One wonders what would happen to our admirable muddle of a world, if even a minority of its inhabitants were suddenly to embrace consistency. It would, presumably, be a world still, but so changed that its best friends would not know it. It is because every-body, everywhere and at all times, acts as they could not logically be expected to act, that our dear familiar chaos of you-never-can-tell continues to entertain us.
Had Desire possessed consistency, this quality so jewel-like in its rarity, she would have realized that, having voluntarily stepped aside from woman's natural destiny, she should also have ceased to trouble herself with those feminine doubts and hopes which are peculiar to it. She would have known that the position of secretary to a professional man does not logically include heart-burnings and questionings concerning that gentleman's love affairs, past or present. She would have refused to consider Mary. She would have been quite happy in the position she had deliberately made for herself.
Much as we would like to present Desire in this thoroughly sensible light, we fear that her action on the morning following her visit to the invalid Miss Martin would not bear us out in so doing. For on that morning, with all facts of the situation freshly in her mind, she went down-town to Dr. Rogers' office for no other purpose than to see and talk to Dr. Rogers' yellow-haired nurse.
"When I see her and hear her," said Desire to her-self, "I shall know. And it will be so comfortable to know." Never a word, mind you, about the inconsistency of being uncomfortable through not knowing.
No attempt at reminding herself that knowledge was none of her business. No arguing out of the matter at all. Merely the following of a blind impulse to find Mary if Mary were to be found.
This impulse, which was wholly foreign to her natural habit of mind, she justified to herself under the guise of "natural curiosity." All she had to do was to make the call seem sufficiently casual and to time her arrival at the doctor's office at an hour when he could not possibly be in it. As a newcomer, such a mistake would seem quite plausible and could be passed over easily with "How stupid of me! I should have known." After that the nurse would probably invite her to wait. And, even if she did not, the mere exchange of question and answer would probably be sufficiently revealing.
This small program proceeded exactly as planned and Desire, in her most becoming frock, learned of the absence of Dr. Rogers with exactly the right degree of impatience and regret.
"Please come in," said Dr. Rogers' nurse in somewhat drawling accents. "Doctor may be back any minute." Being a nurse she always predicted the doctor's arrival no matter how certain she might be that he would not arrive.
Desire hesitated, glanced quite naturally at her watch and decided to wait. "If you are sure the doctor won't be long—?" The nurse was sure that he wouldn't be long.
Here her interest in the caller seemed to cease and she became very much occupied with a business-like addressing of envelopes at a desk in the corner.
Desire looked around the cool and pleasant room. It was not like her idea of a doctor's office, save perhaps for a faint clean smell of drugs. There were comfortable chairs, flowers in a window-box, a table with a book or two and some magazines. Through a half-open door, an inner office showed—all very different from the picture her memory showed her of the musty, cumbered room in which her father had received his dwindling patients. As a child she had hated that room, hated the hideous charts of "people with their skins off," the ponderous books with their horrific and highly colored plates, the "patients' chair" with its clinging odor of plush and ether, the untidy desk, the dust on everything!
But she had not come to Dr. Rogers' office to indulge in memory. She had come to see the lady who was so busily addressing envelopes and, after a decent interval of polite abstraction, she devoted herself cautiously to this purpose.
Nurse Watkins, before Desire's entrance, had not been addressing envelopes. She had been reading. Her book lay open upon the window-sill and Desire, having good eyes, could read its title upside down. It was not a title which she knew, nor, if titles tell anything, did it belong to a book which invited knowing. Desire felt almost certain that it was not a book which Mary would care to read. Still, one never could tell. The professor had said nothing whatever about Mary's literary taste.
Desire's eyes strayed, vaguely, from the book to its owner. Only Miss Watkins' profile was visible but it was a profile well worth attention. People who cannot choose their literature are often quite successful with their caps. Miss Watkins' cap was just right. And her hair was certainly yellow. Desire frowned.
Miss Watkins, looking up, caught the frown.
"Doctor really can't be long now," she drawled sympathetically. Desire felt that the sympathy, like the assurance, was professional—an afterglow, perhaps of sympathy which had existed once, before life had overdrawn its account. She felt, also, that Miss Watkins' nose was decidedly good. It was straight, with the nicest little blunt point; and her eyes were blue—not misty blue, like the hills, but a passable blue for all that. Her expression was cold and eminently superior. ("Frightfully nursey" was what Desire called it to herself.) Her voice was thin. (Desire was glad of that.)
"Doctor must have been kept somewhere," said the nurse pursuing her formula. "Won't you sit near the window? There's a breeze."
"Thank you." Desire moved to the window. "You must find it very peaceful here—after nursing overseas."
Nurse Watkins tapped her full upper lip with her pen. "Yes," she said. "It's very dull." Desire smiled. Her spirits had been rising ever since her entrance and she was now quite cheerful. Pretty as Miss Mary Watkins undoubtedly was, there was a some-thing—could it be possible that she chewed gum? No, of course she could not chew gum. And yet there was an impression of gum somewhere—an insinuating certainty that she might chew gum on a dark night when no one was looking. Desire heaved a little sigh of satisfaction and, leaning out, appeared to occupy herself with the passers-by.
"Aren't Bainbridge streets wonderful?" she said.
Nurse Watkins' mouth took on a discontented droop. "The streets are all right," she said, "only they don't go anywhere."
Desire laughed. "Are you as bored as that?" she asked.
"Worse. I wouldn't stay here a minute if it weren't—I mean, if I hadn't been advised to rest up a bit."
Desire looked at her watch, and rose. Now that her curiosity had been amply satisfied, she began to realize that curiosity is an undignified thing. And also that she had not been the only person present to give way to it.
The somewhat drawling tones of Miss Watkins' voice were not at all in keeping with the activity of her wide-awake blue eyes. A sense of this nurse's speculation as to her presence there flicked Desire with little whips of irritation. It is one thing to observe and quite another to render oneself observable. She felt the blood flow hotly to her cheek. Why had she come? How could she have so far forgotten her natural reserve, her instinctive dislike of intrusion? Desire saw plainly that she had allowed a regrettable sentiment to trick her into a ridiculous situation. Satisfied curiosity is usually ashamed of itself.
And how absurd to have fancied for a moment that this blond prettiness could be Mary!
"I am afraid I cannot wait longer," she murmured with polite regret.
"If there is any message—"
"None, I think. Thank you so much."
With the departure of her caller, Miss Watkins' manner underwent a remarkable change. Professional coolness deserted her. She stamped her foot and, from the safe concealment of the window curtain, she watched Desire's unhurried progress down the street with eyes in which the blue grew clouded and opaque. They brightened again as she noticed Professor Spence passing on the opposite side of the street, and became quite snappy with interest as she saw him pause as if to call to his wife, then, after a swift and hesitating glance at the door from which she had emerged, pass on without attracting her attention.
As a bit of pure pantomime, these expressions of feeling on Miss Watkins' part might be misleading with-out the added comment of a letter which she wrote that night.
"I'm going to cut it, Flossy old girl," wrote Miss Watkins. "If you know of anything near you that would suit me, pass it on. I think I'm about due to get out of here. You know why I've stayed so long. At first, I thought if we were together enough he might get to care. People say I'm not bad for the eyes. And I don't use peroxide. Well, I've made myself useful—he'll miss me anyway!
"It's kind of hard to give up. But I don't believe it's a bit of use. I've noticed a difference in him ever since he came back from that western trip. He doesn't seem to see me anymore. And there's something else, a look in his eyes and a line along his mouth that were never there before. I knew something had happened. And now I know what it was. Another girl, of course.
"And this girl is married!
"You might think this would make things hopeful for me. But it doesn't. Doctor's just the kind that would go on loving her if she had a thousand husbands. So here's where I hook it. No use wasting myself, honey. Maybe I'll get over it. They say everyone does.
"Funny thing—she's just the kind I'd think he'd go dippy over, dark and still, with a lovely, wide mouth and skin like lilies. She is young, younger than I am. But, believe me, she isn't a kid. Those eyes of hers have seen things. They're the kind of eyes that I'd go wild over if I were a man. So I'm not blaming Doctor. He can't help it.
"She came into the office today, just like an ordinary patient. But I knew right off that she'd come for some-thing. Don't know yet what she came for. She doesn't give herself away, that one! Didn't seem to look around, didn't ask questions and only stayed a few minutes. Do you suppose she could have come to see me? Because, if she did—Well, that shows where her interest is.
"Another odd thing—as she went out, I saw her husband. (I'll tell you, in strict confidence, that her husband is Professor Spence. They are well known people here. He used to be a sort of recluse. A queer chap. Deep as a judge.) Well, I saw him pass, on the opposite side of the road. He saw her and was just going to call, when it seemed to strike him where she had come from. I couldn't see very well across the road, but he looked as if someone had hit him. And he went on without saying a word. Now that looked queer to me.
"Don't write and say that I'm only guessing at things. I may be mistaken, of course, but I know I'm not. And I'm not a Pharisee (or whoever it was that threw stones). If she cares for Doctor, I suppose she can't help it. Some people think her husband handsome but I don't. He's too thin and he has the oddest little smile. It slips out and slips in like a mouse. When Dr. John smiles, he smiles all over.
"Well, I'll wait a week or so to make sure. Although I'm sure now. If I ever see Doctor look at her, I'll know. You see, I know how he'd look if he looked that way. I've kept hoping—but I guess I'd better take my ticket, Yours,
"MARY."
This letter satisfactorily explains the loss, some weeks later, of Dr. Rogers' capable nurse—a matter which he, himself, could never understand.
Desire was smiling as she left Dr. Rogers' office. It was a smile compounded of derision and relief—a shamefaced smile which admitted an opinion of herself very far from flattering.
So occupied was she with her mental reactions that she had no attention to spare for the opposite side of the street and therefore missed the slightly peculiar action of her husband-by-courtesy. Professor Spence, when he had first caught sight of his wife had automatically paused, as if to call or cross over. It had become their friendly habit to inform each other of their daily plans and a cheery "whither away?" had risen naturally to the professor's lips. It rose to them, but did not leave them, for, in the intervening instant, he had grasped the fact of Desire's smiling abstraction and had sought its explanation in the place from which she had come. Desire calling at old Bones' office at this hour of the morning? Before he had recovered from the surprise of it, she had passed.
Time, which seems so mighty, is sometimes quite negligible. The most amazing mental illuminations may occupy only the fraction of a second. A light flashes and is gone—but meanwhile one has seen.
The professor's pause was hardly noticeable. He walked on at once. But years could not have instructed him more thoroughly than that one second. He had received a revelation. Like all revelations, he received it in its entirety and realized it piecemeal. His thoughts stumbled over each other in confusion.... Desire at John's office at this unusual hour? ... Desire in her prettiest frock and smiling ... smiling, and so lost in her own thoughts that she saw no one ... Desire ... John? ... What the devil!
Spence had a finicky dislike of strong language. He thought it savored of weakness, yet he found himself swearing heartily as he hurried on—meaningless swears which by their very childishness brought him back to common sense. His step slowed, he forced himself to be reasonable. He took a brief against his own unwarranted disturbance of mind and reduced it to argument. There was nothing at all strange, he pointed out, in Desire having called at old Bones' office at this, or any other, time of day (but what under heaven did she do it for?). She might easily have forgotten to tell the doctor some-thing. (What in thunder would she have to tell him?) She might have dropped in, in passing (at that hour of the morning?) merely to ask him over for some tennis (was the dashed telephone out of order?). Or she might have felt a trifle seedy (pshaw! her health was perfect—idiot!). Anyway she had a perfect right to see Dr. Rogers at any time and for any reason she might choose. (Yes, she had—that was the devil of it!)
At this point of his argument the professor was nearly-run down by a delivery boy on a bicycle and saved himself only by a sharp collision with a telegraph pole. This served to clear his brain somewhat. His confusion of thought dropped away. He began to look his revelation in the face—
"Desire—John?"
It was certainly possible! Why had he never seen it before? ... He had been warned. John himself had warned him—Old John who had been so palpably "hit" when he had first seen Desire at Friendly Bay. But he, Benis Spence, had laughed. Honestly laughed. No possibility of this possibility had troubled him. He simply had not seen it. And now—he saw. The thing italicised itself on his brain.
Granted that Desire might love, there was no reason on earth why she should not love John.
The conclusion seemed childishly simple and yet he had never seriously considered it. Why? Relentlessly he forced himself to answer why. It was because he had believed that when Desire woke to love, if she should so wake, she would wake to love for him! He tore this admission out of a shrinking heart and laughed at it. It was funny, quite funny in its ridiculous conceit.... But it hadn't been conceit, it had been assurance. Impossible to account for, and absurd as it seemed now, it was some-thing higher than vanity which had hidden in his heart that happy sense of kinship with Desire which had made John's warning seem an emptiness of words.
It was gone now, that wonderful sense of "belonging," swept away in the swift rush of startled doubt. Searching as it might, his mind could not find anywhere the faintest foothold for a belief that Desire, free to choose, should turn to him and not to another.
"I had better go and sleep this off somewhere," murmured the professor with a wry smile. "Mustn't let it get ahead of me. Mustn't make any more mistakes. This needs thinking out—steady now!"
He tried to forget his own problem in thinking of hers. It couldn't be very pleasant for her—this. And yet she had been smiling as she came out of John's office. Perhaps she did not know yet? On second thoughts, he felt sure that she did not know. He recognized the essentials of Desire. She was loyalty itself. And had he not reason to know from his own present experience that the beginnings of love can be very blind.
John, too—but with John it was different. John had given his warning. If the warning were to be justified he could not blame John. He could not blame anyone save his own too confident self. Why, oh why, had he been so sure? Had he not known that love is the most unaccountable of all the passions? How had he dared to build security on that subtle thing within himself which, without cause or reason, had claimed as his the unstirred heart of the girl he had married.
Spence returned home with lagging step. The old distaste for familiar things, which he thought had gone with the coming of Desire, was heavy upon him. The gate of his pleasant home shut behind him like a prison gate. In short, Benis Spence paid for a moment's enlightenment with a bad day and a night that was no better.
By the morning he had won through. One must carry on. And the advantage of a quiet manner is that no one notices when it grows more quiet.
Desire was already in the library when he entered it. She looked very crisp and cool. It struck Spence for the first time that she was dressing her part—the neat, dark skirt and laundered blouse, blackbowed at the neck in a perfect orgy of simplicity, were eminently secretarial. How beautifully young she was!
Desire looked up from her note-book with business-like promptitude.
"I think," she said, "that we are quite ready to go on with the thirteenth chapter."
"But I think," said Benis, "that it would be much nicer to go fishing."
"Why?"
"Well, it's Friday, for one thing. Do you really think it safe to begin the thirteenth chapter on a Friday?"
His secretary's smile was dutiful, but her lips were firm. "We didn't do a thing-yesterday," she reminded him. "I couldn't find you anywhere and no one knew where you were."
"I was—just around," vaguely.
"Not around here," Desire was uncompromising. "Benis, I think we should really be more businesslike. We should have talked this thirteenth chapter over yesterday. I see you have a note here for some opening paragraphs on The Apprehension of Color in Primitive Minds—"
A cascade of goblin laughter from Yorick interrupted her.
"Yorick is amused," said Benis. "He knows all about the apprehension of color in primitive minds. He advises us to go fishing."
Desire watched him stroke the bird's bent head with a puzzled frown.
"I wish you wouldn't joke about—this," she said slowly. "You don't want that habit of mind to affect your serious work."
Spence looked up surprised.
"The whole character of the book is changing," went on Desire resolutely. "It will all have to be revised and brought into harmony. I'm sure you've felt it yourself. In a book like this the treatment must be the same throughout. I've heard you say that a hundred times. It doesn't matter what the treatment is, the necessary thing is that it be consistent. Isn't that right?"
"Certainly."
"Well—yours isn't!"
Spence forgot the parrot (who immediately pecked his finger). He almost forgot that he had suffered an awakening and had passed a bad night. Desire interested him in the present moment as she always did. She was—what was she? "Satisfying" was perhaps the best word for it. Just to be with her seemed to round out life.
"Prove it!" said he with some heat.
For half an hour he listened while she proved it with great energy and a thorough knowledge of her facts. He listened because he liked to listen and not because she was telling him anything new. He knew just where his "treatment" of his material had changed, and he knew, as Desire did not, what had changed it. For the change was not really in the treatment at all, but in himself.
This book had been his earliest ambition. It had been the sole companion of his thoughts for years. It had been the little idol which must be served. Without a word of it being written, it had grown with his growth. His notes for it comprised all that he had filched from life. He had not hurried. He was leisurely by nature. Then had come the war, lifting him out of all the things he knew. And, after the war, its great weariness. Not until he had met Desire and found, in her fresh interest, something of his own lost enthusiasm, had he been able to work again. Then, in a glow of recovered energy, the book had been begun. And all had gone well until the book's inspirer had begun to usurp the place of the book itself. (Spence smiled as he realized that Desire was painstakingly tracing the course of her self-caused destruction.) How could he think of the book when he wanted only to think of her? Insensibly, his gathered facts had begun to lose their prime importance, his deductions had lost their sense of weight, all that he had done seemed strangely insignificant—it was like looking at something through the wrong end of a telescope. The great book was a star which grew steadily smaller.
The proportion was wrong. He knew that. But at present he could do nothing to readjust it. Two interests cannot occupy the same space at the same time. The book interest had simply succumbed to an interest older and more potent.
"In this chapter, the Sixth," Desire was saying, "you seem to lose some of the serious purpose which is a prominent note in the opening chapters. You begin to treat things casually. You almost allow yourself to be humorous. Now is this supposed to be a humorous book, or is it not?"
"Oh—not. Distinctly not."
"Well then, don't you see? If you had treated the thing in that semi-humorous manner all through and continued in that vein you would produce a certain definite type of book. The critics would probably say—"
"I know, spare me!"
"They would say," sternly, "that 'Professor Spence has a light touch.' That 'he has treated his subject in a popular manner.'" (The professor groaned.) "But that isn't a patch upon what they will say if you mix up your styles as you are doing at present."
"But—well, what do you advise?"
Desire sucked her pencil. (He had given up trying to cure her of this poisonous habit.)
"I've thought about that. If you were not so—so temperamental, I would say go back and begin again. But that is risky. It will be better to go on, I think, trying to recapture the more serious style, until the whole book it at least in some form. Then you will know exactly where you are and what is necessary to harmonize the whole. You can then rewrite the 'off' chapters, bringing them into line. This is a recognized literary method, I believe."
"Is it? Good heavens!"
"I read it in a book."
"Then it must be literary. All right. I'm agreeable. But at present—"
"At present," firmly, "the main thing is to go on."
"This morning?"
"Certainly."
"But I don't want to go on this morning. That is the flaw in your literary method. It makes me go on whether I want to or not. Now the really top-notchers never do that. They are as full of stoppages as a freight train. Fact. They only create when the spirit moves them."
"Aren't you thinking of Quakers?" suggested Desire sweetly. "Besides you are not creating. You are compiling—a very different thing."
"But what is the use of compiling an off chapter when I know it is going to be an off one?"
Desire threw down her pencil.
"Oh, Benis," she said. "I don't like this. Don't let us play with words. Surely you are not getting tired—you can't be."
Her eyes, urgent and truth-compelling, forced an answer.
"I don't quite know," he said. "But I am certainly off work at present. There may be all kinds of reasons. You will have to be patient, Desire."
"Then," in a low voice, "it isn't only indolence?"
He was moved to candor. "It isn't indolence at all. I have always been a fairly good worker, and will be again. But the driving force has shifted. I have not been doing good work and I know it. The more I know it the worse the work will become.... It doesn't matter, really, child," he added gently, seeing that she had turned away. "The world can wait for the bit of knowledge I can give it."
Desire, whose face was invisible, took a moment to answer this. When she did her voice was carefully with-out expression.
"Then this ends my usefulness. You will not need me any more."
The professor, who had been nursing his knee on the corner of the desk, straightened up so suddenly that he heard his spine click.
"What's this?" he said. (Good heavens—the girl was as full of surprises as a grab-bag!)
"It was for the book you needed me, was it not? That was my share of our partnership."
("Now you've done it!" shouted an exultant voice in the professor's brain. "Oh, you are an ass!")
"Shut up!" said Spence irritably. "I wasn't talking to you," he explained apologetically. "It's just a horrid little devil I converse with sometimes. What I meant was—" He did not seem to know what he meant and looked rather helplessly out of the window. "Oh, I say," he said presently, "you are not going to—to act like that, are you? Agitation's so frightfully bad for me. Ask old Bones."
"You are not agitated," said Desire coldly. "Please be serious."
"I am. Deuced serious. And agitated too. You ought to think twice before you startle me like that—just when everything was going along so nicely."
"I am only reminding you of your own agreement," stubbornly. "I want to be of use."
"Very selfish of you. Can't you think of someone else once in a while?"
"Selfish? Because I want to help?"
"Certainly. I wonder you don't see it! Think of the mornings I've put in on this dashed book just because you wanted to help. I have to be polite, haven't I?—up to a point. But when you begin to blame me for doing poorly what I do not want to do at all I begin to see that my self-sacrifice is not appreciated."
"You are talking nonsense."
"Perhaps I am. But it was you who started it. When you said I did not need you, you said a very nonsensical thing. And a very unkind thing, too. A man does not like to talk of—his need. But, now that we have come to just this point, let us have it out. Surely our partnership was not quite as narrow as you suggest? The book is a detail. It is L. part of life which will fit in somewhere—an important part in its right place—but it isn't the whole pattern." He smiled whimsically. "Do not think of me as just an animated book, my dear—if you can help it. And remember, no matter how we choose to interpret our marriage, you are my wife. And my very good comrade. The one thing which could ever change my need of you is your greater need of—of someone else."
The last words were casual enough but the look which accompanied them was keen, and a sense of relief rose gratefully in the professor as no sign of disturbance appeared upon the thoughtful face of his hearer.
"Is Benis here, my dear?" asked Aunt Caroline opening the door. "Oh yes, I see that he is. Benis, you are wanted on the 'phone. If you would take my advice, which you never do, you would have an extension placed in this room. Then you could always just answer and save Olive a great deal of bother. Not that I think maids ought to mind being bothered. They never did in my time. But it would be quite simple for you, when you are writing here, to attend to the 'phone. Perhaps if the butcher heard a man's voice occasionally he might be more respectful. I do not expect much of tradespeople, as you know, but if the butcher—"
"Is it the butcher who wishes to speak to me, Aunt?"
"Good gracious, no. It's long distance. Why don't you hurry? ... Men have no idea of the value of time," she added as the professor vanished. "My dear you must not let Benis overwork you. He doesn't intend to be unkind, but men never think."
Desire turned back to her papers as the door closed. But her manner was no longer brisk and business-like. There was a small, hot lump in her throat.
"It isn't fair," she thought passionately. "It's all very well to talk, but it does make a difference—it does. If I'm not his secretary what am I?" A hot blush crimsoned her white skin and she stamped her foot. "I'm not his wife. I'm not! I'm not!" she said defiantly.
There was no one to contradict her. Even Yorick was silent. And, as contradiction is really necessary to belligerency, some of the fire died out of her stormy eyes. But it flared again as thought flung thought upon the embers.
"Wife!" How dared he use the word? And in that tone! A word that meant nothing to him. Nothing, save a cold, calm statement of claim.... Not that she wanted it to mean anything else. Had she not, herself, arranged a most satisfactory basis of coolness and calmness? (Reason insisted upon reminding her of this.) And a strict recognition of this basis was precisely what she wanted, of course. Only she wanted it as a secretary and not as a—not as anything else.
"What's in a word?" asked Reason mildly. "Words mean only what you mean by them. Wife or secretary, if they mean the same—"
Desire flung her note-books viciously into a drawer and banged it shut.
Why did things insist upon changing anyway? She had been content—well, almost. She had not asked for more than she had. Why, then, should a cross-grained fate insist upon her getting less? Since yesterday she had not troubled even about Mary. Her self-ridicule at the absurdity of her mistake regarding Dr. Rogers' pretty nurse had had a salutary effect. And now—just when everything promised so well (self-pity began to cool the hot lump in her throat). And just when she had made up her mind that, however small her portion of her husband's thought might be, it would be enough—well, almost enough—
A screech from Yorick made her start nervously.
"Cats!" said Yorick. "Oh the devil—cats!"
Desire laughed and firmly dislodged Aunt Caroline's big Maltese cat from its place of vantage on the window-sill. The laughter dissolved the last of the troublesome lump and she began to feel better. After all, the book-weariness of which Benis had spoken would probably be a passing phase. If she allowed herself to go on creating mountains out of molehills she would soon have a whole range upon her hands.
And he had said he needed her!
Mechanically, she began to straighten the desk, restoring the professor's notes to their proper places. She was feeling almost sanguine again when her hand fell upon the photograph.
We say "the" photograph because, of all photographs in the world, this one was the one most fatal to Desire's new content. She picked it up casually. Photographs have no proper place amongst notes of research. Desire, frowning her secretarial frown, lifted the intruder to remove it and, lifting, naturally looked at it. Having looked, she continued looking.
It was an arresting photograph. Desire had not seen it before. That in itself was surprising, since one of Aunt Caroline's hardest-to-bear social graces was the showing of photographs. She had quantities of them—tons, Desire sometimes thought. They lived in boxes in different parts of the house, and were produced upon most unlikely occasions. One was never quite safe from them. Even the spare room had its own box, appropriately covered with chintz to match the curtains.
This photograph, Desire saw at once, would not fit into Aunt Caroline's boxes. It was too big. And it was very modern. Most of Aunt Caroline's collection dated from the "background" period of photographic art. But this one was all person. And a very charming person too.
Photographs are often deceiving. But one can usually catch them at it. Desire perceived at once that this photograph's nose had been artistically rounded and that its flawlessness of line and texture owed something to retoucher's lead. But looking through and behind all this, there was enough—oh, more than enough!
With instant disfavor, Desire noted the perfect arrangement of the hair, the delicate slope of the shoulder, the lifted chin, the tip of a hidden ear, the slightly mocking, but very alluring, glance of long, fawn-like eyes.
"Another molehill," thought Desire. And, virtuously disregarding the instinct leaping in her heart, she turned the fascinating thing face downwards. Probably fate laughed then. For written large and in very black ink across the back was the admirably restrained autograph, "Benis, from Mary" ...
Well, she knew now!
A very different person, this, from the blond Miss Watkins with her hard blue eyes and too, too dewy lips! Here was a woman of character and charm. A woman fully armed with all the witchery of sex. A woman any man might love—even Benis.
Desire did not struggle against her certainty. Her acceptance of it was as sudden as it was complete. Huddling back in her chair, with the tell-tale photo in her hands, she felt cold. Certainty is a chill thing. We all seek certainty but, when we get it, we shiver. The proper place for certainty is just ahead, that we may warm our blood in the pursuit of it. Certainty stands at the end of things and human nature shrinks from endings.
Only that morning, Desire had qualified the good of her present state by the "if" of "if I only knew." And, now that she did know, the only unqualified thing was her sense of desolation. The most disturbing of her speculations had been as nothing to this relentless knowledge. Not until she had found certainty did she realize how she had clung to hope.
She did not know that she was crying until a tear splashed hot upon her hand. She did not hear the door open as Benis reentered the room, but she sprang to her feet, alert and defensive, at the sound of his voice.
"Crying?" said Benis.
It was hardly a question. He had, in fact, seen the tear. But there was nothing in his manner to indicate more than ordinary concern.
"Certainly not," said Desire.
"My mistake. But what is it you are hiding so carefully behind you? Mayn't I see?"
Desire thought quickly. Her denial of tears had been, she knew, quite useless. Besides, she had heard that note of dry patience in the professor's voice before. It came when he wanted something and intended to get it. And he wanted now to know the cause of her tears. Well, he would never know it—never. It was the one impossible thing. Desire's pride flamed in her, a white fire which would consume her utterly—if he knew.
"It is a personal matter," she said. (This was merely to gain time.)
"It is personal to me also."
"I do not wish to show it to you."
"No. But—do not force me to insist."
These two wasted but few words upon each other. It was not necessary. Desire took a quick step backward. And, as she did so, the desired inspiration came. Directly behind her stood the table on which lay Aunt Caroline's box of photographs. If she could, without turning, substitute one of them for the tell-tale picture in her hand—
"You will hardly insist, I think." Her eyes were on him, cool and wary. She took another step backward. He did not follow her. There was a faint smile on his lips but his face, she noticed with perturbation, had gone very pale. His eyes were shining and chill, like water under grey skies.
"Please," he said, holding out his hand.
Desire let her glance go past him. "The door!" she murmured. He turned to close it. It gave her only a moment. But a moment was all she needed.
"Surely we are making a fuss over nothing." With difficulty she kept a too obvious relief out of her voice. He must not find her opposition weakened.
"Perhaps. But—let me decide, Desire."
"Shan't!" said Desire, like a naughty child.
Fire leapt from the chill grey of his eyes.
"Very well, then—"
He took it so quickly that Desire gasped. Then she laughed. She had never had anything taken from her by force since her childhood and it was an astonishing experience. Also, she had not dreamed that Benis was so strong. It hadn't been at all difficult. And this in spite of the fact that she had clung to the substituted photo-graph with convincing stubbornness.
"Well—now you've got it, I hope you like it," she said a little breathlessly. Her eyes were sparkling. She did not know what photo she had picked up when she dropped the real one. 'Probably it was a picture of Aunt Caroline herself or of some dear and departed Spence. Benis would have some difficulty in tracing the cause of the tears he had surprised. Fortunately he could always see a joke on himself. It would be funny ...
But it did not seem to be funny. Benis was not laughing. He had gone quite grey.
"What is it, Benis?" in a startled tone. "You see it was just a mistake? I was crying because—because I was sorry you were not going on with the book. I just happened to have a photograph—" The look in his eyes stopped her.
"Please don't," he said.
She took the card he held out to her, glanced at it, and choked back a spasm of hysterical laughter. For it wasn't a picture of Aunt Caroline, or even of a departed Spence—it was a picture of Dr. John Rogers!
"Gracious!" said Desire. There seemed to be nothing else to say. "Well," she ventured after a perplexed pause, "you can see that I couldn't be crying over John, can't you?"
"I can see—no need why you should;" said Benis slowly. "I'm afraid I have been very blind."
The girl's complete bewilderment at this was plain to anyone of unbiased judgment. But Spence's judgment was not at present unbiased. He went on painfully.
"I owe you an apology for my very primitive method of obtaining your confidence. But it is better that I should know—"
"Know what? You don't know. I don't know myself. I did not even know whose the photograph was until—" She hesitated at the look of hurt wonder in his eyes. "You think I am lying?" she finished angrily.
"I think you are making things unnecessarily difficult. There is no need for you to explain—anything."
Desire was furious. And helpless. She remembered now that when he had entered the room he had certainly seen her bending over a photograph. No wonder her statement that she did not know whose photograph it was seemed uniquely absurd. There was only one adequate explanation. And that explanation she wouldn't and couldn't make.
"Very well then," she said loftily. "I shall not explain."
He did not look at her. He had not looked at her since handing her back John's picture. But he had himself well in hand now. Desire wondered if she had imagined that greyish pallor, that sudden look of a man struck down. What possible reason had there been for such an effect anyway? Desire could see none.
"I came to tell you," he said in his ordinary voice, "that the long distance call came from Miss Davis. If it is convenient for you and Aunt, she plans to come along on the evening train. Her cold is quite better."
"The evening train, tonight?"
"Yes." He smiled. "She is a sudden person. Gone today and here tomorrow. But you will like her. And you will adore her clothes."
"Are they the very latest?"
"Later than that. Mary always buys yesterday what most women buy tomorrow."
"Oh," said Desire. "And what does this futurist lady look like?"
Benis considered. "I can't think of anything that she looks like," he concluded. "She doesn't go in for resemblances. Futurists don't, you know!"
"Isn't it odd?" said Desire in what she hoped was a casual voice. "So many of your friends seem to be named Mary."
"I've noticed that myself—lately."
"There are—"
"'Mary Seaton and Mary Beaton and Mary Carmichael and me,'" quoted Benis gravely.
Desire permitted herself to smile and turning, still smiling, faced Aunt Caroline; who, for her part, was in anything but a smiling humor.
"I'm glad you take it good-naturedly, Desire," said Aunt Caroline acidly. "But people who arrive at a moment's warning always annoy me. I do not require much, but a few days' notice at the least—have you seen a photograph anywhere about?"
Desire bit her lips. "Whose photograph was it, Aunt?"
"Why, Mary Davis' photograph, of course. The one she gave to Benis when she was last here. I hope you do not mind my taking it from your room, Benis? My intention was to have it framed. People do like to see themselves framed. I thought it might be a delicate little attention. But if she is coming tonight, it is too late now. Still, we might put it in place of Cousin Amelia Spence on the drawing-room mantel. What do you think, my dear?"
"I think we might," said Desire. Her tone was admirably judicial but her thoughts were not.... If the Mary of the visit were no other than the Mary of the faun-eyed photograph, why then—
Why then, no wonder that Benis had lost interest in the great Book!