It was night at the flat. There was just chill enough in the air to justify a cozy little fire. Through the open windows came the low hum of London, subdued by walls and distance to the pitch of a friendly accompaniment to talk. In two great leathern chairs, half facing each other, Vi and Leighton sat down, the fire between them.
They had been silent for a long time. Vi had been twisting her fingers, staring at them. Her lips were half open and mobile. She was even flushed. Suddenly she locked her hands and leaned forward.
"Grapes," she said without a drawl, "I have seen myself. It is terrible.Nothing is left."
Leighton rose and stepped into his den. He came back slowly with two pictures in his hands.
"Look at these," he said. "If you were ten years older, you'd only have to glance at them, and they'd open a door to memory."
Vi gazed at the pictures, small paintings of two famous Spanish dancers. One was beautiful, languorous, carnal; the other was neither languorous nor carnal despite her wonderful body, and she was certainly not beautiful. Vi laid the second picture down and held the first. Then almost unconsciously she reached out her hand for the discarded picture. Gradually the face that was not beautiful drew her until attention grew into absorption. The portrait of the languorous beauty fell to her lap and then slipped to the floor, face down. Leighton laughed.
Vi glanced up.
"Why?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," said Leighton, "except that the effect those pictures had on you is an exact parallel to the way the two originals influenced men. For that——" Leighton waved a hand at the picture on the floor—"men gave all they possessed in the way of worldly goods, and then Wondered why they'd done it. But for her—the one you 're looking at——"
He broke off. "You never heard of De Larade? De Larade spent all of his short life looking for animate beauty, and worshiping it when he found it. But he died leaning too far over a balcony to pick a flower for the Woman you're staring at."
"Why?" asked Vi again. "You knew her, of course. Tell me about her."
"I'm going to," said Leighton. "The first time I saw her on the stage she seemed to me merely an extra-graceful and extra-sensuous Spanish dancer. Nothing to rave over, nothing to stimulate a jaded palate. I could have met her; I decided I didn't want to. Later on I did meet her, not in her dressing-room, but at a house where she was the last person I expected to see."
Leighton picked up a cigarette, lighted it, and sat down.
"The place ought to have protected her," he continued, "but when you've seen two thirds of a woman's body, it takes a lot of atmosphere to make you forget it. We were in a corner by ourselves. I can't remember just what I did. Probably laid my hand on her arm with intent. Well, Vi, she didn't thrill the way your blood and mine has thrilled an occasion. She just shrank. Then she frowned, and the frown made her look really ugly. 'Don't forget,' she whispered to me, 'that I'm a married woman. I never forget it—not for one minute.'"
Leighton blew a cloud of smoke at the fire. It twisted into wreaths and whirled up the chimney.
"Quite a facer, eh?" he went on. "But it didn't down me. It only woke me up. 'Have you ever had a man sit down with you beside him and hold you so,' I asked her, 'with your back to his knees, your head in his hands and his eyes and his mouth close to yours—a man that wasn't trying to get to a single goal, but was content to linger with you in the land of dreams?'
"Believe me, Vi, the soul of a pure woman that every man thinks he has a right to make love to is the shyest of all souls. Such a woman sheds innuendo and actions with the proverbial ease of a duck disposing of a shower. But just words—the right words—will bring tears to her eyes. Well, I'd stumbled on the right words."
"'No,' she said, with a far-away look, 'I've never had a man hold me like that. Why?'"
"'Why?' I said, 'Because I will—some day.'"
"'You!'"
"I can't give you all the derision she put into that 'you!' Then her face and her eyes went as hard as flint. 'Money?' she asked, and I answered, 'No; love.'"
Leighton looked at his cigarette end and flipped it into the fire.
"She laughed, of course, and when she laughed she became to me the most unattainable and consequently the most desirable of women. I was at that age.
"Well, to cut the story short, I went mad over her, but it wasn't the madness that loses its head. It was just cunning—the cunning with a touch of fanaticism that always reaches its goal. I laid seige to her by day and by night, and at last, one day, she sent for me. She was alone; I could see that she meant us to be alone. She made me sit down. She stood in front of me. To my eyes she had become beautiful. I wanted her, really wanted her.
"What she said was this: 'I've sent for you because, if you keep on, you're going to win. No, don't get up. Before you keep on, I want to tell you something about myself—about what I believe with all my soul. I don't have to tell you that I'm a good woman; you know it. The first time you saw me dance you were rather disgusted, weren't you? I nodded. 'What do you think of my dancing now?"
"I remember my answer to that. It was: 'You possess people gradually, you hold them forever. It's more than personality with you, it's power.'
"Her eyes were fastened on me. They drew mine. 'That's right,' she said; 'look at me. I want you to look at me. You see I'm an ugly woman.' I cried out in protest, and I meant it. Her face went suddenly hard. 'You fool,' she said, 'say that I'm pretty—say it now!' And I cried out at her, 'Not when you look like that. But you can assume beauty. You know it.'
"She seemed to pause in her thoughts at that and smiled. 'Can I—for you?' she asked in a way that made her divine. Then she jerked herself back. 'I'm an ugly woman. My body is wonderful. Look!' She raised her long arms, which were bare, gave a half-turn, and glanced at me over her shoulder. An apparently simple movement, but it was consummate in grace and display. 'You see?' she said, with a flashing smile. Then she turned and stood stolidly. 'I didn't have a body worth speaking of once. What I've got I made—every bit of it.'
"She sat down sidewise on a chair, folded her arms on the back of it, and looked at me over them. 'I have that power you were speaking of. Do you know just in what consists a woman's power over a man? I'll tell you: in keeping eternally just one thing that he wants.'
"She paused a long time on that, then she went on: 'Some women hold their own in the world and their men by beauty, others by wit, others by culture, breeding, and occasionally there's a woman clever enough to hold her place and her man by wealth. I've got none of these things. I've got only one great gift of God by which I hold my power. When that's gone, all is gone. Wise people have told me so. I know it is true.' She rose slowly, came and stood close beside me. 'It's—it's this—that I'm still my own. Do you want to—to rob me?"
Leighton paused, staring into the fire.
"That was the time," he said, "I went off on my longest shooting-trip. I never saw her again." He looked up. Vi was very pale.
"You have been cruel—cruel to me," she said.
Leighton sprang to his feet and started walking up and down.
"I have not," he said. "The trouble with you women is you're forever wanting to have your cake and eat it, too. If you thought I was going to comfort you with sophist assurances that there's a way out of paying the price for the kind of life you've led, you were just wrong. What I'm trying to do is to give you a prescription for an individual sick soul, not a well one."
He stopped and pointed at the picture lying on Vi's lap.
"Don't you see where her philosophy helps you? You've got all the elements of power that she lacked—beauty, wit, breeding, wealth, and—yes—and mind. She had that, too, but she didn't know it. With all that of your cargo left, can't you trade honestly with life? Can't you make life worth while, not only just to yourself? You'll be trading in compensations, it's true."
Leighton started walking up and down again.
"In one of my many brilliant moments," he went on, "I defined a compensation to Lewis as something that doesn't quite compensate. There you have the root of most of the sadness in life. But believe me, my dear girl, almost all the live people you and I know are trading in compensations, and this is what I want you to fasten on. Some of them do it nobly."
Leighton stood with folded arms, frowning at the floor. Vi looked up at him but could not catch his eye. She rose, picked up her wraps, and then came and stood before him. She laid her fingers on his arms.
"Grapes," she said, still without a drawl, "youhavehelped me—a lot.Good night." She held up her lips.
"No, Vi," said Leighton, gravely. "Just give up paying even for kindness with a kiss."
Vi nodded her head.
"You're right; only—that kiss wouldn't have been as old as I." She turned from him. "I don't think I'll call you 'Grapes' any more."
"Yes, you will," said Leighton. "We're born into one name; we earn another. We've got a right to the one we earn. You see, even a man can't have his cake——"
But, with a wave of her hand, Vi was gone. Leighton heard Nelton running down the stairs to call a cab for her.
Mlle. Folly Delaires was not born within a stone's throw of the Paris fortifications, as her manager would have liked you to believe, but in an indefinite street in Cockneydom, so like its mates that, in the words of Folly herself, she had to have the homing instinct of a pigeon to find it at all. Folly's original name had been—but why give it away? She was one of those women who are above and beyond a name—of a class, or, rather, of a type that a relatively merciful world produces sparingly. She was all body and no soul.
From the moment that Lewis kissed Folly, and then kissed her several times more, discovering with each essay depths in the art which even his free and easy life had never given him occasion to dream of, he became infatuated—so infatuated that the following dialogue passed over him and did not wake him.
"Why are you crying?" asked Lewis, whom tears had never before made curious.
"I'm crying," gasped Folly, stamping her little foot, "because it's taken solong!"
Lewis looked down at her brown head, buried against his shoulder, and asked dreamily:
"Are you spirit and flower, libertine and saint?"
To which Folly replied: "Well, I was the flower-girl once in a great hit, and I played 'The Nun' last season, you remember. As for spirits, I had the refusal of one of the spirit parts in the first "Blue Bird" show, but there were too many of them, so I turned it down. I'd have felt as though I'd gone back to the chorus. Libertine," she mused finally—"whatisa libertine?"
Lewis's father could have looked at Folly from across the street and given her a very complete and charming definition for a libertine in one word. But Lewis had not yet reached that wisdom which tells us that man learns to know himself last of all. He did not realize that your true-born libertine never knows it. Whatever Folly's life may have been, and he thought he had no illusions on that score, he seized upon her question as proving that she still held the potential bloom of youth and a measure of innocence.
To do her justice, Folly was young, and also she had asked her question in good faith. As to innocence—well, what has never consciously existed, causes no lack. Folly's little world was exceedingly broad in one way and as narrow in another, but, like few human worlds, it contained a miracle. The miracle was that it absolutely satisfied her. She dated happiness, content, and birth itself from the day she went wrong.
She had the appearance of being frank, open, and lovable, just as she had that appearance of culture which every woman of her type gets from the cultivated class of men they prey upon. Pet her, and she murmured softly in the king's best English: scratch her, and, like the rock that Moses struck, she burst forth in a surprising torrent. Without making others merry, she was eternally merry. Without ever feeling the agony of thirst, she instilled thirst. A thousand broken-hearted women might have looked on her as an avenging sword, if the sword hadn't been two-edged. She had a motto, a creed, a philosophy, packed into four words: "Be loved; never love."
If both parts of this creed had not been equally imperative, Lewis might have escaped. His aloofness was what doomed him. Like all big-game hunters, Folly loved the rare trophy, the thing that's hard to get. By keeping his distance, Lewis pressed the spring that threw her into action. Almost instinctively she concentrated on him all her forces of attraction, and Folly's forces of attraction, once you pressed the spring, were simply dynamic. Beneath that soft, breathing skin of hers was such store of vitality, intensity, and singleness of purpose as only the vividly monochromatic ever bring to bear on life.
Lewis, unconsciously in very deep waters indeed, reached London in a state of ineffable happiness. Not so Folly. Lewis had awakened in her desire. With her, desire was merely the prelude to a natural consummation. Folly was worried because one of the first and last things Lewis had said to her was, "Darling, when will you marry me?" To which she had replied, but without avail, "Let's think about that afterward."
When Lewis reached the flat on a Saturday night, he did not have to tell his father that something wonderful had happened. Leighton saw it in his face—a face suddenly become more boyish than it had ever been before. They rushed feverishly through dinner, for Lewis's mood was contagious. Then they went into the living-room, and straight for the two big leather chairs which, had they lacked that necessary measure of discretion which Nelton had assigned to them, might have told of many a battle of the mind with the things that are.
"Well, Boy," said Leighton, "what is it?"
"Dad," cried Lewis, with beaming face, "I've found the woman—the all-embracing woman."
Leighton's mind wandered back to the tales of Lewis's little palNatalie.
"Tell me about her—again," he said genially.
"Again!" cried Lewis. "But you've never heard of her—not from me, anyway."
"What's her name?" asked Leighton, half aroused.
"Her name," said Lewis, smiling absently into the fire, "is Folly—FollyDelaires."
Leighton was a trained stalker of dangerous game. Surprise never startled him into movement. It stilled him. Old Ivory had once said of him that he could make his heart stop beating at the smell of elephant; which is quite a different thing from having your heart stop beating on its own hook. When Lewis said, "Folly—Folly Delaires," Leighton suddenly became intensely still. He remained still for so long that Lewis looked up.
"Well, Dad, what Is it?" he asked, still smiling. "Have you heard of her?"
"Yes," said Leighton, quietly, "I've heard of her. I've even seen her. She's a beautiful—she has a beautiful body. Tell me just how it happened."
Then Lewis talked, and Leighton appeared to listen. He knew all the stages of thatvia dolorosatoo well to have to pay close attention to Lewis's description, of the first emotional step of man toward man's surest tribulation.
There was no outburst from Leighton when Lewis finished. On the contrary, he made an effort to hide his thoughts, and succeeded so well that, had it not been for a touch of bitterness in his smile, Lewis might have been led to think that with this active calm his father would have received the announcement of his son's choice of any woman.
"Dad," said Lewis, troubled, "why do you smile like that?"
"I am smiling," said Leighton, "at the tragedy of philanthropy. Any man can get; it takes a genius to give. There are things I've got that I'd like to give you now—on the eve of your greatest trouble." Lewis threw up his head in amazement. He would have protested but, with a half-raised hand, Leighton stilled him. "No," he went on, "I don't expect you to acquire prescience all in a moment, nor do I expect myself to acquire the genius of giving to a sudden need in half an hour. Let's let things stand this way. You love Folly Delaires; I don't. I don't want to be converted, and you don't. But one of us has simply got to be, because—well—because I like to think we've lived too long together in spirit to take to two sides of a fence now."
Lewis felt a sudden depression fall on him, all the more terible for the exaltation that had preceded it.
"Two sides of a fence, Dad?" he said. "That can never be. I—I've just got to convert you. When you know her, she'll help me."
The two rose to their feet on a common impulse. Leighton laid his hand on Lewis's shoulder.
"Boy," he said, "forgive me for making your very words my own. I have no illusions as to the power of woman. She is at once the supreme source of happiness and of poignant suffering. You think your woman will help you; I think she'll help me. That neutralizes her a bit, doesn't it? It reduces our battle to the terms of single combat—unless one of us is right about Folly."
"But, Dad," stammered Lewis, "I don'twanta battle."
Leighton pressed his hand down. Unconsciously Lewis straightened under the pressure.
"Listen to this," said Leighton. "The battles of life aren't served up like the courses at a dinner that you can skip at will. In life we have to fight. Mostly we have to fight people we love for things we love better. Sometimes we fight them for the very love we bear them. You and I are going to fight each other because we can't help it. Let's fight like gentlemen—to the finish—and smile. My boy, you don't know Folly."
"It's you who don't know Folly, Dad," said Lewis, He tried to smile, but his lips twitched treacherously. Not since Leighton had gambled with him, and won all he possessed, had such a blow been dealt to his faith.
Both Lewis and his father passed a miserable night, but not even Nelton could have guessed it when the two met in the morning for a late Sunday breakfast. Leighton felt a touch of pride in the bearing of his son. He wondered if Lewis had taken to heart a saying of his: "To feel sullen is human nature; to show it is ill breeding." He decided that he hadn't, on the grounds that no single saying is ever more than a straw tossed on the current of life.
When they had finished breakfast in their accustomed cheerful silence,Leighton settled down to a long cigar and his paper.
"I suppose you're off to see your lady," he said casually.
Lewis laughed.
"Not yet. She isn't up until twelve ever."
"Doesn't get up until twelve?" said Leighton. "You've found that out, eh?"
"I didn't say 'doesn't get up'; I said 'isn't.' She gets up early enough, but it takes her hours. I've never even heard of a woman that takes such care of herself."
Leighton laid his paper aside.
"By the way," he said, "I've a confession to make to you, one that has worried me for some days. Your little affair drove it out of my mind last night."
"Well, Dad, go ahead," said Lewis. "I won't be hard on you."
"Have you any recollection of what you were working on before you went away?"
For a moment Lewis's face looked blank, then suddenly it flushed. He turned sharp eyes on his father.
"I left the studio locked," he said.
Leighton colored in his turn.
"I forgive you that," he said quietly. "Just after I came back to town Vi called and told me she had been posing for you. She said she had left something in the studio that she wanted to fetch herself. She asked me for the key."
Lewis's hands were clenched.
"Well?" he asked.
"I went with her—to the door. She asked me to wait outside. She was gone a long time. I heard her sobbing——"
"Sobbing? Vi?"
Leighton nodded.
"So—so I went in."
Father and son looked steadily at each other for a moment. Then Lewis said:
"You've forgiven me for my thought, Dad; now I beg your pardon for it. I suppose you saw that that bit of modeling was never intended for the Salon? It was meant for Vi—because—well, because I liked her enough to——"
"I know," interrupted Leighton. "Well, it worked. It worked as such cures seldom do. While Vi was sobbing her heart out on the couch, I smashed up the statue with a mallet. That's my confession."
Lewis did not move.
"Did you hear what I said?" asked Leighton. "I smashed up your model ofVi."
"I heard you, Dad," said Lewis. "But you mustn't expect me to get excited over it, because it's what I should have done myself, once she had seen it."
"When I did it," continued Leighton, "I had no doubts; but since then I've thought a lot. I want you to know that if that cast had gone into marble or bronze, it would have had the eternal life of art itself."
Lewis flushed with pleasure. He knew that such praise from his father must have been weighed a thousand times before it gained utterance. Only from one other man on earth could commendation bring such a thrill. As the name of Le Brux came to his mind, it fell from his father's lips.
"Le Brux has been giving me an awful talking to."
"Le Brux!" cried Lewis. "Has he been here?"
"Only in spirit," said Leighton, smiling. "And this is what he said in his voice of thunder: 'If I had been here, I would have stood by that figure with a mallet and smashed the head of any man that raised a finger against it. What is the world coming to when a mere life weighs more in the balance than the most trifling material expression of eternity?
"'But, Master,' I said, 'a gentleman must always remember the woman.'
"To which he replied, 'What business has an artist to be anything so small as a mere gentleman? It is not alone for fame and repute that we great have our being. If by the loss of my single soul I can touch a thousand other souls to life, bring sight to the blind and hearing to ears that would not hear, what, then, is my soul? Nothing.'"
Leighton stopped and leaned forward.
"Then he said this, and the thunder was gone from his voice: 'When all the trappings of the world's religions have rotted away, the vicarious intention and example of Christ will still stand and bring a surge to the hearts of unforgetful men. Thou child, believe me, what humanity has gained of the best is founded solidly on sacrifice—on the individual ruin of many men and women and little children.'"
Leighton paused. Lewis was sitting with locked hands. He was trying to detach his mind from personalities.
"That's a great sophistry, isn't it?" he said.
"Do you know the difference between a sophistry and a great sophistry?" asked Leighton. "A sophistry is a lie; a great sophistry is merely super-truth."
"I can see," he went on, "that it's difficult for you to put yourself outside sculpture. Let's switch off to literature, because literature, next to music, is the supreme expression in art. I heard one of the keenest men in London say the other day, 'The man who writes a book that everybody agrees with is one of two things: a mere grocer of amusement or a mental pander to cash.'
"You've read Irving's tales of the Catskills and of the Alhambra. Vignettes. I think I remember seeing you read Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter." I pick out two Americans because to-day our country supports more literary grocers and panders than the rest of the world put together. It isn't the writers' fault altogether. You can't turn a nation from pap in a day any more than you can wean a baby on lobsterà laNewburg.
"But to get back. You might say that Irving gives the lie to my keen friend unless you admit, as I do, that Irving was not a writer of books so much as a painter of landscapes. He painted the scenes that were dear to his heart, and in his still blue skies he hung the soft mists of fable, of legend, and of the pageant of a passing race. Hawthorne was his antithesis—a painter of portraits of the souls of men and women. That's the highest achievement known to any branch of art." Leighton paused. "Do you know why those two men wrote as they did?"
Lewis shook his head.
"Because, to put it in unmistakable English, they had something on their chest, and they had to get it off. Irving wrote to get away from life. Hawthorne never wrote to get away from life,—he wrote himself into it forever and forever."
Leighton paused to get his cigar well alight.
"And now," he went on, "we come to the eternal crux. Which is beauty? Irving's placid pictures of light, or Hawthorne's dark portrayals of the varying soul of man?" He turned to Lewis. "What's your idea of a prude?"
"A prude," stammered Lewis—"why a prude's a person with an exaggerated idea of modesty, isn't it?"
"Bah!" said Leighton, "you are as flat as a dictionary. A prude is a far more active evil than that. A prude, my boy, is one who has but a single eye, and that in the back of his head, and who keeps his blind face set toward nature. If he would be content to walk backward, the world would get along more easily, and would like him better the farther he walked. The reason the live world has always hated prudes is that it's forever being stumbled on by them. Your prude clutches Irving to the small of his back and cries, 'This alone is beauty!' But any man with two eyes looks and answers, 'You are wrong; this is beauty alone.'
"And now do you see where we've come out? To make a thing of beauty alone is to bring a flash of joy to a hard-pressed world. But joy is never a force, not even an achievement. It's merely an acquisition. It isn't alive. The man who writes on paper or in stone one throbbing cry of the soul has lifted the world by the power of his single arm. He alone lives. And it is written that you shall know life above all the creatures that are in sea and land and in the heavens above the earth by this sign: sole among the things that are, life is its own source and its own end."
Leighton stopped.
"You see now," he added, "why half of me is sorry that it let the other half smash up that cast. What claim has a puny person against one flicker of eternal truth?"
"Yes," said Lewis, slowly, "I see. I can follow your logic to the very end. I can't answer it. All I know is that I myself—I couldn't have paid the price, nor—nor let Vi pay it."
"And to tell you the truth," said Leighton with a smile, "I don't know that I'm sorry." Lewis rose to his feet.
"Well, Dad," he said, "it's about twelve o'clock."
"Go ahead, my boy," said Leighton. "Bring the lady to lunch to-day or any other day—if she'll come. Just telephone Nelton."
DURING the next few days Leighton saw little of his son and nothing of Folly, but he learned quite casually that the lady was occupying an apartment overlooking Hyde Park. From that it was easy for him to guess her address, and one morning, without saying anything to Lewis of his plans, he presented himself at Folly's door. A trim maid opened to his ring.
"Is Mlle. Delaires in, my dear?" asked Leighton.
The maid stiffened, and peered intently at Leighton, who stood at ease in the half-dusk of the hall. When she had quite made out his trim, well-dressed figure, she decided not to be as haughty as she had at first intended.
"Miss Delaires," she said, without quite unbending, however, "is not in to callers at half after ten; she's in her bath."
"I am fortunate," remarked Leighton, coolly. "Will you take her my card?" He weighted it with a sovereign.
"Oh, sir," said the maid, "it's not fair for me to take it. She won't be seeing you. I can promise."
"Where shall I wait?" asked Leighton, stepping past her.
"This way, sir."
He was shown into a small, but dainty, sitting-room. The door beyond was ajar, and before the maid closed it he caught a glimpse of a large bedroom still in disarray. In the better light the maid glanced at his face and then at his card.
"What kin are you to Mr. Lewis Leighton, please, sir?" she asked.
"I have every reason to believe that I'm his father," said Leighton, smiling.
"I should say you had, sir," answered the maid, with a laugh, "if looks is a guaranty. But even so she won't see you, I'm afraid."
"I don't mind much if she doesn't," said Leighton. "Just to have had this chat with you makes it a charming morning."
In saying that Miss Delaires was in her bath, the maid had committed an anachronism. Folly was not in her bath. She had been in her bath over an hour ago; now she was in her bandages.
Folly's bath-room was not as large as her bedroom, but it was larger than anything since Rome. To the casual glance, its tiled floor and walls and its numerous immaculate fittings, nickel-trimmed and glass-covered, gave the impression of a luxurious private-clinic theater. Standing well away from one wall was, in fact, a glass operating-table of the latest and choicest design. A more leisurely inspection of the room, however, showed this operating-table to be the only item—if a large-boned Swedish masseuse be omitted—directly reminiscent of a surgery. All the other glittering appliances, including an enormous porcelain tub, were subtly allied to the cult of healthy flesh.
At the moment when the maid entered with Leighton's card, Folly was virtually indistinguishable. She could only be guessed at in the mummy-like form extended, but not stretched, if you please, on the operating-table. Her face, all but a central oval, was held in a thin mask of kidskin, and her whole body, from neck to peeping pink toes, was wrapped closely in bandages soaked with cold cream. The bath-tub was still half-full of tepid water, from which rose faint exhalations of the latest attar, so delicate that they attained deception, and made one look around instinctively for flowers.
Folly's big brown eyes seemed to be closed, but in reality they were fixed on a little clock in plain, white porcelain, to match the room, which stood on a glass shelf high on the wall in front of her. "I'm sure that old clock has stopped," she cried petulantly to the masseuse. "Tell me if it's ticking."
"Ut's ticking," said themasseuse, patiently. Then she added, as though she were reciting: "Be mindful. Youth is a fund that can be saved up like pennies. The tenure of youth and beauty is determined by the amount and the quality—"
"Of relaxation," chanted Folly, breaking in. "It is not enough that the body be relaxed; wrinkles come from the mind. Relax your mind even as you relax your fingers and your toes. Tra-la-la, la-la!" Folly wriggled the free tips of her pink toes. She felt the maid come in. "What do you want, Marie?"
"Nothing, Miss," said the maid; "only I think something must of happened."
"Nothing, only something's happened," mimicked Folly. "Well, what's happened?"
"It's Mr. Lewis's governor, Miss, please. He's here, and he says he just must see you."
"So you let him in, did you? At half-past ten in the morning? How much did he give you?"
"Oh, nothing at all, Miss." Marie paused. "He's that charming he didn't have to give me anything."
"H—m—m!" said Folly. "Well, go ask him what he wants."
"He won't say, Miss. He's that troubled he just keeps his eyes on the floor, an' says as he has something private he must tell you. Perhaps Mr. Lewis has broke his leg. I'm sure I don't know."
"Come on, Buggins," said Miss Delaires to the masseuse. "Don't you hear?There's a gentleman waiting to see me."
Buggins shook her head.
"The hour ut is not finish," she said calmly. "Five minutes yet." And for five long minutes Folly had to wait. Then themasseusewent swiftly into action. Off came the mask and the long, moist bandages. As the bandages uncoiled, Marie rolled them up tightly and placed them, one after the other, on the glass shelves of a metal sterilizer. Buggins rolled up her white sleeves, and entered forthwith on the major rite.
First she massaged Folly's full, round neck; then her swift, deep fingers, passed down one arm and felt out every muscle, every joint, to the tips of Folly's fingers. Back up the arm again, across the bosom, and down the other arm. Back to the neck once more, and then down and around the body to the very last joint of Folly's very last and very little toe.
Folly let go a great sigh, sprang from the table, and stood erect, young and alive in every fiber, in the center of the blue and white bath-rug. The film of cold cream was quite gone. But themasseusewas not yet content. She caught up a soft, scented towel and passed it deftly over arms, body, and legs, not forgetting the last little toe. When she finished, she was on her knees. She looked up and nodded to Folly's inquiring glance.
Folly gave a little laugh of pure delight, and stretched. She held her doubled fists high above her head. Her whole body glowed in an even, unblemished pink. Verily, it seemed to breathe; it breathed with the breath of flowers. And no wonder!
When she had finished stretching, Marie was holding ready a gown of silk,—dark blue, with a foam of lace at the throat and on the broad half-sleeves,—and Buggins had placed lamb's-wool slippers just before her feet. But Folly was too full of animal to be even so softly imprisoned just yet. With a chuckle of mischief, she gave them each a quick push and darted across the room and out by the door.
Maid and masseuse followed her into the bedroom with protesting cries. The bedroom had been put in order. Only the bed itself, dressed merely in a fresh white sheet and pillows, looked a little naked, for the bedclothes proper had been carried out to air. In the center of the bed was Folly, curled up like a kitten. Her hair had tumbled down into two thick, loose braids. She submitted now to the gown, and wrapped herself carefully in it. Propped high against the pillows, a braid of brown hair falling forward over each shoulder, and her bare arms lying still at her sides, she looked very demure indeed and very sweet.
"Bring tea, Marie," she said softly, "and show in Daddy Leighton."
LEIGHTON'S first feeling on entering Folly's bedroom was one of despair. All his knowledge of the highways and byways of the feminine mind was only enough to make him recognize, as he glanced about the room, that he was about to encounter more! than a personality, that he was face to face with a force.
The most illuminating thing that can be said about Folly's bedroom is that Leighton saw the bedroom—the whole of it—before he consciously saw Folly. The first impression that the room gave was one of fresh air—the weighted air of a garden in bloom, however, rather than that of some wind-swept plain. The next, was one of an even and almost stolid tone, neither feminine nor masculine, in the furnishings. They were masterfully impersonal.
To Leighton, who had had the run of every grade of greasy, professional dressing-room, chaotic and slovenly beyond description, and of boudoirs, professional and otherwise, each in its appropriate measure a mirror of the character of its occupant, the detachment of this big room came as a shock. There were only eight pieces of furniture, of which four were chairs, yet there was no sense of emptiness. The proportions of the remaining objects would have dwarfed a far larger space.
Along the whole length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany, with sliding-doors. Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air. Leighton caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings, mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny slippers all in a row.
At right angles to the press, but well away from it, stood a dressing-table surmounted by a wide, low swivel-mirror. The table was covered with tapestry under glass. The dull gleam of the tapestry seemed to tone down and control the glittering array of toilet articles in monogrammed gold. Facing the press, stood a large trinity cheval-glass, with swinging wings. In the center of the room was the bed. Behind the bed and on each side of it were two high windows. They carried no hangings, but were fitted with three shades, differing in weight and color, and with adjustable porcelain Venetian blinds which could be made to exclude light without excluding air.
Folly's bed was a mighty structure. Like the rest of the furniture, it was of mahogany. It was a four-poster, but posts would be a misleading term applied to the four fluted pillars that carried the high canopy. The canopy itself was trimmed with no tassels or hangings except for a single band of thick tapestry brought just low enough to leave the casual observer in doubt as to whether there really was a canopy at all.
Having taken in all the surroundings at a glance, Leighton's eyes finally fell upon Folly. She lay in a puzzling, soft glow of light. Resting high on the pillows, she reached scarcely half-way down the length of the great bed. For a second they looked at each other solemnly. Then Leighton's glance passed from her face to the two braids of hair, down the braids to her bare arms demurely still at her sides, down her carefully wrapped figure, down, down to her pink toes. Folly was watching that glance. As it reached her toes, she gave them a quick wriggle. Leighton jumped as if some one had shot at him, and solemnity made a bolt through the open windows, hotly pursued by a ripple and a rumble of laughter.
When Leighton had finished laughing, he sat down in a chair and sighed. He was trying to figure out just what horse-power it would have taken to drag him away from Folly at Lewis's age. Where was he going to find the power? For the first time in many years he trembled before a situation. He began to talk casually, trying to lead up to the object of his call. Two things, however, distracted him. One was the puzzling glow of light that bathed Folly and the bed, the other was Folly herself.
Folly was very polite indeed as far as occasional friendly interjections went, but as to genuine attention she was distinctly at fault. She did not look at Leighton while he talked, but held her gaze dreamily on what would have been the sky above her had not three floors of apartments, a roof, and several other things intervened.
Finally Leighton exclaimed in exasperation:
"Whatare you staring at?"
Folly started as though she had just wakened, and turned her eyes on him.
"You're too far away," she said. "If you really want to talk to me, come over here." She patted the bed at her side.
Leighton crossed over, and sat on the edge of the bed. Something made him look up. His jaw dropped. There was a canopy to Folly's bed. It consisted of one solid sweep of French mirror so limpid that reflection became reality. It was fringed with tiny veiled lights.
Once more Folly's gay ripple of laughter rang out, but it was unaccompanied this time. Leighton's fighting blood was up. He stared at her stolidly.
"Look here," he said, "Idowant to talk to you. Put out those cursed little lights!"
"Oh, dear!" gasped Folly as she switched off the lights, "you're such a funny man! You make me laugh. Please don't do it any more."
"I won't try any harder than I have so far," said Leighton, grimly. "This is what I came to say to you. My boy wants to marry you. I don't want him to. I might as well confess that during the last ten minutes I've given up any ideas I had of buying you off. I'm not worth a million."
"You poor dear," said Folly, "don't worry any longer. I don't want to marry Lew. Ask me something else."
"I will," said Leighton. "It's just this. Chuck Lew over. Get rid of him. It will hurt him, I know. I can understand that better now than I did before. But I'd rather hurt him a bit that way than see him on the rack."
"Thanks," said Folly; "but, you see, I can't get rid of him. You can't get rid of something you haven't got." She smiled. "Don't you see? I'll have to get him before I can oblige you."
"Don't bother," said Leighton. "A clever woman like you often gets rid of something she hasn't got. Look here, you don't want to marry Lew, and, what's more, you don't love him. You couldn't marry him if you wanted to. You know it isn't in you to marry any man. But I tell you, Folly, if it really was in you truly to marry Lew, I'd give in and bless you. I wouldn't have yesterday, but I would to-day; because, my dear, you are simply made up of charms. The only thing missing is a soul."
"You talk better than Lew—not so silly," remarked Folly. "But what's the use of all this palaver about marrying? I've told you I don't want to marry him."
"Well, what do you want, then?"
"I want Lew," said Folly, smiling. She sat up, and drew her knees into the circle of her arms. "He's an awfully nice boy. So like you, Marie says. I just want him to have.Youknow."
"Yes," said Leighton, dryly. "Well, you can't have him."
"Can't have him?" repeated Folly, straightening. "Why not?"
"Because I don't want you to."
"But why?"
"Well," said Leighton, "I don't believe in that sort of thing."
"Oh, oh!" cried Folly, "now you're trying to make me laugh again! By the way,areyou Mr. Grapes Leighton?"
"I am," said Leighton, flushing.
Folly called the maid.
"Marie," she said, "bring me my scrap-book—the oldest one."
Leighton moved back to the chair and sat down with a resigned air. Marie brought in a huge scrap-book, and placed it on a bracket tea-tray that swung in over the bed. Folly opened the book and turned the leaves slowly. "Here we are," she said at last, and read, mimicking each speaker to a turn:
"'Counsel:' 'Please, Mrs. Bing, just answer yes or no; did you or did you not meet Mr. Leighton in the corridor at three o'clock in the morning?
"'Mrs. Bing:' 'Well, sir, yes; sir, that is, please your Honor [turning to the judge], Ididmeet Mr. Leighton in the collidoor, but 'e was eating of a bunch of grapes that innercent you'd ha' knowed at once as 'ee'adn't been up to no mischief.' [Laughter.]
"Order! Order!" boomed Folly, as she slammed the book.
Leighton shrugged his shoulders.
"That's neither here nor there. You'll find before you get through with life what people with brains have known for several centuries. The son that's worth anything at all is never like his father. Sons grow."
"I don't care anything about that," said Folly, calmly. "I'm going to have Lew because—well, just because I want him."
"And I say you 're not."
"So?" said Folly, her eyes narrowing. Then she smiled and added,"There's only one way you can stop me"
"How's that?" said Leighton.
"By making me want somebody else more."
Leighton looked at her keenly for a moment.
"I shall never do that," he said.
"Somehow," said Folly, still smiling, "you've made a fair start. It isn't you exactly. It's that you are just Lew—the whole of Lew and a lot of things added."
"You are blind," said Leighton; "you don't know the difference between addition and subtraction. Anyway, even if I could do it, I wouldn't. I want to fight fair—fair with Lew, fair with you, if you're fair with me, and fair with myself. But I want to fight, not play. Will you lunch at our place to-morrow?"
"Let's see. To-morrow," said Folly, tapping her lips to hide a tiny yawn. "Well, we can't fight unless we get together, can we? Yes, I'll come."
Immediately upon leaving Folly, Leighton called on Lady Derl, by appointment. He had already been to Hélène with his trouble over Lewis. It was she that had told him to see Folly. "In a case of even the simplest subtraction," Hélène had said, "you've got to know what you're trying to subtract from."
As usual, Leighton was shown into Hélène's intimate room. He closed the door after him quickly.
"Hélène," he said, "where's the key?"
"The key? What key?"
"The key to this door. I want to lock myself in here."
"Poor frightened thing!" laughed Hélène. "Turn around and let me look at you. Is your face scratched?"
Leighton pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He stared at each familiar object in the room as though he were trying to recall a truant mind. Finally his eyes came around to Hélène, and with a quick smile and the old toss of the head with which he was wont to throw off a mood, he brought himself back to the present.
"With time and patience," he said, as he sat down, "anybody can get a grip on a personality, but a mighty impersonality is like the Deluge or—or a steam-roller. Do I look flattened out?"
"You do, rather, for you," said Hélène. "Tell me about it from the beginning." And Leighton did. It took him half an hour. When he got through, she said, still smiling, "I'd like to meet this Folly person."
"I see I've talked for nothing," said Leighton. "It isn't the Folly person that flattened me out. It's what's around her, outside of her."
"That's what you think," said Hélène. "But, still, it's she I'd like to see."
"That's lucky," said Leighton, "because you 're going to."
"When?"
"To-morrow. Lunch."
"What's the idea?"
"The idea is this. I've been looking her up, viewing her cradle and her mother's cradle and that sort of thing. I'd have liked to have viewed her father's as well, but it's a case ofcherchez l'homme."
"Well?"
"Well, the young lady's an emanation from sub-Cockneydom. My idea is that that kind can't stand the table andgrande-dametest. I'll supply the table, with fixtures, and you're going to be thegrande-dame." Leighton's face suddenly became boyishly pleading. "Will you, Hélène? It's more than an imposition to ask; it's an impertinence."
For a moment Hélène was serious and looked it.
"Glen," she said, "you and I don't have to ask that sort of thing—not with each other. We take it. Of course I'll come. I'll enjoy it. But—do you think she's really raw enough to give herself away?"
"I don't know," said Leighton, gloomily. "I couldn't think of anything else. Lunch begins to look a bit thin for the job. At first I'd thought of one of those green-eyed Barbadian cocktails, followed by that pale-eyed Swiss wine of mine that Ivory calls the Amber Witch with the hidden punch. But I've given them up. You see, I told her I'd play fair if she did."
"Yes, I see," said Hélène.
A psychologist would have liked an hour to study the lightning change that came over Folly when, on the following day, she suddenly realized Lady Derl. Folly had blown into the flat like a bit of gay thistledown. For her, to lunch with one man was the stop this side of boredom; but to lunch with two was a delight. If she was allowed to pick the other woman, she could just put up with apartie carrée. But she hadn't picked out Lady Derl. Lady Derl was something that had never touched her world except from a box across the footlights on an occasional première.
One flash of Folly's eyes took in Lady Derl, and then her long lashes drooped before Lady Derl had time to take in Folly. Folly's whole self drooped. She was still a bit of thistle-down, but its pal, the breeze, was gone. She crossed the room, barely touched Hélène's hand, and then fluttered down to stillness on the edge of a big chair.
At lunch Leighton made desperate efforts to start a breeze and failed.Folly said "Yes" and Folly said "No,"—very softly, too,—and that wasall. Leighton stepped on Hélène's foot several times, but to no avail.Lady Derl was watching Folly. "Could she keep it up? Yes, she could."Lady Derl couldn't talk; she wanted to laugh.
Throughout that interminable lunch, Hélène, Leighton, and Lewis saw nothing, thought nothing, but Folly, and, for all any one of them could see, Folly didn't know it. "Oh, you adorablecat!" thought Lady Derl. "Oh, youadorable!" sighed Lewis to himself, and, inwardly, Leighton groaned, "Oh, youyou!"
Within twenty minutes of leaving the table, Folly rose from the edge of her chair and crossed to Lady Derl.
"Good-by," she breathed shyly, holding out her hand. "I must go now." Lewis sprang up to accompany her. They could see he was aching to get away somewhere where he could put his arms around her. Leighton crossed to the door and held it open. "Good-by," said Folly to him, holding out her hand. "I've hadsucha good time."
At the word "such," Leighton winced and flushed. Then he grinned.
"Good-by, Folly," he said. "I hope you'll come again when you're feeling more like yourself."
He closed the door and then rang for Nelton. Nelton came.
"Bring me the iodine," said Leighton, as with his handkerchief he stanched the blood from a bad scratch on his right wrist.
"Heavens! Glen," cried Hélène, "how did you get that?
"Didn't you see me jump when she said 'such'?" asked Leighton. Then they sat down, and Hélène laughed for a long time, while Leighton tried not to. "Oh," he said at last, "I wish we didn't have to think of Lew!"
"You may ask for my advice now," said Hélène, a little breathlessly."I've got it ready."
"Thank God!" said Leighton. "What is it?"
"It's only a plan to gain time, after all," said Hélène; "but that's what you want—time for Lew to get his puppy eyes opened. You can elaborate the idea. I'll just give you the skeleton."
She did, and, soon after, Leighton saw her into a cab. He went back to the flat and waited. He knew that Lewis would not be gone long. He would be too keen to hear his father's and Lady Derl's verdict.
Leighton had just settled down to a book and a second cigar when Lewis came into the room like a breeze that had only a moment to stay.
"Well, Dad," he cried, "what have you got to say now? What has Lady Derl got to say?"
Lewis flung himself into a chair, crossed his arms, and stretched his legs straight out before him. His head hung to one side, and he was so confident of his father's verdict that he was laughing at him out of bright eyes.
Leighton laid his book aside and took his cigar from his mouth. He leaned toward his son, his elbows on his knees.
"Every time I see Miss Delaires," he said slowly, "my opinion of her charms and her accomplishments goes up with a leap."
Lewis nodded, and scarcely refrained from saying, "I told you so."
Leighton's face remained impassive. "She has a much larger repertoire than I thought," he continued; "but there's one rôle she can't play."
"What's that?" asked Lewis.
"Marriage."
"Why?" asked Lewis, his face setting. Then he blurted out: "I might as Well tell you, she says she doesn't believe in marriage. She's too advanced."
"Too advanced!" exclaimed Leighton. "Why, my dear boy, she hasn't advanced an inch from the time the strongest man with the biggest club had a God-given right to the fairest woman in the tribe and exercised it. That was the time for Folly to marry."
"Go easy, Dad," warned Lewis.
"I'm going to, Boy," said Leighton. "You hear a lot of talk to-day on the shortcomings of marriage as an institution. The socialists and the suffragists and a lot of other near-sighted people have got it into their heads that we've outgrown marriage." Leighton puffed at his cigar. "Once I was invited out to dinner, and had to eat cabbage because there was nothing else. That night I had the most terrible dream of my life. I dreamed that instead of growing up, I was growing down, and that by morning I had grown down so far that, when I tried to put them on, I only reached to the crotch of my trousers. I'll never forget those flapping, empty legs."
Lewis smiled.
"You can smile," went on Leighton. "I can't, even now. That's what's happened to this age. We've outgrown marriage downward. Your near-sighted people talk of contractual agreements, parity of the sexes, and of a lot of other drugged panaceas, with the enthusiasm of a hawker selling tainted bloaters. They don't see that marriage is founded on a rock set deeper than the laws of man. It's a rock upon which their jerry-rigged ships of the married state are bound to strike as long as there's any Old Guard left standing above the surge of leveled humanity."
"And what's the rock?" asked Lewis.
"A woman's devotion," said Leighton, and paused. "Devotion," he went on, "is an act of worship, and of prayer as well as of consecration, only, with a woman, it isn't an act at all. Sometime perhaps H lne will talk to you. If she does, you'll see in her eyes what I'm trying to tell you in words."
"And—Folly?" said Lewis. His own pause astounded him.
"Yes, Folly," said Leighton. "Well, that's what Folly lacks—the key, the rock, the foundation. The only person Folly has a right to marry is herself, and she knows it."
Lewis sighed with disappointment. He had been so sure. Leighton spoke again.
"One thing more. Don't forget that to-day you and I—and H lne, received Folly here as one of us."
Lewis looked up. Leighton rose, and laid one hand on his shoulder.
"Boy," he said, "don't make a mistress out of anything that has touchedH lne. You owe that to me."
"I won't, Dad," gulped Lewis. He snatched up his hat and stick and hurried out into the open.
LEIGHTON'S heart ached for his boy as he watched him go, and during the next few weeks Iris pity changed into an active anxiety. In setting that trap—he could call it nothing else—for Lew, he and H lne had put forces into conflict that were not amenable to any light control. Lewis had passed his word. Leighton knew he would never go back on it. On the other hand, for the first time in all her life Folly's primal instinct was being balked by a denial she could comprehend only as having its source in Leighton rather than in Lew.
Folly was being eaten away by desire. She was growing desperate. So were Marie and themasseuse.When a morning came that found Folly with purple shadows under her eyes their despair became terror.
"Madame," cried Marie, "why don't you marry him? You've got to stop it. You've got to stop it. Anyway, all ways, you've got to stop it. It's a-eating of you up. If you're a loving of him that much, why don't cher?"
"Loving of him!" sneered Folly. "I—I hate him. No, no, that's not true. I don't hate Lew, poor dear. It'sthemI hate. And Iwon'tbe beaten." She pounded her doubled knee with her fist. "I don'twantto marry him; but if they push me, if they keep on pushing me——"
It can be seen from the above that Lew was beginning to get on Folly's nerves. She had long since begun to get on his. When they were with others it was all right; Folly was her old self. But whenever they were alone, the same wordy battle began and never ended. Lew grew morose, heavy. He avoided his father, but he could do no work; so time hung on his hands, and began to rot away his fiber as only too much time can.
One day H lne sent for Leighton.
"Glen," she said, "we've been playing with something bigger than merelyFolly. I saw her to-day, just a flash in Bond Street. I saw her face. IfLew holds out another week, she's going to marry him, and yet, somehow,I don't believe she loves him. Something tells me you weren't wrong whenyou said she could love nothing but just herself."
Leighton sighed.
"I know I wasn't wrong," he said. "But you are right: she's going to marry him. And I'll have to stand by and see him through. Watch her break him up and throw him off. And I'll have to pick up the pieces and stick them together. One doesn't like to have to do that sort of thing twice. I did it with my own life. I don't want to do it with Lew's. There are such a lot of patched lives. I wanted him—I wanted him—"
H lne crossed the room quickly, and put her arms around Leighton, one hand pressing his head to her.
"Glen," she said softly, "why, Glen!"
Leighton was not sobbing. He was simply quivering from head to toe—quivering so that he could not speak. His teeth chattered. H lne smoothed his brow and his crisp hair, shot with gray. She soothed him.
"H lne," he said at last, "he's my boy."
"Glen," said H lne, "if you love him—love him like that, she can't break him up. Don't be frightened. Go and find him. Send him to me."
Leighton did not have to look for Lew. He had scarcely reached the flat when Lew came rushing in, a transformed Lew, radiant, throbbing with happiness.
"Dad," he cried, "she's said 'Yes.' She's going to marry me. Do you hear, Dad?"
"Yes, I hear," said Leighton, dully. Then he tossed back his head. He would not blur Lew's happy hour. He held out his hand. "I hear," he repeated, "and I'll—I'll see you through."
Lewis gripped the extended hand with all his strength, then he sat down and chatted eagerly for half an hour. He did not see that his father was tired.
"Go and tell H lne," he said when Lewis at last paused. "Telephone her that you want to talk to her."
H lne was on the point of going out. She told Lewis to come and see her at ten the next morning. He went, and as he was standing just off the hall, waiting to be announced, the knocker on the great front door was raised, and fell with a resounding clang. Before the doorman could open, it fell again.
Lewis, startled, looked around. The door opened. A large man in evening dress staggered in. His clothes were in disorder. His high hat had been rubbed the wrong way in spots. But Lewis hardly noticed the clothes. His eyes were fastened on the man's face. It was bloated, pouched, and mottled with purple spots and veins. Fear filled it. Not a sudden fear, but fear that was ingrown, that proclaimed that face its habitual habitation. The man's eyes bulged and stared, yet saw nothing that was. He blundered past the doorman.
Lewis caught a glimpse of a tawdry woman peering out from a hansom at the disappearing man. "Thank Gawd!" he heard her say as the cab drove off.
With one hand on the wall the man guided himself toward the stairs at the end of the hall. On the first step he stumbled and would have fallen had it not been for a quick footman. The man recovered his balance and struck viciously at the servant. Then he clutched the baluster, and stumbled his way up the stairs.
Lewis was frightened. He turned and hurried through the great, silent drawing-rooms, through the somber library, to the little passage to H lne's room. He met the footman who had gone to announce him. He did not stop to hear what he said. He pushed by him and knocked at H lne's door.
"Come in," she cried.
Lewis stood before her. He was excited.
"H lne," he said, "there's a man come in—a horrible man. He pushed by the servants. He's gone upstairs. I think—well, I think he's not himself. Do you want me to do anything?"
H lne was standing. At Lewis's first words she had flushed; then she turned pale, deathly pale, and steadied herself with one hand on the back of a chair. She put the other hand to the side of her head and pressed it there.
"That's it," she said; "he's—he's not himself." Then she faced Lewis."Lew, that's my—that's Lord Derl that you saw."
"H lne!" cried Lew, putting out quick hands toward her. "Oh, I'm sorry—I'm sorry I said that!"
His contrition was so deep, so true, that H lne smiled, to put him at his ease.
"It's all right, Lew; it's all right that you saw," she said evenly."Come here. Sit down here. Now, what have you got to tell me?"
Lewis was still frowning.
"It seemed," he said, "such a big thing. Now, somehow, it doesn't seem so big. I just wanted to tell you that Folly has come around at last. We're going to be married."
For a long moment there was silence, then H lne said: "You love her,Lew? You're sure you love her?"
Lewis nodded his head vehemently.
"And you're sure she loves you?" asked H lne.
"Yes," said Lewis, not so positively. "In her way she does. She says she's wanted me from the first day she saw me."
H lne sat down. She held one knee in her locked hands. Her face was half turned from Lewis. She was staring out through the narrow, Gothic panes of the broad window. Her face was still pale and set. Lewis's eyes swept over her. Her beauty struck him as never before. Something had been added to it. H lne seemed to him a girl, a frail girl. How could he ever have thought this Woman worldly! Her fragrance reached him. It was a fragrance that had no weight, but it bound him—bound him hand and foot in its gossamer web. He felt that he ought to struggle, but that he did not wish to. He waited for H lne to speak.
"Love," she said at last, "is a terrible thing. Young people don't know what a terrible thing it is. We talk about the word 'love' being so abused. We think we abuse it, but it's love that abuses itself. There are so many kinds of love, and every big family is bound to include a certain number of rotters. Love isn't terrible through the things we do to it; it's terrible for the things it does to us."
H lne paused.
"I'm glad you saw what you did to-day because it will make it easier for you to understand. Tour father loves me, and I love him. It's not the love of youth. It's the love of sanity. The love of sanity is a fine, stalwart love, but it hasn't the unnamable sweetness or the ineffaceable bitterness of the love of youth. Years ago your father wanted to take me away from—from what you saw. There did not seem to be any reason why we should not go. He and I—we're not wedded to any place or to any time. We have a World that's ours alone. We could take it with us wherever we went."
"H lne," whispered Lewis, "why didn't you go?"
"H lne unlocked her hands, put them on the lounge at her sides, and stayed herself on them. She stared at the floor.
"We didn't go," she said, "because of the terrible things that love—bitter love—had done to us."
She turned luminous eyes toward Lewis.
"You say you love Folly; you think she loves you. Lew, perhaps, sheisyour pal to-day. Will she be your pal always? You know what a pal is. You've told me about that little girl Natalie. A pal is one who can't do wrong, who can't go wrong, who can't grow wrong. Your pal is you—your blood, your body, your soul. Is Folly your blood, your body, your soul? If she is, she'll grow finer and finer and you will, too, and years and time and place will fade away before the greatest battle-cry the world has ever known—'We're partners.'"