell you," he resumed. "My parents died when I was young. They were New England farm-folk and poor. After I was left alone, I started in to get an education without a cent to my name. It took me fifteen years. I graduated from college and then from the law school. I came here to New York and opened an office. That is all."
He waved his hand deprecatingly as though ashamed that it was so slight and undramatic a tale. But she leaned towards him with sudden access of interest.
"Fifteen years, and you did it all alone! You must have had to fight."
"In a way," he answered.
"Will you tell me more about it?" she asked eagerly.
"It's not very interesting," he laughed. "It was mostly a grind—just a plain, unceasing grind. It was n't very exciting—just getting any old job I could and then studying what time was left."
"And growing stronger every day—feeling your increasing power!"
"And my hunger, too, sometimes."
He tried to make light of it because he didn't wish her to become so serious over it. He did n't like playing the part of hero.
"You did n't have enough to eat?" she asked in astonishment.
"You should have seen me watch Barstow's cake-box."
He told her the story, making it as humorous as he could. But when he had finished, she wasn't laughing. For a moment his impulse was to lay before her the whole story—the bitter climax, the ashen climax, which lately he had thought so beautiful. She had said that nothing in the past would matter—but this was of the future, too. Even if she ought to know, he had no right to force upon her the burden of what was to come. He found now that he had even cut himself off from the privilege of being utterly honest with her. To tell her the whole truth might be to destroy his usefulness to her. She might then scorn his help. He must not allow that. Nothing could justify that.
"You are looking very serious," she commented.
Her own face had in the meanwhile grown brighter.
"It is all from within," he answered, "all from within. And—now presto!—it is gone."
Truly the problem did seem to vanish as he allowed himself to become conscious of the picture she made there in the sunshine. With her hair down her back she could have worn short dresses and passed for sixteen. The smooth white forehead, the exquisite velvet skin with the first bloom still upon it, the fragile pink ears were all of unfolding womanhood.
"Since my mother died," he said, "you are the first woman who has ever made me serious."
"Have you been such a recluse then?"
"Not from principle. I have been a sort of office hermit by necessity."
"You should not have allowed an office to imprison you," she scolded. "You should have gone out more."
"I have—lately."
"And has it not done you good?" she challenged, not realizing his narrow application of the statement.
"A world of good."
"It brightens one up."
"Wonderfully."
"If we stay too much by ourselves we get selfish, don't we?"
"Intensely. And narrow-minded, and morbid, and petty and—," the words came charged with bitterness, "and intensely foolish."
"I 'm glad you crawled out before you became all those things."
"You gave me a hand or I should n't."
"I gave you a hand?"
"Yea," he answered, soberly.
"Perhaps—perhaps this is another of the things that could n't have happened to either of us alone."
"I think you are right," he answered.
He did not dare to look at her.
"Perhaps that is true of all the good things in the world," she hazarded.
"Perhaps."
Once again the golden mist—once again the aching yearning.
The telephone jangled harshly. It was a warning from the world beyond the hedge, the world they had forgotten.
The sound of it was to him like the savage clang of barbaric war-gongs.
With her permission he answered it himself. It was a message from his man at the Waldorf.
"He's making an awful fuss, sir. He says as how he wants to go home. I can hold him all right, only I thought I 'd let you know."
"Thanks, I 'll be right down."
"I 'd better go back to your brother," he said to her as he hung up the receiver. "I want to have a talk with him before bringing him home."
Her eyes grew moist.
"How am I ever going to repay you for all you 've done?"
"You 've repaid me already," he answered briefly and left at once.
Donaldson with hands in his pockets stood in front of Arsdale, who had slumped down into a big leather chair, and admired his work. There was much still to be done, but, comparing the man before him with the thing he had brought in here some thirty hours before, the improvement was most satisfactory. Arsdale, with trimmed hair and clean, shaven face, in a new outfit from shoes to collar, and sane even if depressed, began to look a good deal of a man.
"How do you feel now?" inquired Donaldson.
Arsdale hitched forward and resting his chin in his hands, elbows on knees, stared at the floor.
"Like hell," he answered.
Donaldson frowned.
"You deserve to, but you oughtn't," he said.
"Oh, I deserve it all right. I deserve it—and more!"
"Yes, you do. But that does n't help any."
Arsdale groaned.
"There is n't any help. I 've made a beastly mess out of my life, out of myself."
"I wish I could disagree, but I can't," answered Donaldson.
He walked up and down a moment before the fellow studying him. He was worried and perplexed. The task before him was an unpleasant one. He had to overcome a natural repugnance to interference in the life of another. Under ordinary circumstances he would have watched Arsdale go to his doom with a feeling of nothing but indifference. In his own passion for individual liberty he neither demanded nor accepted sympathy for personal misfortunes or mistakes, and in turn was loath to trespass either upon the rights or duties of another, but his own life, through the medium of the boy's sister, was so inextricably entangled with this other that now he recognized the inevitability of such interference. On his success or failure to arouse Arsdale largely depended the happiness of the girl.
"No," he reflected aloud, "the question is n't how much punishment you deserve, for the pain you suffer personally does n't, unfortunately, remedy matters in the slightest. It wouldn't do you any good for me to kick you about the room or I 'd do it. It would n't do you any good for me to turn you over to the police or I 'd do that. You 're hard to get hold of because there's so little left of you."
Arsdale made no reply. He remained motionless.
"But," continued Donaldson with emphasis, "that does n't make it any the less necessary. You 've got to pull what is left together—you 've got to play the man with what remains. You can't get all the punishment you deserve and so you 've got to deserve less. This, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the girl,—for the sake of the girl you struck."
"Don't!"
Arsdale quailed. He glanced up at Donaldson with a look that made the latter see again Barstow's dog Sandy as he had tottered in his death throes. But the mere fact that the man quivered back from this shameful thing was encouraging. It was upon this alone that Donaldson based his hope, upon this single drop of uncorrupted Arsdale blood which still nourished some tiny spot in the burned out brain.
"You must make such reparation as you can," continued Donaldson. "Your life is n't long enough to do it fully, but you can accomplish something towards it if you start at once."
Arsdale shook his head.
"It's all a beastly mess. It 's too late!"
Donaldson's lips tightened.
"Well," he asked, "if you are n't going to do what you can, what do you propose?"
Thickly Arsdale answered,
"I know a way; I 'm going to pull out for the sake of Elaine!"
Donaldson started as at the cut of a whip-lash. Then he straightened to meet face to face this new development. Somehow this contingency had never occurred to him. Now for the moment it disarmed him, for it brought him down, like a wounded bird, to the level of Arsdale himself. As voiced by the latter the act expressed the climax of simpering cowardice. Donaldson, in the first shock of finding himself included in the same indictment with the very man for whom he had had so little mercy, felt the same powerlessness that had paralyzed this other. He was shorn of his strength. He blinked as stupidly at Arsdale as Arsdale had blinked at him.
But even as he stood with loose lips before the infirm features of the younger man, he realized that Arsdale's talk had been the chatter of a child. He had used the phrase idly and, although it was possible he might in just as idle a mood commit the act itself, Donaldson was convinced that it was not yet a fixed idea. With this came the inspiration which gave him a fresh grip upon himself, that revealed his great opportunity; he would make Arsdale see all that he himself had learned in these few days. So in reality he would be giving the best of his life to another.
It was like oxygen to one struggling for breath through congested lungs. He went to the window and in great deep-chested inhalations stood for a moment drinking in not only the fresh air but with it the spirit of the eager, turbulent world which was bathed in it, the world that he now saw so clearly. The sun flashing from the neighboring windows glinted its glad message of life; the rumbling of the passing traffic roared it to him in a thundering message, like that of shattered sea waves; the deep cello-like undernote of the city itself sang it to him. And the message of all the voices was just, "It is good to live! It is good to be!"
He turned back, seeing a new man in the chair before him. Here was a brother—a brother in a truer sense than a better man could have been. Coming from different directions, along different roads, through different temptations, they had reached at last the crumbling edge of the same dark chasm. They faced the same eternal problem. That made them brothers. But Donaldson had already seen, already learned; that made him the stronger brother.
His face was alight, his body alert, as he came to Arsdale's side. The latter looked up at him in surprise, feeling his presence before he saw. Donaldson's first words stirred him,
"You can't pull out," he said, "because you 're out already. You must pull in. Don't you see,—you must pull back!"
"You don't understand what I mean."
"A great deal better than you yourself do. And in the light of that understanding I tell you that you can't do it,—that it is n't the way."
"I 'm no good to any one," Arsdale complained dully. "I don't see why it would n't be better for everyone if I just quit."
The word quit was a biting gnome to Donaldson.
"I know," he answered. "But it is n't right—all because you don't know and you can't know what you 're quitting. You can't just look around you and see. You wouldn't just be quitting the girl who perhaps does n't need you, though you can't even tell that; you would n't be quitting just your friends who can get along without you—though even that is n't sure; you 'd be quitting the others, the unseen others, the unknown others, who are waiting for you, perhaps a year from now, perhaps twenty years from now, but in their need waiting for you. They are waiting for you, understand, and for no one else. Just you, no matter how weak you are, or how poor you are, or how worthless you are, because it is you and no one else who will fit into their lives to help complete them."
"I 'd bring nothing but trouble. I 've been no good to any one."
"You can't help being good to some one. Queer it sounds, but I believe that's true. A man never lived, so mean that he didn't do good to some one."
"You believe that?" demanded Arsdale.
"Yes. I know that. I know that, Arsdale!" he answered, his lips tremulous, a deep-seated light in his eyes. "I know that you can't possibly be so useless, so cowardly, so utterly bad, but what you 're still more useless, still more of a coward, still worse when you quit! Maybe we can't see how—maybe at the time we can't realize it, but it's so. Some one will get at the good in us if we just fight along, no matter how we may cover it up."
Arsdale straightened in his chair. His shaking fingers clutched the chair arms. But the next second his face clouded.
"Tell me what good I 've done," he demanded aggressively.
Donaldson smiled. He could n't very well tell the man the details of these last few days and what they meant to him, but they proved his claim. Arsdale had been, if nothing else, a connecting link. It was he, even this self-indulgent weakling, who had brought Donaldson to his own, who had led Donaldson, through a series of self-revealing incidents, to where he could stand quivering with the truth of life, and give of his strength back to this man to pay the debt. Yes, he knew what Arsdale had accomplished, and before he was through the latter should feel its effect.
"Man," answered Donaldson almost solemnly, "you have done your good—even you, in spite of yourself."
"But not to Elaine where I should have done most!"
Donaldson's hand rested a moment on Arsdale's shoulder.
"Yes," he said, "I like to think you have been of some service even to her."
Arsdale rose to his feet.
"If I could think that—if I could look her in the eyes again!"
"Look her in the eyes! Keep those eyes before you! Never get where those eyes can't follow you! And as you look take my word for it that even there by a strange chance you 've done your good."
The man in Arsdale was at the top. For a second he faced Donaldson as one man should face another. Then he tottered and fell back in his chair, covering his face with his hands.
"It's too late," he groaned, "God, it's too late!"
Donaldson seized him by the shoulder and dragged him to his feet—not in anger, not in contempt, but in his naked eagerness to make the man see. Half supporting him, he drew him to the window. He threw it wide open.
"Too late!" he cried, waving his hand at the brisk scene upon the street. "Too late! It is n't too late so long as there's a living world out there, so long as there's a man or a woman out there! It isn't too late because there's work for you to do, work for others that you 've shirked. What is it? I don't know, but it's there. Dig around until you find it. Maybe to-day it was only to give a nickel to the blind beggar at the corner, maybe it was only to help an old lady across the street, maybe it was to do some kindness to your sister. I don't know what it was, but I know it was something, and went undone because of you."
Arsdale, leaning against the window-sill, strained towards Donaldson.
"That's a queer idea," he whispered hoarsely.
"And another thing," continued Donaldson, "tangled up with those duties are all the joys of the world. You 've been looking for them somewhere else—I 've been looking for them somewhere else—but it is n't any use. They are right there with your duties—in the keeping of other people, the unseen others. And they couldn't be bought, not with all the gold in the world. They must be given if you get them at all."
Arsdale was listening eagerly. It was as much the spirit back of the words as the words themselves that made him feel the stirring of a new power which was a new hope.
"You!" he exclaimed. "You make a man feel that you know! But the hellish smoke-hunger—you don't know anything of that."
"It's a part of the same hellish selfishness which eats the vitals out of everything. Get out of yourself, get into the lives of others, and the smoke-hunger will quit you. You could n't go down where you 've been and made a beast of yourself if you cared more about others than yourself. The power that drove you down there would n't mean anything if a stronger power held you back. The point is, Arsdale, the point is, that all by himself a man is n't worth much. He does n't count. Either he dries up or he rots."
"That's true! That's true!" answered Arsdale. "And I 've rotted. If only I had found you a year ago!"
"A year ago is dead and buried. Let it alone. Think of the live things; think of the Now! There 's a big, strong world all around you, pulsating with life; there 's sunshine in the morning and stars at night—and they are alive; there are flowers, and birds, and grasses—all alive; there are live men and women, live questions, and there is your sister. The world would be alive—would be worth while if you had only her. She 's a world in herself."
"You are right. Man, how you know!"
"Can't you see it yourself? Can't you feel the thrill of it all?"
"Yes," answered Arsdale, his eyes as alive as Donaldson's, "I see. I feel. And if I had your strength—"
"You have the strength! You have everything you need in just your beating heart and the days ahead of you. Buck up to it!—Go and meet life half-way. Throw yourself at life! The trouble with you and me is that we stand still, all curled up in ourselves as in a chrysalis. You must give yourself room, you must break free from your own selfish conceit, you must reach a point where you don't give a damn about yourself! Do you hear—where all the worrying you do is about others? Then don't worry."
Arsdale was breathing through his nostrils, his lips closed.
"It's going to be a hard fight," he said. "It 's going to be a hard fight, but you make me feel as though I could do it."
"A hard fight," cried Donaldson. "Why, man, I 'd strip myself down to you—I 'd go back to where you stand to-day for the fighting chance you have."
"You'd—what?"
Donaldson caught his breath. For a moment he was silent, staring at the eager life upon the street. Then he turned again to Arsdale.
"I 'd like to swap places with you—that's all," he said.
Elaine, her pale face tense, heard the steps of Arsdale coming up the stairs to meet her. Donaldson had telephoned at nine that if she had not yet retired he was going to bring her brother home. She dreaded the ordeal for herself and for him. She dreaded lest the aversion she felt for him with the horror of that night still upon her might overcome her sense of duty; she dreaded the renewed protestations, the self abasement, the sight of the maudlin shame of the man. She had gone through the hysterical scenes so many times that it was growing difficult, especially in her present condition of weakness, to arouse the necessary spirit to undergo it. Not only this, but she found herself inevitably pitting him against the strong self-reliant character of Donaldson. It had been easier for her to condone when she had seen Arsdale only as the loved son of the big-hearted elder, but now that this other unyielding personality had come into her life it was difficult to avoid comparison. Arsdale when standing beside a man was only pitiable.
He faltered at the door and then crossed the room with a poise that reminded her of the father who to the end had never shown evidence of any physical weakness in his bearing. In fact in look and carriage, even in the spotless freshness of his dress which was a characteristic of the elder, he appeared like his father. She could hardly believe. She sat as silent as though this were some illusion.
There was color in the ordinarily yellow cheeks, there was life in the usually dull eyes, though the spasmodic twitching testified to nerves still unsteady. When he held out his trembling hand, she took it as though in a trance. She saw that it was difficult for him to speak. It was impossible for her. The suggested metamorphosis was too striking.
He broke the strained, glad silence.
"Elaine, can you forget?"
She uttered his name but could go no further.
"I can't apologize," he stammered, "it's too ghastly. But if we could start fresh from to-day, if you could wait a little before judging, and watch. Perhaps then—"
She drew him quickly towards her.
"Can I believe what I see?" she asked.
"I—I don't know what you see," he answered unsteadily.
"I see your father. I see the man who was the only father I myself knew."
He bent over her. He kissed her forehead.
"Dear Elaine," he said hoarsely, "you see a man who is going to be a better man to you."
"To yourself, Ben,—be better to yourself! Are you going to be that?"
"That is the way,—by being a man to you and to the others."
"The others?"
"The unseen others. You must get Donaldson to tell you about the others."
She grasped his wrist with both her hands, looking up at him intently. Where was the change? A photograph would not have shown all the change. Yet it was there. Nor was this a temporal reformation based upon cowardly remorse. It showed too calm, too big an impulse for that. It was so sincere, so deep, that it did not need words to express it.
"I believe you, Ben," she said, "I believe you with all my heart and soul."
In the words he realized the divine that is in all women, the eagerness that is Christ-like in its eternal hunger to seize upon the good in man. He stooped again and with religious reverence kissed the white space above her eyes.
"We 'll not talk about it much, shall we?" he said. "I want you to believe only as I go on from day to day. I 've some big plans that I thought up on the way home. Some day we 'll talk those over, but not now. Donaldson is downstairs."
He saw the color sweep her face. It suggested to him something that he had not yet suspected. It came to him like a new revelation of sunlight.
He smiled. It was the smile of the father which she had so long missed, the smile that always greeted her when his sad heart was fullest of hope and gladness. It was so he used to smile when at twilight he stood at her side, his long thin arm over her shoulder and talked of Ben with a new hope born of his own victory.
"I was going to tell you," he said tenderly, "I was going to tell you of what a big fine fellow this Donaldson is. But—perhaps you know."
She refused not to meet her brother's eyes.
"Yes, Ben," she said, "I know that."
He took her hand, seating himself on the arm of her chair, the other arm resting affectionately across her shoulders. So the father had sometimes sat.
"Is there more?" he asked softly.
"So," she answered, starting a little, "not as you mean. But tell me about him—tell me all about him, Ben."
He felt her hand throb as he held it.
"It's just this; that I owe everything in the world to him. I owe my life to him; I owe," his voice lowered, "I owe my soul to him. You ought to have heard him talk. But it was n't talking, it wasn't preaching. I don't know what it was, unless—unless it was praying. Yet it was n't like that either. He got inside me and made me talk to myself. It was the first time words ever meant anything to me—that they ever got a hold on me. You 've talked, little sister, Lord knows how often, and how deep from the heart, but somehow, dear, nothing of it sank in below the brain. I understood as in a sort of dream. Sometimes I even remembered it for a little, but that was all.
"But he was different, Elaine! If I forgot every word he spoke, the meaning of it would still be left. I 'd still feel his hand upon my shoulder, the hand that sank through my shoulder and got a grip on something inside me. I 'd still feel his eyes burning into mine. I 'd still see that street out the window and know what it meant. I 'd even see the little old lady picking her way to the other side,—see the blind beggar on the corner and the Others. Oh, the Others, Elaine!"
He had risen from beside her and pressed towards the window as though once again he wished to taste the air that came down to him from the star-country to sweeten the decaying soul of him.
"What was it, Elaine?" he demanded.
"You heard," she answered, "because every fibre of him is true. Tell me more."
"He showed me the sun on the windows!" he ran on eagerly. "He showed me the people passing on the streets! He showed me what I—even I—had to do among them. Did you know that we are n't just ourselves—that we 're a part of a thousand other lives? Did you know that?"
"It takes a seer really to know that," she answered, "but it's true."
"That's it," he broke in. "Heknows! He doesn't guess, he doesn't reason, heknows!"
She was leaning forward, her head a little back, her eyes half-closed. He saw the veins in her neck—the light purple penciling of them—as they throbbed. He was held a moment by the sight. Then he laughed gently.
"Little sister," he said, "you know him even better than I."
She started back.
He was surprised at the shy beauty he perceived. She had always seemed to him such a sober body.
The nurse rapped at the door.
"It is bedtime," she announced,
"Yes, nurse," she answered quickly.
"He asked if he might come to say good night. He 's going to stay here with me a day or so. Shall I bring him up?"
She hesitated a moment and then meeting her brother's eyes steadily, answered,
"Yes, Ben."
When Donaldson came into the room she was shocked at the change in his appearance. It was almost as though what Arsdale had gained Donaldson had lost. He was colorless, wan, and haggard. His eyes seemed more deeply imbedded in the dark recesses below his brows. Even his hair at the temples looked grayer. But neither his voice nor his manner betrayed the change. The grip of his hand was just as sure; there was the same certainty in gesture and speech, save perhaps for some abstraction.
"They tell me I may stay but a minute," he said, "but it is good to see you even that long."
"You brought him back home," she cried. "But it has cost you heavy. You look tired."
"I am not tired," he answered shortly. Then turning the talk away from himself, as he was ever eager to do, he continued,
"I brought him home, but the burden is still on you."
"Not a burden any longer. You have removed the burden."
"I 'm afraid not. There still remains the fight to make him stay. This is only a beginning."
His face grew worried.
"He will stay," she answered confidently, "he will stay because you reached the father in him and the father was a fighter. I saw the father in his eyes—I heard his father's voice. It is a miracle!"
"No. The miracle is how we men keep blind."
"I feel blind myself when I think how you see."
"I am no psychic," he exclaimed impatiently. "I see nothing that is n't before me. You can't help seeing unless you close your eyes. The world presses in upon you from every side. It is insistent. Even now the stars outside there are demanding recognition."
He drew back the crimson curtains draping the big French windows, which opened upon a balcony. The silver stiletto rays darted a greeting to him. He swung open the windows.
"Come out with me and see my friends," he said.
She rose instantly and followed him.
He stood there a moment in silence, his head back as he seemed to lead her into the limitless fragrant purple above. She caught his profile and saw him like some prophet. It was as though a people were at his back and he trying to pierce the road ahead for them. The thin face and erect head seemed to dominate the night. He looked down at her, a sad smile about his mouth.
"Out here," he said, "out here with a million miles over our heads we are freer."
In her eyes he saw now just what he saw in the stars, the same freedom of unpathed universes. He saw the same limitlessness. Here there were no boundaries. A man could go on forever and forever in those eyes—in their marvelous unfolding. More! More! He would go beyond the cognate universe, straight into the golden heart of universes beyond. Eternity was written there. The beacon of her eyes flamed a path that reached beyond the stars!
She seemed like nothing but a trusting child. So, she was one with the great poets. So, she was a great poem. He listened to the same music which had moved Isaiah.
"The stars,—they seem to be dancing!" she exclaimed.
It was to the music of the spheres they were dancing.
"You!" he commanded, "you must get away from this house. You must take Ben and get away from here. You must go into a new country. You must begin your life anew and forget all this, forget everything."
He paused.
"Everything," he repeated. "They tell us that the road is straight and narrow. It's narrow, but it is n't straight. It's crooked and it's winding and it goes through brake and brush. It's a hard road to find and a hard road to keep, even with the polestar over our heads. Maybe, if we were a little above earth—maybe for those who are winged—the road is straight, but we are n't all winged. Some of us have n't even sturdy legs and have to creep. Some of us find our legs only after we are helplessly lost. For down below there is a terrible tangle with things to be gone around, with things to beat down, and always the tangle above our heads. So what wonder that we get lost? What wonder?"
"But I am not lost—you are not lost!"
"I! I do not matter," he answered slowly. "You must n't let me matter. I come into your life and I go out of your life and I pray that I have done no harm."
His words to her were like words caught in a wind. She heard snatches of them, but she was unable to piece them together.
"In your new life you must forget even me. We have met in the brush and gone on a little way together. We have helped each other in finding each his true road again. Whether the paths will meet again—whether the paths will meet again—" he repeated as though deep in some new and grander reflection, "why, God knows. If we go on forever, perhaps they will in an aeon or two."
He paused to give her an opportunity to say something which he might use as a subject for proceeding farther. His thoughts did n't go very far along any one line. Always he seemed checked by a wall of darkness. But she said nothing. The silence lengthened into a minute.
"Do you understand?" he asked gently.
"No," she answered frankly.
"Then—then perhaps we had better go in," he said, fearing for himself.
He led the way through the swinging windows and closed them behind him. In the light he saw that she was shivering.
"I 'm afraid I kept you out there too long," he said anxiously. He reached her shawl and placed it about her shoulders. His throat ached.
"I haven't hurt you?"
"I think you have hurt yourself, somehow."
She raised her head a little.
Marie was calling.
"Good night," he said quickly.
"Good night."