The Flirt

Laura stared at the suddenly vacated space where they had been. At a thought she started. Then she rushed upstairs to her mother, who was sitting in the hall near her husband’s door.

“Mamma,” whispered Laura, flinging herself upon her knees beside her, “when papa wanted to speak to you, was it a message to Cora?”

“Yes, dear. He told me to tell her he was sorry he’d made her sick, and that if he got well he’d try to do what she asked him to.”

Laura nodded cheerfully. “And he WILL get well, darling mother,” she said, as she rose. “I’ll come back in a minute and sit with you.”

Her return was not so quick as she promised, for she lay a long time weeping upon her pillow, whispering over and over:

“Oh, poor, poor papa! Oh, poor, poor Richard!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Within a week Mr. Madison’s illness was a settled institution in the household; the presence of the nurse lost novelty, even to Hedrick, and became a part of life; the day was measured by the three regular visits of the doctor. To the younger members of the family it seemed already that their father had always been sick, and that he always would be; indeed, to Cora and Hedrick he had become only a weak and querulous voice beyond a closed door. Doctor Sloane was serious but reassuring, his daily announcement being that his patient was in “no immediate danger.”

Mrs. Madison did not share her children’s sanguine adaptability; and, of the three, Cora was the greatest solace to the mother’s troubled heart, though Mrs. Madison never recognized this without a sense of injustice to Laura, for Laura now was housewife and housekeeper—that is, she did all the work except the cooking, and on “wash-day” she did that. But Cora’s help was to the very spirit itself, for she was sprightly in these hours of trial: with indomitable gayety she cheered her mother, inspiring in her a firmer confidence, and, most stimulating of all, Cora steadfastly refused to consider her father’s condition as serious, or its outcome as doubtful.

Old Sloane exaggerated, she said; and she made fun of his gravity, his clothes and his walk, which she mimicked till she drew a reluctant and protesting laugh from even her mother. Mrs. Madison was sure she “couldn’t get through” this experience save for Cora, who was indeed the light of the threatened house.

Strange perversities of this world: Cora’s gayety was almost unbearable to her brother. Not because he thought it either unfeeling or out of place under the circumstances (an aspect he failed to consider), but because years of warfare had so frequently made him connect cheerfulness on her part with some unworthily won triumph over himself that habit prevailed, and he could not be a witness of her high spirits without a strong sense of injury. Additionally, he was subject to a deeply implanted suspicion of any appearance of unusual happiness in her as having source, if not in his own defeat, then in something vaguely “soft” and wholly distasteful. She grated upon him; he chafed, and his sufferings reached the surface. Finally, in a reckless moment, one evening at dinner, he broke out with a shout and hurled a newly devised couplet concerning luv-a-ly slush at his, sister’s head. The nurse was present: Cora left the table; and Hedrick later received a serious warning from Laura. She suggested that it might become expedient to place him in Cora’s power.

“Cora knows perfectly well that something peculiar happened to you,” she advised him. “And she knows that I know what it was; and she says it isn’t very sisterly of me not to tell her. Now, Hedrick, there was no secret about it; you didn’t CONFIDE your—your trouble to me, and it would be perfectly honourable of me to tell it. I wont{sic} unless you make me, but if you can’t be polite and keep peace with Cora—at least while papa is sick I think it may be necessary. I believe,” she finished with imperfect gravity, “that it—it would keep things quieter.”

The thoughts of a boy may be long, long thoughts, but he cannot persistently remember to fear a threatened catastrophe. Youth is too quickly intimate with peril. Hedrick had become familiar with his own, had grown so accustomed to it he was in danger of forgetting it altogether; therefore it was out of perspective. The episode of Lolita had begun to appear as a thing of the distant and clouded past: time is so long at thirteen. Added to this, his late immaculate deportment had been, as Laura suggested, a severe strain; the machinery of his nature was out of adjustment and demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again at average speed. Also, it is evident that his destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly:

“Tell her! Go on and tell her—_I_ give you leaf! THAT wasn’t anything anyway—just helped you get a little idiot girl home. What is there to that? I never saw her before; never saw her again; didn’t have half as much to do with her as you did yourself. She was a lot more YOUR friend than mine; I didn’t even know her. I guess you’ll have to get something better on me than that, before you try to boss THIS ranch, Laura Madison!”

That night, in bed, he wondered if he had not been perhaps a trifle rash; but the day was bright when he awoke, and no apprehension shadowed his morning face as he appeared at the breakfast table. On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary. Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable. His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura. She looked very meek this morning. THAT showed! The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with women. He was tempted to insane daring: the rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the crater.

“Told Cora yet?” he asked, with scornful laughter.

“Told me what?” Cora looked quickly up from her plate.

“Oh, nothing about this Corliss,” he returned scathingly. “Don’t get excited.”

“Hedrick!” remonstrated his mother, out of habit.

“She never thinks of anything else these days, he retorted. “Rides with him every evening in his pe-rin-sley hired machine, doesn’t she?’

“Really, you should be more careful about the way you handle a spoon, Hedrick,” said Cora languidly, and with at least a foundation of fact. “It is not the proper implement for decorating the cheeks. We all need nourishment, but it is SO difficult when one sees a deposit of breakfast-food in the ear of one’s vis-a-vis.”

Hedrick too impulsively felt of his ears and was but the worse stung to find them immaculate and the latter half of the indictment unjustified.

“Spoon!” he cried. “I wouldn’t talk about spoons if I were you, Cora-lee! After what I saw in the library the other night, believe ME, you’re the one of this family that better be careful how you `handle a spoon’!”

Cora had a moment of panic. She let the cup she was lifting drop noisily upon its saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth opening wide.

“Oh, no!” he went on, with a dreadful laugh. “I didn’t hear you asking this Corliss to kiss you! Oh, no!”

At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd relief showed itself in Cora’s expression. She recovered herself.

“You little liar!” she flashed, and, with a single quick look at her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.

“Hedrick, Hedrick, Hedrick!” wailed Mrs. Madison. “And she told me you drove her from the table last night too, right before Miss Peirce!” Miss Peirce was the nurse, fortunately at this moment in the sick-room.

“I DID hear her ask him that,” he insisted, sullenly. “Don’t you believe it?”

“Certainly not!”

Burning with outrage, he also left his meal unfinished and departed in high dignity. He passed through the kitchen, however, on his way out of the house; but, finding an unusual politeness to the cook nothing except its own reward, went on his way with a bitter perception of the emptiness of the world and other places.

“Your father managed to talk more last night,” said Mrs. Madison pathetically to Laura. “He made me understand that he was fretting about how little we’d been able to give our children; so few advantages; it’s always troubled him terribly. But sometimes I wonder if we’ve done right: we’ve neither of us ever exercised any discipline. We just couldn’t bear to. You see, not having any money, or the things money could buy, to give, I think we’ve instinctively tried to make up for it by indulgence in other ways, and perhaps it’s been a bad thing. Not,” she added hastily, “not that you aren’t all three the best children any mother and father ever had! HE said so. He said the only trouble was that our children were too good for us.” She shook her head remorsefully throughout Laura’s natural reply to this; was silent a while; then, as she rose, she said timidly, not looking at her daughter: “Of course Hedrick didn’t mean to tell an outright lie. They were just talking, and perhaps he—perhaps he heard something that made him think what he DID. People are so often mistaken in what they hear, even when they’re talking right to each other, and–-“

“Isn’t it more likely,” said Laura, gravely, “that Cora was telling some story or incident, and that Hedrick overheard that part of it, and thought she was speaking directly to Mr. Corliss?”

“Of course!” cried the mother with instant and buoyant relief; and when the three ladies convened, a little later, Cora (unquestioned) not only confirmed this explanation, but repeated in detail the story she had related to Mr. Corliss. Laura had been quick.

Hedrick passed a variegated morning among comrades. He obtained prestige as having a father like-to-die, but another boy turned up who had learned to chew tobacco. Then Hedrick was pronounced inferior to others in turning “cartwheels,” but succeeded in a wrestling match for an apple, which he needed. Later, he was chased empty-handed from the rear of an ice-wagon, but greatly admired for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the other boys rightly considered that what he said to the ice-man was much more horrible than what the ice-man said to him. The ice-man had a fair vocabulary, but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched a family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility as having produced even an ice-man, but curiously interesting zoologically.

He came home at noon with the flush of this victory new upon his brow. He felt equal to anything, and upon Cora’s appearing at lunch with a blithe, bright air and a new arrangement of her hair, he opened a fresh campaign with ill-omened bravado.

“Ear-muffs in style for September, are they? he inquired in allusion to a symmetrical and becoming undulation upon each side of her head. “Too bad Ray Vilas can’t come any more; he’d like those, I know he would.”

Cora, who was talking jauntily to her mother, went on without heeding. She affected her enunciation at times with a slight lisp; spoke preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing the letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of artificial distinction and conscious elegance which never failed to produce in her brother the last stage of exasperation. She did this now. Charming woman, that dear Mrs. Villard, she prattled. “I met her downtown this morning. Dear mamma, you should but have seen her delight when she saw ME. She was but just returned from Bar Harbor–-“

“`Baw-hawbaw’!” Poor Hedrick was successfully infuriated immediately. “What in thunder is `Baw-hawbaw’? Mrs. Villawd! Baw-hawbaw! Oh, maw!”

“She had no idea she should find ME in town, she said,” Cora ran on, happily. “She came back early on account of the children having to be sent to school. She has such adorable children—beautiful, dimpled babes–-“

“SLUSH! SLUSH! LUV-A-LY SLUSH!”

“—And her dear son, Egerton Villard, he’s grown to be such a comely lad, and he has the most charming courtly manners: he helped his mother out of her carriage with all the air of a man of the world, and bowed to me as to a duchess. I think he might be a great influence for good if the dear Villards would but sometimes let him associate a little with our unfortunate Hedrick. Egerton Villard is really distingue; he has a beautiful head; and if he could be induced but to let Hedrick follow him about but a little–-“

“I’ll beat his beautiful head off for him if he but butts in on me but a little!” Hedrick promised earnestly. “Idiot!”

Cora turned toward him innocently. “What did you say, Hedrick?”

“I said `Idiot’!”

“You mean Egerton Villard?”

“Both of you!”

“You think I’m an idiot, Hedrick?” Her tone was calm, merely inquisitive.

“Yes, I do!”

“Oh, no,” she said pleasantly. “Don’t you think if I were REALLY an idiot I’d be even fonder of you than I am?”

It took his breath. In a panic he sat waiting he knew not what; but Cora blandly resumed her interrupted remarks to her mother, beginning a description of Mrs. Villard’s dress; Laura was talking unconcernedly to Miss Peirce; no one appeared to be aware that anything unusual had been said. His breath came back, and, summoning his presence of mind, he found himself able to consider his position with some degree of assurance. Perhaps, after all, Cora’s retort had been merely a coincidence. He went over and over it in his mind, making a pretence, meanwhile, to be busy with his plate. “If I were REALLY an idiot.” … It was the “REALLY” that troubled him. But for that one word, he could have decided that her remark was a coincidence; but “REALLY” was ominous; had a sinister ring. “If I were REALLY an idiot!” Suddenly the pleasant clouds that had obscured his memory of the fatal evening were swept away as by a monstrous Hand: it all came back to him with sickening clearness. So is it always with the sinner with his sin and its threatened discovery. Again, in his miserable mind, he sat beside Lolita on the fence, with the moon shining through her hair; and he knew—for he had often read it—that a man could be punished his whole life through for a single moment’s weakness. A man might become rich, great, honoured, and have a large family, but his one soft sin would follow him, hunt him out and pull him down at last. “REALLY an idiot!” Did that relentless Comanche, Cora, know this Thing? He shuddered. Then he fell back upon his faith in Providence. It COOULD not be that she knew! Ah, no! Heaven would not let the world be so bad as that! And yet it did sometimes become negligent—he remembered the case of a baby-girl cousin who fell into the bath-tub and was drowned. Providence had allowed that: What assurance had he that it would not go a step farther?

“Why, Hedrick,” said Cora, turning toward him cheerfully, “you’re not really eating anything; you’re only pretending to.” His heart sank with apprehension. Was it coming? “You really must eat,” she went on. “School begins so soon, you must be strong, you know. How we shall miss you here at home during your hours of work!”

With that, the burden fell from his shoulders, his increasing terrors took wing. If Laura had told his ghastly secret to Cora, the latter would not have had recourse to such weak satire as this. Cora was not the kind of person to try a popgun on an enemy when she had a thirteen-inch gun at her disposal; so he reasoned; and in the gush of his relief and happiness, responded:

“You’re a little too cocky lately, Cora-lee: I wish you were MY daughter—just about five minutes!”

Cora looked upon him fondly. “What would you do to me,” she inquired with a terrible sweetness—“darling little boy?”

Hedrick’s head swam. The blow was square in the face; it jarred every bone; the world seemed to topple. His mother, rising from her chair, choked slightly, and hurried to join the nurse, who was already on her way upstairs. Cora sent an affectionate laugh across the table to her stunned antagonist.

“You wouldn’t beat me, would you, dear? she murmured. “I’m almost sure you wouldn’t; not if I asked you to kiss me some MORE”

All doubt was gone, the last hope fled! The worst had arrived. A vision of the awful future flamed across his staggered mind. The doors to the arena were flung open: the wild beasts howled for hunger of him; the spectators waited.

Cora began lightly to sing:

… “Dear,

Would thou wert near

To hear me tell how fair thou art!

Since thou art gone I mourn all alone,

Oh, my Lolita–-“

She broke off to explain: “It’s one of those passionate little Spanish serenades, Hedrick. I’ll sing it for your boy-friends next time they come to play in the yard. I think they’d like it. When they know why you like it so much, I’m sure they will. Of course you DO like it—you roguish little lover!” A spasm rewarded this demoniacal phrase. “Darling little boy, the serenade goes on like this:

Oh, my Lolita, come to my heart:

Oh, come beloved, love let me press thee,

While I caress thee

In one long kiss, Lolita!

Lolita come! Let me–-“

Hedrick sprang to his feet with a yell of agony. “Laura Madison, you tattle-tale,” he bellowed, “I’ll never forgive you as long as I live! I’ll get even with you if it takes a thousand years!”

With that, and pausing merely to kick a rung out of a chair which happened to be in his way, he rushed from the room.

His sisters had risen to go, and Cora flung her arms round Laura in ecstacy. “You mean old viper!” she cried. “You could have told me days ago! It’s almost too good to be true: it’s the first time in my whole life I’ve felt safe from the Pest for a moment!”

Laura shook her head. “My conscience troubles me; it did seem as if I ought to tell you—and mamma thought so, too; and I gave him warning, but now that I have done it, it seems rather mean and–-“

“No!” exclaimed Cora. “You just gave me a chance to protect myself for once, thank heaven!” And she picked up her skirts and danced her way into the front hall.

“I’m afraid,” said Laura, following, “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Oh, Laura,” cried the younger girl, “I am having the best time, these days! This just caps it.” She lowered her voice, but her eyes grew even brighter. “I think I’ve shown a certain gentleman a few things he didn’t understand!”

“Who, dear?”

“Val,” returned Cora lightly; “Valentine Corliss. I think he knows a little more about women than he did when he first came here.”

“You’ve had a difference with him?” asked Laura with eager hopefulness. “You’ve broken with him?”

“Oh, Lord, no! Nothing like that.” Cora leaned to her confidentially. “He told me, once, he’d be at the feet of any woman that could help put through an affair like his oil scheme, and I decided I’d just show him what I could do. He’d talk about it to me; then he’d laugh at me. That very Sunday when I got papa to go in–-“

“But he didn’t,” said Laura helplessly. “He only said he’d try to–-when he gets well.”

“It’s all the same—and it’ll be a great thing for him, too,” said Cora, gayly. “Well, that very afternoon before Val left, he practically told me I was no good. Of course he didn’t use just those words—that isn’t his way—but he laughed at me. And haven’t I shown him! I sent Richard a note that very night saying papa had consented to be secretary of the company, and Richard had said he’d go in if papa did that, and he couldn’t break his word–-“

“I know,” said Laura, sighing. “I know.”

“Laura”—Cora spoke with sudden gravity—“did you ever know anybody like me? I’m almost getting superstitious about it, because it seems to me I ALWAYS get just what I set out to get. I believe I could have anything in the world if I tried for it.”

“I hope so, if you tried for something good for you,” said Laura sadly. “Cora, dear, you will—you will be a little easy on Hedrick, won’t you?”

Cora leaned against the newel and laughed till she was exhausted.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mr. Trumble’s offices were heralded by a neat blazon upon the principal door, “Wade J. Trumble, Mortgages and Loans”; and the gentleman thus comfortably, proclaimed, emerging from that door upon a September noontide, burlesqued a start of surprise at sight of a figure unlocking an opposite door which exhibited the name, “Ray Vilas,” and below it, the cryptic phrase, “Probate Law.”

“Water!” murmured Mr. Trumble, affecting to faint. “You ain’t going in THERE, are you, Ray?” He followed the other into the office, and stood leaning against a bookcase, with his hands in his pockets, while Vilas raised the two windows, which were obscured by a film of smoke-deposit: there was a thin coat of fine sifted dust over everything. “Better not sit down, Ray,” continued Trumble, warningly. “You’ll spoil your clothes and you might get a client. That word `Probate’ on the door ain’t going to keep ‘em out forever. You recognize the old place, I s’pose? You must have been here at least twice since you moved in. What’s the matter? Dick Lindley hasn’t missionaried you into any idea of WORKING, has he? Oh, no, I see: the Richfield Hotel bar has closed—you’ve managed to drink it all at last!”

“Have you heard how old man Madison is to-day? asked Ray, dusting his fingers with a handkerchief.

“Somebody told me yesterday he was about the same. He’s not going to get well.”

“How do you know?” Ray spoke quickly.

“Stroke too severe. People never recover–-“

“Oh, yes, they do, too.”

Trumble began hotly: “I beg to dif–-” but checked himself, manifesting a slight confusion. “That is, I know they don’t. Old Madison may live a while, if you call that getting well; but he’ll never be the same man he was. Doctor Sloane says it was a bad stroke. Says it was `induced by heat prostration and excitement.’ `Excitement!’” he repeated with a sour laugh. “Yep, I expect a man could get all the excitement he wanted in THAT house, especially if he was her daddy. Poor old man, I don’t believe he’s got five thousand dollars in the world, and look how she dresses!”

Ray opened a compartment beneath one of the bookcases, and found a bottle and some glasses. “Aha,” he muttered, “our janitor doesn’t drink, I perceive. Join me?” Mr. Trumble accepted, and Ray explained, cheerfully: “Richard Lindley’s got me so cowed I’m afraid to go near any of my old joints. You see, he trails me; the scoundrel has kept me sober for whole days at a time, and I’ve been mortified, having old friends see me in that condition; so I have to sneak up here to my own office to drink to Cora, now and then. You mustn’t tell him. What’s she been doing to YOU, lately?”

The little man addressed grew red with the sharp, resentful memory. “Oh, nothing! Just struck me in the face with her parasol on the public street, that’s all!” He gave an account of his walk to church with Cora. “I’m through with that girl!” he exclaimed vindictively, in conclusion. “It was the damnedest thing you ever saw in your life: right in broad daylight, in front of the church. And she laughed when she did it; you’d have thought she was knocking a puppy out of her way. She can’t do that to me twice, I tell you. What the devil do you see to laugh at?

“You’ll be around,” returned his companion, refilling the glasses, “asking for more, the first chance she gives you. Here’s her health!”

“I don’t drink it!” cried Mr. Trumble angrily.

“And I’m through with her for good, I tell you! I’m not your kind: I don’t let a girl like that upset me till I can’t think of anything else, and go making such an ass of myself that the whole town gabbles about it. Cora Madison’s seen the last of me, I’ll thank you to notice. She’s never been half-decent to me; cut dances with me all last winter; kept me hanging round the outskirts of every crowd she was in; stuck me with Laura and her mother every time she had a chance; then has the nerve to try to use me, so’s she can make a bigger hit with a new man! You can bet your head I’m through! She’ll get paid though! Oh, she’ll get paid for it!”

“How?” laughed Ray.

It was a difficult question. “You wait and see,” responded the threatener, feebly. “Just wait and see. She’s wild about this Corliss, I tell you,” he continued, with renewed vehemence. “She’s crazy about him; she’s lost her head at last–-“

“You mean he’s going to avenge you?”

“No, I don’t, though he might, if she decided to marry him.”

“Do you know,” said Ray slowly, glancing over his glass at his nervous companion, “it doesn’t strike me that Mr. Valentine Corliss has much the air of a marrying man.”

“He has the air to ME,” observed Mr. Trumble, “of a darned bad lot! But I have to hand it to him: he’s a wizard. He’s got something besides his good looks—a man that could get Cora Madison interested in `business’! In OIL! Cora Madison! How do you suppose–-“

His companion began to laugh again. “You don’t really suppose he talked his oil business to her, do you, Trumble?”

“He must have. Else how could she–-“

“Oh, no, Cora herself never talks upon any subject but one; she never listens to any other either.”

“Then how in thunder did he–-“

“If Cora asks you if you think it will rain,” interrupted Vilas, “doesn’t she really seem to be asking: `Do you love me? How much?’ Suppose Mr. Corliss is an expert in the same line. Of course he can talk about oil!”

“He strikes me,” said Trumble, as just about the slickest customer that ever hit this town. I like Richard Lindley, and I hope he’ll see his fifty thousand dollars again. I wouldn’t have given Corliss thirty cents.”

“Why do you think he’s a crook?”

“I don’t say that,” returned Trumble. “All I know about him is that he’s done some of the finest work to get fifty thousand dollars put in his hands that I ever heard of. And all anybody knows about him is that he lived here seventeen years ago, and comes back claiming to know where there’s oil in Italy. He shows some maps and papers and gets cablegrams signed `Moliterno.’ Then he talks about selling the old Corliss house here, where the Madisons live, and putting the money into his oil company: he does that to sound plausible, but I have good reason to know that house was mortgaged to its full value within a month after his aunt left it to him. He’ll not get a cent if it’s sold. That’s all. And he’s got Cora Madison so crazy over him that she makes life a hell for poor old Lindley until he puts all he’s saved into the bubble. The scheme may be all right. How do I know? There’s no way to tell, without going over there, and Corliss won’t let anybody do that—oh, he’s got a plausible excuse for it! But I’m sorry for Lindley: he’s so crazy about Cora, he’s soft. And she’s so crazy about Corliss SHE’S soft! Well, I used to be crazy about her myself, but I’m not soft—I’m not the Lindley kind of loon, thank heaven!”

“What kind are you, Trumble?” asked Ray, mildly.

“Not your kind either,” retorted the other going to the door. “She cut me on the street the other day; she’s quit speaking to me. If you’ve got any money, why don’t you take it over to the hotel and give it to Corliss? She might start speaking to YOU again. I’m going to lunch!” He slammed the door behind him.

Ray Vilas, left alone, elevated his heels to the sill, and stared out of the window a long time at a gravelled roof which presented little of interest. He replenished his glass and his imagination frequently, the latter being so stirred that when, about three o’clock, he noticed the inroads he had made upon the bottle, tears of self-pity came to his eyes. “Poor little drunkard!” he said aloud. “Go ahead and do it. Isn’t anything YOU won’t do!” And, having washed his face at a basin in a corner, he set his hat slightly upon one side, picked up a walking stick and departed jauntily, and, to the outward eye, presentably sober.

Mr. Valentine Corliss would be glad to see him, the clerk at the Richfield Hotel reported, after sending up a card, and upon Ray’s following the card, Mr. Valentine Corliss in person confirmed the message with considerable amusement and a cordiality in which there was some mixture of the quizzical. He was the taller; and the robust manliness of his appearance, his splendid health and boxer’s figure offered a sharp contrast to the superlatively lean tippler. Corliss was humorously aware of his advantage: his greeting seemed really to say, “Hello, my funny bug, here you are again!” though the words of his salutation were entirely courteous; and he followed it with a hospitable offer.

“No,” said Vilas; “I won’t drink with you.” He spoke so gently that the form of his refusal, usually interpreted as truculent, escaped the other’s notice. He also declined a cigar, apologetically asking permission to light one of his own cigarettes; then, as he sank into a velour-covered chair, apologized again for the particular attention he was bestowing upon the apartment, which he recognized as one of the suites de luxe of the hotel.

“`Parlour, bedroom, and bath,’” he continued, with a melancholy smile; “and `Lachrymae,’ and `A Reading from Homer.’ Sometimes they have `The Music Lesson,’ or `Winter Scene’ or `A Neapolitan Fisher Lad’ instead of `Lachrymae,’ but they always have `A Reading from Homer.’ When you opened the door, a moment ago, I had a very strong impression that something extraordinary would some time happen to me in this room.”

“Well,” suggested Corliss, “you refused a drink in it.”

“Even more wonderful than that,” said Ray, glancing about the place curiously. “It may be a sense of something painful that already has happened here—perhaps long ago, before your occupancy. It has a pathos.”

“Most hotel rooms have had something happen in them,” said Corliss lightly. “I believe the managers usually change the door numbers if what happens is especially unpleasant. Probably they change some of the rugs, also.”

“I feel–-” Ray paused, frowning. “I feel as if some one had killed himself here.”

“Then no doubt some of the rugs HAVE been changed.”

“No doubt.” The caller laughed and waved his hand in dismissal of the topic. “Well, Mr. Corliss,” he went on, shifting to a brisker tone, “I have come to make my fortune, too. You are Midas. Am I of sufficient importance to be touched?”

Valentine Corliss gave him sidelong an almost imperceptibly brief glance of sharpest scrutiny—it was like the wink of a camera shutter—but laughed in the same instant. “Which way do you mean that?”

“You have been quick,” returned the visitor, repaying that glance with equal swiftness, “to seize upon the American idiom. I mean: How small a contribution would you be willing to receive toward your support!”

Corliss did not glance again at Ray; instead, he looked interested in the smoke of his cigar. “`Contribution,’” he repeated, with no inflection whatever. “`Toward my support.’”

“I mean, of course, how small an investment in your oil company.”

“Oh, anything, anything,” returned the promoter, with quick amiability. “We need to sell all the stock we can.”

“All the money you can get?”

“Precisely. It’s really a colossal proposition, Mr. Vilas.” Corliss spoke with brisk enthusiasm. “It’s a perfectly certain enormous profit upon everything that goes in. Prince Moliterno cables me later investigations show that the oil-field is more than twice as large as we thought when I left Naples. He’s on the ground now, buying up what he can, secretly.”

“I had an impression from Richard Lindley that the secret had been discovered.”

“Oh, yes; but only by a few, and those are trying to keep it quiet from the others, of course.”

“I see. Does your partner know of your success in raising a large investment?”

“You mean Lindley’s? Certainly.” Corliss waved his hand in light deprecation. “Of course that’s something, but Moliterno would hardly be apt to think of it as very large! You see he’s putting in about five times that much, himself, and I’ve already turned over to him double it for myself. Still, it counts—certainly; and of course it will be a great thing for Lindley.”

“I fear,” Ray said hesitatingly, “you won’t be much interested in my drop for your bucket. I have twelve hundred dollars in the world; and it is in the bank—I stopped there on my way here. To be exact, I have twelve hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-one cents. My dear sir, will you allow me to purchase one thousand dollars’ worth of stock? I will keep the two hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-one cents to live on—I may need an egg while waiting for you to make me rich. Will you accept so small an investment?”

“Certainly,” said Corliss, laughing. “Why not? You may as well profit by the chance as any one. I’ll send you the stock certificates—we put them at par. I’m attending to that myself, as our secretary, Mr. Madison, is unable to take up his duties.”

Vilas took a cheque-book and a fountain-pen from his pocket.

“Oh, any time, any time,” said Corliss cheerfully, observing the new investor’s movement.

“Now, I think,” returned Vilas quietly. “How shall I make it out?”

“Oh, to me, I suppose,” answered Corliss indifferently. “That will save a little trouble, and I can turn it over to Moliterno, by cable, as I did Lindley’s. I’ll give you a receipt–-“

“You need not mind that,” said Ray. “Really it is of no importance.”

“Of course the cheque itself is a receipt,” remarked Corliss, tossing it carelessly upon a desk. “You’ll have some handsome returns for that slip of paper, Mr. Vilas.”

“In that blithe hope I came,” said Ray airily.

“I am confident of it. I have my own ways of divination, Mr. Corliss. I have gleams.” He rose as if to go, but stood looking thoughtfully about the apartment again. “Singular impression,” he murmured. “Not exactly as if I’d seen it in a dream; and yet—and yet–-“

“You have symptoms of clairvoyance at times, I take it.” The conscious, smooth superiority of the dexterous man playing with an inconsequent opponent resounded in this speech, clear as the humming of a struck bell; and Vilas shot him a single open glance of fire from hectic eyes. For that instant, the frailer buck trumpeted challenge. Corliss—broad-shouldered, supple of waist, graceful and strong—smiled down negligently; yet the very air between the two men seemed charged with an invisible explosive. Ray laughed quickly, as in undisturbed good nature; then, flourishing his stick, turned toward the door.

“Oh, no, it isn’t clairvoyance—no more than when I told you that your only real interest is women. He paused, his hand upon the door-knob. “I’m a quaint mixture, however: perhaps I should be handled with care.”

“Very good of you,” laughed Corliss—“this warning. The afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting you I think I remember your implying that you were a mere marionette.”

“A haggard harlequin!” snapped Vilas, waving his hand to a mirror across the room. “Don’t I look it?” And the phrase fitted him with tragic accuracy. “You see? What a merry wedding-guest I’ll be! I invite you to join me on the nuptial eve.”

“Thanks. Who’s getting married: when the nuptial eve?”

Ray opened the door, and, turning, rolled his eyes fantastically. “Haven’t you heard?” he cried. “When Hecate marries John Barleycorn!” He bowed low. “Mr. Midas, adieu.”

Corliss stood in the doorway and watched him walk down the long hall to the elevator. There, Ray turned and waved his hand, the other responding with gayety which was not assumed: Vilas might be insane, or drunk, or both, but the signature upon his cheque was unassailable.

Corliss closed the door and began to pace his apartment thoughtfully. His expression manifested a peculiar phenomenon. In company, or upon the street, or when he talked with men, the open look and frank eyes of this stalwart young man were disarming and his most winning assets. But now, as he paced alone in his apartment, now that he was not upon exhibition, now when there was no eye to behold him, and there was no reason to dissimulate or veil a single thought or feeling, his look was anything but open; the last trace of frankness disappeared; the muscles at mouth and eyes shifted; lines and planes intermingled and altered subtly; there was a moment of misty transformation—and the face of another man emerged. It was the face of a man uninstructed in mercy; it was a shrewd and planning face: alert, resourceful, elaborately perceptive, and flawlessly hard. But, beyond all, it was the face of a man perpetually on guard.

He had the air of debating a question, his hands in his pockets, his handsome forehead lined with a temporary indecision. His sentry-go extended the length of his two rooms, and each time he came back into his bedroom his glance fell consideringly upon a steamer-trunk of the largest size, at the foot of his bed. The trunk was partially packed as if for departure. And, indeed, it was the question of departure which he was debating.

He was a man of varied dexterities, and he had one faculty of high value, which had often saved him, had never betrayed him; it was intuitive and equal to a sixth sense: he always knew when it was time to go. An inner voice warned him; he trusted to it and obeyed it. And it had spoken now, and there was his trunk half-packed in answer. But he had stopped midway in his packing, because he had never yet failed to make a clean sweep where there was the slightest chance for one; he hated to leave a big job before it was completely finished—and Mr. Wade Trumble had refused to invest in the oil-fields of Basilicata.

Corliss paused beside the trunk, stood a moment immersed in thought; then nodded once, decisively, and, turning to a dressing-table, began to place some silver-mounted brushes and bottles in a leather travelling-case.

There was a knock at the outer door. He frowned, set down what he had in his hands, went to the door and opened it to find Mr. Pryor, that plain citizen, awaiting entrance.

Corliss remained motionless in an arrested attitude, his hand upon the knob of the opened door. His position did not alter; he became almost unnaturally still, a rigidity which seemed to increase. Then he looked quickly behind him, over his shoulder, and back again, with a swift movement of the head.

“No,” said Pryor, at that. “I don’t want you. I just thought I’d have two minutes’ talk with you. All right?”

“All right,” said Corliss quietly. “Come in.” He turned carelessly, and walked away from the door keeping between his guest and the desk. When he reached the desk, he turned again and leaned against it, his back to it, but in the action of turning his hand had swept a sheet of notepaper over Ray Vilas’s cheque—a too conspicuous oblong of pale blue. Pryor had come in and closed the door.

“I don’t know,” he began, regarding the other through his glasses, with steady eyes, “that I’m going to interfere with you at all, Corliss. I just happened to strike you—I wasn’t looking for you. I’m on vacation, visiting my married daughter that lives here, and I don’t want to mix in if I can help it.”

Corliss laughed, easily. “There’s nothing for you to mix in. You couldn’t if you wanted to.”

“Well, I hope that’s true,” said Pryor, with an air of indulgence, curiously like that of a teacher for a pupil who promises improvement. “I do indeed. There isn’t anybody I’d like to see turn straight more than you. You’re educated and cultured, and refined, and smarter than all hell. It would be a big thing. That’s one reason I’m taking the trouble to talk to you.”

“I told you I wasn’t doing anything,” said Corliss with a petulance as oddly like that of a pupil as the other’s indulgence was like that of a tutor. “This is my own town; I own property here, and I came here to sell it. I can prove it in half-a-minute’s telephoning. Where do you come in?”

“Easy, easy,” said Pryor, soothingly. “I’ve just told you I don’t want to come in at all.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I came to tell you just one thing: to go easy up there at Mr. Madison’s house.”

Corliss laughed contemptuously. “It’s MY house. I own it. That’s the property I came here to sell.”

“Oh, I know,” responded Pryor. “That part of it’s all right. But I’ve seen you several times with that young lady, and you looked pretty thick, to me. You know you haven’t got any business doing such things, Corliss. I know your record from Buda Pesth to Copenhagen and–-“

“See here, my friend,” said the younger man, angrily, “you may be a tiptop spotter for the government when it comes to running down some poor old lady that’s bought a string of pearls in the Rue de la Paix–-“

“I’ve been in the service twenty-eight years,” remarked Pryor, mildly.

“All right,” said the other with a gesture of impatience; “and you got me once, all right. Well, that’s over, isn’t it? Have I tried anything since?”

“Not in that line,” said Pryor.

“Well, what business have you with any other line?” demanded Corliss angrily. “Who made you general supervisor of public morals? I want to know–-“

“Now, what’s the use your getting excited? I’m just here to tell you that I’m going to keep an eye on you. I don’t know many people here, and I haven’t taken any particular pains to look you up. For all I know, you’re only here to sell your house, as you say. But I know old man Madison a little, and I kind of took a fancy to him; he’s a mighty nice old man, and he’s got a nice family. He’s sick and it won’t do to trouble him; but—honest, Corliss—if you don’t slack off in that neighbourhood a little, I’ll have to have a talk with the young lady herself.”

A derisory light showed faintly in the younger man’s eyes as he inquired, softly: “That all, Mr. Pryor?”

“No. Don’t try anything on out here. Not in ANY of your lines.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“That’s right. Sell your house and clear out. You’ll find it healthy.” He went to the door. “So far as I can see,” he observed, ruminatively, “you haven’t brought any of that Moliterno crowd you used to work with over to this side with you.”

“I haven’t seen Moliterno for two years,” said Corliss, sharply.

“Well, I’ve said my say.” Pryor gave him a last word as he went out. “You keep away from that little girl.”

“Ass!” exclaimed Corliss, as the door closed. He exhaled a deep breath sharply, and broke into a laugh. Then he went quickly into his bedroom and began to throw the things out of his trunk.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hedrick Madison’s eyes were not of marble; his heart was not flint nor his skin steel plate: he was flesh and tender; he was a vulnerable, breathing boy, with highly developed capacities for pain which were now being taxed to their utmost. Once he had loved to run, to leap, to disport himself in the sun, to drink deep of the free air; he had loved life and one or two of his fellowmen. He had borne himself buoyantly, with jaunty self-confidence, even with some intolerance toward the weaknesses of others, not infrequently displaying merriment over their mischances; but his time had found him at last; the evil day had come. Indian Summer was Indian for him, indeed: sweet death were welcome; no charity was left in him. He leaped no more, but walked broodingly and sought the dark places. And yet it could not be said that times were dull for him: the luckless picket who finds himself in an open eighty-acre field, under the eye of a sharpshooter up a tree, would not be apt to describe the experience as dull. And Cora never missed a shot; she loved the work; her pleasure in it was almost as agonizing for the target as was the accuracy of her fire.

She was ingenious: the horrible facts at her disposal were damaging enough in all conscience: but they did not content her. She invented a love-story, assuming that Hedrick was living it: he was supposed to be pining for Lolita, to be fading, day-by-day, because of enforced separation; and she contrived this to such an effect of reality, and with such a diabolical affectation of delicacy in referring to it, that the mere remark, with gentle sympathy, “I think poor Hedrick is looking a little better to-day,” infallibly produced something closely resembling a spasm. She formed the habit of never mentioning her brother in his presence except as “poor Hedrick,” a too obvious commiseration of his pretended attachment—which met with like success. Most dreadful of all, she invented romantic phrases and expressions assumed to have been spoken or written by Hedrick in reference to his unhappiness; and she repeated them so persistently, yet always with such apparent sincerity of belief that they were quotations from him, and not her inventions, that the driven youth knew a fear, sometimes, that the horrid things were actually of his own perpetration.

The most withering of these was, “Torn from her I love by the ruthless hand of a parent… .” It was not completed; Cora never got any further with it, nor was there need: a howl of fury invariably assured her of an effect as satisfactory as could possibly have been obtained by an effort less impressionistic. Life became a series of easy victories for Cora, and she made them somehow the more deadly for Hedrick by not seeming to look at him in his affliction, nor even to be aiming his way: he never could tell when the next shot was coming. At the table, the ladies of his family might be deep in dress, or discussing Mr. Madison’s slowly improving condition, when Cora, with utter irrelevance, would sigh, and, looking sadly into her coffee, murmur, “Ah, FOND mem’ries!” or, “WHY am I haunted by the dead past?” or, the dreadful, “Torn from her I love by the ruthless hand of a parent… .”

There was compassion in Laura’s eyes and in his mother’s, but Cora was irresistible, and they always ended by laughing in spite of themselves; and though they pleaded for Hedrick in private, their remonstrances proved strikingly ineffective. Hedrick was the only person who had ever used the high hand with Cora: she found repayment too congenial. In the daytime he could not go in the front yard, but Cora’s window would open and a tenderly smiling Cora lean out to call affectionately, “Don’t walk on the grass—darling little boy!” Or, she would nod happily to him and begin to sing:

“Oh come beloved, love let me press thee,

While I caress thee

In one long kiss, Lolita… . ”

One terror still hung over him. If it fell—as it might at any fatal moment—then the utmost were indeed done upon him; and this apprehension bathed his soul in night. In his own circle of congenial age and sex he was, by virtue of superior bitterness and precocity of speech, a chief—a moral castigator, a satirist of manners, a creator of stinging nicknames; and many nourished unhealed grievances which they had little hope of satisfying against him; those who attempted it invariably departing with more to avenge than they had brought with them. Let these once know what Cora knew… . The vision was unthinkable!

It was Cora’s patent desire to release the hideous item, to spread the scandal broadcast among his fellows—to ring it from the school-bells, to send it winging on the hot winds of Hades! The boys had always liked his yard and the empty stable to play in, and the devices he now employed to divert their activities elsewhere were worthy of a great strategist. His energy and an abnormal ingenuity accomplished incredible things: school had been in session several weeks and only one boy had come within conversational distance of Cora;—him Hedrick bore away bodily, in simulation of resistless high spirits, a brilliant exhibition of stagecraft.

And then Cora’s friend, Mrs. Villard, removed her son Egerton from the private school he had hitherto attended, and he made his appearance in Hedrick’s class, one morning at the public school. Hedrick’s eye lighted with a savage gleam; timidly the first joy he had known for a thousand years crept into his grim heart. After school, Egerton expiated a part of Cora’s cruelty. It was a very small part, and the exploit no more than infinitesimally soothing to the conqueror, but when Egerton finally got home he was no sight for a mother.

Thus Hedrick wrought his own doom: Mrs. Villard telephoned to Cora, and Cora went immediately to see her.

It happened to Hedrick that he was late leaving home the next morning. His entrance into his classroom was an undeniable sensation, and within ten minutes the teacher had lost all control of the school. It became necessary to send for the principal. Recess was a frantic nightmare for Hedrick, and his homeward progress at noon a procession of such uproarious screamers as were his equals in speed. The nethermost depths were reached when an ignoble pigtailed person he had always trodden upon flat-footed screamed across the fence from next door, as he reached fancied sanctuary in his own backyard:

“Kiss me some MORE, darling little boy!”

This worm, established upon the fence opposite the conservatory windows, and in direct view from the table in the dining-room, shrieked the accursed request at short intervals throughout the luncheon hour. The humour of childhood is sometimes almost intrusive.

And now began a life for Hedrick which may be rather painfully but truthfully likened to a prolongation of the experiences of a rat that finds itself in the middle of a crowded street in daylight: there is plenty of excitement but no pleasure. He was pursued, harried, hounded from early morning till nightfall, and even in his bed would hear shrill shouts go down the sidewalk from the throats of juvenile fly-by-nights: “Oh darling lit-oh darling lit-oh LIT-le boy, LIT-le boy, kiss me some MORE!” And one day he overheard a remark which strengthened his growing conviction that the cataclysm had affected the whole United States: it was a teacher who spoke, explaining to another a disturbance in the hall of the school. She said, behind her hand:

“HE KISSED AN IDIOT.”

Laura had not even remotely foreseen the consequences of her revelation, nor, indeed, did she now properly estimate their effect upon Hedrick. She and her mother were both sorry for him, and did what they could to alleviate his misfortunes, but there was an inevitable remnant of amusement in their sympathy. Youth, at war, affects stoicism but not resignation: in truth, resignation was not much in Hedrick’s line, and it would be far from the fact to say that he was softened by his sufferings. He brooded profoundly and his brightest thought was revenge. It was not upon Cora that his chief bitterness turned. Cora had always been the constant, open enemy: warfare between them was a regular condition of life; and unconsciously, and without “thinking it out,” he recognized the naturalness of her seizing upon the deadliest weapon against him that came to her hand. There was nothing unexpected in that: no, the treachery, to his mind, lay in the act of Laura, that non-combatant, who had furnished the natural and habitual enemy with this scourge. At all times, and with or without cause, he ever stood ready to do anything possible for the reduction of Cora’s cockiness, but now it was for the taking-down of Laura and the repayment of her uncalled-for and overwhelming assistance to the opposite camp that he lay awake nights and kept his imagination hot. Laura was a serene person, so neutral—outwardly, at least—and so little concerned for herself in any matter he could bring to mind, that for purposes of revenge she was a difficult proposition. And then, in a desperate hour, he remembered her book.

Only once had he glimpsed it, but she had shown unmistakable agitation of a mysterious sort as she wrote in it, and, upon observing his presence, a prompt determination to prevent his reading a word of what she had written. Therefore, it was something peculiarly sacred and intimate. This deduction was proved by the care she exercised in keeping the book concealed from all eyes. A slow satisfaction began to permeate him: he made up his mind to find that padlocked ledger.

He determined with devoted ardour that when he found it he would make the worst possible use of it: the worst, that is, for Laura. As for consequences to himself, he was beyond them. There is an Irish play in which an old woman finds that she no longer fears the sea when it has drowned the last of her sons; it can do nothing more to her. Hedrick no longer feared anything.

The book was somewhere in Laura’s room, he knew that; and there were enough opportunities to search, though Laura had a way of coming in unexpectedly which was embarrassing; and he suffered from a sense of inadequacy when—on the occasion of his first new attempt—he answered the casual inquiry as to his presence by saying that he “had a headache.” He felt there was something indirect in the reply; but Laura was unsuspicious and showed no disposition to be analytical. After this, he took the precaution to bring a school-book with him and she often found the boy seated quietly by her west window immersed in study: he said he thought his headaches came from his eyes and that the west light “sort of eased them a little.”

The ledger remained undiscovered, although probably there has never been a room more thoroughly and painstakingly searched, without its floor being taken up and its walls torn down. The most mysterious, and, at the same time, the most maddening thing about it was the apparent simplicity of the task. He was certain that the room contained the book: listening, barefooted, outside the door at night, he had heard the pen scratching. The room was as plain as a room can be, and small. There was a scantily filled clothes-press; he had explored every cubic inch of it. There was the small writing table with one drawer; it held only some notepaper and a box of pen-points. There was a bureau; to his certain knowledge it contained no secret whatever. There were a few giltless chairs, and a white “wash-stand,” a mere basin and slab with exposed plumbing. Lastly, there was the bed, a very large and ugly “Eastlake” contrivance; he had acquired a close acquaintance with all of it except the interior of the huge mattress itself, and here, he finally concluded, must of necessity be the solution. The surface of the mattress he knew to be unbroken; nevertheless the book was there. He had recently stimulated his deductive powers with a narrative of French journalistic sagacity in a similar case; and he applied French reasoning. The ledger existed. It was somewhere in the room. He had searched everything except the interior of the mattress. The ledger was in that interior.

The exploration thus become necessary presented some difficulties. Detection in the act would involve explanations hard to invent; it would not do to say he was looking for his knife; and he could not think of any excuse altogether free from a flavour of insincerity. A lameness beset them all and made them liable to suspicion; and Laura, once suspicious, might be petty enough to destroy the book, and so put it out of his power forever. He must await the right opportunity, and, after a racking exercise of patience, at last he saw it coming.

Doctor Sloane had permitted his patient to come down stairs for an increasing interval each day. Mr. Madison crept, rather than walked, leaning upon his wife and closely attended by Miss Peirce. He spoke with difficulty and not clearly; still, there was a perceptible improvement, and his family were falling into the habit of speaking of him as almost well.” On that account, Mrs. Madison urged her daughters to accept an invitation from the mother of the once courtly Egerton Villard. It was at breakfast that the matter was discussed.

“Of course Cora must go,” Laura began, but–-“

“But nothing!” interrupted Cora. “How would it look if I went and you didn’t? Everybody knows papa’s almost well, and they’d think it silly for us to give up the first real dance since last spring on that account; yet they’re just spiteful enough, if I went and you stayed home, to call me a `girl of no heart.’ Besides, she added sweetly, “we ought to go to show Mrs. Villard we aren’t hurt because Egerton takes so little notice of poor Hedrick.”

Hedrick’s lips moved silently, as in prayer.

“I’d rather not,” said Laura. “I doubt if I’d have a very good time.”

“You would, too,” returned her sister, decidedly. “The men like to dance with you; you dance every bit as well as I do, and that black lace is the most becoming dress you ever had. Nobody ever remembers a black dress, anyway, unless it’s cut very conspicuously, and yours isn’t. I can’t go without you; they love to say nasty things about me, and you’re too good a sister to give ‘em this chance, you old dear.” She laughed and nodded affectionately across the table at Laura. “You’ve got to go!”

“Yes, it would be nicer,” said the mother. And so it was settled. It was simultaneously settled in Hedrick’s mind that the night of the dance should mark his discovery of the ledger. He would have some industrious hours alone with the mysterious mattress, safe from intrusion.

Meekly he lifted his eyes from his plate. “I’m glad you’re going, sister Laura,” he said in a gentle voice. “I think a change will do you good.”

“Isn’t it wonderful, exclaimed Cora, appealing to the others to observe him, “what an improvement a disappointment in love can make in deportment?”

For once, Hedrick only smiled.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Laura had spent some thoughtful hours upon her black lace dress with results that astonished her family: it became a ball-gown—and a splendidly effective one. She arranged her dark hair in a more elaborate fashion than ever before, in a close coronal of faintly lustrous braids; she had no jewellery and obviously needed none. Her last action but one before she left her room was to dispose of the slender chain and key she always wore round her neck; then her final glance at the mirror—which fairly revealed a lovely woman—ended in a deprecatory little “face” she made at herself. It meant: “Yes, old lady, you fancy yourself very passable in here all by yourself, don’t you? Just wait: you’ll be standing beside Cora in a moment!”

And when she did stand beside Cora, in the latter’s room, a moment later, her thought seemed warranted. Cora, radiant-eyed, in high bloom, and exquisite from head to foot in a shimmering white dancing-dress, a glittering crescent fastening the silver fillet that bound her vivid hair, was a flame of enchantment. Mrs. Madison, almost weeping with delight, led her daughters proudly, an arm round the waist of each, into her husband’s room. Propped with pillows, he reclined in an armchair while Miss Peirce prepared his bed, an occupation she gave over upon this dazzling entrance, departing tactfully.

“Look at these,” cried the mother; “—from our garden, Jim, dear! Don’t we feel rich, you and I?”

“And—and—Laura,” said the sick man, with the slow and imperfect enunication caused by his disease; “Laura looks pretty—too.”

“Isn’t she adorable!” Cora exclaimed warmly. “She decided to be the portrait of a young duchess, you see, all stately splendour—made of snow and midnight!”

“Hear! hear!” laughed Laura; but she blushed with pleasure, and taking Cora’s hand in hers lifted it to her lips.

“And do you see Cora’s crescent?” demanded Mrs. Madison. “What do you think of THAT for magnificence? She went down town this morning with seven dollars, and came back with that and her party gloves and a dollar in change! Isn’t she a bargainer? Even for rhinestones they are the cheapest things you ever heard of. They look precisely like stones of the very finest water.” They did—so precisely, indeed, that if the resemblance did not amount to actual identity, then had a jeweller of the town been able to deceive the eye of Valentine Corliss, which was an eye singularly learned in such matters.

“They’re—both smart girls,” said Madison, “both of them. And they look—beautiful, tonight—both. Laura is—amazing!”

When they had gone, Mrs. Madison returned from the stairway, and, kneeling beside her husband, put her arms round him gently: she had seen the tear that was marking its irregular pathway down his flaccid, gray cheek, and she understood.

“Don’t. Don’t worry, Jim,” she whispered. “Those bright, beautiful things!—aren’t they treasures?”

“It’s—it’s Laura,” he said. “Cora will be all right. She looks out for—herself. I’m—I’m afraid for—Laura. Aren’t you?”

“No, no,” she protested. “I’m not afraid for either of them.” But she was: the mother had always been afraid for Cora.

… . At the dance, the two girls, attended up the stairway to the ballroom by a chattering covey of black-coats, made a sensational entrance to a gallant fanfare of music, an effect which may have been timed to the premonitory tuning of instruments heard during the ascent; at all events, it was a great success; and Cora, standing revealed under the wide gilt archway, might have been a lithe and shining figure from the year eighteen-hundred-and-one, about to dance at the Luxembourg. She placed her hand upon the sleeve of Richard Lindley, and, glancing intelligently over his shoulder into the eyes of Valentine Corliss, glided rhythmically away.

People looked at her; they always did. Not only the non-dancers watched her; eyes everywhere were upon her, even though the owners gyrated, glided and dipped on distant orbits. The other girls watched her, as a rule, with a profound, an almost passionate curiosity; and they were prompt to speak well of her to men, except in trustworthy intimacy, because they did not enjoy being wrongfully thought jealous. Many of them kept somewhat aloof from her; but none of them ever nowadays showed “superiority” in her presence, or snubbed her: that had been tried and proved disastrous in rebound. Cora never failed to pay her score—and with a terrifying interest added, her native tendency being to take two eyes for an eye and the whole jaw for a tooth. They let her alone, though they asked and asked among themselves the never-monotonous question: “Why do men fall in love with girls like that?” a riddle which, solved, makes wives condescending to their husbands.

Most of the people at this dance had known one another as friends, or antagonists, or indifferent acquaintances, for years, and in such an assembly there are always two worlds, that of the women and that of the men. Each has its own vision, radically different from that of the other; but the greatest difference is that the men are unaware of the other world, only a few of them—usually queer ones like Ray Vilas—vaguely perceiving that there are two visions, while all the women understand both perfectly. The men splash about on the surface; the women keep their eyes open under water. Or, the life of the assembly is like a bright tapestry: the men take it as a picture and are not troubled to know how it is produced; but women are weavers. There was a Beauty of far-flung renown at Mrs. Villard’s tonight: Mary Kane, a creature so made and coloured that young men at sight of her became as water and older men were apt to wonder regretfully why all women could not have been made like Mary. She was a kindly soul, and never intentionally outshone her sisters; but the perfect sumptuousness of her had sometimes tried the amiability of Cora Madison, to whom such success without effort and without spark seemed unfair, as well as bovine. Miss Kane was a central figure at the dance, shining tranquilly in a new triumph: that day her engagement had been announced to Mr. George Wattling, a young man of no special attainments, but desirable in his possessions and suitable to his happiness. The pair radiated the pardonable, gay importance of newly engaged people, and Cora, who had never before bestowed any notice upon Mr. Wattling, now examined him with thoughtful attention.

Finding him at her elbow in a group about a punch bowl, between dances, she offered warm felicitations. “But I don’t suppose you care whether I care for you to be happy or not,” she added, with a little plaintive laugh;—“you’ve always hated me so!”

Mr. Wattling was startled: never before had he imagined that Cora Madison had given him a thought; but there was not only thought, there was feeling, in this speech. She seemed to be concealing with bravery an even deeper feeling than the one inadvertently expressed. “Why, what on earth makes you think that?” he exclaimed.

“Think it? I KNOW it!” She gave him a strange look, luminous yet mysterious, a curtain withdrawn only to show a shining mist with something undefined but dazzling beyond. “I’ve always known it!” And she turned away from him abruptly.

He sprang after her. “But you’re wrong. I’ve never–-“

“Oh, yes, you have.” They began to discuss it, and for better consideration of the theme it became necessary for Cora to “cut” the next dance, promised to another, and to give it to Mr. Wattling. They danced several times together, and Mr. Wattling’s expression was serious. The weavers of the tapestry smiled and whispered things the men would not have understood—nor believed.

Ray Vilas, seated alone in a recessed and softly lighted gallery, did not once lose sight of the flitting sorceress. With his elbows on the railing, he leaned out, his head swaying slowly and mechanically as she swept up and down the tumultuously moving room, his passionate eyes gaunt and brilliant with his hunger. And something very like a general thrill passed over the assembly when, a little later, it was seen that he was dancing with her. Laura, catching a glimpse of this couple, started and looked profoundly disturbed.

The extravagance of Vilas’s passion and the depths he sounded, in his absurd despair when discarded, had been matters of almost public gossip; he was accounted a somewhat scandalous and unbalanced but picturesque figure; and for the lady whose light hand had wrought such havoc upon him to be seen dancing with him was sufficiently startling to elicit the universal remark—evidently considered superlative—that it was “just like Cora Madison!” Cora usually perceived, with an admirably clear head, all that went on about her; and she was conscious of increasing the sensation, when after a few turns round the room, she allowed her partner to conduct her to a secluding grove of palms in the gallery. She sank into the chair he offered, and, fixing her eyes upon a small lamp of coloured glass which hung overhead, ostentatiously looked bored.

“At your feet, Cora,” he said, seating himself upon a stool, and leaning toward her. “Isn’t it appropriate that we should talk to music—we two? It shouldn’t be that quick step though—not dance-music—should it?”

“Don’t know ‘m sure,” murmured Cora.

“You were kind to dance with me,” he said huskily. “I dared to speak to you–-“

She did not change her attitude nor the direction of her glance. “I couldn’t cut you very well with the whole town looking on. I’m tired of being talked about. Besides, I don’t care much who I dance with—so he doesn’t step on me.”

“Cora,” he said, “it is the prelude to `L’Arlesienne’ that they should play for you and me. Yes, I think it should be that.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s just a rustic tragedy, the story of a boy in the south of France who lets love become his whole life, and then—it kills him.”

“Sounds very stupid,” she commented languidly.

“People do sometimes die of love, even nowadays,” he said, tremulously—“in the South.”

She let her eyes drift indifferently to him and perceived that he was trembling from head to foot; that his hands and knees shook piteously; that his lips quivered and twitched; and, at sight of this agitation, an expression of strong distaste came to her face.

“I see.” Her eyes returned to the lamp. “You’re from the South, and of course it’s going to kill you.”

“You didn’t speak the exact words you had in your mind.’”

“Oh, what words did I have `in my mind’?” she asked impatiently.

“What you really meant was: `If it does kill you, what of it?’”

She laughed, and sighed as for release.

“Cora,” he said huskily, “I understand you a little because you possess me. I’ve never—literally never—had another thought since the first time I saw you: nothing but you. I think of you—actually every moment. Drunk or sober, asleep or—awake, it’s nothing but you, you, YOU! It will never be different: I don’t know why I can’t get over it—I only know I can’t. You own me; you burn like a hot coal in my heart. You’re through with me, I know. You drained me dry. You’re like a child who eats so heartily of what he likes that he never touches it again. And I’m a dish you’re sick of. Oh, it’s all plain enough, I can tell you. I’m not exciting any more—no, just a nauseous slave!

“Do you want people to hear you?” she inquired angrily, for his voice had risen.

He tempered his tone. “Cora, when you liked me you went a pretty clipping gait with me,” he said, trembling even more than before. “But you’re infinitely more infatuated with this Toreador of a Corliss than you were with me; you’re lost in him; you’re slaving for him as I would for you. How far are you going with–-“

“Do you want me to walk away and leave you?” she asked, suddenly sitting up straight and looking at him with dilating eyes. “If you want a `scene’–-“

“It’s over,” he said, more calmly. “I know now how dangerous the man is. Of course you will tell him I said that.” He laughed quietly. “Well—between a dangerous chap and a desperate one, we may look for some lively times! Do you know, I believe I think about as continuously of him, lately, as I do of you. That’s why I put almost my last cent into his oil company, and got what may be almost my last dance with you!”

“I wouldn’t call it `almost’ your last dance with me!” she returned icily. “Not after what you’ve said. I had a foolish idea you could behave—well, at least decently.”

“Did Corliss tell you that I insulted him in his rooms at the hotel?”

“You!” She laughed, genuinely. “I see him letting you!”

“He did, however. By manner and in speech I purposely and deliberately insulted him. You’ll tell him every word of this, of course, and he’ll laugh at it, but I give myself the pleasure of telling you. I put the proposition of an `investment’ to him in a way nobody not a crook would have allowed to be smoothed over—and he allowed it to be smoothed over. He ate it! I felt he was a swindler when he was showing Richard Lindley his maps and papers, and now I’ve proved it to myself, and it’s worth the price.” Often, when they had danced, and often during this interview, his eyes lifted curiously to the white flaming crescent in her hair; now they fixed themselves upon it, and in a flash of divination he cried: “You wear it for me!”

She did not understand. “Finished raving?” she inquired.

“I gave Corliss a thousand dollars,” he said, slowly. “Considering the fact that it was my last, I flatter myself it was not unhandsomely done—though I may never need it. It has struck me that the sum was about what a man who had just cleaned up fifty thousand might regard as a sort of `extra’—`for lagniappe’—and that he might have thought it an appropriate amount to invest in a present some jewels perhaps—to place in the hair of a pretty friend!”

She sprang to her feet, furious, but he stood in front of her and was able to bar the way for a moment.

“Cora, I’ll have a last word with you if I have to hold you,” he said with great rapidity and in a voice which shook with the intense repression he was putting upon himself. “We do one thing in the South, where I came from. We protect our women–-“

“This looks like it! Keeping me when–-“

“I love you,” he said, his face whiter than she had ever seen it. “I love you! I’m your dog! You take care of yourself if you want to take care of anybody else! As sure as–-“

“My dance, Miss Madison.” A young gentleman on vacation from the navy had approached, and, with perfect unconsciousness of what he was interrupting, but with well-founded certainty that he was welcome to the lady, urged his claim in a confident voice. “I thought it would never come, you know; but it’s here at last and so am I.” He laughed propitiatingly.

Ray yielded now at once. She moved him aside with her gloved forearm as if he were merely an awkward stranger who unwittingly stood between her and the claiming partner. Carrying the gesture farther, she took the latter’s arm, and smilingly, and without a backward glance, passed onward and left the gallery. The lieutenant, who had met her once or twice before, was her partner for the succeeding dance as well, and, having noted the advantages of the place where he had discovered her, persuaded her to return there to sit through the second. Then without any fatiguing preamble, he proposed marriage. Cora did not accept, but effected a compromise, which, for the present, was to consist of an exchange of photographs (his to be in uniform) and letters.

She was having an evening to her heart. Ray’s attack on Corliss had no dimming effect; her thought of it being that she was “used to his raving”; it meant nothing; and since Ray had prophesied she would tell Corliss about it, she decided not to do so.

The naval young gentleman and Valentine Corliss were the greatest of all the lions among ladies that night; she had easily annexed the lieutenant, and Corliss was hers already; though, for a purpose, she had not yet been seen in company with him. He was visibly “making an impression.” His name, as he had said to Richard Lindley, was held in honour in the town; and there was a flavour of fancied romance in his absence since boyhood in unknown parts, and his return now with a `foreign air’ and a bow that almost took the breath of some of the younger recipients. He was, too, in his way, the handsomest man in the room; and the smiling, open frankness of his look, the ready cordiality of his manner, were found very winning. He caused plenty of flutter.

Cora waited till the evening was half over before she gave him any visible attention. Then, during a silence of the music, between two dances, she made him a negligent sign with her hand, the gesture of one indifferently beckoning a creature who is certain to come, and went on talking casually to the man who was with her. Corliss was the length of the room from her, chatting gayly with a large group of girls and women; but he immediately nodded to her, made his bow to individuals of the group, and crossed the vacant, glistening floor to her. Cora gave him no greeting whatever; she dismissed her former partner and carelessly turned away with Corliss to some chairs in a corner.

“Do you see that?” asked Vilas, leaning over the balcony railing with Richard Lindley. “Look! She’s showing the other girls—don’t you see? He’s the New Man; she let ‘em hope she wasn’t going in for him; a lot of them probably didn’t even know that she knew him. She sent him out on parade till they’re all excited about him; now she shows ‘em he’s entirely her property—and does it so matter-of-factly that it’s rubbed in twice as hard as if she seemed to take some pains about it. He doesn’t dance: she’ll sit out with him now, till they all read the tag she’s put on him. She says she hates being talked about. She lives on it!—so long as it’s envious. And did you see her with that chap from the navy? Neptune thinks he’s dallying with Venus perhaps, but he’ll get–-“

Lindley looked at him commiseratingly. “I think I never saw prettier decorations. Have you noticed, Ray? Must have used a thousand chrysanthemums.”

“Toreador!” whispered the other between his teeth, looking at Corliss; then, turning to his companion, he asked: “Has it occurred to you to get any information about Basilicata, or about the ancestral domain of the Moliterni, from our consul-general at Naples?”

Richard hesitated. “Well—yes. Yes, I did think of that. Yes, I thought of it.”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“No. That is, I haven’t yet. You see, Corliss explained to me that–-“

His friend interrupted him with a sour laugh. “Oh, certainly! He’s one of the greatest explainers ever welcomed to our city!”

Richard said mildly: “And then, Ray, once I’ve gone into a thing I—I don’t like to seem suspicious.”

“Poor old Dick!” returned Vilas compassionately. “You kind, easy, sincere men are so conscientiously untruthful with yourselves. You know in your heart that Cora would be furious with you if you seemed suspicious, and she’s been so nice to you since you put in your savings to please her, that you can’t bear to risk offending her. She’s twisted you around her little finger, and the unnamed fear that haunts you is that you won’t be allowed to stay there—even twisted!”

“Pretty decorations, Ray,” said Richard; but he grew very red.

“Do you know what you’ll do,” asked Ray, regarding him keenly, “if this Don Giovanni from Sunny It’ is shown up as a plain get-rich-quick swindler?”

“I haven’t considered–-“

“You would do precisely, said Ray, “nothing! Cora’d see to that. You’d sigh and go to work again, beginning at the beginning where you were years ago, and doing it all over. Admirable resignation, but not for me! I’m a stockholder in his company and in shape to `take steps’! I don’t know if I’d be patient enough to make them legal—perhaps I should. He may be safe on the legal side. I’ll know more about that when I find out if there is a Prince Moliterno in Naples who owns land in Basilicata.”

“You don’t doubt it?”

“I doubt everything! In this particular matter I’ll have less to doubt when I get an answer from the consul-general. I‘ve written, you see.

Lindley looked disturbed. “You have?”

Vilas read him at a glance. “You’re afraid to find out!” he cried. Then he set his hand on the other’s shoulder. “If there ever was a God’s fool, it’s you, Dick Lindley. Really, I wonder the world hasn’t kicked you around more than it has; you’d never kick back! You’re as easy as an old shoe. Cora makes you unhappy,” he went on, and with the very mention of her name, his voice shook with passion,—“but on my soul I don’t believe you know what jealousy means: you don’t even understand hate; you don’t eat your heart–-“

“Let’s go and eat something better,” suggested Richard, laughing. “There’s a continuous supper downstairs and I hear it’s very good.”

Ray smiled, rescued for a second from himself. “There isn’t anything better than your heart, you old window-pane, and I’m glad you don’t eat it. And if I ever mix it up with Don Giovanni T. Corliss—`T’ stands for Toreador—I do believe it’ll be partly on your–-” He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished, as his attention was caught by the abysmal attitude of a figure in another part of the gallery: Mr. Wade Trumble, alone in a corner, sitting upon the small of his small back, munching at an unlighted cigar and otherwise manifesting a biting gloom. Ray drew Lindley’s attention to this tableau of pain. “Here’s a three of us!” he said. He turned to look down into the rhythmic kaleidoscope of dancers. “And there goes the girl we all OUGHT to be morbid about.”

“Who is that?”

“Laura Madison. Why aren’t we? What a self-respecting creature she is, with that cool, sweet steadiness of hers—she’s like a mountain lake. She’s lovely and she plays like an angel, but so far as anybody’s ever thinking about her is concerned she might almost as well not exist. Yet she’s really beautiful tonight, if you can manage to think of her except as a sort of retinue for Cora.”

“She IS rather beautiful tonight. Laura’s always a very nice-looking girl,” said Richard, and with the advent of an idea, he added: “I think one reason she isn’t more conspicuous and thought about is that she is so quiet,” and, upon his companion’s greeting this inspiration with a burst of laughter, “Yes, that was a brilliant deduction,” he said; “but I do think she’s about the quietest person I ever knew. I’ve noticed there are times when she’ll scarcely speak at all for half an hour, or even more.”

“You’re not precisely noisy yourself,” said Ray. Have you danced with her this evening?”

“Why, no,” returned the other, in a tone which showed this omission to be a discovery; “not yet. I must, of course.”

“Yes, she’s really `rather’ beautiful. Also, she dances `rather’ better than any other girl in town. Go and perform your painful duty.”

“Perhaps I’d better,” said Richard thoughtfully, not perceiving the satire. “At any rate, I’ll ask her for the next.”

He found it unengaged. There came to Laura’s face an April change as he approached, and she saw he meant to ask her to dance. And, as they swam out into the maelstrom, he noticed it, and remarked that it WAS rather warm, to which she replied by a cheerful nod. Presently there came into Richard’s mind the thought that he was really an excellent dancer; but he did not recall that he had always formed the same pleasing estimate of himself when he danced with Laura, nor realize that other young men enjoyed similar self-help when dancing with her. And yet he repeated to her what Ray had said of her dancing, and when she laughed as in appreciation of a thing intended humorously, he laughed, too, but insisted that she did dance “very well indeed.” She laughed again at that, and they danced on, not talking. He had no sense of “guiding” her; there was no feeling of effort whatever; she seemed to move spontaneously with his wish, not to his touch; indeed, he was not sensible of touching her at all.

“Why, Laura,” he exclaimed suddenly, “you dance BEAUTIFULLY!”

She stumbled and almost fell; saved herself by clutching at his arm; he caught her; and the pair stopped where they were, in the middle of the floor. A flash of dazed incredulity from her dark eyes swept him; there was something in it of the child dodging an unexpected blow.

“Did I trip you?” he asked anxiously.

“No,” she laughed, quickly, and her cheeks grew even redder. “I tripped myself. Wasn’t that too bad—just when you were thinking that I danced well! Let’s sit down. May we?”

They went to some chairs against a wall. There, as they sat, Cora swung by them, dancing again with her lieutenant, and looking up trancedly into the gallant eyes of the triumphant and intoxicated young man. Visibly, she was a woman with a suitor’s embracing arm about her. Richard’s eyes followed them.

“Ah, don’t!” said Laura in a low voice.

He turned to her. “Don’t what?”

“I didn’t mean to speak out loud,” she said tremulously. “But I meant: don’t look so troubled. It doesn’t mean anything at all—her coquetting with that bird of passage. He’s going away in the morning.”

“I don’t think I was troubling about that.”

“Well, whatever it was”—she paused, and laughed with a plaintive timidity—“why, just don’t trouble about it!”

“Do I look very much troubled?” he asked seriously.

“Yes. And you don’t look very gay when you’re not!” She laughed with more assurance now. “I think you’re always the wistfulest looking man I ever saw.”

“Everybody laughs at me, I believe,” he said, with continued seriousness. “Even Ray Vilas thinks I’m an utter fool. Am I, do YOU think?”

He turned as he spoke and glanced inquiringly into her eyes. What he saw surprised and dismayed him.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t cry!” he whispered hurriedly.

She bent her head, turning her face from him.

“I’ve been very hopeful lately,” he said. “Cora has been so kind to me since I did what she wanted me to, that I–-” He gave a deep sigh. “But if you’re THAT sorry for me, my chances with her must be pretty desperate.”

She did not alter her attitude, but with her down-bent face still away from him, said huskily: “It isn’t you I’m sorry for. You mustn’t ever give up; you must keep on trying and trying. If you give up, I don’t know what will become of her!”

A moment later she rose suddenly to her feet. “Let’s finish our dance,” she said, giving him her hand. “I’m sure I won’t stumble again.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The two girls let themselves into the house noiselessly, and, turning out the hall-light, left for them by their mother, crept upstairs on tiptoe; and went through the upper hall directly to Laura’s room—Cora’s being nearer the sick-room. At their age it is proper that a gayety be used three times: in anticipation, and actually, and in after-rehearsal. The last was of course now in order: they went to Laura’s room to “talk it over.” There was no gas-fixture in this small chamber; but they found Laura’s oil-lamp burning brightly upon her writing-table

“How queer!” said Laura with some surprise, as she closed the door. “Mother never leaves the lamp lit for me; she’s always so afraid of lamps exploding.”

“Perhaps Miss Peirce came in here to read, and forgot to turn it out,” suggested Cora, seating herself on the edge of the bed and letting her silk wrap fall from her shoulders. “Oh, Laura, wasn’t he gorgeous… .”

She referred to the gallant defender of our seas, it appeared, and while Laura undressed and got into a wrapper, Cora recounted in detail the history of the impetuous sailor’s enthrallment;—a resume predicted three hours earlier by a gleeful whisper hissed across the maritime shoulder as the sisters swung near each other during a waltz: “PROPOSED!”

“I’ve always heard they’re horribly inconstant,” she said, regretfully. “But, oh, Laura, wasn’t he beautiful to look at! Do you think he’s more beautiful than Val? No—don’t tell me if you do. I don’t want to hear it! Val was so provoking: he didn’t seem to mind it at all. He’s nothing but a big brute sometimes: he wouldn’t even admit that he minded, when I asked him. I was idiot enough to ask; I couldn’t help it; he was so tantalizing” and exasperating—laughing at me. I never knew anybody like him; he’s so sure of himself and he can be so cold. Sometimes I wonder if he really cares about anything, deep down in his heart—anything except himself. He seems so selfish: there are times when he almost makes me hate him; but just when I get to thinking I do, I find I don’t—he’s so deliciously strong, and there’s such a BIG luxury in being understood: I always feel he KNOWS me clear to the bone, somehow! But, oh,” she sighed regretfully,” doesn’t a uniform become a man? They ought to all wear ‘em. It would look silly on such a little goat as that Wade Trumble, though: nothing could make him look like a whole man. Did you see him glaring at me? Beast! I was going to be so nice and kittenish and do all my prettiest tricks for him, to help Val with his oil company. Val thinks Wade would come in yet, if I’D only get him in the mood to have another talk with Val about it; but the spiteful little rat wouldn’t come near me. I believe that was one of the reasons Val laughed at me and pretended not to mind my getting proposed to. He MUST have minded; he couldn’t have helped minding it, really. That’s his way; he’s so MEAN—he won’t show things. He knows ME. I can’t keep anything from him; he reads ME like a signboard; and then about himself he keeps me guessing, and I can’t tell when I’ve guessed right. Ray Vilas behaved disgustingly, of course; he was horrid and awful. I might have expected it. I suppose Richard was wailing HIS tiresome sorrows on your poor shoulder–-“

“No,” said Laura. “He was very cheerful. He seemed glad you were having a good time.”

“He didn’t look particularly cheerful at me. I never saw so slow a man: I wonder when he’s going to find out about that pendant. Val would have seen it the instant I put it on. And, oh, Laura! isn’t George Wattling funny? He’s just SOFT! He’s good-looking though,” she continued pensively, adding, “I promised to motor out to the Country Club with him tomorrow for tea.”

“Oh, Cora,“protested Laura, “no! Please don’t!”

“I’ve promised; so I’ll have to, now.” Cora laughed. “It’ll do Mary Kane good. Oh, I’m not going to bother much with HIM—he makes me tired. I never saw anything so complacent as that girl when she came in tonight, as if her little Georgie was the greatest capture the world had ever seen… .”

She chattered on. Laura, passive, listened with a thoughtful expression, somewhat preoccupied. The talker yawned at last.

“It must be after three,” she said, listlessly, having gone over her evening so often that the colours were beginning to fade. She yawned again. “Laura,” she remarked absently, “I don’t see how you can sleep in this bed; it sags so.”

“I’ve never noticed it,” said her sister. “It’s a very comfortable old bed.”

Cora went to her to be unfastened, reverting to the lieutenant during the operation, and kissing the tire-woman warmly at its conclusion. “You’re always so sweet to me, Laura,” she said affectionately. “I don’t know how you manage it. You’re so good”—she laughed—“sometimes I wonder how you stand me. If I were you, I’m positive I couldn’t stand me at all!” Another kiss and a hearty embrace, and she picked up her wrap and skurried silently through the hall to her own room.

It was very late, but Laura wrote for almost an hour in her book (which was undisturbed) before she felt drowsy. Then she extinguished the lamp, put the book away and got into bed.

It was almost as if she had attempted to lie upon the empty air: the mattress sagged under her weight as if it had been a hammock; and something tore with a ripping sound. There was a crash, and a choked yell from a muffled voice somewhere, as the bed gave way. For an instant, Laura fought wildly in an entanglement of what she insufficiently perceived to be springs, slats and bedclothes with something alive squirming underneath. She cleared herself and sprang free, screaming, but even in her fright she remembered her father and clapped her hand over her mouth that she might keep from screaming again. She dove at the door, opened it, and fled through the hall to Cora’s room, still holding her hand over her mouth.

“Cora! Oh, Cora!” she panted, and flung herself upon her sister’s bed.

Cora was up instantly; and had lit the gas in a trice. “There’s a burglar!” Laura contrived to gasp. “In my room! Under the bed!”

“What! ”

“I fell on him! Something’s the matter with the bed. It broke. I fell on him!”

Cora stared at her wide-eyed. “Why, it can’t be. Think how long I was in there. Your bed broke, and you just thought there was some one there. You imagined it.”

“No, no, no!” wailed Laura. I HEARD him: he gave a kind of dreadful grunt.”

“Are you sure?”

“SURE? He wriggled—oh! I could FEEL him!”

Cora seized a box of matches again. “I’m going to find out.” “Oh, no, no!” protested Laura, cowering.”

“Yes, I am. If there’s a burglar in the house I’m going to find him!”

“We mustn’t wake papa.”

“No, nor mamma either. You stay here if you want to–-“

“Let’s call Hedrick,” suggested the pallid Laura; “or put our heads out of the window and scream for–-“

Cora laughed; she was not in the least frightened. “That wouldn’t wake papa, of course! If we had a telephone I’d send for the police; but we haven’t. I’m going to see if there’s any one there. A burglar’s a man, I guess, and I can’t imagine myself being afraid of any MAN!”

Laura clung to her, but Cora shook her off and went through the hall undaunted, Laura faltering behind her. Cora lighted matches with a perfectly steady hand; she hesitated on the threshold of Laura’s room no more than a moment, then lit the lamp.

Laura stifled a shriek at sight of the bed. “Look, look!” she gasped.

“There’s no one under it now, that’s certain,” said Cora, and boldly lifted a corner of it. “Why, it’s been cut all to pieces from underneath! You’re right; there was some one here. It’s practically dismembered. Don’t you remember my telling you how it sagged? And I was only sitting on the edge of it! The slats have all been moved out of place, and as for the mattress, it’s just a mess of springs and that stuffing stuff. He must have thought the silver was hidden there.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” moaned Laura. “He WRIGGLED–-ugh!”

Cora picked up the lamp. “Well, we’ve got to go over the house–-“

“No, no!”

“Hush! I’ll go alone then.”

“You CAN’T.”

“I will, though!”

The two girls had changed places in this emergency. In her fright Laura was dependent, clinging: actual contact with the intruder had unnerved her. It took all her will to accompany her sister upon the tour of inspection, and throughout she cowered behind the dauntless Cora. It was the first time in their lives that their positions had been reversed. From the days of Cora’s babyhood, Laura had formed the habit of petting and shielding the little sister, but now that the possibility became imminent of confronting an unknown and dangerous man, Laura was so shaken that, overcome by fear, she let Cora go first. Cora had not boasted in vain of her bravery; in truth, she was not afraid of any man.

They found the fastenings of the doors secure and likewise those of all the windows, until they came to the kitchen. There, the cook had left a window up, which plausibly explained the marauder’s mode of ingress. Then, at Cora’s insistence, and to Laura’s shivering horror, they searched both cellar and garret, and concluded that he had escaped by the same means. Except Laura’s bed, nothing in the house had been disturbed; but this eccentricity on the part of a burglar, though it indeed struck the two girls as peculiar, was not so pointedly mysterious to them as it might have been had they possessed a somewhat greater familiarity with the habits of criminals whose crimes are professional.

They finally retired, Laura sleeping with her sister, and Cora had begun to talk of the lieutenant again, instead of the burglar, before Laura fell asleep.

In spite of the short hours for sleep, both girls appeared at the breakfast-table before the meal was over, and were naturally pleased with the staccato of excitement evoked by their news. Mrs. Madison and Miss Peirce were warm in admiration of their bravery, but in the same breath condemned it as foolhardy.

“I never knew such wonderful girls!” exclaimed the mother, almost tearfully. “You crazy little lions! To think of your not even waking Hedrick! And you didn’t have even a poker and were in your bare feet—and went down in the CELLAR–-“

“It was all Cora,” protested Laura. “I’m a hopeless, disgusting coward. I never knew what a coward I was before. Cora carried the lamp and went ahead like a drum-major. I just trailed along behind her, ready to shriek and run—or faint!”

“Could you tell anything about him when you fell on him?” inquired Miss Peirce. “What was his voice like when he shouted?”

“Choked. It was a horrible, jolted kind of cry. It hardly sounded human.”

“Could you tell anything about whether he was a large man, or small, or–-“

“Only that he seemed very active. He seemed to be kicking. He WRIGGLED–-ugh!”

They evolved a plausible theory of the burglar’s motives and line of reasoning. “You see,” said Miss Peirce, much stirred, in summing up the adventure, “he either jimmies the window, or finds it open already, and Sarah’s mistaken and she DID leave it open! Then he searched the downstairs first, and didn’t find anything. Then he came upstairs, and was afraid to come into any of the rooms where we were. He could tell which rooms had people in them by hearing us breathing through the keyholes. He finds two rooms empty, and probably he made a thorough search of Miss Cora’s first. But he isn’t after silver toilet articles and pretty little things like that. He wants really big booty or none, so he decides that an out-of-the-way, unimportant room like Miss Laura’s is where the family would be most apt to hide valuables, jewellery and silver, and he knows that mattresses have often been selected as hiding-places; so he gets under the bed and goes to work. Then Miss Cora and Miss Laura come in so quietly—not wanting to wake anybody—that he doesn’t hear them, and he gets caught there. That’s the way it must have been.”

“But why,” Mrs. Madison inquired of this authority, “why do you suppose he lit the lamp?”

“To see by,” answered the ready Miss Peirce. It was accepted as final.

Further discussion was temporarily interrupted by the discovery that Hedrick had fallen asleep in his chair.

“Don’t bother him, Cora,” said his mother. “He’s finished eating—let him sleep a few minutes, if he wants to, before he goes to school. He’s not at all well. He played too hard, yesterday afternoon, and hurt his knee, he said. He came down limping this morning and looking very badly. He oughtn’t to run and climb about the stable so much after school. See how utterly exhausted he looks!—Not even this excitement can keep him awake.”

“I think we must be careful not to let Mr. Madison suspect anything about the burglar,” said Miss Peirce. “It would be bad for him.”

Laura began: “But we ought to notify the police–-“

“Police!” Hedrick woke so abruptly, and uttered the word with such passionate and vehement protest, that everybody started. “I suppose you want to KILL your father, Laura Madison!”

“How?”

“Do you suppose he wouldn’t know something had happened with a squad of big, heavy policemen tromping all over the house? The first thing they’d do would be to search the whole place–-“

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Madison quickly. “It wouldn’t do at all.”

“I should think not! I’m glad,” continued Hedrick, truthfully, “THAT idea’s out of your head! I believe Laura imagined the whole thing anyway.”

“Have you looked at her mattress,” inquired Cora, “darling little boy?”

He gave her a concentrated look, and rose to leave. “Nothin’ on earth but imagina–-” He stopped with a grunt as he forgetfully put his weight on his left leg. He rubbed his knee, swallowed painfully, and, leaving the word unfinished, limped haughtily from the room.

He left the house, gloomily swinging his books from a spare length of strap, and walking with care to ease his strains and bruises as much as possible. He was very low in his mind, that boy. His fortunes had reached the ebb-tide, but he had no hope of a rise. He had no hope of anything. It was not even a consolation that, through his talent for surprise in waylayings, it had lately been thought necessary, by the Villard family, to have Egerton accompanied to and from school by a man-servant. Nor was Hedrick more deeply depressed by the certainty that both public and domestic scandal must soon arise from the inevitable revelation of his discontinuing his attendance at school without mentioning this important change of career at home. He had been truant a full fortnight, under brighter circumstances a matter for a lawless pride—now he had neither fear nor vainglory. There was no room in him for anything but dejection.

He walked two blocks in the direction of his school; turned a corner; walked half a block; turned north in the alley which ran parallel to Corliss Street, and a few moments later had cautiously climbed into an old, disused refuse box which stood against the rear wall of the empty stable at his own home. He pried up some loose boards at the bottom of the box, and entered a tunnel which had often and often served in happier days—when he had friends—for the escape of Union officers from Libby Prison and Andersonville. Emerging, wholly soiled, into a box-stall, he crossed the musty carriage house and ascended some rickety steps to a long vacant coachman’s-room, next to the hayloft. He closed the door, bolted it, and sank moodily upon a broken, old horsehair sofa.

This apartment was his studio. In addition to the sofa, it contained an ex-bureau, three chair-like shapes, a once marble-topped table, now covered with a sheet of zinc, two empty bird cages, and a condemned whatnot. The walls were rather over-decorated in coloured chalks, the man-headed-snake motive predominating; they were also loopholed for firing into the hayloft. Upon the table lay a battered spy-glass, minus lenses, and, nearby, two boxes, one containing dried corn-silk, the other hayseed, convenient for the making of amateur cigarettes; the smoker’s outfit being completed by a neat pile of rectangular clippings from newspapers. On the shelves of the whatnot were some fragments of a dead pie, the relics of a “Fifteen-Puzzle,” a pink Easter-egg, four seashells, a tambourine with part of a girl’s face still visible in aged colours, about two thirds of a hot-water bag, a tintype of Hedrick, and a number of books: several by Henty, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” “100 Practical Jokes, Easy to Perform,” “The Jungle Book,” “My Lady Rotha,” a “Family Atlas,” “Three Weeks,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “A Boy’s Life in Camp,” and “The Mystery of the Count’s Bedroom.”

The gloomy eye of Hedrick wandered to “The Mystery of the Count’s Bedroom,” and remained fixed upon it moodily and contemptuously. His own mystery made that one seem tame and easy: Laura’s bedroom laid it all over the Count’s, in his conviction; and with a soul too weary of pain to shudder, he reviewed the bafflements and final catastrophe of the preceding night.

He had not essayed the attempt upon the mattress until assured that the house was wrapped in slumber. Then, with hope in his heart, he had stolen to Laura’s room, lit the lamp, feeling safe from intrusion, and set to work. His implement at first was a long hatpin of Cora’s. Lying on his back beneath the bed, and, moving the slats as it became necessary, he sounded every cubic inch of the mysterious mattress without encountering any obstruction which could reasonably be supposed to be the ledger. This was not more puzzling than it was infuriating, since by all processes of induction, deduction, and pure logic, the thing was necessarily there. It was nowhere else. Therefore it was there. It HAD to be there! With the great blade of his Boy Scout’s knife he began to disembowel the mattress

For a time he had worked furiously and effectively, but the position was awkward, the search laborious, and he was obliged to rest frequently. Besides, he had waited to a later hour than he knew, for his mother to go to bed, and during one of his rests he incautiously permitted his eyes to close. When he woke, his sisters were in the room, and he thought it advisable to remain where he was, though he little realized how he had weakened his shelter. When Cora left the room, he heard Laura open the window, sigh, and presently a tiny clinking and a click set him a-tingle from head to foot: she was opening the padlocked book. The scratching sound of a pen followed. And yet she had not come near the bed. The mattress, then, was a living lie.

With infinite caution he had moved so that he could see her, arriving at a coign of vantage just as she closed the book. She locked it, wrapped it in an oilskin cover which lay beside it on the table, hung the key-chain round her neck, rose, yawned, and, to his violent chagrin, put out the light. He heard her moving but could not tell where, except that it was not in his part of the room. Then a faint shuffling warned him that she was approaching the bed, and he withdrew his head to avoid being stepped upon. The next moment the world seemed to cave in upon him.

Laura’s flight had given him opportunity to escape to his own room unobserved; there to examine, bathe and bind his wounds, and to rectify his first hasty impression that he had been fatally mangled.

Hedrick glared at “The Mystery of the Count’s Bedroom.”

By and by he got up, brought the book to the sofa and began to read it over.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The influence of a familiar and sequestered place is not only soothing; the bruised mind may often find it restorative. Thus Hedrick, in his studio, surrounded by his own loved bric-a-brac, began to feel once more the stir of impulse. Two hours’ reading inspired him. What a French reporter (in the Count’s bedroom) could do, an American youth in full possession of his powers—except for a strained knee and other injuries—could do. Yes, and would!

He evolved a new chain of reasoning. The ledger had been seen in Laura’s room; it had been heard in her room; it appeared to be kept in her room. But it was in no single part of the room. All the parts make a whole. Therefore, the book was not in the room.

On the other hand, Laura had not left the room when she took the book from its hiding-place. This was confusing; therefore he determined to concentrate logic solely upon what she had done with the ledger when she finished writing in it. It was dangerous to assume that she had restored it to the place whence she obtained it, because he had already proved that place to be both in the room and out of the room. No; the question he must keep in was: What did she do with it?

Laura had not left the room. But the book had left the room.

Arrived at this inevitable deduction, he sprang to his feet in a state of repressed excitement and began to pace the floor—like a hound on the trail. Laura had not left the room, but the book had left the room: he must keep his mind upon this point. He uttered a loud exclamation and struck the zinc table-top a smart blow with his clenched fist.

Laura had thrown the book out of the window!

In the exaltation of this triumph, he forgot that it was not yet the hour for a scholar’s reappearance, and went forth in haste to search the ground beneath the window—a disappointing quest, for nowhere in the yard was there anything but withered grass, and the rubbish of other frost-bitten vegetation. His mother, however, discovered something else, and, opening the kitchen window, she asked, with surprise:

“Why, Hedrick, what on earth are you doing here?”

“Me?” inquired Hedrick.

“What are you doing here?”

“Here?” Evidently she puzzled him.

She became emphatic. “I want to know what you are doing.”

“Just standing here,” he explained in a meek, grieved way.

“But why aren’t you at school?”

This recalled what he had forgotten, and he realized the insecurity of his position. “Oh, yes,” he said—“school. Did you ask me–-“

“Didn’t you go to school?”

He began to speak rapidly. “Didn’t I go to SCHOOL? Well, where else could I go? Just because I’m here now doesn’t mean I didn’t GO, does it? Because a person is in China right now wouldn’t have to mean he’d never been in South America, would it?”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“Well, I was going along, and you know I didn’t feel very well and–-” He paused, with the advent of a happier idea, then continued briskly: “But that didn’t stop me, because I thought I ought to go if I dropped, so I went ahead, but the teacher was sick and they couldn’t get a substitute. She must have been pretty sick, she looked so pale–-“

“They dismissed the class?”

“And I don’t have to go tomorrow either.”

“I see,” said his mother. “But if you feel ill, Hedrick, hadn’t you better come in and lie down?”

“I think it’s kind of passing off. The fresh air seems to be doing me good.”

“Be careful of your sore knee, dear.” She closed the window, and he was left to continue his operations in safety.

Laura had thrown the ledger out of the window; that was proved absolutely. Obviously, she had come down before daylight and retrieved it. Or, she had not. Proceeding on the assumption that she had not, he lifted his eyes and searched the air. Was it possible that the book, though thrown from the window, had never reached the ground? The branches of an old and stalwart maple, now almost divested of leaves, extended in rough symmetry above him, and one big limb, reaching out toward the house, came close to Laura’s windows. Triumph shown again from the shrewd countenance of the sleuth: Laura must have slid the ledger along a wire into a hollow branch. However, no wire was to be seen—and the shrewd countenance of the sleuth fell. But perhaps she had constructed a device of silk threads, invisible from below, which carried the book into the tree. Action!

He climbed carefully but with many twinges, finally pausing in a parlous situation not far from the mysterious window which Laura had opened the night before. A comprehensive survey of the tree revealed only the very patent fact that none of the branches was of sufficient diameter to conceal the ledger. No silk threads came from the window. He looked and looked and looked at that window; then his eye fell a little, halted less than three feet below the window-ledge, and the search was ended.

The kitchen window which his mother had opened was directly beneath Laura’s, and was a very long, narrow window, in the style of the house, and there was a protecting stone ledge above it. Upon this ledge lay the book, wrapped in its oilskin covering and secured from falling by a piece of broken iron hooping, stuck in the mortar of the bricks. It could be seen from nowhere save an upper window of the house next door, or from the tree itself, and in either case only when the leaves had fallen.

Laura had felt very safe. No one had ever seen the book except that night, early in August, when, for a better circulation of air, she had left her door open as she wrote, and Hedrick had come upon her. He had not spoken of it again; she perceived that he had forgotten it; and she herself forgot that the memory of a boy is never to be depended on; its forgettings are too seldom permanent in the case of things that ought to stay forgotten.

To get the book one had only to lean from the window.

Hedrick seemed so ill during lunch that his mother spoke of asking Doctor Sloane to look at him, if he did not improve before evening. Hedrick said meekly that perhaps that would be best—if he did not improve. After a futile attempt to eat, he courteously excused himself from the table—a ceremony which made even Cora fear that his case might be serious—and, going feebly to the library, stretched himself upon the sofa. His mother put a rug over him; Hedrick, thanking her touchingly, closed his eyes; and she went away, leaving him to slumber.

After a time, Laura came into the room on an errand, walking noiselessly, and, noticing that his eyes were open, apologized for waking him.

“Never mind,” he returned, in the tone of an invalid. “I didn’t sleep sound. I think there’s something the matter inside my head: I have such terrible dreams. I guess maybe it’s better for me to keep awake. I’m kind of afraid to go to sleep. Would you mind staying here with me a little while?”

“Certainly I’ll stay,” she said, and, observing that his cheeks were flushed, and his eyes unusually bright, she laid a cool hand on his forehead. “You haven’t any fever, dear; that’s good. You’ll be all right tomorrow. Would you like me to read to you?”

“I believe,” he answered, plaintively, “reading might kind of disturb my mind: my brain feels so sort of restless and queer. I’d rather play some kind of game.”

“Cards?”

“No, not cards exactly. Something’ I can do lying down. Oh, I know! You remember the one where we drew pictures and the others had to guess what they were? Well, I’ve invented a game like that. You sit down at the desk over there and take some sheets of paper. I’ll tell you the rest.”

She obeyed. “What next?”

“Now, I’ll describe some people and where they live and not tell who they are, and you see if you can guess their names and addresses.”

“Addresses, too?”

“Yes, because I’m going to describe the way their houses look. Write each name on a separate sheet of paper, and the number of their house below it if you know it, and if you don’t know it, just the street. If it’s a woman: put `Miss’ or `Mrs.’ before their name and if it’s a man write `Esquire’ after it.”

“Is all that necessary for the game?”

“It’s the way I invented it and I think you might–-“

“Oh, all right,” she acquiesced, good-naturedly. “It shall be according to your rules.”

“Then afterward, you give me the sheets of paper with the names and addresses written on ‘em, and we—we–-” He hesitated.

“Yes. What do we do then?”

“I’ll tell you when we come to it.” But when that stage of his invention was reached, and Laura had placed the inscribed sheets in his hand, his interest had waned, it appeared. Also, his condition had improved.

“Let’s quit. I thought this game would be more exciting,” he said, sitting up. “I guess,” he added with too much modesty, “I’m not very good at inventing games. I b’lieve I’ll go out to the barn; I think the fresh air–-“

“Do you feel well enough to go out?” she asked. “You do seem to be all right, though.”

“Yes, I’m a lot better, I think.” He limped to the door.” The fresh air will be the best thing for me.”

She did not notice that he carelessly retained her contributions to the game, and he reached his studio with them in his hand. Hedrick had entered the ‘teens and he was a reader: things in his head might have dismayed a Borgia.

No remotest glimpse entered that head of the enormity of what he did. To put an end to his punishing of Cora, and, to render him powerless against that habitual and natural enemy, Laura had revealed a horrible incident in his career—it had become a public scandal; he was the sport of fools; and it might be months before the thing was lived down. Now he had the means, as he believed, to even the score with both sisters at a stroke. To him it was turning a tremendous and properly scathing joke upon them. He did not hesitate.

That evening, as Richard Lindley sat at dinner with his mother, Joe Varden temporarily abandoned his attendance at the table to answer the front doorbell. Upon his return, he remarked:

“Messenger-boy mus’ been in big hurry. Wouldn’ wait till I git to door.”

“What was it?” asked Richard.

“Boy with package. Least, I reckon it were a boy. Call’ back from the front walk, say he couldn’ wait. Say he lef’ package in vestibule.”

“What sort of a package?”

“Middle-size kind o’ big package.”

“Why don’t you see what it is, Richard?” Mrs. Lindley asked of her son. “Bring it to the table, Joe.”

When it was brought, Richard looked at the superscription with surprise. The wrapper was of heavy brown paper, and upon it a sheet of white notepaper had been pasted, with the address:

“Richard Lindley, Esq.,

1218 Corliss Street.”

“It’s from Laura Madison,” he said, staring at this writing. “What in the world would Laura be sending me?”

“You might possibly learn by opening it,” suggested his mother. “I’ve seen men puzzle over the outside of things quite as often as women. Laura Madison is a nice girl.” She never volunteered similar praise of Laura Madison’s sister. Mrs. Lindley had submitted to her son’s plans concerning Cora, lately confided; but her submission lacked resignation.

“It’s a book,” said Richard, even more puzzled, as he took the ledger from its wrappings. “Two little torn places at the edge of the covers. Looks as if it had once had clasps–-“

“Perhaps it’s the Madison family album,” Mrs. Lindley suggested. “Pictures of Cora since infancy. I imagine she’s had plenty taken.”

“No.” He opened the book and glanced at the pages covered in Laura’s clear, readable hand. “No, it’s about half full of writing. Laura must have turned literary.” He read a line or two, frowning mildly. “My soul! I believe it’s a novel! She must think I’m a critic—to want me to read it.” Smiling at the idea, he closed the ledger. “I’ll take it upstairs to my hang-out after dinner, and see if Laura’s literary manner has my august approval. Who in the world would ever have thought she’d decide to set up for a writer?”

“I imagine she might have something to write worth reading,” said his mother. “I’ve always thought she was an interesting-looking girl.”

“Yes, she is. She dances well, too.”

“Of course,” continued Mrs. Lindley, thoughtfully, “she seldom SAYS anything interesting, but that may be because she so seldom has a chance to say anything at all.”

Richard refused to perceive this allusion. “Curious that Laura should have sent it to me,” he said. “She’s never seemed interested in my opinion about anything. I don’t recall her ever speaking to me on any subject whatever—except one.”

He returned his attention to his plate, but his mother did not appear to agree with him that the topic was exhausted.

“`Except one’?” she repeated, after waiting for some time.

“Yes,” he replied, in his habitual preoccupied and casual tone. “Or perhaps two. Not more than two, I should say—and in a way you’d call that only one, of course. Bread, Joe.”

“What two, Richard?”

“Cora,” he said, with gentle simplicity, “and me.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mrs. Lindley had arranged for her son a small apartment on the second floor, and it was in his own library and smoking-room that Richard, comfortable in a leather-chair by a reading-lamp, after dinner, opened Laura’s ledger.

The first page displayed no more than a date now eighteen months past, and the line:

“Love came to me to-day.”

The next page was dated the next day, and, beneath, he read:

“That was all I COULD write, yesterday. I think I was too excited to write. Something seemed to be singing in my breast. I couldn’t think in sentences—not even in words. How queer it is that I had decided to keep a diary, and bound this book for it, and now the first thing I have written in it was THAT! It will not be a diary. It shall be YOUR book. I shall keep it sacred to You and write to You in it. How strange it will be if the day ever comes when I shall show it to You! If it should, you would not laugh at it, for of course the day couldn’t come unless you understood. I cannot think it will ever come—that day! But maybe–- No, I mustn’t let myself hope too much that it will, because if I got to hoping too much, and you didn’t like me, it would hurt too much. People who expect nothing are never disappointed—I must keep that in mind. Yet EVERY girl has a RIGHT to hope for her own man to come for her some time, hasn’t she? It’s not easy to discipline the wanting to hope—since YESTERDAY!

“I think I must always have thought a great deal about you without knowing it. We really know so little what we think: our minds are going on all the time and we hardly notice them. It is like a queer sort of factory—the owner only looks in once in a while and most of the time hasn’t any idea what sort of goods his spindles are turning out.

“I saw You yesterday! It seems to me the strangest thing in the world. I’ve seen you by chance, probably two or three times a month nearly all my life, though you so seldom come here to call. And this time wasn’t different from dozens of other times—you were just standing on the corner by the Richfield, waiting for a car. The only possible difference is that you had been out of town for several months—Cora said so this morning—and how ridiculous it seems now, didn’t even know it! I hadn’t noticed it—not with the top part of my mind, but perhaps the deep part that does the real thinking had noticed it and had mourned your absence and was so glad to see you again that it made the top part suddenly see the wonderful truth!”

Lindley set down the ledger to relight his cigar. It struck him that Laura had been writing “very odd Stuff,” but interesting; and certainly it was not a story. Vaguely he recalled Marie Bashkirtseff: hadn’t she done something like this? He resumed the reading:

“You turned and spoke to me in that lovely, cordial, absent-minded way of yours—though I’d never thought (with the top part) what a lovely way it was; and for a moment I only noticed how nice you looked in a light gray suit, because I’d only seen you in black for so long, while you’d been in mourning for your brother.”

Richard, disturbed by an incredible idea, read these last words over and then dismissed the notion as nonsense.

“… While you’d been in mourning for your brother—and it struck me that light gray was becoming to you. Then such a queer thing happened: I felt the great kindness of your eyes. I thought they were full of—the only word that seems to express it at all is CHARITY—and they had a sweet, faraway look, too, and I’ve ALWAYS thought that a look of wistful kindness was the loveliest look in the world—and you had it, and I saw it and then suddenly, as you held your hat in your hand, the sunshine on your hair seemed brighter than any sunshine I had ever seen—and I began to tremble all over. I didn’t understand what was the matter with me or what had made me afraid with you not of you—all at once, but I was so hopelessly rattled that instead of waiting for the car, as I’d just told you I meant to, I said I’d decided to walk, and got away—without any breath left to breathe with! I COULDN’T have gotten on the car with you– and I couldn’t have spoken another word.

“And as I walked home, trembling all the way, I saw that strange, dazzling sunshine on your hair, and the wistful, kind look in your eyes—you seemed not to have taken the car but to have come with me—and I was uplifted and exalted oh, so strangely—oh, how the world was changing for me! And when I got near home, I began to walk faster, and on the front path I broke into a run and rushed in the house to the piano—and it was as if my fingers were thirsty for the keys! Then I saw that I was playing to you and knew that I loved you.

“I love you!

“How different everything is now from everything before. Music means what it never did: Life has leaped into blossom for me. Everywhere there is colour and radiance that I had never seen—the air is full of perfume. Dear, the sunshine that fell upon your head has spread over the world!

“I understand, as I never understood, that the world—so dazzling to me now—was made for love and is meaningless without it. The years until yesterday are gray—no, not gray, because that was the colour You were wearing—not gray, because that is a beautiful colour. The empty years until yesterday had no colour at all. Yes, the world has meaning only through loving, and without meaning there is no real life. We live only by loving, and now that this gift of life has come to me I love ALL the world. I feel that I must be so kind, kind, KIND to EVERYBODY! Such an odd thing struck me as my greatest wish. When I was little, I remember grandmother telling me how, when she was a child in pioneer days, the women made the men’s clothes—homespun—and how a handsome young Circuit Rider, who was a bachelor, seemed to her the most beautifully dressed man she had ever seen. The women of the different churches made his clothes, as they did their husbands’ and brothers.’ you see—only better! It came into my head that that would be the divinest happiness that I could know—to sew for you! If you and I lived in those old, old times—you LOOK as if you belonged to them, you know, dear—and You were the young minister riding into the settlement on a big bay horse—and all the girls at the window, of course!—and I sewing away at the homespun for you!—I think all the angels of heaven would be choiring in my heart—and what thick, warm clothes I’d make you for winter! Perhaps in heaven they’ll let some of the women sew for the men they love—I wonder!

“I hear Cora’s voice from downstairs as I write. She’s often so angry with Ray, poor girl. It does not seem to me that she and Ray really belong to each other, though they SAY so often that they do.”

Richard having read thus far with a growing, vague uneasiness, looked up, frowning. He hoped Laura had no Marie Bashkirtseff idea of publishing this manuscript. It was too intimate, he thought, even if the names in it were to be disguised.

… “Though they SAY so often that they do. I think Ray is in love with HER, but it can’t be like THIS. What he feels must be something wholly different—there is violence and wildness in it. And they are bitter with each other so often - always `getting even’ for something. He does care—he is frantically “IN love” with her, undoubtedly, but so insanely jealous. I suppose all jealousy is insane. But love is the only sanity. How can what is insane be part of it? I could not be jealous of You. I owe life to you—I have never lived till now.”

The next writing was two days later:

… . “To-day as I passed your house with Cora, I kept looking at the big front door at which you go in and out so often—YOUR door! I never knew that just a door could look so beautiful! And unconsciously I kept my eyes on it, as we walked on, turning my head and looking and looking back at it, till Cora suddenly burst out laughing, and said: `Well, LAURA!’ And I came to myself—and found her looking at me. It was like getting back after a journey, and for a second I was a little dazed, and Cora kept on laughing at me, and I felt myself getting red. I made some silly excuse about thinking your house had been repainted—and she laughed louder than ever. I was afraid then that she understood—I wonder if she could have? I hope not, though I love her so much I don’t know why I would rather she didn’t know, unless it is just my FEELING about it. It is a GUARDIAN feeling—that I must keep for myself, the music of these angels singing in my heart—singing of You. I hope she did not understand—and I so fear she did. Why should I be so AFRAID?” …

… . “Two days since I have talked to You in your book after Cora caught me staring at your door and laughed at me—and ten minutes ago I was sitting beside the ACTUAL You on the porch! I am trembling yet. It was the first time you’d come for months and months; and yet you had the air of thinking it rather a pleasant thing to do as you came up the steps! And a dizzy feeling came over me, because I wondered if it was seeing me on the street THAT day that put it into your head to come. It seemed too much happiness—and risking too much—to let myself BELIEVE it, but I couldn’t help just wondering. I began to tremble as I saw you coming up our side of the street in the moonlight—and when you turned in here I was all panic—I nearly ran into the house. I don’t know how I found voice to greet you. I didn’t seem to have any breath left at all. I was so relieved when Cora took a chair between us and began to talk to you, because I’m sure I couldn’t have. She and poor Ray had been having one of their quarrels and she was punishing him. Poor boy, he seemed so miserable—though he tried to talk to me—about politics, I think, though I’m not sure, because I couldn’t listen much better than either of us could talk. I could only hear Your voice—such a rich, quiet voice, and it has a sound like the look you have—friendly and faraway and wistful. I have thought and thought about what it is that makes you look wistful. You have less to wish for than anybody else in the world because you have Yourself. So why are you wistful? I think it’s just because you ARE!

“I heard Cora asking you why you hadn’t come to see us for so long, and then she said: `Is it because you dislike me? You look at me, sometimes, as if you dislike me!’ And I wished she hadn’t said it. I had a feeling you wouldn’t like that `personal’ way of talking that she enjoys—and that—oh, it didn’t seem to be in keeping with the dignity of You! And I love Cora so much I wanted her to be finer—with You. I wanted her to understand you better than to play those little charming tricks at you. You are so good, so HIGH, that if she could make a real friend of you I think it would be the best thing for her that could happen. She’s never had a man-FRIEND. Perhaps she WAS trying to make one of you and hasn’t any other way to go about it. She can be so REALLY sweet, I wanted you to see that side of her.

“Afterwhile, when Ray couldn’t bear it any longer to talk to me, and in his desperation brazenly took Cora to the other end of the porch almost by force, and I was left, in a way, alone with you what did you think of me? I was tongue-tied! Oh, oh, oh! You were quiet—but I_ was DUMB! My heart wasn’t dumb—it hammered! All the time I kept saying to myself such a jumble of things. And into the jumble would come such a rapture that You were there—it was like a paean of happiness—a chanting of the glory of having You near me—I WAS mixed up! I could PLAY all those confused things, but writing them doesn’t tell it. Writing them would only be like this: `He’s here, he’s HERE! Speak, you little fool! He’s here, he’s here! He’s sitting beside you! SPEAK, idiot, or he’ll never come back! He’s here, he’s beside you you could put out your hand and touch him! Are you dead, that you can’t speak? He’s here, he’s here, he’s HERE!’

“Ah, some day I shall be able to talk to you—but not till I get more used to this inner song. It seems to WILL that nothing else shall come from my lips till IT does!

“In spite of my silence—my outward woodenness—you said, as you went away, that you would come again! You said `soon’! I could only nod but Cora called from the other end of the porch and asked: `HOW soon?’ Oh, I bless her for it, because you said, `Day after tomorrow.’ Day after tomorrow! Day after tomorrow! DAY AFTER TOMORROW!

… . “Twenty-one hours since I wrote—no, SANG—`Day after tomorrow!’ And now it is `Tomorrow!’ Oh, the slow, golden day that this has been! I could not stay in the house—I walked—no, I WINGED! I was in the open country before I knew it—with You! For You are in everything. I never knew the sky was blue, before. Until now I just thought it was the sky. The whitest clouds I ever saw sailed over that blue, and I stood upon the prow of each in turn, then leaped in and swam to the next and sailed with IT! Oh, the beautiful sky, and kind, green woods and blessed, long, white, dusty country road! Never in my life shall I forget that walk—this day in the open with my love—You! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! TOMORROW!”

The next writing in Laura’s book was dated more than two months later:

… . “I have decided to write again in this book. I have thought it all out carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that it can do no harm and may help me to be steady and sensible. It is the thought, not its expression, that is guilty, but I do not believe that my thoughts are guilty: I believe that they are good. I know that I wish only good. I have read that when people suffer very much the best thing is for them to cry. And so I’ll let myself WRITE out my feelings—and perhaps get rid of some of the silly self-pity I’m foolish enough to feel, instead of going about choked up with it. How queer it is that even when we keep our thoughts respectable we can’t help having absurd FEELINGS like self-pity, even though we know how rotten stupid they are! Yes, I’ll let it all out here, and then, some day, when I’ve cured myself all whole again, I’ll burn this poor, silly old book. And if I’m not cured before the wedding, I’ll burn it then, anyhow.

“How funny little girls are! From the time they’re little bits of things they talk about marriage—whom they are going to marry, what sort of person it will be. I think Cora and I began when she was about five and I not seven. And as girls grow up, I don’t believe there was ever one who genuinely expected to be an old maid. The most unattractive young girls discuss and plan and expect marriage just as much as the prettier and gayer ones. The only way we can find out that men don’t want to marry us is by their not asking us. We don’t see ourselves very well, and I honestly believe we all think—way deep down—that we’re pretty attractive. At least, every girl has the idea, sometimes, that if men only saw the whole truth they’d think her as nice as any other girl, and really nicer than most others. But I don’t believe I have any hallucinations of that sort about myself left. I can’t imagine—now—ANY man seeing anything in me that would make him care for me. I can’t see anything about me to care for, myself. Sometimes I think maybe I could make a man get excited about me if I could take a startlingly personal tone with him from the beginning, making him wonder all sorts of you-and-I perhapses—but I couldn’t do it very well probably—oh, I couldn’t make myself do it if I could do it well! And I shouldn’t think it would have much effect except upon very inexperienced men—yet it does! Now, I wonder if this is a streak of sourness coming out; I don’t feel bitter—I’m just thinking honestly, I’m sure.

“Well, here I am facing it: all through my later childhood, and all through my girlhood, I believe what really occupied me most—with the thought of it underlying all things else, though often buried very deep—was the prospect of my marriage. I regarded it as a certainty: I would grow up, fall in love, get engaged, and be married—of course! So I grew up and fell in love with You—but it stops there, and I must learn how to be an Old Maid and not let anybody see that I mind it. I know this is the hardest part of it, the beginning: it will get easier by-and-by, of course. If I can just manage this part of it, it’s bound not to hurt so much later on.

“Yes, I grew up and fell in love with You—for you will always be You. I’ll never, never get over THAT, my dear! You’ll never, never know it; but I shall love You always till I die, and if I’m still Me after that, I shall keep right on loving you then, of course. You see, I didn’t fall in love with you just to have you for myself. I fell in love with You! And that can never bother you at all nor ever be a shame to me that I love unsought, because you won’t know, and because it’s just an ocean of good-will, and every beat of my heart sends a new great wave of it toward you and Cora. I shall find happiness, I believe, in service—I am sure there will be times when I can serve you both. I love you both and I can serve her for You and you for her. This isn’t a hysterical mood, or a fit of `exaltation’: I have thought it all out and I know that I can live up to it. You are the best thing that can ever come into her life, and everything I can do shall be to keep you there. I must be very, very careful with her, for talk and advice do not influence her much. You love her—she has accepted you, and it is beautiful for you both. It must be kept beautiful. It has all become so clear to me: You are just what she has always needed, and if by any mischance she lost you I do not know what would become–-“

“Good God!” cried Richard. He sprang to his feet, and the heavy book fell with a muffled crash upon the floor, sprawling open upon its face, its leaves in disorder. He moved away from it, staring at it in incredulous dismay. But he knew.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Memory, that drowsy custodian, had wakened slowly, during this hour, beginning the process with fitful gleams of semi-consciousness, then, irritated, searching its pockets for the keys and dazedly exploring blind passages; but now it flung wide open the gallery doors, and there, in clear light, were the rows of painted canvasses.

He remembered “that day” when he was waiting for a car, and Laura Madison had stopped for a moment, and then had gone on, saying she preferred to walk. He remembered that after he got into the car he wondered why he had not walked home with her; had thought himself “slow” for not thinking of it in time to do it. There had seemed something very “taking” about her, as she stopped and spoke to him, something enlivening and wholesome and sweet—it had struck him that Laura was a “very nice girl.” He had never before noticed how really charming she could look; in fact he had never thought much about either of the Madison sisters, who had become “young ladies” during his mourning for his brother. And this pleasant image of Laura remained with him for several days, until he decided that it might be a delightful thing to spend an evening with her. He had called, and he remembered, now, Cora’s saying to him that he looked at her sometimes as if he did not like her; he had been surprised and astonishingly pleased to detect a mysterious feeling in her about it.

He remembered that almost at once he had fallen in love with Cora: she captivated him, enraptured him, as she still did—as she always would, he felt, no matter how she treated him or what she did to him. He did not analyze the process of the captivation and enrapturement—for love is a mystery and cannot be analyzed. This is so well known that even Richard Lindley knew it, and did not try!

… Heartsick, he stared at the fallen book. He was a man, and here was the proffered love of a woman he did not want. There was a pathos in the ledger; it seemed to grovel, sprawling and dishevelled in the circle of lamp-light on the floor: it was as if Laura herself lay pleading at his feet, and he looked down upon her, compassionate but revolted. He realized with astonishment from what a height she had fallen, how greatly he had respected her, how warmly liked her. What she now destroyed had been more important than he had guessed.

Simple masculine indignation rose within him: she was to have been his sister. If she had been unable to stifle this misplaced love of hers, could she not at least have kept it to herself? Laura, the self-respecting! No; she offered it—offered it to her sister’s betrothed. She had written that he should “never, never know it”; that when she was “cured” she would burn the ledger. She had not burned it! There were inconsistencies in plenty in the pitiful screed, but these were the wildest—and the cheapest. In talk, she had urged him to “keep trying,” for Cora, and now the sick-minded creature sent him this record. She wanted him to know. Then what else was it but a plea? “I love you. Let Cora go. Take me.”

He began to walk up and down, wondering what was to be done. After a time, he picked up the book gingerly, set it upon a shelf in a dark corner, and went for a walk outdoors. The night air seemed better than that of the room that held the ledger.

At the corner a boy, running, passed him. It was Hedrick Madison, but Hedrick did not recognize Richard, nor was his mind at that moment concerned with Richard’s affairs; he was on an errand of haste to Doctor Sloane. Mr. Madison had wakened from a heavy slumber unable to speak, his condition obviously much worse.

Hedrick returned in the doctor’s car, and then hung uneasily about the door of the sick-room until Laura came out and told him to go to bed. In the morning, his mother did not appear at the breakfast table, Cora was serious and quiet, and Laura said that he need not go to school that day, though she added that the doctor thought their father would get “better.” She looked wan and hollow-eyed: she had not been to bed, but declared that she would rest after breakfast. Evidently she had not missed her ledger; and Hedrick watched her closely, a pleasurable excitement stirring in his breast.

She did not go to her room after the meal; the house was cold, possessing no furnace, and, with Hedrick’s assistance, she carried out the ashes from the library grate, and built a fire there. She had just lighted it, and the kindling was beginning to crackle, glowing rosily over her tired face, when the bell rang.

“Will you see who it is, please, Hedrick?”

He went with alacrity, and, returning, announced in an odd voice. “It’s Dick Lindley. He wants to see you.”

“Me?” she murmured, wanly surprised. She was kneeling before the fireplace, wearing an old dress which was dusted with ashes, and upon her hands a pair of worn-out gloves of her father’s. Lindley appeared in the hall behind Hedrick, carrying under his arm something wrapped in brown paper. His expression led her to think that he had heard of her father’s relapse, and came on that account.

“Don’t look at me, Richard,” she said, smiling faintly as she rose, and stripping her hands of the clumsy gloves. “It’s good of you to come, though. Doctor Sloane thinks he is going to be better again.”

Richard inclined his head gravely, but did not speak.

“Well,” said Hedrick with a slight emphasis, I guess I’ll go out in the yard a while.” And with shining eyes he left the room.

In the hall, out of range from the library door, he executed a triumphant but noiseless caper, and doubled with mirth, clapping his hand over his mouth to stifle the effervescings of his joy. He had recognized the ledger in the same wrapping in which he had left it in Mrs. Lindley’s vestibule. His moment had come: the climax of his enormous joke, the repayment in some small measure for the anguish he had so long endured. He crept silently back toward the door, flattened his back against the wall, and listened.

“Richard,” he heard Laura say, a vague alarm in her voice, “what is it? What is the matter?”

Then Lindley: “I did not know what to do about it. I couldn’t think of any sensible thing. I suppose what I am doing is the stupidest of all the things I thought of, but at least it’s honest—so I’ve brought it back to you myself. Take it, please.”

There was a crackling of the stiff wrapping paper, a little pause, then a strange sound from Laura. It was not vocal and no more than just audible: it was a prolonged scream in a whisper.

Hedrick ventured an eye at the crack, between the partly open door and its casing. Lindley stood with his back to him, but the boy had a clear view of Laura. She was leaning against the wall, facing Richard, the book clutched in both arms against her bosom, the wrapping paper on the floor at her feet.

“I thought of sending it back and pretending to think it had been left at my mother’s house by mistake,” said Richard sadly, “and of trying to make it seem that I hadn’t read any of it. I thought of a dozen ways to pretend I believed you hadn’t really meant me to read it–-“

Making a crucial effort, she managed to speak.

You—think I—did mean–-“

“Well,” he answered, with a helpless shrug, “you sent it! But it’s what’s in it that really matters, isn’t it? I could have pretended anything in a note, I suppose, if I had written instead of coming. But I found that what I most dreaded was meeting you again, and as we’ve got to meet, of course, it seemed to me the only thing to do was to blunder through a talk with you, somehow or another, and get that part of it over. I thought the longer I put off facing you, the worse it would be for both of us—and—and the more embarrassing. I’m no good at pretending, anyhow; and the thing has happened. What use is there in not being honest? Well?”

She did not try again to speak. Her state was lamentable: it was all in her eyes.

Richard hung his head wretchedly, turning partly away from her. “There’s only one way—to look at it,” he said hesitatingly, and stammering. “That is—there’s only one thing to do: to forget that it’s happened. I’m—I—oh, well, I care for Cora altogether. She’s got never to know about this. She hasn’t any idea or—suspicion of it, has she?”

Laura managed to shake her head.

“She never must have,” he said. “Will you promise me to burn that book now?”

She nodded slowly.

“I—I’m awfully sorry, Laura,” he said brokenly. “I’m not idiot enough not to see that you’re suffering horribly. I suppose I have done the most blundering thing possible.” He stood a moment, irresolute, then turned to the door. “Good-bye.”

Hedrick had just time to dive into the hideous little room of the multitudinous owls as Richard strode into the hall. Then, with the closing of the front door, the boy was back at his post.

Laura stood leaning against the wall, the book clutched in her arms, as Richard had left her. Slowly she began to sink, her eyes wide open, and, with her back against the wall, she slid down until she was sitting upon the floor. Her arms relaxed and hung limp at her sides, letting the book topple over in her lap, and she sat motionless.

One of her feet protruded from her skirt, and the leaping firelight illumined it ruddily. It was a graceful foot in an old shoe which had been resoled and patched. It seemed very still, that patched shoe, as if it might stay still forever. Hedrick knew that Laura had not fainted, but he wished she would move her foot.

He went away. He went into the owl-room again, and stood there silently a long, long time. Then he stole back again toward the library door, but caught a glimpse of that old, motionless shoe through the doorway as he came near. Then he spied no more. He went out to the stable, and, secluding himself in his studio, sat moodily to meditate.

Something was the matter. Something had gone wrong. He had thrown a bomb which he had expected to go off with a stupendous bang, leaving him, as the smoke cleared, looking down in merry triumph, stinging his fallen enemies with his humour, withering them with satire, and inquiring of them how it felt, now THEY were getting it. But he was decidedly untriumphant: he wished Laura had moved her foot and that she hadn’t that patch upon her shoe. He could not get his mind off that patch. He began to feel very queer: it seemed to be somehow because of the patch. If she had worn a pair of new shoes that morning… . Yes, it was that patch.

Thirteen is a dangerous age: nothing is more subtle. The boy, inspired to play the man, is beset by his own relapses into childhood, and Hedrick was near a relapse.

By and by, he went into the house again, to the library. Laura was not there, but he found the fire almost smothered under heaping ashes. She had burned her book.

He went into the room where the piano was, and played “The Girl on the Saskatchewan” with one finger; then went out to the porch and walked up and down, whistling cheerily.

After that, he went upstairs and asked Miss Peirce how his father was “feeling,” receiving a noncommital reply; looked in at Cora’s room; saw that his mother was lying asleep on Cora’s bed and Cora herself examining the contents of a dressing-table drawer; and withdrew. A moment later, he stood in the passage outside Laura’s closed door listening. There was no sound.

He retired to his own chamber, found it unbearable, and, fascinated by Laura’s, returned thither; and, after standing a long time in the passage, knocked softly on the door.

“Laura,” he called, in a rough and careless voice, “it’s kind of a pretty day outdoors. If you’ve had your nap, if I was you I’d go out for a walk.” There was no response. “I’ll go with you,” he added, “if you want me to.”

He listened again and heard nothing. Then he turned the knob softly. The door was unlocked; he opened it and went in.

Laura was sitting in a chair, with her back to a window, her hands in her lap. She was staring straight in front of her.

He came near her hesitatingly, and at first she did not seem to see him or even to know that she was not alone in the room. Then she looked at him wonderingly, and, as he stood beside her, lifted her right hand and set it gently upon his head.

“Hedrick,” she said, “was it you that took my book to–-“

All at once he fell upon his knees, hid his face in her lap, and burst into loud and passionate sobbing.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Valentine Corliss, having breakfasted in bed at a late hour that morning, dozed again, roused himself, and, making a toilet, addressed to the image in his shaving-mirror a disgusted monosyllable.

“Ass!”

However, he had not the look of a man who had played cards all night to a disastrous tune with an accompaniment in Scotch. His was a surface not easily indented: he was hard and healthy, clear-skinned and clear-eyed. When he had made himself point-device, he went into the “parlour” of his apartment, frowning at the litter of malodorous, relics, stumps and stubs and bottles and half-drained glasses, scattered chips and cards, dregs of a night, session. He had been making acquaintances.

He sat at the desk and wrote with a steady hand in Italian:

MOST ILLUSTRIOUS MOLITERNO:

We live but learn little. As to myself it appears that I learn nothing—nothing! You will at once convey to me by CABLE five thousand lire. No; add the difference in exchange so as to make it one thousand dollars which I shall receive, taking that sum from the two-hundred and thirty thousand lire which I entrusted to your safekeeping by cable as the result of my enterprise in this place. I should have returned at once, content with that success, but as you know I am a very stupid fellow, never pleased with a moderate triumph, nor with a large one, when there is a possible prospect of greater. I am compelled to believe that the greater I had in mind in this case was an illusion: my gentle diplomacy avails nothing against a small miser—for we have misers even in these States, though you will not believe it. I abandon him to his riches! From the success of my venture I reserved four thousand dollars to keep by me and for my expenses, and it is humiliating to relate that all of this, except a small banknote or two, was taken from me last night by amateurs. I should keep away from cards—they hate me, and alone I can do nothing with them. Some young gentlemen of the place, whose acquaintance I had made at a ball, did me the honour of this lesson at the native game of poker, at which I—though also native—am not even so expert as yourself, and, as you will admit, Antonio, my friend, you are not a good player—when observed. Unaided, I was a child in their hands. It was also a painful rule that one paid for the counters upon delivery. This made me ill, but I carried it off with an air of carelessness creditable to an adopted Neapolitan. Upon receipt of the money you are to cable me, I shall leave this town and sail immediately. Come to Paris, and meet me there at the place on the Rue Auber within ten days from your reading this letter. You will have, remaining, two hundred and twenty-five thousand francs, which it will be safer to bring in cash, and I will deal well with you, as is our custom with each other. You have done excellently throughout; your cables and letters for exhibition concerning those famous oil wells have been perfection; and I shall of course not deduct what was taken by these thieves of poker players from the sum of profits upon which we shall estimate your commission. I have several times had the feeling that the hour for departure had arrived; now I shall delay not a moment after receiving your cable, though I may occupy the interim with a last attempt to interest my small miser. Various circumstances cause me some uneasiness, though I do not believe I could be successfully assailed by the law in the matter of oil. You do own an estate in Basilicata, at least your brother does—these good people here would not be apt to discover the difference—and the rest is a matter of plausibility. The odious coincidence of encountering the old cow, Pryor, fretted me somewhat (though he has not repeated his annoying call), and I have other small apprehensions—for example, that it may not improve my credit if my loss of last night becomes gossip, though the thieves professed strong habits of discretion. My little affair of gallantry grows embarrassing. Such affairs are so easy to inaugurate; extrication is more difficult. However, without it I should have failed to interest my investor and there is always the charm. Your last letter is too curious in that matter. Licentious man, one does not write of these things while under the banner of the illustrious Uncle Sam—I am assuming the American attitude while here, or perhaps my early youth returns to me—a thing very different from your own boyhood, Don Antonio. Nevertheless, I promise you some laughter in the Rue Auber. Though you will not be able to understand the half of what I shall tell you—particularly the portraits I shall sketch of my defeated rivals—your spirit shall roll with laughter.

To the bank, then, the instant you read. Cable me one thousand dollars, and be at the Rue Auber not more than ten days later. To the bank! Thence to the telegraph office. Speed!

V. C.

He was in better spirits as he read over this letter, and he chuckled as he addressed it. He pictured himself in the rear room of the bar in the Rue Auber, relating, across the little marble-topped table, this American adventure, to the delight of that blithe, ne’er-do-well outcast of an exalted poor family, that gambler, blackmailer and merry rogue, Don Antonio Moliterno, comrade and teacher of this ductile Valentine since the later days of adolescence. They had been school-fellows in Rome, and later roamed Europe together unleashed, discovering worlds of many kinds. Valentine’s careless mother let her boy go as he liked, and was often negligent in the matter of remittances: he and his friend learned ways to raise the wind, becoming expert and making curious affiliations. At her death there was a small inheritance; she had not been provident. The little she left went rocketing, and there was the wind to be raised again: young Corliss had wits and had found that they could supply him—most of the time—with much more than the necessities of life. He had also found that he possessed a strong attraction for various women; already—at twenty-two—his experience was considerable, and, in his way, he became a specialist. He had a talent; he improved it and his opportunities. Altogether, he took to the work without malice and with a light heart… .

He sealed the envelope, rang for a boy, gave him the letter to post, and directed that the apartment should be set to rights. It was not that in which he had received Ray Vilas. Corliss had moved to rooms on another floor of the hotel, the day after that eccentric and somewhat ominous person had called to make an “investment.” Ray’s shadowy forebodings concerning that former apartment had encountered satire: Corliss was a “materialist” and, at the mildest estimate, an unusually practical man, but he would never sleep in a bed with its foot toward the door; southern Italy had seeped into him. He changed his rooms, a measure of which Don Antonio Moliterno would have wholly approved. Besides, these were as comfortable as the others, and so like them as even to confirm Ray’s statement concerning “A Reading from Homer”: evidently this work had been purchased by the edition.

A boy came to announce that his “roadster” waited for him at the hotel entrance, and Corliss put on a fur motoring coat and cap, and went downstairs. A door leading from the hotel bar into the lobby was open, and, as Corliss passed it, there issued a mocking shout:

“Tor’dor! Oh, look at the Tor’dor! Ain’t he the handsome Spaniard!”

Ray Vilas stumbled out, tousled, haggard, waving his arms in absurd and meaningless gestures; an amused gallery of tipplers filling the doorway behind him.

“Goin’ take Carmen buggy ride in the country, ain’t he? Good ole Tor’dor!” he quavered loudly, clutching Corliss’s shoulder. “How much you s’pose he pays f’ that buzz-buggy by the day, jeli’m’n? Naughty Tor’dor, stole thousand dollars from me—makin’ presents—diamond cresses. Tor’dor, I hear you been playing cards. Tha’s sn’t nice. Tor’dor, you’re not a goo’ boy at all—YOU know you oughtn’t waste Dick Lindley’s money like that!”

Corliss set his open hand upon the drunkard’s breast and sent him gyrating and plunging backward. Some one caught the grotesque figure as it fell.

“Oh, my God,” screamed Ray, “I haven’t got a gun on me! He KNOWS I haven’t got my gun with me! WHY haven’t I got my gun with me?”

They hustled him away, and Corliss, enraged and startled, passed on. As he sped the car up Corliss Street, he decided to anticipate his letter to Moliterno by a cable. He had stayed too long.

Cora looked charming in a new equipment for November motoring; yet it cannot be said that either of them enjoyed the drive. They lunched a dozen miles out from the city at an establishment somewhat in the nature of a roadside inn; and, although its cuisine was quite unknown to Cora’s friend, Mrs. Villard (an eager amateur of the table), they were served with a meal of such unusual excellence that the waiter thought it a thousand pities patrons so distinguished should possess such poor appetites.

They returned at about three in the afternoon, and Cora descended from the car wearing no very amiable expression.

“Why won’t you come in now?” she asked, looking at him angrily. “We’ve got to talk things out. We’ve settled nothing whatever. I want to know why you can’t stop.”

“I’ve got some matters to attend to, and–-“

“What matters?” She shot him a glance of fierce skepticism.

“Are you packing to get out?”

“Cora!” he cried reproachfully, “how can you say things like that to ME!”

She shook her head. “Oh, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least! How do I know what you’ll do? For all I know, you may be just that kind of a man. You SAID you ought to be going–-“

“Cora,” he explained, gently, “I didn’t say I meant to go. I said only that I thought I ought to, because Moliterno will be needing me in Basilicata. I ought to be there, since it appears that no more money is to be raised here. I ought to be superintending operations in the oil-field, so as to make the best use of the little I have raised.”

“You?” she laughed. “Of course I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

He sighed deeply. “You know perfectly well that I appreciate all you did. We don’t seem to get on very well to-day–-“

“No!” She laughed again, bitterly. “So you think you’ll be going, don’t you?”

“To my rooms to write some necessary letters.”

“Of course not to pack your trunk?”

“Cora,” he returned, goaded; “sometimes you’re just impossible. I’ll come tomorrow forenoon.”

“Then don’t bring the car. I’m tired of motoring and tired of lunching in that rotten hole. We can talk just as well in the library. Papa’s better, and that little fiend will be in school tomorrow. Come out about ten.”

He started the machine. “Don’t forget I love you,” he called in a low voice.

She stood looking after him as the car dwindled down the street.

“Yes, you do!” she murmured.

She walked up the path to the house, her face thoughtful, as with a tiresome perplexity. In her own room, divesting herself of her wraps, she gave the mirror a long scrutiny. It offered the picture of a girl with a hard and dreary air; but Cora saw something else, and presently, though the dreariness remained, the hardness softened to a great compassion. She suffered: a warm wave of sorrow submerged her, and she threw herself upon the bed and wept long and silently for herself.

At last her eyes dried, and she lay staring at the ceiling. The doorbell rang, and Sarah, the cook, came to inform her that Mr. Richard Lindley was below.

“Tell him I’m out.”

“Can’t,” returned Sarah. “Done told him you was home.” And she departed firmly.

Thus abandoned, the prostrate lady put into a few words what she felt about Sarah, and, going to the door, whisperingly summoned in Laura, who was leaving the sick-room, across the hall.

“Richard is downstairs. Will you go and tell him I’m sick in bed—or dead? Anything to make him go.” And, assuming Laura’s acquiescence, Cora went on, without pause: “Is father worse? What’s the matter with you, Laura?”

“Nothing. He’s a little better, Miss Peirce thinks.”

“You look ill.”

“I’m all right.”

“Then run along like a duck and get rid of that old bore for me.”

“Cora—please see him?”

“Not me! I’ve got too much to think about to bother with him.”

Laura walked to the window and stood with her back to her sister, apparently interested in the view of Corliss Street there presented. “Cora,” she said, “why don’t you marry him and have done with all this?”

Cora hooted.

“Why not? Why not marry him as soon as you can get ready? Why don’t you go down now and tell him you will? Why not, Cora?”

“I’d as soon marry a pail of milk—yes, tepid milk, skimmed! I–-“

“Don’t you realize how kind he’d be to you?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Cora moodily. “He might object to some things—but it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to try him. I don’t mind a man’s being a fool, but I can’t stand the absent-minded breed of idiot. I’ve worn his diamond in the pendant right in his eyes for weeks; he’s never once noticed it enough even to ask me about the pendant, but bores me to death wanting to know why I won’t wear the ring! Anyhow, what’s the use talking about him? He couldn’t marry me right now, even if I wanted him to—not till he begins to get something on the investment he made with Val. Outside of that, he’s got nothing except his rooms at his mother’s; she hasn’t much either; and if Richard should lose what he put in with Val, he couldn’t marry for years, probably. That’s what made him so obstinate about it. No; if I ever marry right off the reel it’s got to be somebody with–-“

“Cora”—Laura still spoke from the window, not turning—“aren’t you tired of it all, of this getting so upset about one man and then another and–-“

“TIRED!” Cora uttered the word in a repressed fury of emphasis. “I’m sick of EVERYTHING! I don’t care for anything or anybody on this earth—except—except you and mamma. I thought I was going to love Val. I thought I DID—but oh, my Lord, I don’t! I don’t think I CAN care any more. Or else there isn’t any such thing as love. How can anybody tell whether there is or not? You get kind of crazy over a man and want to go the limit—or marry him perhaps—or sometimes you just want to make him crazy about you—and then you get over it—and what is there left but hell!” She choked with a sour laugh. “Ugh! For heaven’s sake, Laura, don’t make me talk. Everything’s gone to the devil and I’ve got to think. The best thing you can do is to go down and get rid of Richard for me. I CAN’T see him!”

“Very well,” said Laura, and went to the door.

“You’re a darling,” whispered Cora, kissing her quickly. “Tell him I’m in a raging headache—make him think I wanted to see him, but you wouldn’t let me, because I’m too ill.” She laughed. “Give me a little time, old dear: I may decide to take him yet!”

It was Mrs. Madison who informed the waiting Richard that Cora was unable to see him, because she was “lying down”; and the young man, after properly inquiring about Mr. Madison, went blankly forth.

Hedrick was stalking the front yard, mounted at a great height upon a pair of stilts. He joined the departing visitor upon the sidewalk and honoured him with his company, proceeding storkishly beside him.

“Been to see Cora?”

“Yes, Hedrick.”

“What’d you want to see her about?” asked the frank youth seriously.

Richard was able to smile. “Nothing in particular, Hedrick.”

“You didn’t come to tell her about something?”

“Nothing whatever, my dear sir. I wished merely the honour of seeing her and chatting with her upon indifferent subjects.

“Why?”

“Did you see her?”

“No, I’m sorry to–-“

“She’s home, all right,” Hedrick took pleasure in informing him.

“Yes. She was lying down and I told your mother not to disturb her.”

“Worn out with too much automobile riding, I expect,” Hedrick sniffed. “She goes out about every day with this Corliss in his hired roadster.”

They walked on in silence. Not far from Mrs. Lindley’s, Hedrick abruptly became vocal in an artificial laugh. Richard was obviously intended to inquire into its cause, but, as he did not, Hedrick, after laughing hollowly for some time, volunteered the explanation:

“I played a pretty good trick on you last night.”

“Odd I didn’t know it.”

“That’s why it was good. You’d never guess it in the world.”

“No, I believe I shouldn’t. You see what makes it so hard, Hedrick, is that I can’t even remember seeing you, last night.”

“Nobody saw me. Somebody heard me though, all right.”

“Who?”

“The nigger that works at your mother’s—Joe.”

“What about it? Were you teasing Joe?”

“No, it was you I was after.”

“Well? Did you get me?”

Hedrick made another somewhat ghastly pretence of mirth. “Well, I guess I’ve had about all the fun out of it I’m going to. Might as well tell you. It was that book of Laura’s you thought she sent you.”

Richard stopped short; whereupon Hedrick turned clumsily, and began to stalk back in the direction from which they had come.

“That book—I thought she—sent me?” Lindley repeated, stammering.

“She never sent it,” called the boy, continuing to walk away. “She kept it hid, and I found it. I faked her into writing your name on a sheet of paper, and made you think she’d sent the old thing to you. I just did it for a joke on you.”

With too retching an effort to simulate another burst of merriment, he caught the stump of his right stilt in a pavement crack, wavered, cut in the air a figure like a geometrical proposition gone mad, and came whacking to earth in magnificent disaster.

Richard took him to Mrs. Lindley for repairs. She kept him until dark: Hedrick was bandaged, led, lemonaded and blandished.

Never in his life had he known such a listener.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

That was a long night for Cora Madison, and the morning found her yellow. She made a poor breakfast, and returned from the table to her own room, but after a time descended restlessly and wandered from one room to another, staring out of the windows. Laura had gone out; Mrs. Madison was with her husband, whom she seldom left; Hedrick had departed ostensibly for school; and the house was as still as a farm in winter—an intolerable condition of things for an effervescent young woman whose diet was excitement. Cora, drumming with her fingers upon a window in the owl-haunted cell, made noises with her throat, her breath and her lips not unsuggestive of a sputtering fuse. She was heavily charged.

“Now what in thunder do YOU want?” she inquired of an elderly man who turned in from the sidewalk and with serious steps approached the house.

Pryor, having rung, found himself confronted with the lady he had come to seek. Ensued the moment of strangers meeting: invisible antennae extended and touched;—at the contact, Cora’s drew in, and she looked upon him without graciousness.

“I just called,” he said placatively, smiling as if some humour lurked in his intention, “to ask how your father is. I heard downtown he wasn’t getting along quite so well.”

“He’s better this morning, thanks,” said Cora, preparing to close the door.

“I thought I’d just stop and ask about him. I heard he’d had another bad spell—kind of a second stroke.”

“That was night before last. The doctor thinks he’s improved very much since then.”

The door was closing; he coughed hastily, and detained it by speaking again. “I’ve called several times to inquire about him, but I believe it’s the first time I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to you, Miss Madison. I’m Mr. Pryor.” She appeared to find no comment necessary, and he continued: “Your father did a little business for me, several years ago, and when I was here on my vacation, this summer, I was mighty sorry to hear of his sickness. I’ve had a nice bit of luck lately and got a second furlough, so I came out to spend a couple of weeks and Thanksgiving with my married daughter.”

Cora supposed that it must be very pleasant.

“Yes,” he returned. “But I was mighty sorry to hear your father wasn’t much better than when I left. The truth is, I wanted to have a talk with him, and I’ve been reproaching myself a good deal that I didn’t go ahead with it last summer, when he was well, only I thought then it mightn’t be necessary—might be disturbing things without much reason.”

“I’m afraid you can’t have a talk with him now,” she said. “The doctor says–-“

“I know, I know,” said Pryor, “of course. I wonder”—he hesitated, smiling faintly—“I wonder if I could have it with you instead.”

“Me?”

“Oh, it isn’t business,” he laughed, observing her expression. “That is, not exactly.” His manner became very serious. “It’s about a friend of mine—at least, a man I know pretty well. Miss Madison, I saw you driving out through the park with him, yesterday noon, in an automobile. Valentine Corliss.”

Cora stared at him. Honesty, friendliness, and grave concern were disclosed to her scrutiny. There was no mistaking him: he was a good man. Her mouth opened, and her eyelids flickered as from a too sudden invasion of light—the look of one perceiving the close approach of a vital crisis. But there was no surprise in her face.

“Come in,” she said.

… . When Corliss arrived, at about eleven o’clock that morning, Sarah brought him to the library, where he found Cora waiting for him. He had the air of a man determined to be cheerful under adverse conditions: he came in briskly, and Cora closed the door behind him.

“Keep away from me,” she said, pushing him back sharply, the next instant. “I’ve had enough of that for a while I believe.”

He sank into a chair, affecting desolation. “Caresses blighted in the bud! Cora, one would think us really married.”

She walked across the floor to a window, turned there, with her back to the light, and stood facing him, her arms folded.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, noting this attitude. “Is it the trial scene from a faded melodrama?” She looked steadily at him without replying. “What’s it all about to-day?” he asked lightly. “I’ll try to give you the proper cues if you’ll indicate the general nature of the scene, Cora mine.”

She continued to look at him in silence.

“It’s very effective,” he observed. “Brings out the figure, too. Do forgive me if you’re serious, dear lady, but never in my life was I able to take the folded-arms business seriously. It was used on the stage of all countries so much that I believe most new-school actors have dropped it. They think it lacks genuineness.”

Cora waited a moment longer, then spoke. “How much chance have I to get Richard Lindley’s money back from you?”

He was astounded. “Oh, I say!”

“I had a caller, this morning,” she said, slowly. “He talked about you—quite a lot! He’s told me several things about you.”

“Mr. Vilas?” he asked, with a sting in his quick smile.

“No,” she answered coolly. “Much older.”

At that he jumped up, stepped quickly close to her, and swept her with an intense and brilliant scrutiny.

“Pryor, by God!” he cried.

“He knows you pretty well,” she said. “So do now!”

He swung away from her, back to his chair, dropped into it and began to laugh. “Old Pryor! Doddering old Pryor! Doddering old ass of a Pryor! So he did! Blood of an angel! what a stew, what a stew!” He rose again, mirthless. “Well, what did he say?”

She had begun to tremble, not with fear. “He said a good deal.”

“Well, what was it? What did he tell you?”

“I think you’ll find it plenty!”

“Come on!”

“YOU!” She pointed at him.

“Let’s have it.”

“He told me”—she burst out furiously—“he said you were a professional sharper!”

“Oh, no. Old Pryor doesn’t talk like that.”

She came toward him. “He told me you were notorious over half of Europe,” she cried vehemently. “He said he’d arrested you himself, once, in Rotterdam, for smuggling jewels, and that you were guilty, but managed to squirm out of it. He said the police had put you out of Germany and you’d be arrested if you ever tried to go back. He said there were other places you didn’t dare set foot in, and he said he could have you arrested in this country any time he wanted to, and that he was going to do it if he found you’d been doing anything wrong. Oh, yes, he told me a few things!”

He caught her by the shoulder. “See here, Cora, do you believe all this tommy-rot?”

She shook his hand off instantly. “Believe it? I know it! There isn’t a straight line in your whole soul and mind: you’re crooked all over. You’ve been crooked with ME from the start. The moment that man began to speak, I knew every word of it was true. He came to me because he thought it was right: he hasn’t anything against you on his own account; he said he LIKED you! I KNEW it was true, I tell you.”

He tried to put his hand on her shoulder again, beginning to speak remonstratingly, but she cried out in a rage, broke away from him, and ran to the other end of the room.

“Keep away! Do you suppose I like you to touch me? He told me you always had been a wonder with women! Said you were famous for `handling them the right way’—using them! Ah, that was pleasant information for ME, wasn’t it! Yes, I could have confirmed him on that point. He wanted to know if I thought you’d been doing anything of that sort here. What he meant was: Had you been using me?”

“What did you tell him?” The question rang sharply on the instant.

“Ha! That gets into you, does it?” she returned bitterly. “You can’t overdo your fear of that man, I think, but I didn’t tell him anything. I just listened and thanked him for the warning, and said I’d have nothing more to do with you. How COULD I tell him? Wasn’t it I that made papa lend you his name, and got Richard to hand over his money? Where does that put ME?” She choked; sobs broke her voice. “Every—every soul in town would point me out as a laughing-stock—the easiest fool out of the asylum! Do you suppose I want you arrested and the whole thing in the papers? What I want is Richard’s money back, and I’m going to have it!”

“Can you be quiet for a moment and listen?” he asked gravely.

If you’ll tell me what chance I have to get it back.”

“Cora,” he said, “you don’t want it back.”

“Oh? Don’t I?”

“No.” He smiled faintly, and went on. “Now, all this nonsense of old Pryor’s isn’t worth denying. I have met him abroad; that much is true—and I suppose I have rather a gay reputation–-“

She uttered a jeering shout.

“Wait!” he said. “I told you I’d cut quite a swathe, when I first talked to you about myself. Let it go for the present and come down to this question of Lindley’s investment–-“

“Yes. That’s what I want you to come down to.”

“As soon as Lindley paid in his check I gave him his stock certificates, and cabled the money to be used at once in the development of the oil-fields–-“

“What! That man told me you’d `promoted’ a South American rubber company once, among people of the American colony in Paris. The details he gave me sounded strangely familiar!”

“You’d as well be patient, Cora. Now, that money has probably been partially spent, by this time, on tools and labour and–-“

“What are you trying to–-“

“I’ll show you. But first I’d like you to understand that nothing can be done to me. There’s nothing `on’ me! I’ve acted in good faith, and if the venture in oil is unsuccessful, and the money lost, I can’t be held legally responsible, nor can any one prove that I am. I could bring forty witnesses from Naples to swear they have helped to bore the wells. I’m safe as your stubborn friend, Mr. Trumble, himself. But now then, suppose that old Pryor is right—as of course he isn’t—suppose it, merely for a moment, because it will aid me to convey something to your mind. If I were the kind of man he says I am, and, being such a man, had planted the money out of reach, for my own use, what on earth would induce me to give it back?”

“I knew it!” she groaned. “I knew you wouldn’t!”

“You see,” he said quietly, “it would be impossible. We must go on supposing for a moment: if I had put that money away, I might be contemplating a departure–-“

“You’d better!” she cried fiercely. “He’s going to find out everything you’ve been doing. He said so. He’s heard a rumour that you were trying to raise money here; he told me so, and said he’d soon–-“

“The better reason for not delaying, perhaps. Cora, see here!” He moved nearer her. “Wouldn’t I need a lot of money if I expected to have a beautiful lady to care for, and–-“

“You idiot!” she screamed. “Do you think I’m going with you?”

He flushed heavily. “Well, aren’t you?” He paused, to stare at her, as she wrung her hands and sobbed with hysterical laughter. “I thought,” he went on, slowly, “that you would possibly even insist on that.”

“Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord!” She stamped her foot, and with both hands threw the tears from her eyes in wide and furious gestures. “He told me you were married–-“

“Did you let him think you hadn’t known that?” demanded Corliss.

“I tell you I didn’t let him think ANYTHING! He said you would never be able to get a divorce: that your wife hates you too much to get one from you, and that she’ll never–-“

“See here, Cora,” he said harshly, “I told you I’d been married; I told you before I ever kissed you. You understood perfectly–-“

“I did not! You said you HAD been. You laughed about it. You made me think it was something that had happened a long time ago. I thought of course you’d been divorced–-“

“But I told you–-“

“You told me after! And then you made me think you could easily get one—that it was only a matter of form and–-“

“Cora,” he interrupted, “you’re the most elaborate little self-deceiver I ever knew. I don’t believe you’ve ever faced yourself for an honest moment in–-“

“Honest! YOU talk about `honest’! You use that word and face ME?”

He came closer, meeting her distraught eyes squarely. “You love to fool yourself, Cora, but the role of betrayed virtue doesn’t suit you very well. You’re young, but you’re a pretty experienced woman for all that, and you haven’t done anything you didn’t want to. You’ve had both eyes open every minute, and we both know it. You are just as wise as–-“

“You’re lying and YOU know it! What did I want to make Richard go into your scheme for? You made a fool of me.”

“I’m not speaking of the money now,” he returned quickly. “You’d better keep your mind on the subject. Are you coming away with me?”

“What for?” she asked.

“What FOR?” he echoed incredulously. “I want to know if you’re coming. I promise you I’ll get a divorce as soon as it’s possible–-“

“Val,” she said, in a tone lower than she had used since he entered the room; “Val, do you want me to come?”

“Yes.”

“Much?” She looked at him eagerly.

“Yes, I do.” His answer sounded quite genuine.

“Will it hurt you if I don’t?”

“Of course it will.”

“Thank heaven for that,” she said quietly.

“You honestly mean you won’t?”

“It makes me sick with laughing just to imagine it! I’ve done some hard little thinking, lately, my friend—particularly last night, and still more particularly this morning since that man was here. I’d cut my throat before I’d go with you. If you had your divorce I wouldn’t marry you—not if you were the last man on earth!”

“Cora,” he cried, aghast, “what’s the matter with you? You’re too many for me sometimes. I thought I understood a few kinds of women! Now listen: I’ve offered to take you, and you can’t say–-“

“Offered!” It was she who came toward him now. She came swiftly, shaking with rage, and struck him upon the breast. “`Offered’! Do you think I want to go trailing around Europe with you while Dick Lindley’s money lasts? What kind of a life are you `offering’ me? Do you suppose I’m going to have everybody saying Cora Madison ran away with a jail-bird? Do you think I’m going to dodge decent people in hotels and steamers, and leave a name in this town that—Oh, get out! I don’t want any help from you! I can take care of myself, I tell you; and I don’t have to marry YOU! I’d kill you if I could—you made a fool of me!” Her voice rose shrilly. “You made a fool of me!”

“Cora–-” he began, imploringly.

“You made a fool of me!” She struck him again.

“Strike me,” he said. “I love you

“Actor!”

“Cora, I want you. I want you more than I ever–-“

She screamed with hysterical laughter. “Liar, liar, liar! The same old guff. Don’t you even see it’s too late for the old rotten tricks?”

“Cora, I want you to come.”

“You poor, conceited fool,” she cried, “do you think you’re the only man I can marry?”

“Cora,” he gasped, “you wouldn’t do that!”

“Oh, get out! Get out NOW! I’m tired of you. I never want to hear you speak again.”

“Cora,“he begged. “For the last time–-“

“NO! You made a fool of me!” She beat him upon the breast, striking again and again, with all her strength. “Get out, I tell you! I’m through with you!”

He tried to make her listen, to hold her wrists: he could do neither.

“Get out—get out!” she screamed. She pushed and dragged him toward the door, and threw it open. Her voice thickened; she choked and coughed, but kept on screaming: “Get out, I tell you! Get out, get out, damn you! Damn you, DAMN you! get out!”

Still continuing to strike him with all her strength, she forced him out of the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Cora lost no time. Corliss had not closed the front door behind him before she was running up the stairs. Mrs. Madison, emerging from her husband’s room, did not see her daughter’s face; for Cora passed her quickly, looking the other way.

“Was anything the matter?” asked the mother anxiously. “I thought I heard–-“

“Nothing in the world,” Cora flung back over her shoulder. “Mr. Corliss said I couldn’t imitate Sara Bernhardt, and I showed him I could.” She began to hum; left a fragment of “rag-time” floating behind her as she entered her own room; and Mrs. Madison, relieved, returned to the invalid.

Cora changed her clothes quickly. She put on a pale gray skirt and coat for the street, high shoes and a black velvet hat, very simple. The costume was almost startlingly becoming to her: never in her life had she looked prettier. She opened her small jewel-case, slipped all her rings upon her fingers; then put the diamond crescent, the pendant, her watch, and three or four other things into the flat, envelope-shaped bag of soft leather she carried when shopping. After that she brought from her clothes-pantry a small travelling-bag and packed it hurriedly.

Laura, returning from errands downtown and glancing up at Cora’s window, perceived an urgently beckoning, gray-gloved hand, and came at once to her sister’s room.

The packed bag upon the bed first caught her eye; then Cora’s attire, and the excited expression of Cora’s face, which was high-flushed and moist, glowing with a great resolve.

“What’s happened?” asked Laura quickly. “You look exactly like a going-away bride. What–-“

Cora spoke rapidly: “Laura, I want you to take this bag and keep it in your room till a messenger-boy comes for it. When the bell rings, go to the door yourself, and hand it to him. Don’t give Hedrick a chance to go to the door. Just give it to the boy;—and don’t say anything to mamma about it. I’m going downtown and I may not be back.”

Laura began to be frightened.

“What is it you want to do, Cora?” she asked, trembling.

Cora was swift and businesslike. “See here, Laura, I’ve got to keep my head about me. You can do a great deal for me, if you won’t be emotional just now, and help me not to be. I can’t afford it, because I’ve got to do things, and I’m going to do them just as quickly as I can, and get it over. If I wait any longer I’ll go insane. I CAN’T wait! You’ve been a wonderful sister to me; I’ve always counted on you, and you’ve never once gone back on me. Right now, I need you to help me more than I ever have in my life. Will you–-“

“But I must know–-“

“No, you needn’t! I’ll tell you just this much: I’ve got myself in a devil of a mess–-“

Laura threw her arms round her: “Oh, my dear, dear little sister!” she cried.

But Cora drew away. “Now that’s just what you mustn’t do. I can’t stand it! You’ve got to be QUIET. I can’t–-“

“Yes, yes,” Laura said hurriedly. “I will. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“It’s perfectly simple: all I want you to do is to take charge of my travelling-bag, and, when a messenger-boy comes, give it to him without letting anybody know anything about it.”

“But I’ve got to know where you’re going—I can’t let you go and not–-“

“Yes, you can! Besides, you’ve promised to. I’m not going to do anything foolish –-“

“Then why not tell me?” Laura began. She went on, imploring Cora to confide in her, entreating her to see their mother—to do a dozen things altogether outside of Cora’s plans.

“You’re wasting your breath, Laura,” said the younger sister, interrupting, “and wasting my time. You’re in the dark: you think I’m going to run away with Val Corliss and you’re wrong. I sent him out of the house for good, a while ago–-“

“Thank heaven for that!” cried Laura.

“I’m going to take care of myself,” Cora went on rapidly. “I’m going to get out of the mess I’m in, and you’ve got to let me do it my own way. I’ll send you a note from downtown. You see that the messenger–-“

She was at the door, but Laura caught her by the sleeve, protesting and beseeching.

Cora turned desperately. “See here. I’ll come back in two hours and tell you all about it. If I promise that, will you promise to send me the bag by the–-“

“But if you’re coming back you won’t need–-“

Cora spoke very quietly. “I’ll go to pieces in a moment. Really, I do think I’d better jump out of the window and have it over.”

“I’ll send the bag,” Laura quavered, “if you’ll promise to come back in two hours.”

“I promise!”

Cora gave her a quick embrace, a quick kiss, and, dry-eyed, ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.

She walked briskly down Corliss Street. It was a clear day, bright noon, with an exhilarating tang in the air, and a sky so glorious that people outdoors were continually conscious of the blue overhead, and looked up at it often. An autumnal cheerfulness was abroad, and pedestrians showed it in their quickened steps, in their enlivened eyes, and frequent smiles, and in the colour of their faces. But none showed more colour or a gayer look than Cora. She encountered many whom she knew, for it was indeed a day to be stirring, and she nodded and smiled her way all down the long street, thinking of what these greeted people would say tomorrow. ”I saw her yesterday, walking down Corliss Street, about noon, in a gray suit and looking fairly radiant!” Some of those she met were enemies she had chastened; she prophesied their remarks with accuracy. Some were old suitors, men who had desired her; one or two had place upon her long list of boy-sweethearts: she gave the same gay, friendly nod to each of them, and foretold his morrow’s thoughts of her, in turn. Her greeting of Mary Kane was graver, as was aesthetically appropriate, Mr. Wattling’s engagement having been broken by that lady, immediately after his drive to the Country Club for tea. Cora received from the beautiful jilt a salutation even graver than her own, which did not confound her.

Halfway down the street was a drug-store. She went in, and obtained appreciative permission to use the telephone. She came out well satisfied, and went swiftly on her way. Ten minutes later, she opened the door of Wade Trumble’s office.

He was alone; her telephone had caught him in the act of departing for lunch. But he had been glad to wait—glad to the verge of agitation.

“By George, Cora!” he exclaimed, as she came quickly in and closed the door, “but you CAN look stunning! Believe me, that’s some get-up. But let me tell you right here and now, before you begin, it’s no use your tackling me again on the oil proposition. If there was any chance of my going into it which there wasn’t, not one on earth—why, the very fact of your asking me would have stopped me. I’m no Dick Lindley, I beg to inform you: I don’t spend my money helping a girl that I want, myself, to make a hit with another man. You treated me like a dog about that, right in the street, and you needn’t try it again, because I won’t stand for it. You can’t play ME, Cora!”

“Wade,” she said, coming closer, and looking at him mysteriously, “didn’t you tell me to come to you when I got through playing?”

“What?” He grew very red, took a step back from her, staring at her distrustfully, incredulously.

“I’ve got through playing”, she said in a low voice. “And I’ve come to you.”

He was staggered. “You’ve come–-” he said, huskily.

“Here I am, Wade.”

He had flushed, but now the colour left his small face, and he grew very white. “I don’t believe you mean it.”

“Listen,” she said. “I was rotten to you about that oil nonsense. It WAS nonsense, nothing on earth but nonsense. I tell you frankly I was a fool. I didn’t care the snap of my finger for Corliss, but—oh, what’s the use of pretending? You were always such a great `business man,’ always so absorbed in business, and put it before everything else in the world. You cared for me, but you cared for business more than for me. Well, no woman likes THAT, Wade. I’ve come to tell you the whole thing: I can’t stand it any longer. I suffered horribly because—because–-” She faltered. “Wade, that was no way to WIN a girl.”