Obediently Enslee turned and wandered about, scanning the floor carefully and chortling idiotically, "Fan, fan, who's got the fan?" And so he floated harmlessly and blindly out of the cloud that was thickening around his household.
Persis laughed. "You see what an ideal husband Willie is?" But Forbes, who had a strong stomach for warfare with its mangled enemies and shattered comrades, shuddered at this tame domestic horror. He blurted out:
"It is all the more shameful to deceive a fool."
"Oh, now you're becoming scrupulous again!" said Persis, who thought pride of little moment in the face of the victory she had set her heart on.
But now she was confronted by an adversary of more weight and acumen than Willie, a man whose trade was diplomacy and politics. Ambassador Tait came forward. He was a little pale and weak, and he felt his heart laboring in his breast, but he had at least one more good fight in him, and when he found Forbes plainly enmeshed, though struggling, in Persis' gossamer web, the old man resolved to make the fight at whatever cost.
After a moment of hesitation he came briskly forward with a blunt: "Pardon me a moment, Mrs. Enslee, I have an important communication for the Captain. These state secrets you know." And he led Forbes to an adjoining room, the library, where he said in a low tone, "Harvey, my boy, I've cooked up an imaginary errand to get you away from her."
But Forbes tossed his head at this aspersion on his ability to take care of himself. He answered, "I'm not afraid."
Tait's eyes grew very sad, though his lips smiled when he said: "Well, I'm afraid for you. You're not responsible when you're in her magnetic circle." Then, seeing that Persis had resolutely followed them into the room, he raised his voice for Persis' benefit: "You'll find the papers on my desk. Read them carefully and sign them if they're all right. They must be mailed this evening." Then he deliberately pushed the reluctant and faltering captain from the room, hardly leaving him time to say, "You'll excuse me, Mrs. Enslee?"
Persis understood it all and answered with thinly veiled pique, "I'll have to." But she would not surrender him so easily. She called after Forbes, "I'll expect you back as soon as you have signed those—alleged papers."
The Ambassador was jolted. He could think of nothing to say. He watched Forbes go, then started to follow; noted that Persis was alone, and remembered the laws of courtesy enough to ask:
"May I send you an ice—or your husband?"
"An ice—or my husband?" Persis was forced to smile at such a collocation. "Neither, please. Sit down, Ambassador."
Tait had not expected this. With a hesitating "Er—ah! Thank you!" he seated himself as far as possible from her on a leather divan. Immediately she rose, crossed the room, and sat next to him. There was no escaping her now, and Tait felt like calling for help.
Persis forsook all the modulations of diplomacy and cut straight to the point. "Ambassador Tait, why don't you like me?"
"Why, I—I admire you immensely," he gasped, amazed.
"Oh, drop diplomacy; I'm not the President of France!" Persis said, with a whit of vexation. When a woman answers a compliment with anger she means business. Persis repeated: "I said, why don't you like me?"
"But—I—I—" Tait fumbled for a word; then, somewhat angered by his discomfort, met a woman's directness with a man's bluntness. "Well, why should I?"
Persis parried his rudeness with a return to gentle measures; she beamed. "I'm very nice! I was good to my mother. I'm good to my husband."
"But are you?"
"I'm as good a wife as he deserves. You've seen him?"
Tait smiled in spite of himself, for he was one of Willie's numberless non-admirers. Now Persis, seeing him smiling, returned to open attack:
"Last summer you took Captain Forbes to Evian-les-Bains to get him away from me. Didn't you?"
Tait was off his guard; he stammered: "Certainly not—that is—well, how did you find it out?"
Persis shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "My mother took me to England when I was very young to get me away from a beautiful butcher's boy. She succeeded; she was a woman. You won't; you're a man."
"Help, help!" Tait gasped, in a parody of fear that had a groundwork of reality.
"You love Captain Forbes, don't you?" Persis lunged at his heart again; and he answered, solemnly:
"Yes, I do, as if he were my own son."
"Why don't you want me to see him?"
"Why do you want to see him? You're married."
"But they don't keep women in harems nowadays. Paris is very dull this winter. Don't take Captain Forbes away again."
"As I remember, you gave him marching orders once yourself. You mustn't mind if he goes of his own accord now."
"But he won't go of his own accord if you don't make him. Why do you? You're not afraid of me?"
"Oh, but I am."
Persis laughed with a kind of pride. "Really! You flatter me! But why?"
Tait twisted his big, soft hands together and stared at her a long while before he could speak. "This is very embarrassing, Mrs. Enslee; but since you are so frank, let me ask you one question. Will you answer it frankly?"
"That depends upon the question." Persis chuckled, never dreaming of its nature. When it came it was:
"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"
She laughed evasively now. "What a remarkable question!"
The old lawyer repeated the demand:
"Are you in love with Captain Forbes?"
"I think he is very nice," she dodged. "But what has that to do with our friendship?"
"Everything," Tait answered, with tightened lips. "Mrs. Enslee, your father and I rowed together in the same college crew, and Harvey's father was my best friend. May I speak freely to you?"
She responded immediately to the almost affection of his tone. "I wish you would."
"What little success in life I have had," Tait began, with the somewhat formal speech of an orator, "has been due to my habit of foreseeing dangerous combinations and preventing them, or running away from them. The most dangerous combination on earth is a woman, a man, and another man. No married woman has a right to the—I believe you said 'friendship,' of a man who cares for her as Harvey cares for you."
She extracted from his warning only the hidden sweet. "And he does care for me still!"
"But you've married another man."
"Of course," she answered. "But do you think thatI can find Mr. Enslee so fascinating that I must give up all my friends?"
"Friends!" Tait exclaimed, with bitterness. "In my day, Mrs. Enslee, I have seen some of the proudest families in New York dragged into the mire of public shame by tragedies that began as innocent experiments in friendship. Don't risk it, Mrs. Enslee. You are on dangerous ground."
She mused aloud. "And you think he loves me still?"
Tait tossed his mane in despair. "Good Lord! That's all my words have meant to you? Well, since we are talking so bluntly, you'll perhaps permit me to say that I know you are not happily married. Everybody knew you never would be happy with Willie Enslee."
"I thought I'd be as happy with him as with anybody-else," she answered, meekly; "but since you assume that I am not happy, why deny me the friendship of a man whose society I am fond of? Don't you think that everybody has the right to be happy?"
"Indeed I don't!"
"Doesn't the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or something guarantee everybody the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of—"
"Yes, the pursuit!" Tait cried. "But the Constitution doesn't guarantee that anybody will get happiness, and there are laws that take away life, take away liberty, take away even the right to the pursuit of happiness."
She was on unfamiliar ground among constitutions. She was more at home in emotion. "Let's not get into a legal debate. All I know is that Harvey used to love me, and I loved him too much to marry him, because he was poor, and because I was bred to reckless extravagance. Besides, I had ambitions. I didn't know then what a vanity they were. But now—well, I don't pretend to be a saint, but I have a heart—a kind of heart. I love only one man on earth. You know that he still loves me. Don't rob us of the happiness we can find in each other's society—the innocent happiness."
A gesture of unbelief escaped the Ambassador. "How long could such love remain innocent—when it begins by being unlawful?"
"But I love him," she insisted, "and he loves me with all his heart. Some day, I presume"—the coming sorrow cast its shadow over her already—"some day, no doubt, he'll find somebody he loves more, and he'll marry her. He can have anybody now; but when he came to me he was poor; he needed money. But I also needed money! Things have changed; money has come to him, as it always comes, too late. But that's no reason for robbing me of my chance for a little while of happiness. And you mustn't—oh, you mustn't rob him of the happiness I could give him!"
Tait was always afraid of himself when his tenderness was appealed to, for he knew from experience that such an appeal if harkened a moment too long, would smother all judgment, all resistance. He felt his heart yearning toward Persis' world-old cry, "Happiness! happiness! a little happiness!" He tried to be harsh.
"But, my good woman—my dear girl—you had your chance; you made your choice. You must pay the price. We can't all have the love we want. I can't. You can't."
Persis laid her hand on his arm. "But why? Why?"
And Tait, after a weak temptation, girded himself for the eternal battle with unholy happiness, and answered with Mosaic simplicity:
"Because it is against the law."
"But you know," Persis returned, unabashed, "you were once a lawyer—you know that the laws in the books are only made for those who haven't the skill to bend them without breaking them."
"Such a love as yours is against the great unwritten laws of society."
Persis would not be crushed with precepts. She sneered: "Society! Is anybody on the square? Why shouldn't we be happy in our own way?"
Tait hesitated, then answered coldly: "There are ten thousand reasons, Mrs. Enslee. I'll give you the one that will appeal to you most strongly: 'You're bound to get found out.'"
"Don't you think I have any discretion? Do you think I am a fool?"
"The first sign of being a fool is trying to play double with the world. Some day—let me warn you—some day you will find yourself so tangled up in your own cleverness that you will be delivered, bound hand and foot, to the shame—yes, the shame of a horrible exposure."
She blenched at this facer. "Don't speak to me as though I were a criminal!"
He struck out again. "Then don't become one. You have no right to love Captain Forbes, nor he to love you. It is a simple question of duty."
"Duty?" she raged. "I want happiness. I'm like a hungry woman standing before a window filled with bread. Your duty says, Stay there and starve. But it isn't duty that lets people starve. It's being afraid."
Tait put off all restraint of courtesy. "Oh, I understand your creed. It's the creed of your set. You're not afraid of any risk. You fear nothing but self-sacrifice. Your greatest horror is being bored. But you'll find that there is a worse boredom than you suffer now—the ennui of exile, of ostracism. The very set that practises your theory is the most merciless to those that get found out. It's like a pack of wolves on the chase. The one that falls or is wounded is torn to pieces by the rest, and then they rush on again. I mean to save Harvey from that pack at any cost."
She had no refuge but a prayer. "I implore you not to break my heart."
Tait donned in manner the black cap of a judge. "Such hearts as yours ought to be broken, Mrs. Enslee, for the health of the world. I understand you. I don't blame you. I don't blame your mother in her grave. It was herbreeding, as it is yours and that of your pack. You are the people who bring wealth into disrepute. The noise of your revels drowns the quiet charities of the rich who are also good and busy with noble works. I'm afraid of you all. But I don't blame you. I don't blame the criminals, the thieves, madmen; but I fear them. And in all mercy I would mercilessly put them out of the way of doing harm to the peace of the world."
Persis saw that for once appeal could not melt. She said, with resignation: "Then you are my sworn enemy?"
"No," Tait protested, "I would be your friend as far as I safely can. But I love Harvey as a son. I would save him from the fire of perdition, beautiful as it is, bright as it is. And you are the fire."
"And so you will fight me?" Persis faltered.
"To the death!" the old jurist cried, as he got heavily to his feet; "though it breaks Harvey's heart—and your heart—and mine." He staggered weakly and jolted against the divan.
PERSIS, forgetting that he was her enemy, leaped to his aid with instinctive womanliness. "You are ill; let me get you something."
Tait straightened himself with an effort, saying: "I'm all right now, thank you. I mustn't let myself get excited, that's all." He was touched by her sudden charity in his behalf. He gazed at her sadly, and, taking her hand, spoke venerably as a father. He was too sad for her sake to be sad for his own. "I'm sorry for you, little woman. You've a big, warm heart; but this is a cold, hard world, and you mustn't try to break its laws. They are based on the scandals and the tragedies of thousands of years, millions on millions of foolish lovers. The world is old, my child, and it is stronger than any of us. And it can punish without mercy. Don't risk it."
An almost unknown earnestness stirred Persis. "You're right, of course. I suppose I must give up all hope of happiness. It's my punishment. I'll take my medicine like a little man."
"That's splendid!" Tait cried. "Live square—in the open. Respect the conventionalities; they're the world's code of morals. If you really love Harvey, let him go his way."
"I'll prove to you that I do love him!" she said, laughing nervously. "I'll give him up. He used to think I was heartless and mercenary. He shall go on thinking so. It's awfully hard, but it is the one way I can help him, isn't it?"
The old man squeezed her slim hand in both of his."It's the one way. God bless you! And you won't see him again?"
"No," she said, with all the vigor of her soul. Then she caught a glimpse of Forbes. He had returned hurriedly. He was looking for her. She amended her promise: "Except to tell him good-by. I've got to tell him good-by—and make him think I was only—only fooling him, haven't I?"
The old man's triumph collapsed again. But he could not demand everything. He nodded and left her as Forbes appeared at the door. With the mocking laughter of fiends, the band brayed another tango. It was faint in the distance, but it was a satanic comment. Persis made haste to get her business done.
"Well, Harvey, good-by. I'm off to Capri to-morrow."
"But I thought—" he stammered. "You're not going to leave just as we meet again? I thought—"
"You never could take a joke, could you, Harvey?"
"But you said—"
"I'm sorry, Harvey. But I'm married now."
She was turning his own weapons on him. He was befuddled with her whims. He repeated, "You told me you loved me, that you were unhappy."
"You ought to have known I was only fooling you. I'm Mrs. Enslee now. And whom God hath joined—"
He was beside himself with rage. She had wheedled him out of his honor, and now she mocked him where she had left him. He sneered:
"God didn't join you and Enslee. God's voice doesn't speak every time a hired preacher reaches out for a wedding fee! It was the devil that joined you, and God keeps you asunder. God joined you with me. He meant us for each other. But you hadn't the courage to face a little poverty. You wanted prestige and position, and you bought them with the love that belonged to me. You haven't the courage now to deny that you are unhappy, that you love me still."
She trembled before the storm of his wrath. "But I don't—I don't love you any more. I am happy."
"You can't look me in the eyes, Persis, and repeat that lie."
She tried vainly to meet his glare. She mumbled weakly, "Why, I'm happy—enough."
"Do you love me still?" he demanded.
"N-no! Of course not!"
He wanted to strike her, primevally, for a coward, a liar, a female cad. He controlled himself and groaned: "Well, that makes everything simpler. Good-by."
She seized his arm and threw off the disguise. "Harvey, Harvey, I can't stand it. I can't endure the thought of it. I can't live without your love. I don't care what happens. I never did love anybody else but you. I never shall."
His love came back in a wild wave. He seized her blindly, and she hid blindly in his arms, sobbing: "I am so unhappy, so unutterably lonely! You must love me, Harvey, for I love you. I love you."
They were as oblivious of their peril as Tristan and Isolde in the spell of the love philter. Only the old Ambassador, who had hovered near to shield their farewell, saw them. The vision was like a thunderbolt. To hear of a scandal, to be convinced of it is as nothing to seeing it. That comes like an exposure, an indecency, a slap in the face. The Ambassador was furious with disgust. He stormed into the room: "Can I believe my eyes? Are you both lost to common sense? Is this your discretion, Mrs. Enslee? Do you realize where you are?"
Persis toppled out of Forbes' relaxed embrace, and spoke from a daze: "No—I forgot—I must be out of my mind."
Forbes came to her defense: "You mustn't blame her. It was my fault."
"No, it was mine," Persis insisted. "But I couldn't help it."
Tait was filled with contempt. "What if it had been any of the guests that had found you two maniacs as I did. What if I had been Enslee!"
Persis was as amazed as he was. She muttered, "I know—I know—but I can't stand everything."
Tait tried to patch up his broken plan. "Harvey, you've disappointed me bitterly. But I give you one more chance to retrieve yourself. Promise me never to see Mrs. Enslee again."
Forbes shook his head.
Tait could hardly believe his senses. "My God! Must the deep friendship of two men always be at the mercy of the first woman that comes along? Harvey, Harvey, I beg you to give this woman up!"
"I can't."
Tait's voice glittered with anger. "You've got to! I command you to! You can't commit this infamy and remain with me!"
Forbes set his jaw hard. "I resign."
Tait snapped: "I accept."
Persis was frantic at this outcome of her passion. "No, no! Oh, don't! I'd rather die than be the cause of a breach between you two." She clutched Tait's arm. "Don't listen to him!"
Forbes seized her other hand. "I'll not give you up again. You belong to me."
"You are wrecking my trust in humanity," Tait groaned; then his wrath blazed again. "But I'll break up this intrigue at any cost, even if I have to tell Enslee."
Persis stared at him in a panic. "You couldn't do that."
Tait had made one step to the door. He hung irresolute before the loathsome office of the tattle-tale. "What in the name of God is a man to do? If I tell your husband I am a contemptible cad. If I don't tell him I am your accomplice." He pondered deeply, and chose between the evils. "Well, I'd rather have you two think me acad than to be a criminal and a coward." He took another step to the door.
Persis clung to his sleeve. "Oh, I implore you!"
He shook her loose. "I am going to tell your husband what I saw."
And then the man most deeply concerned appeared in the doorway. Willie Enslee stumbled at the sill and spoke with a blur: "Pershish, itsh time we were dresshing for d-dinner."
Tait looked at him in disgust, then at Persis and Forbes, who stood cowering with suspense. The old man shivered in an agony of decision. "Mr. Enslee, I must tell you—"
He clapped his hand to his heart, and strangled at the words: "I must tell you—I must tell you—good night!"
He could not force his tongue to the task. The fierce effort broke him. He wavered. A sudden languor invaded him. His muscles turned to sand. He crumbled in a heap.
Forbes ran to him, and with all difficulty heaved the limp huge frame into a chair that Persis pushed forward. He straightened the arms that flopped like a scarecrow's, and steadied the great leonine head that rolled drunkenly on the immense shoulders. And he spoke to Enslee as if he were a servant.
"Run for a doctor—quick—you fool!"
Willie staggered away, almost sobered with fright. Persis stood wringing her hands. Through her brain ran the music of the tango they were playing:
At the devil's ball, at the devil's ball,Dancing with the devil—oh, the little devil!Dancing at the devil's ball.
At the devil's ball, at the devil's ball,Dancing with the devil—oh, the little devil!Dancing at the devil's ball.
She ran to the door like a fury and shrieked: "Stop that music! For God's sake, stop that music!"
The music ended in shreds of discord. The dancers paused in puppet attitudes, then turned like a huddle of curious cattle and drifted toward the door. Persis returned to Forbes' side, and, bending close, heard the old man speaking thickly as his hands fluttered feebly about Forbes' arm.
"Harvey—I'm so—sor-ry for you—and for her. Take care of—my poor—ch-child, won't you?"
"Yes, yes!" Forbes whispered.
"And—and Harvey—I wanted to—to die in A-mer-America. Take me b-back and bury me—at home, won't you?"
"Yes, yes!"
The soft hands glided along Forbes' arm in a fumbling caress.
"Th-thass—a goo' boy. You've been a—a—a—a son to me. Har-har-vey. Goo'-b-b—Good-by!"
Forbes bent down and pressed his lips to the old man's forehead.
Liveried servants with wan faces glided through the crowd, and, lifting the chair, struggled from the room with its great burden, the old head wagging, the lips laboring at the messages they could not accomplish.
Forbes followed the chair as if it were already the coffin of his ideal among men. Persis waited in a trance, shaken now and then with sudden onsets of ague, but otherwise motionless, her whole soul pensive. Willie hung about her, whining:
"I say, old girl, let's be getting home—I feel all creepy. Awfully unfortunate, wasn't it? Let's be getting home. Rotten luck for the Ambassador. Nice old boy, too. Let's be getting home."
Persis did not answer. By and by Willie went in search of his coat and her furs. The other guests dispersed. Outside there was a muffled hubbub of chasseurs calling carriages and cars, of horns squawking, of doors slammed.
Winifred could be heard sobbing in the room where the musicians were putting up their violins and slinking out. Mrs. Mather Edgecumbe was audible in the stillness telephoning the alarm to the Embassy.
Persis stood fixed, still staring where Forbes had gone. Suddenly her face lighted up. Forbes wandered back all bewildered. She forced her hand on him, and he took it idly. It was some time before he could speak that ultimate word "Dead!"
Persis wrung his hand and sighed:
"Poor old fellow! I'm sorry he hated me so bitterly. He said he'd fight against my happiness till he died, and now—"
Forbes did not hear her. He was thinking only of the foster-father he had lost. He mumbled, with dark dejection:
"I'm alone now—alone!"
But Persis' face was overswept with a shaft of light. Glancing over her shoulder, and seeing that no one was near their door, she moved closer to Forbes, laid her other hand on his, and spoke with all meekness and with a questioning appeal.
"Not alone, Harvey? I'm here."
He opened his clenched eyes a little and met her upward gaze. He closed his eyes again against her. She waited. Only a moment, and then with a sudden frenzy he gripped her in a mad embrace and smote her lips with his. She closed her eyes in ecstasy.
Immediately he started back from her in horror, groaning: "What am I thinking? And he's just dead!"
"He's dead, but I live!" She meant only to soothe him, but through her low voice an exultance broke like a bugle of triumph, and she whispered again: "I live! I live!"
So the eyes of Jael must have widened when she had driven the nail through the temples of Sisera.
In her victory she remembered discretion and glided aside from Forbes just before Willie entered the room with a servant carrying Persis' furs.
"Come along, Persis," Willie complained; "we can't stay here all night."
"I'm quite ready," she answered, with bridal gentleness.Then, "Good-by, Captain Forbes; so glad to have seen you again. Good-by."
She offered her hand formally, and he took it formally, dumbly. As it slipped warmly, reluctantly from his grasp it was replaced by the clammy, bony fingers of Willie, who was doing his best in the gentle art of consolation:
"Awfully sorry, old chap. These things have got to happen, though, haven't they? Don't take it too hard, and if you get too blue come round and let us try to cheer you up a bit. We're at the Meurice."
"Thank you," said Forbes. He bowed and did not raise his eyes for fear of what might be smoldering in the eyes of Persis.
IN the exceeding industry of the days following the death of Ambassador Tait, Captain Forbes found no chance to see Mrs. Enslee. Their meeting would have been perilous. The Ambassador had received his death-stroke in their presence.
Physicians, police, reporters, all demanded minute descriptions of the event, and from the first Forbes blurred the account so that Persis should not be drawn into it. He emphasized the strenuous diplomatic labors of the last week and the final afternoon. He italicized the presence of Mr. Enslee at the moment of death, which came, he said, without immediate explanation. He described how the Ambassador's father had died—just died while pulling on his overshoes.
He lied about the last words of the Ambassador in spirit at least, for it was sadly incomplete truth to say that the Ambassador, after discussing trivial matters, had said, "Mr. Enslee, I must tell you good night," and fallen to the floor.
Yet the account was not questioned. Enslee was too befuddled to know or, when the shock sobered him, to remember. Persis could be trusted to keep silent. In fact, she retired from view "prostrated with the shock." It was explained that the Ambassador had been a classmate of her father's, an old friend of the family's.
The story was telegraphed and cabled about the world. As usual, every newspaper published a minutely circumstantial account with a pretendedlyverbatimstatement of the last words, and, as usual, the accounts were asdiscrepant mutually as they were commonly remote from the truth.
The idea that the Ambassador's death might be concerned with an intrigue between Mrs. Enslee and Captain Forbes occurred perhaps only to one mind on earth, and that the too-sophisticated brain of a reporter in New York, a brindle-haired man with half of one eyebrow gone. He could not confirm his suspicion even enough for publication, so he hid it in the cellar of his soul, alongside the memory of seeing Persis Cabot walk out of a lonely forest with a man he afterward learned to be Forbes.
When this reporter—Hallard, his name was—was comfortably drunk he would discuss New York society's rotten state of morals, usually with a horrified barkeeper, forgetting his own morals and that of his class and of the other classes low and middle that he knew well enough. He would add: "There's lovely li'l lady growin' a peach of a scan'al—um-m, a pippin!—swee' li'l dynamite bomb. Story's going to break some day, and I'm lovely li'l feller's goin' to break it."
But he would not tell the name. He was holding that in trust for whatever newspaper should be employing his fanatic loyalty at the time of the break. And he was waiting, listening, following.
Persis had been soft-hearted enough to feel the pity of the Ambassador's death. She had wept a little for her stricken enemy, and she suffered some acute stabs of repentance as the instrument of his assassination. But regret was mingled with the lilt of victory and successful evasion—even with blasphemous prayers of gratitude to the Lord for saving her from exposure in the matter. She had fallen on her knees to pour out this thanksgiving, and piously or impiously promised her Lord not to be indiscreet again.
One's god is apt to be one's ideal servant magnified.As the daughters of joy in old Florence used to keep a votive Mary in their rooms and pray to it for success in their offices, so Persis whispered to her heaven words of praise and gratitude for aid in escaping the consequences of her mad whim to nestle in Forbes' arms.
She went to the Ambassador's funeral, partly as a tribute of awesome esteem, partly as good sportsmanship toward a beaten adversary, and chiefly because it would have been conspicuous to stay away when almost every other American in Paris was sure to be there. She compelled Willie to go along, an unwilling and unwitting chaperon.
She saw Forbes in the church, but at a distance, and noted with a gush of pity how haggard and lonely he seemed. She hoped that not all of his grief was for his dead friend. She longed to go to him with comfort, but she ventured only a nod from afar and one of her slow, sweet, tender smiles.
Forbes had been kept intensely active at the Embassy, where the Consul took over the interrupted duties of the Ambassador's office, but left to Forbes the personal details of the funeral ceremony, the closing up of the house, and the arrangements for getting Mildred back to New York. The Ambassador's body was to be taken home to America on board a war-ship proffered by the French Republic.
For three days Forbes was too grimly busy and too grief-stricken to feel more than a longing to see Persis; an impossible desire without impulse to achieve it.
Mildred was, for once, demanding help instead of giving it. The loss of her father was a devastation in her soul. She clung to Forbes as to a brother. Had Persis seen her in his arms she might have felt a jealousy; but not if she could have seen Forbes' heart. That was filled only with a sense of shame. He felt that in denying Mildred his love he had robbed the old man of his last great wish. At times he reproached himself with the very murder ofhis best friend, the murder of a great statesman, the noble father of a noble woman. And the motive of the assassination was his obstinate devotion to another man's wife!
People have a genius for remorse as for other emotions, and Forbes was of those who can mercilessly indict their own souls. Storms of self-condemnation were succeeded by storms of longing. About him hovered the tantalizing beckoning vision of Persis. He was mad to see her. He kept alternately vowing that he would not go near her and wondering when he should.
At first he dared not make an effort to see her, because he feared to involve her and because he had not a moment he could call his own. He was burdened with tasks of every sort, and in and out of his office he was beset with correspondents like sparrows demanding crumbs of news to cable to America. He had no leisure of his own except the black hours when he sank into his bed.
He would trudge to his room so exhausted, so drowsy, that he could hardly get his clothes off. The moment he lay down he was the prey to a swarm of black emotions that swooped about him like bats in a cave, swooped and shot and chittered, swept him with their vile wings and fastened their claws in his hair. He reproached himself with every wickedness and worthlessness from hideous ingratitude to murder and adultery that dared not take what it lusted for.
Sleepless nights and restless days wore him out until the funeral, an affair of great pomp and enormous impressiveness. When he saw Persis in the church her beauty was overwhelming in the black costume she wore under the shadow of a black hat.
Somehow, after the funeral ceremony, the prayers, and the long ritual, with which the church formally restored the soul to the heaven from which it emigrated and the body to the earth of which it was made, there came a great relief to Forbes—the restful word "Finis."
That night he dined with Mildred. She, too, felt therelaxation of a burden removed. She almost collapsed into sleep at the table, and her maid supported her to her room. She had wept herself out.
Forbes envied her nothing but her fluency in weeping. He carried about with him the ache of the tears a man feels but cannot release, the unshed tears that scratch the eyes like blown grit. He longed to be a boy again and cry his heart out as he had cried when his father was brought home dead. He longed to weep stormily as he had wept when the boy he was had been denied some luxury he greatly desired—honey, or a staying home from school, or some wild animal for a pet.
The thought of Persis came to him now with the charm of all three—honey, truancy to duty, and danger. He lifted the telephone from the rack to ask her permission to call. He put it down again, his heart beating as if he had touched a snake. He went out into the air.
It was a typical, sharp, wet winter night in Paris, the chill going with a peculiar directness straight to the marrow of the bones and freezing the body from within outward. Forbes had buffeted blizzards and the still, grim, icy airs of Dakota when the mercury seemed to crowd into the bulb of the thermometer to keep warm. But he wondered if he had ever been so cold in his life as he was now, when the thermometer had not reached even the zero of the French centigrade.
Paris was not Paris. The sidewalks were not peopled with tables, and the restaurants were deserted within. There were few people abroad, for the audiences were at this hour in the theaters and the home-keepers were at home. Nobody loitered in the streets but a few miserables, and they were wretchedly cold.
Forbes was so desperately lonely that he resolved to call upon Persis, even if he had to talk to her husband. He walked to the Meurice, but dared not turn in; he went on by. Later he was back again. Three times his courage—or his cowardice—failed him. The last time he stopped short as if he heard a sudden "Halt!"
Willie Enslee was just stepping into a car with two other men, violently American and manifestly bent on finding in Paris what Paris manufactures for American visitors.
Willie paused and cast his eyes along the street idly while he waited for the other two to precede him. Forbes stepped behind a shelter till Willie vanished.
Forbes, the brave, the upright, found himself dodging to escape Willie's fishy eyes, found himself chuckling over Willie's blindness. Then he cursed himself for a reptile. He turned away from the hotel and started back to his apartment, groaning to himself, "The woman doesn't live that can make a sneak of me."
WHEN he had gone a few hundred paces he whirled about and hurried back to the hotel; asked for MonsieuretMadame Enslee; sent up his card; wished he had it back; received a summons to come up; cursed the slowness of the Parisianascenseur; wished it would fall and kill him; moved toward Persis' door as to his execution; and was ushered in by Nichette, who was cloaked and bonneted for an evening out. She left him a moment, then came back and rattled off a string of French, from which he gleaned that he wasvoulez-vous'dto seat himself and attend a little moment. Then Nichette left him and hastened to the corner of the street, where a little waitingpiou-pioushivered in his uniform.
The hostility Forbes read in Nichette's look was merely her impatience at being kept a few moments longer from her sergeant after having been detained an hour by a quarrel of the Enslees—a quarrel ending in a defiant announcement from Willie that he was going to see the wickedest show he could find in Paris, and from Persis an hilarious "Bonne chance!I hope you find somebody to take you off my hands for a while!"
This had horrified Willie as a sacrilege, and he had regretted his vow. But in the court of the hotel he found two Americans who had typically arrived in Paris, and bibulously prepared for a night of social investigation without having taken the trouble to learn a word of French, the distinction of coins, or the system of cab fares and tips. They welcomed Enslee as a life-saver, embraced him, and bade him confirm their worst suspicions of Paris.
This Forbes did not know, and he misinterpreted Nichette's brusquerie. His own thoughts were brusque. He loathed himself, and hated Persis and blamed her as if she had cast down a net from her window and dragged him to her feet.
He paced the lavishly furnished reception-room of the suite and resolved to escape before it was too late. The thought of the cold loneliness of the streets, of the town, of the world, held him back. He was unutterably forlorn. He sank into a chair and clenched his hands together.
Then he heard Persis' voice. It came through the glistening portières masking the doors to the room adjoining, a kind of living-room. Music and welcome and all of Persis' beauty were in the little hospitable words:
"Come in here, Harvey, won't you? I can't budge, and I'm all by myself."
Wondering where she was and how he should find her, he pushed through the curtains timidly, as timidly as Joseph entering Potiphar's wife's boudoir.
He found Persis cuddled up on a chaise longue of gold and satin. She was almost lost in a jumble of parcels and toys and knickknacks. She had been writing addresses, and the fingers she gave into his were smudged with ink.
She sat like a sultana, with her feet curled under her. She wore a light confection of a house-gown of some astonishingly attractive hue, with plentiful display of white lace and arms and bosom and a good deal of stocking. She wore a boudoir-cap fetchingly awry.
Forbes put her hand up to his lips and laughed as he kissed the smudge of ink. It was the first laugh he had known for days. It was like the first chuckle of rain after a drought. It brought moisture to his eyes.
He clung to her hand. It was now a rescuing hand put out to lift him from the dry well of gloom. He dropped to his knee, and without any coquetry she put her armsaround him and huddled him close. His hot cheek knew the ineffable comfort of her silken shoulder; his brow felt her lips upon them. He was at home.
All the strength that had sustained him, all his ideas of duty and honor, were blown away like the down of a dandelion puff by the mere breath of her lips. And now the tears his eyes had refused broke from them in flood. He wept because he was happy and because he had found contentment and refuge. He wept as great heroes and fierce warriors used to weep before tears went out of fashion for men and began to fall into disuse even among women.
Persis mothered him, wondering at his childishness. She did not weep with him. She smiled. She laughed the low, thorough laughter of the victorious Delilah getting her Samson back. She loved him though she betrayed him. She loved the triumph of her beauty, the victory of her soft bosom, over all the hateful inconveniences of law and justice and piety.
By and by he was smiling, too, with shame at his humanity and his return to boyhood, and with the revel of her companionship. She humiliated him deliciously by drying his wet eyelids with her fragrant tiny handkerchief and by the silly baby talk she lavished on him. But it was the only comfortable shame he had felt in the past black days.
And now they were indeed acquainted with each other. She had seen him weep. When a woman has gained that advantage over a man, what dignity has he left? She can make a face at him, and all his pride becomes a laughing-stock.
At length, to avoid the reefs of more important talk, he asked her how she came to be alone, and what all the bundles were for. She explained that she had been shopping betimes for Christmas presents and had been making the things ready for the morrow's American mail; Willie had mutinied and gone vaudevilling; his man had takenthe English maid of a neighbor in the hotel to a dance at the Red Mill; and Nichette had refused to miss her soldier's evening out.
Persis made Forbes help her with the remaining packages, and they laughed like youngsters over the knots she tied, and the blots she made, and the things she had bought for all the people she had to buy things for—her father, her mother-in-law, her sister, her sister's children, and an army of servants. When finally the last address was inscribed she felt that she had done enough duty for a month, and voted herself a vacation—also a cigarette. She told Forbes where Willie's cigars were kept, but he made a punctilio of not smoking them, though he had none of his own and would not order any from the hotel.
They talked small talk and love talk; they laughed and cooed. They were congenial to the infinitesimal degree. The world outside was dank and cheerless. They shut it away with great curtains. They forgot that there was any curse upon their rapture. They shut out all their obligations as things clammy and odious.
Nature had selected them for each other. Nature mated them and wooed for them, and did not know or did not care what other plans they had made, what contracts or pledges had been assumed. The true damnation was in the earlier crime: that solemn marriage in the church before the world. The wickedness was begun at the altar: the violation of duty, the breach of the seventh "Thou shalt not." It was there that Persis' feet took hold on hell.
Yet the world had made a jubilee of that occasion. People had put on their best clothes and were proud to be asked to assist. Rather, they should have hidden their eyes from the abomination; they should have resented the request to play accomplice to that indecency. Instead, they celebrated the crime with flowers, and music, and with surplices in a church.
There would be resentment enough, but belated, whenthe consequences of that impious sacrifice were reaped, when nature demanded restitution and scoffed at the mortgage. If this night's rite were ever heard of it would be cried out against, the celebrants would be shunned, banished.
None of this is to say that faith should not be kept, however rashly pledged, or that people should make a virtue of refusing to pay the debts they run and repudiating the laws that shelter them.
Persis' earlier crime did not justify or cancel the latter, but added another to it. She had entered with open eyes into her compact with Enslee; she auctioned herself off; he was the highest bidder, and she knocked herself down. She was in honor bound to stay sold. But the very readiness to commit that infamy, the yielding to that temptation, was instruction for the next. Easy bind, easy break.
Her only safety was in keeping away from Forbes. That was the Ambassador's wisdom. He feared the very proximity of Persis and Forbes. He foresaw that, while nature would hold cheap the laws of mankind, mankind would not accept nature as an excuse for lawlessness.
In spite of him Persis and Forbes were reunited. The withes that marriage had bound about her were as nothing to the great changes it had made in her soul. It had taken away the enormous power that exists in maidenhood, with its self-awe and its fierce defense of integrity. That instinct of self-preciousness that had made Persis hide her lips from Forbes' kisses on a far-off day was annulled, for her lips had been Willie Enslee's for more than half a year. Her body had been his toy. He had schooled her to maturity, made a woman of the girl.
And now in the presence of the bridegroom selected by nature and love what protection had she? She had no harem walls to inclose her, no guardians to keep the suitor away or to threaten exposure. She had lost the fawn-like girlishness that would take flight; there was no nun-spirit within her now to cry "Help me!"
What remorse there was was the man's. He blamed himself for overpowering where he was overpowered and decoyed. With the traditional mistake of the man he accused himself of a ruthless conquest when he was really the prey of ancient guile and wile. And this again is not to blame Persis. She was herself the mere puppet of world-old impulses along the wires of sense. She was a victim, too. But her remorse was hardly remorse at all, rather amazement or dismay. It was Forbes that condemned himself for dishonor.
Man is the maker of laws, the upholder of laws, the punisher of those who violate the majesty of the law.
But law for law's sake has little or no meaning for woman. She has her own codes and reads them within. The complex tissue of her loves and hates is her attorney, always plaintiff or defendant, not often referee. She has her glories, and perhaps they are greater than any of man's; but the creation of laws and constitutions and codes is not one of them. She is timid, she is brave, she is merciful, she is ruthless. She may reproach herself for indiscretion, for folly, for misplaced trust, for misguided emotion; but did any woman ever honestly reproach herself for a breach of honor as honor? A disloyalty to religion, yes; to faith, yes; to love, oh yes; but to honor?
Persis was dumfounded at the completeness of her success by surrender and at its rashness. She was afraid that Forbes might despise her; but she felt also the barbaric primeval perfection of the triumph of nature. She had achieved her destiny. She had been female to the male of her choice. She would fight the consequences; she would deny the fact, but she felt that she could never regret it.
Immediately having made conquest of Forbes, she began to own him. She began to resent his other obligations, his other codes; her jealousy began to function.
She implored him to postpone his return to America;to follow the Ambassador's body on a later steamer; not to go, at least, on the steamer Mildred took—anything to escape the breaking of the rose-chains wherewith she withed him. But his almost filial love for his benefactor overcame even his passion. Nothing could move him from that last foothold on self-respect.
The triumph of love wound up in a war, a downright quarrel, with all the brutality of a married couple. And that came to an abrupt end with the tinkle of a clock sounding the hour. Both of them blenched. It was as if rats fighting heard the bell of the cat.
"You must hurry," she gasped, "Willie is long past due."
Forbes needed no urging. He fled so precipitately that he hardly paused for a farewell kiss. They had time for no future plans. He sneaked along the corridors of the hotel. He feared to summon the elevator lest Willie step out of it. He went down by the stairways. From the entresol he studied the lobby of the hotel to make sure of not meeting Enslee. A detective might have suspected him for a thief had not his manner been the immemorial stealth of clandestine lovers. Love had belittled him thus in one evening.
Little Willie Enslee could have put him to flight, have struck him without resistance, have shot him down without provoking an answering shot.
So Forbes had coerced and terrified soldiers of his who were far superior to him in bulk and brawn. They saw his shoulder-straps and respected them, took a pride in being humble before them. Back of them was the whole power and dignity of the nation.
Willie Enslee wore the shoulder-straps of the husband. He wore that authority, and back of it was arrayed the decency and the safety of human society.
FORBES took the steamer he had planned to take, though he had such battles with his recalcitrant heart that he did not feel safe till the tender at Cherbourg put away from the ship and left him no opportunity of return.
Equally disconsolate was young Stowe Webb, who had lost his post with his chief, and who was in a panic of uncertainty. But Mildred, on her first day of calm, reverted to habit and began to take thought of the welfare of others. She asked Stowe of his plans, and, learning of his hopelessness, immediately begged him to act as her own secretary—"at an increase of salary because of the extra trouble she would give him."
The reaction from despair to this paradise was so great that young Webb found it hard to maintain the appropriate solemnity. He fired off a wireless to the friend who received his messages for Alice, and when he heard it crackling from the mast it was like a volley of festival sky-rockets.
He told Forbes of his new-found hope and how poor it was at best, and Forbes envied him his very deferment; there was something so clean and beautiful about a young lover trying to earn enough to earn the girl that waits for him. Young Webb was building a home, and Forbes was destroying one.
The arrival in New York brought a new mountain of tasks for Forbes. Mildred had adopted him as an elder brother; she gave him power of attorney in the endless interviews with the lawyers, executors, directors, and the officials in the Department of State.
Forbes soon learned what the Ambassador's hints as to his will had meant. A recent codicil bequeathed to him almost as much as Tait's dead son was to have had.
It seemed to Forbes as if Satan had laid the wealth of Ormus and of Ind at his feet and knelt there grinning over the hoard. There was a further sardonic bitterness in the legacy, since he knew that it had been given him so that he might feel able to make Mildred his wife without sacrifice of his pride.
The thought came to him that he could square himself with the dead and with the living by carrying out this implied, if not inscribed, condition of the deed of gift.
Mildred was a splendid soul. She was not Aphrodite like Persis, but Minerva was beautiful, too. Mildred was far nobler than Persis, who was not noble at all. She would be a magnificent wife. She would make their home a bee-hive of lofty purposes amid serene delights. A union with Mildred would be wonderful. It would crown life.
And he felt that Mildred would not oppose it. He resolved again and again to ask her; but he simply could not tell her that he loved her as a wife ought to be loved. He and Mildred had become so dear to each other as brother and sister that no other affection seemed possible. To marry her would mean not only an infidelity to Persis, but a more cruel infidelity to Mildred.
Unable to fulfil the condition of the legacy, he tried to refuse it. The executors asked him why; his evasions led them to suspect his sanity. Mildred would ask him why? What could he tell her?
He consulted Ten Eyck, but could tell him only that he could not give Mildred the love that was needed to sanctify the marriage. Ten Eyck probably understood more than he admitted. He lifted one eyebrow and lowered the other, as if his mind were divided between two comments. He said:
"I see why you can't go to nice old Mildred and say, 'Dear girl, I wouldn't marry you for a hundred thousand dollars.' That would be an awful black eye to hand a charming lady. But I can't say that your motives of love appeal to me, Forbesy. You sound like the heroine of an old-fashioned novel refusing to marry a rich man because she loves old Dr. A. Nother.
"But whatever you do, Forbesy, don't refuse the money. In times like these, when bank presidents are robbing their children's savings-banks for carfare, don't spurn any real money, or you'll cause several persons to die of apoplexy, and strong men will lead you to the paddedest cell in the house of foolishness.
"Take the money and build an Old Ladies' Home with it; but don't make a solemn jackass of yourself right out in public."
Forbes took the money, promising himself that he would scatter it in beautiful deeds of charity.
But he didn't.
One never does.
In the first place, money in large quantities has singular adhesive and cohesive properties. In the second place, when the news of his wealth was published he received such serial avalanches of begging letters of every sort, noble and ignoble, that he was dismayed. He showed a stack of them to Ten Eyck, who said:
"You could give away your fortune in a week, and make about as much of a show as if you drove a sprinkling-cart along the main street of hell. All millionaires grow callous; if they don't, they cease to be millionaires."
Forbes answered a few of the appeals with cheques, and planned to file the others alphabetically for future reference. But he never got round to filing them.
This was not the only sarcasm of his wealth. He had returned to his duties as a line captain and was restored to Governor's Island. But here again there was discomfort. His fellow-officers envied him his luck, but despisedhim for not profiting by it. And it did seem peculiarly grotesque that a man of his important means should be trudging about on a drill-ground giving orders to stupid privates and taking orders from stupid superiors. His very men seemed to think he was a ludicrous fanatic. He felt that he must leave the service.
He poured out his woes to Ten Eyck again, who advised caution. "Don't jump out of the frying-pan, Forbes, till you've tested the fire with your big toe. You might be even unhappier out of the army than in it. Ask for a long leave of absence—say, six months, and see how you like it. Then you can resign or go back."
"They won't give me six months' leave without a good reason," Forbes demurred, though he was fascinated by the idea.
"A lot of money is a good reason for nearly anything. Anybody will give a rich man what he asks for," Ten Eyck insisted. "Take some of the high boys out in your car, and blow them off to a gorgeous evening, and promise them some more of the same. Then pop the question."
Forbes made the attempt, and it succeeded with surprising ease; he was granted six months' leave of absence without pay "for special research and experiment."
His research was into the comforts of wealth, and his experiment was the effect of life without labor or ambition.
Forbes had a car now. He had not intended to get one, but after dodging salesmen for weeks one of them lay in ambush for him and carried him off for a ride—a demonstration in disguise. He was so captivated by the 1915 model and the enlarged powers it gave him that he capitulated and bought. He learned to be his own chauffeur; but this was so inconvenient at times that he was soon hiring a charioteer. And, of course, he never skimmed the earth or sped through beauties of landscape that he did not wish for Persis at his side. He had a better car than Enslee's now. He could buy Persis thecostly, cozy little runabout she wanted; he could hire her father's chauffeur and Nichette. He could buy her great quantities of clothes, and he had leisure for her entertainment. But he had not her, nor the right to buy things for her.
Away from her he found that time was softening his remorse without hardening his heart against her. His wealth was mockery, his leisure was mockery. His mind was hardly more than a music-box eternally purling one little tune: "Persis-Persis-Persis!"
And then Persis came back, as if his longing had pulsed across the sea. She had no difficulty in persuading Willie to return to New York. He felt positively footsore from travel.
As they came up the Bay on a home-bound liner her heart was beating as if she were entering a dark room full of ghosts. As Governor's Island was reached she studied it again with a marine-glass.
She thought of the little homes of the officers' wives, the little garage-less quarters where there must be so much content. She wished to God that she were living in one of those little homes there.
If she had married Forbes she would never have caused the Ambassador's death; she would not have given herself to Willie Enslee. She could not have had more unhappiness, more loneliness and vain regrets. She would have dwelt in Forbes' arms; she would have been his all day long and all the long nights. All this past and horrible year would have been a true honeymoon. Love would have been wealth enough.
As she had told Alice Neff, "Almost anything that we are not used to is a luxury." She had learned the corollary, that almost any luxury becomes a poverty as soon as one is used to it. She was all too familiar with splendor. She hungered for a life of little comforts. The word "cozy" grew magically beautiful.
She had not been long ashore before she learned thenew status of Forbes. It was Mrs. Neff who told her, taunting her with having jumped into the marital noose with Willie too soon.
She had not been long ashore before she met Forbes. And once more it was Willie who brought her into his presence.
Forbes was now a member of several of the more important clubs. Willie met him at one of them, and asked him to join a crowd he was inviting up to the country place.
Forbes' heart began to knock at his breast at the thought of being with Persis again in the Enslee Eden. A remnant of honesty led him to decline the invitation on the ground of another engagement, but Willie insisted.
"You had such a rotten time there last spring," he said. "I want to make up. There won't be any lilacs yet; but there'll be servants—and something to eat."
Forbes flung off his scruples, and promised to "motor up." The phrase sounded odd in his ears, for he remembered the poverty of his first visit, when he went as a passenger in Mrs. Neff's car.
When he spoke of his car Enslee said: "By the way, if you're motoring up you might bring Mrs. Neff and Alice. The old lady's old car has got the sciatica or something."
So Forbes brought Mrs. Neff along, and Alice. Mrs. Neff had much to say of his wealth. And now that she knew Persis to be out of the running, she had evidently entered Alice for the Forbes stakes. Forbes could feel the idea in the air, and he was exceedingly embarrassed.
He was embarrassed more by his arrival at the country home. The great hill was as bleak as the granite bridge. The trees were shaggy with snow. The house was part of the winter, as white as an igloo. The statues were oddly distorted with icicles and snow; they looked very cold—especially the Cupid in the temple—a windy and forlorn white kiosk where a naked child suffered exile. Itstruck him as pitifully appropriate to the Enslee menage that Love should be left out in the cold.
Persis received him now in her quality of owner and housewife, with a flock of servants everywhere. He found her in the living-room, surrounded by guests, chattering and lounging and sprawling. He had not seen her since he left her that night in Paris.
She gave him her hand and a few commonplace words, but their eyes embraced and their lips were tremulous with unspoken messages and ungiven kisses.
Her manner warned him, and her apparent neglect of him gave him the cue of his behavior. But there were brief collisions when it was possible to murmur a word or two before one of the numerous other guests drifted up and ruined the tête-à-tête. He pleaded ruthlessly for a meeting; she pleaded for discretion above all things. She reminded him of the great difference between the condition of their former visit and the present. With only a few about them before, they had narrowly escaped discovery; what chance had they now?
As the dinner-hour approached, and the others went up to dress, Forbes lingered, and Persis sat with him a moment in the embrasure of that drawing-room window where they had once held rendezvous. The mystery was gone from it, and the poetry. But they seized each other in one swift embrace of arms and lips. Even this was broken just in time to escape the sight of the butler, who entered to ask a question as to the wines for the dinner.
Persis gave her orders with an impatience that could hardly have escaped the man's notice. She felt a little extra effort at impassivity in his manner, and was sure that he suspected her of more than a hospitable interest in Forbes. She could not resent an unexpressed intuition, but she felt humbled and shamed and afraid.
When the butler was gone she repeated her warning to Forbes, but he took her in his arms again. Her mind told her that she must not go on risking, go on registeringfaint impressions in the minds of servants and of guests; but her heart would not defer entirely to her intelligence.
Forbes was taciturn at the dinner. Mrs. Neff could not provoke him to vivacity. She noted that his gaze returned constantly to Persis, and that when her look came down the board to him it softened strangely.
After dinner little cliques were formed about the billiard and the pool tables, the card-tables, and a few danced the everlasting tango with some new variation. Forbes and Persis danced together, and many eyes noted the perfect rapport of their mood, the solemn joy they took in the welded union.
"How well they dance!" was the spoken comment; but the thought was, "How congenial they seem!"
Shortly after nine there was an excitement. On the hill opposite a building was on fire. The guests crowded and jostled at the windows. Somebody proposed that they all go to the scene of the blaze. The irresistible fascination of a burning building at night was inducement enough. Motors were telephoned for from the distant garage, and there was a scramble for wraps. Forbes' car was not brought up, and he was invited into Enslee's. He climbed in, but clambered out again to get an extra wrap for Mrs. Neff. A maid had already run for it, and by the time he returned the cars had all gone.
He stood regretting boyishly the loss of the opportunity to go to a fire. He watched for a few moments from the steps, and then turned back into the house. He found Persis at the drawing-room window. She had declined to go. He joined her. Out on the white edge of the lawn they could see the servants in a little mob staring at the pyrotechnics of an upward rain of sparks.
"I'll put out the light. We can see better," he said.
"No, no!" she protested; but he had already found and turned the switch. They were in a cavern of darkness, with one window dimly reddened. He found his way back to her. She urged him to turn the light on again,but he refused. She moved to turn it on herself, but he held her fast, and compelled her back to the deep embrasure, and drew the curtains behind them.
She could count the servants on the lawn outside. They were all there. She felt that it was safe to be alone with Forbes, at least till one of the domestics should detach himself from the group and move across the snowy sheet of white.
They watched in silence awhile the leaping red geyser of the flames. It grew and expanded till it formed a huge ember-mottled orchid with vast petals trembling in the wind.
On the far-off roads they could see the long shafts of motor-lights wavering like antennæ. From all the homes of the region the neighbors were hastening to the spectacle, huge night moths drawn by the flaring lamp.
For a long, blissful while the flame-flower bloomed against the black sky. At last it wilted and failed and shriveled. Then the servants turned back to the house. Persis fled from Forbes' arms to her own room, where Nichette found her, apparently established the past hour.
Forbes waited at another window, and when at last the motors came puffing back the home-comers were too benumbed with cold and too eager for warming drinks to know or care whether Forbes had been with them or not. Any one who might have missed him would have supposed him to be in one of the other cars.
The next day some of the guests rode over to see the ruins. Forbes and Persis went along. To their amazement, what had seemed, while flaming, to be a miracle of enchantments, a palace afire, proved in the daylight to have been a miserable shack whose hollow shams and rotten timbers the flames had mercilessly exposed to public contempt, stark, charred, cold, obscene.
"It was so beautiful while it burned," said Persis. "I can't believe it's the same. It was like a wild rose in the night; but in the daylight it's hideous, it's revolting.Look at the fraud in the building of the house—the rotten timbers, the ghastly furniture in the back rooms!"