 CHAPTER XIV Descending the hill, Thor saw a light in his Uncle Sim's table, and knew that Delia was being settled for the night. Uncle Sim still lived in the ramshackle house to which his father—old Dr. Masterman, as elderly people in the village called him—had taken his young wife, who had been Miss Lucy Dawes. In this house both Sim and Archie Masterman were born. It was the plainest of dwellings, painted by wind and weather, to a dove-like silver-grey. Here lived Uncle Sim, cared for in the domestic sense, by a lady somewhat older and more eccentric than himself, known to the younger Mastermans as Cousin Amy Dawes. Thor avoided the house and Cousin Amy Dawes going directly to the stable. By the time he had reached the door, Uncle Sim was shutting it. In the light of Atlanta and standing in the snow, the naked elms round about loomed weirdly. The greetings were brief. �Hello, Uncle Sim—hello, Thor.� Thor made an effort to reduce the emotional tremor of his voice to the required minimum. �Father's been telling me about Claude and Rosie Faye.� Uncle Sim turned to the key in the lock with a loud grating. �Father had to do it, did he?� thought you might have caught on to that by yourself. �One of the reasons I sent you into the Faye family.� �Did you know it then, already?� �Didn't know it.� couldn't help putting two and two together. �You see everything, Uncle Sim.� Uncle Sim stooped to pick up the lantern. �See everything's under my nose.� thought you could, too. �This hasn't been under my nose.� �Oh, well, there are noses and noses. A donkey has one kind and a dog has another.� Thor was not a finished actor, but he was doing his best to play a part. �Well, what do you think now?� �What do I think now?� �I don't think anything but other people's business.� �I think we ought to do something� thought declared with energy. �All right, everyone to his mind.� �Only it's great fun to let other people settle their own affairs.� �Settle their own affairs and suffer?� �Yes, and suffer.� Suffering doesn't hurt any one. �Do you mean to say, Uncle Sim, that I should sit still and do nothing, while the people I care for most in the world are in all sorts of trouble that I could get them out of?� �That little baggage rosy Faye isn't one of the people you care for most in the world, I presume?� Thor knew that with Uncle Sim's perspicacity this might be a leading question, but he made the answer he considered the most diplomatic in the circumstances. She is, if Claude is in love with her, but why do you call her that, Uncle Sim? �Because he's a little witch, most determined little piece I know, hardworking, lots of pluck, industrious as a devil, whole soul set on attaining her ends.� Thor considered it prudent to return to the point from which he had been diverted. �Well, if the people I care for most are in trouble that I can get them out of?� �Oh, if you can get them out of it?� �Well, I can.� �Then that's all right.� �But if the case must be rather rare, I often see the attempt made except with one result, not that of getting people out of trouble, but of getting oneself in.� �Everyone to his own tastes, Thor, wouldn't stop you for the world.� �Only advise you not to be in a hurry.� �There's no question of being in a hurry when things have to be done now.� �All right, Thor, you know better than I.� �I'm one of those slow-pokes who look on the fancy for taking a hand in other people's affairs as I do on the taste for committing suicide. There's always time.� �If you don't do it today, you can tomorrow, which is a reason for putting it off, ain't it?� There was more than impatience in Thor�s protest as he cried. �But how can you put it off when there's someone who's unhappy?� �I see.� �Come back to that.� �But I don't mind someone being unhappy. Don't care how many damn. Do them good.� �I see more people unhappy than I could tell you about in a year. And nine out of ten were made men and women by it, who before that had been only rags.� �I'm afraid I can't accept that, cheerful doctrine, Uncle Sim.� �All right, Thor, don't want you to. Wouldn't interfere with you any more than with anyone else. Free country, got your own row to hoe.� �If you make yourself miserable in the process, why I'll do you as much good as he does all the rest?� �Nothing like it.� �Wouldn't save you from it for anything.� �But there's a verse of an old song that you might turn over in your mind.� �An old song written about two or three thousand years ago.� �Oh, tarry thou the Lord's ledger.� Thor tossed his head impatiently. �Oh, chock!� �But it goes on.� �And be strong.� �You can be awful strong when you're tarrying the Lord's ledger, Thor, because then you know you're not making any damn full mistakes.� Thor spoke up proudly. �I'd rather make mistakes than do nothing.� �That's all right, Thor, splendid spirit. Don't disapprove it or might. Go ahead, make mistakes. It'll be live and learn.� �Not the least afraid.� �I've often noticed that when young foes of your sort prefer their own haste to the Lord's ledger, there's a Lord's haste that hurries on before him, so as to be all ready to meet him when they come a cropper in the ditch.� Thor turned away sharply. �I guess I'll beat it, Uncle Sim.� The old man, swinging his lantern, shams along by his nephew's side as the latter made for the road again. �Oh, I ain't trying to hold you back, Thor.� �How am I?� �On the contrary, I say, go ahead, rush in, where angels fear to tread. If you don't do anything else, you'll carry the angels along with you. You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor, but you'll be on the side of the angels, and the angels are beyond yours.� Though dinner was over by the time Thor reached home, his stepmother sat with him when he headed. It was a new departure for her. Four could not remember that she had ever done anything of the sort before. She sat with him and served him, asking no questions as to why he was late. She seemed to divine a trouble on his part beyond her power to console, and for which the only sympathy she dared to express was that of small, kindly facts. He understood this, and was grateful. He found her society soothing. This too surprised him. He felt so battered and sore that the mere presence of one who approached him from an affectionate impulse had the effect on him of a gentle hand. Never before in his life had he been conscious of women's genius for the comforting. Possibly because never before in his life had he needed comfort to the same degree. There reference is made by his stepmother or himself to the seam with Mrs. Willoughby in the afternoon. But it was not hard for him to perceive that in some strange way it was stirring the victim of it to newness of life. It was not that she admitted the application of Bessie's charges to herself. They only startled her to the knowledge that there were heights and depths in human existence such as her imagination had never plumbed. Her nature was making a feeble effort to expand, as the petals of a bud that had been kept hard and compact by a backward spring may unfold in the heat of summer. When he finished his hasty meal, Thor rose and kissed her, saying, Thank you, Mumfy, using the pet name that had not been on his lips since childhood. She drew his face downward with a sudden sob. A sob quite inexplicable except on the ground that her poor, withered, strangled little soul was at last trying to live. Having gone upstairs to his room, Thor shut the door and bolted it in his desire for solitude. He changed his coat and kicked off his boots. When he had lightened a pipe he threw himself on the old sofa which had done duty as coach at the foot of his bed ever since he was a boy. It was the attitude in which he had always been best able to think things out. Now that he had eaten a sufficient dinner, he felt physically less bruised, though mentally there was more to torture him. He regretted having seen Uncle Sim. He hated the alternative of letting things alone. There was a sense in which action would have been an anodyne to suffering, and had it not been for Uncle Sim he would have had no scruple in making use of it. It was all very well to talk of letting people settle their own affairs, but how could they settle them in these particular cases without his intervention? As far as Pa went he was like a fairy prince who had only to wave a wand to see the whole scene transfigured. If he hadn't asked Uncle Sim's advice he would be already waving it instead of lolling on his back with his right foot poised over his left knee and dangling a heelless slipper in the air. He felt shame at the very attitude of idleness. True, there were two distinct lines of action. That of making a number of people happy now, and that of holding back that they might fight their own battles. By fighting their own battles they might emerge from the conflict of the stronger, after forty or fifty years. Those who were unlikely to live so long—Lynne and Betty Willoughby, for example—would probably go down rebelling and protesting to their graves. But Claude and Rosie and Lowe's might all grow morally the stronger. There was that possibility. It was plain. Claude and Rosie might marry on the former's fifteen hundred dollars a year, have children, and bring them up in poverty as model citizens. But whatever the high triumph of their middle age, four shrank from the thought of the interval for both. And Lowe's, too, might live down grief, disappointment, small means, and loneliness, might become hardened and toughened and beaten to endurance, and grow up to the best and bravest and kindest old maid in the world. Of course him would probably consider that in these noble achievements the game would be worth the candle. But he, for Masterman, didn't. The more he developed the possibilities of this future for everyone concerned, himself included, the more he loathed it. It was part eleven before he reached the point of loathing at which he was convinced that action should begin. But once he reached it he bound it to his feet. He was wonderfully free and vigorous. If certain details could be settled there and then, he couldn't wait till the morrow, he thought that in spite of everything he should sleep. He had heard Claude go to his room, which was on the same floor as his own, an hour earlier. Claude was probably by this time in bed and asleep. But the elder brother couldn't hesitate for that. Within less than a minute he, across the passage, entered Claude's bedroom and turned on the electric light. Claude's profile sunk into the middle of the pillow might have been carved in ivory. His dark, wavy hair fell back picturesquely from temple and brow. Under the coverings his slim form made a light graceful line. The room was at once dainty and severe. A striped paper, brightened by a design of garland knots and flowers, alamari antoinette, made a background for white furniture in the style of Louis Zay's, modern and inexpensive, but carefully selected by Mrs. Masterman. The walls were further lightened by coloured reprints of old French scenes, discretely amorous, collected by Claude himself. Thor stood for some seconds in front of the bed before the brother opened his eyes. More seconds passed while the younger gazed up at the elder. Other devil! Claude began sleepily. But Thor broke in promptly. Claude, why didn't you ever tell me you knew Rosie Faye? Claude closed his eyes again. The expected had happened. Like Rosie he resolved to meet the moment cautiously, creating no more opposition than he could help. Why should I? he parried without hostility. Because I asked you for one thing. He opened his eyes. When did you ever ask me? At the bank, one day when I found you there, must have been two months ago. Claude stirred slightly under the bedclothes. Oh, then! Yes, then! Why didn't you tell me? I didn't see how I could. What good would it have done, anyhow? It was on Thor's tongue to say it would have done the good of not telling lies. But he suppressed that. One of his objects was to be conciliating. He had other objects which he believed would be best served by taking a small chair and sitting on it a stride, close to Claude's bed. An easy fraternal there was maintained by the effect of the pipe still hanging by its curved stem from the corner of his mouth. He began to think highly of himself as a comedian. I wish you had told me, he said quietly, because I could have helped you. Claude lay still. His eyes grew brilliant. Help me, how? Helped you in whatever it is you are trying to do. He added with significance. You are trying to do something, aren't you? Claude endeavoured to gain time by saying, Trying to do what? You are—fore hesitated, but dashed in. You are in love with her? It was still to gain time that Claude replied, What do you think? Force-heart bound you with the great hope. Perhaps Claude was not in love with her. He not been noticeably moved as yet. In that case it might be possible, barely possible, that after Rosy had outlived her disappointment there might be a chance that he— But he dared not speculate. Mustering everything that was histrionic within him, he said, with the art of the concealed's art. I think you are, decidedly. Claude rolled partly over in bed. That's about it. The confession was as full as one brother could expect from another. Force-heart sank again. He managed, however, to keep on the high plane of art, as he brought out the words. And what about her? Again, Claude's aval was as ardent as the actual conditions called for. Oh, I guess she's all right. So what now? Claude rolled back toward his brother, raising his head slightly from the pillow. Well, what now? You're going to be married, I suppose. Claude lifted himself on his elbow. Married on fifteen hundred a year. He went on before four could say anything if there was nothing else to consider. Four felt stirrings of hope again. Then, if you're not going to be married, what do you mean? What do I mean? What can I mean? Oh, come, Claude, you're not a boy any longer. You know perfectly well that a man of honour, with your traditions, can't trifle with a girl like that, or break her heart, or ruin her. I'm not doing any of the three. She knows I'm not. She knows I'm only in the same box she's in herself. That is, you're both in love, without seeing how you're going to— Claude lurched forward in the bed. Look here, Thor. If you want to know, it's this. I've tried to leave the girl alone, and I can't. I'm worse than a damn fool. I'm every sort of a hound. I can't marry her, and I can't give her up. When I haven't seen her for a week, I'm frantic. When I do see her, I swear to God I'll ever see her again. So now you know. Claude threw himself back again on the pillows, but Thor went on quietly. Why do you swear to God that you'll never see her again? Because I'm killing her. That is, I should be killing her if she wasn't the bravest little brick on earth. You don't know her, Thor. You've seen her, and you know she's pretty, but you don't know that she's as plucky as they make them. Pluckier. Thor answered, wearily. I'd rather guess that, which is one of the reasons why I feel you should be true to her. I am true to her, trueer than I ought to be. If I was less true, it would be better for us both. She'd get over it. Again, Thor was aware of an up-leaping hope. And you too? Oh, I suppose so, in time. Yes, but you'd suffer. Claude gave another lurch forward in the bed. I couldn't suffer worse than I'm suffering now, knowing I'm an infernal cad and not seeing how to be anything else. But you wouldn't be an infernal cad if you married her. The young man flung himself about the bed impatiently. Ah, what's the use of talking? If she had money, you could marry her all right. I'll go to the devil, Thor. The term was one of utter exasperation. Thor persisted. If she had, let us say, four or five thousand dollars a year of her own— Claude stretched his purse halfway out of the bed. I said, go to the devil! Well, she has. Has what? Four or five thousand dollars a year of her own. That is, she will have it if you and she get married. Say, Thor, have you got the gym-jams? I'm speaking quite seriously, Claude. I've always intended to do something to help you out when I got hold of Grandpa for all his money, and if you like, I'll do it that way. Do it what way? The way I say. If you and Rosie get married, she shall have five thousand a year of her own. From you? Thor nodded. The younger brother looked at the elder curiously. It was a long minute before he spoke. If it's to help me out, why don't I have it? I'm your brother. I should think I'd be the one. Because I'd rather do it that way. It would be a means of evening things up. It would make her more like your equal. You know, as well as I do, that father and mother will kick like blazes. But if Rosie has money, if Rosie has money, they'll know she gets it from somewhere. They won't think it comes down to her out of heaven. They can think what they like. They needn't know that I have anything to do with it. They know you haven't got five thousand a year, and if she has, why, there'll be the solid cash to convince them. The whole thing would be a pill for them. But if it's gilded— Claude's knees were drawn up in the bed, his hands clasped about them. Thor noticed the strangeness of his expression, but he was unprepared for his words when they came out. Say, Thor, you're not in love with her yourself, are you? I wonder what he believed to be the perfection of his acting. It was the question that Thor had least expected to be called on to answer. He knew it was turning white or green, and that his smile when he forced it was nothing but a ghastly movement of the mouth. It was his turn to gain time, but he could think of nothing more forcible than, what makes you answer me that? Because he looks so funny, so damn funny! There's nothing funny am I trying to give a lift to my own brother, is there? And I hope, perhaps not. But see here, Thor! he leaned forward. You're not in love with her, are you? Thor knew the supreme moment of his life had come, that he should never reach another like it. It was within his power to seize the cup and drain it all, thrust it aside. Of all temptations he had ever had to meet, none had been so strong as this. It was the stronger for his knowing that if it was conquered now, it would probably never return. He would have put himself beyond reach of its returning. That in itself appalled him. There was some joy in feeling the temptation there as a thing to be dadded with. He dadded with it now. He dadded with it to the extent of saying, with a smile he tried to temper to playfulness. Well, what if I was in love with her? Something about Claude leaped into flame. Then I wouldn't touch a cent of your money. I wouldn't let her touch it. I wouldn't let her look at it. I'd marry her on my own. I'd be hanged if I wouldn't. I'd marry her tomorrow. I'd get out of bed and marry her tonight. Thor forced his smile to attend to her playfulness, sitting calmly astride of his chair, his left arm along the back, his right hand holding his pipe by the bowl. So he wouldn't let me have her. Claude lashed across the bed. I'd see you hanged first. I'd see you damned. I'd see you damned to hell. She's mine, I tell you. I'm not going to give her up to anyone, and to you least of all. Do you get that? Now you know. All right, Claude. Now I know. Yes, but I don't know. Claude wriggled to the side of the bed, drawing as near to his brother as he could without getting out. I don't know. I've asked you a question, and you haven't answered it. By God you've got to answer it. Sooner than let anyone else get her, I'll marry her and starve. Now speak! Thor got up heavily. He had the feeling with which the ancients submitted when they stood soberly and affirmed that it was useless to struggle against fate. Fate was upon him. He saw it now. He had tried to elute her, but she'd got him where he couldn't move. She asserted herself again when Claude, hanging half out of bed, his mouth feverish, his eyes burning, insisted imperiously, Say you speak! Thor spoke. He spoke from the middle of the floor, his pipe still in his hand. He spoke without premeditation, as though but uttering the words that destiny had put into his mouth from all eternity. It's all right, Claude. Calm down. I'm going to be married to Lois Willoughby. But Claude was not yet convinced. When? Just as soon as we can fix things up after the tenth of next month, after I get the money. How long has this been settled? Claude demanded with lingering suspicion. It's been settled for years, as far as I'm concerned. I can hardly remember the time when I didn't intend. Just what I'm going to do? Claude let himself drop back again among the pillows. So now it's all right, isn't it? Thor continued making a move towards the door. It'll be Lois and I and you and Rosie, and the money will go to Rosie. I insist on that. It'll even things up. Five thousand a year, perhaps more, we'll see. He looked back from the door, but Claude, after his excitement, was lying white and silent, his eyes closed, his profile upturned. Thor was swept by compunction. It had always been part of the family tradition to respect Claude's high strong nerves. Nothing did him more harm than to be thwarted or stirred up. With a murmured good-night, Thor turned out the light, opening and closing the door softly. But in the passage he heard the pad of bare feet behind him. Claude stood there in his pajamas. Say, Thor, he whispered hoarsely. Your top-hole, for my soul you are! He caught his brother's hand, pulling it rather than shaking, like a boy tugging at a bell-rope. You're a top-hole, brother, Thor, he repeated nervously. And I'm a beast. I know you don't care anything about Rosie, of course you don't. But I've got the jumps. I've been through such a lot during the months I've been beating her that I'm on springs. But with you to back me up. I'll back you up, all right, Claude. Just wade in and get married. And I guess our team will hold its own against all comers. Lois will be with us. She's fond of Rosie. With another tug at his brother's arm, a maul in our ticket at Thang's. Claude darted back to his room again. Thor closed his own door, unlocked it behind him. He was too far spent for more emotion. He had hardly the energy to throw off his clothes, and turn out the light. Within five minutes of his final assurance to Claude, he was sleeping profoundly. End of Chapter 14 Having slept soundly till after eight in the morning, Thor woke with an odd sense of pleasure. On regaining his faculties, he was able to analyse it as the pleasure he had experienced in having Claude tugging at his arm. It meant that Claude was happy, and Claude being happy, Rosie would be happy. Claude and Rosie were taken care of. Consequently, Lois would be taken care of. Thor turned the idiom over with a vast content. It was the tune to which he bathed and dressed. They would all three be taken care of. Those who were taken care of were as folded sheep. His mind could be at rest concerning them. It was something to have the mind at rest, even at the cost of heartache. There was, of course, one intention that before all others must be carried out. He would have to clinch the statement he had made for the sake of appeasing and convincing Claude concerning Lois Willoughby. It was something to be signed and sealed before Claude could see her or betray the daring assertion to his parents. Fortunately, the younger brother's duties at the bank would deprive him of any such opportunity earlier than nightfall. Said that Thor himself was free for the regular tasks of the day. He kept, therefore, his office hours during the forenoon, and visited his few patients after a hasty luncheon. There was one patient whom he omitted, whom he would leave henceforth to Dr. Hillary. It was but a little after four when he arrived at the house of the corner of Willoughby's Lane and County Street. Mrs. Willoughby met him in the hall, across which she happened to be bustling. She wore an apron and struck him as curiously businesslike. As he had never before seen her share in household tasks, her present aspect seemed to denote a change of heart. Oh, come in, Thor! she said briskly. I am glad you have come. Go up and see poor Len. He is so depressed. You will cheer him. If there was a force to note in her bravery, he did not perceive it. I am glad to see you are not depressed. He observed that he took off his overcoat. She shrugged her shoulders. I am going to die game. Which means that there is a fight in me yet. Fight? His brows went up anxiously. Oh, not with your father. You needn't be afraid of that. Besides, I see well enough it would be no use. If he says we have spent our money, he has got everything fixed to make it look so, whether we have spent it or not. No, I am not going to spare him because he is your father. I am going to say what I think. And if you don't like it, you can dump it. I shall not go to law. I get the worst of it if I did. But neither shall I be bottled up. So there. It doesn't matter what you say to me. Thor began with significant stress on the ultimate word. It may not matter what I say to you, but I continue. It will matter what I say to other people. Thor took no notice of that. And if you are not going to law, would it be indiscreet to ask what you are going to do? Bessie forced Thor to note a bravery game with a flash in her little eyes. I am going to live on my income. That's what I am going to do. Thank the Lord I have got some money left. I didn't let Archie Masterman get his hands on all of it. Not me. I've got some money left. And we've got this house. I'm going to let it. I'm going to let it tomorrow if I get the chance. I'm getting it ready now. And then we're going abroad. Oh, I know lots of places where you can live. Pithy through Parchere. Dear little places too, where little have a chance to get better. Thor made a big resolution. If you are going to let the house, why not let it to me? She knew what was coming, but it made her feel faint. Back into one of the regions she chairs, she sank into it. It was a mere pretense that she said. What do you want it for? I want it because I want to marry Lois. He added with an anxiety that sprang of his declaration to the Lord. Do you think she'll take me? Bessie spoke with conviction. She'll take you unless she's more of a fool than I think. Of course she'll take you. Any woman in her senses would jump at you. I know I would. She dashed away a tear. But look here, Thor, she hurried on. If you marry Lois, you won't have the whole family on your back, you know. You won't be marrying Len and me. I tell you right now, because you're the sort that'll think he ought to do it. Well, you won't have to. I mean what I say when I tell you we're going to live on our income, what's left of it. We can, and we will, and we're going to. Couldn't we talk about all that when? When you're married to Lois and have more of a right to speak, no, we'll talk about it now and never any more. Then and I are going to have plenty, plenty. If you think I can't manage, well, you'll see. Oh, I know you've got lots of pluck, Mrs. Willoughby. She sprang to her feet. With her hands thrust jauntily into the pockets of her apron, she looked like some poor little soubrette, grown middle-aged, stout and rather grotesque, in a marivou play. She acted her part well. Pluck! Oh, I've got more than that. I've got some ability. If you've never knew it before, you'll see it now. I spent a lot, but then I've had a lot, more thought I had. And now that I'm going to have little, well, I'll show you I can cut my coat according to my cloth as well as the next one. I don't doubt that in the least, and yet, and yet you want us to have all our money back. Oh, I know what you meant yesterday afternoon. I didn't see it at the time. I had so many things to think of, but I caught on to it as soon as I got home. We should get it back because you give it to us. Well, you won't. You can marry Lose if she'll marry you, and I hope to the Lord she won't be such a goose as to refuse you, and you can take the house off our hands, but more than that you won't be able to do not if you were Thor Masterman ten times over. He's mad. I shouldn't like to be that. Once is bad enough. Her little eyes shone tearily. All the same I like you for it. I do believe that if you hadn't said it, I should have gone to Law. I certainly meant to, but when I saw how nice you were. Dashing away another tear, she changed her tone suddenly. Tell me, what did your mother say after I left yesterday? Thor informed her that to the best of his knowledge she hadn't said anything. Bessie chuckled. I didn't leave her much to say, did I? Well, I'm glad to have had the opportunity of talking it out with her. He certainly talked it out, if that's the word. Yes, didn't I? And I suppose she's mad. Thor was unable to affirm as much as this. In fact, the conversation, since Mrs. Willoughby liked to apply that term to the encounter, had induced in his stepmother, as far as he could see, a somewhat superior frame of mind. Well, I hope it'll do her much as good as it did me, bet his side, divoutly. And now that I let off steam, I'll go round and make it up. Now go and see Len. He'll want to talk to you. Thor intimated that he would be glad of a minute with Lois, to which Mrs. Willoughby replied that Lois was having one of her fits of bird craze. She was in the kitchen of that minute getting suet with which to garb into the woods and feed the chickadees. Good Lord! There had been chickadees since the world began, and they'd lived through the winter somehow. Betty had no patience with what she called nature-fads, but it was as easy to talk sense into a chickadee itself as to keep Lois from going to the woods with two or three pounds of suet after every snowstorm. She undertook, however, to delay her daughter's departure on this errand, till warning had been given to Thor. Upstairs, Thor found Len, sitting in his big arm chair, clad in a gorgeous dressing gown. He was idle, stupefied, and were begone. With his bushy snow-white hair and beard, his puffy cheeks, his sagging mouth, and his clumsy bulk, he produced an effect half spectral and half fleshly, but quite pathetically ludicrous. His hand trembled violently as he held it toward his visitor. Not well to-day, Thor, he complained, or to be back in bed. Any other man would have gone up, always had too much energy. Awful blow, Thor, awful blow. Never could have believed it of your father. But I'm not down yet. Go to work, make another fortune. That's what I'll do. Thor sympathised with his friend's intentions, and, having slipped downstairs again, found Lois in the hall, a basket containing a varied assortment of bird foods on her arm. When she'd given him permission to accompany her, they took their way up Willoughby's lane, when she was possible to pass into the woodland stretches of the hillside. The day was clear and cold, with just enough wind to wake the eerie and harp of the forest into sound. Once in the woods they advanced warily. Listen to the red pulse, Lois whispered. She paused, leaning forward, her face alight. There was nothing visible, but a low, continuous warble interspersed with the sort of liquid rattle struck the ear. Taking a bunch of minute-stalks from her basket, she directed Thor while he tied them to the bow of a birch that trailed its lower branches to the snow. When they'd gone forward, they perceived, on looking around, that some dozen or twenty of the crimson-headed birds had found their food. So they went on, scattering seeds or crumbs in sheltered spots, and fixing masses of suet and conspicuous places to a approving chirrup of dee-dee, chicka-dee-dee-dee, from friendly little throats. The basket was almost emptied by the time they reached the outskirts of the wood and neared the top of the hill. Lois was fastening the last bunch of minute-stalks to a branch hanging just above her head. Thor stood behind her, holding the basket, and noticing, as he'd often noticed before, the slim shapeliness of her hands. In spite of the cold they were bare, the fur of the cuffs falling back sufficiently to display the exquisitely formed wrists. Lois, when can we be married? She gave no sign of having heard him, unless it was that her hands stopped for an instant in the deft rapidity of their task. Within a few seconds they had resumed their work, though it seemed to him with less sureness in the supple movement of the fingers. Beyond the upturned collar of her coat, he saw the steaming of a warm, slow flush. He was moved. He hardly knew how. He hardly knew how, except that it was with an emotion different from that which Rosie Faye had always rised in him. In that case the impulse was primarily physical. He couldn't have said what it was primarily in this. It was perhaps mental or spiritual, or only sympathetic. But it was an emotion. He was sure of that, though he was less sure that it had the nature of love. As for love, since yesterday the words sickened him. Its association had become, for the present, at any rate both sacred and appalling. He couldn't have used it, even if he had been more positive concerning the blends that made up his present sentiment. It was to postpone as long as possible the moment for turning around that Lois worked unnecessarily at the fasting of her minute stalks. They were not yet secured to her satisfaction when, urged by a sudden impulse, he bent forward and kissed her wrist. She allowed him to do this without protest while she knotted the ends of her string. But he was obliged to turn at last. I didn't know you wanted to be married, she said, with shy fragness. He responded as simply as she. But now that you do know it, how soon can it be? Why are you asking me? For, before he had time to reply as she went on, is it because Papa has got into trouble? He was ready with his answer. It's because he's got into trouble that I'm asking you today, but I may be needing to ask you for years and years. She uttered something like a little cry. Oh, Thor, is that true? The fact that he must make so many reservations impelled him to be the more ardent in what he could affirm without putting a strain on his conscience. I can swear to it, Lois, if you want me to. It began as long ago as when I was a youngster, and you were a little girl. She clasped her hands tightly. Oh, Thor! Since that time there hasn't been a— he's going to say a day, but he made a rapid correction— there hasn't been a year when I haven't looked forward to your being my wife. He allowed a few seconds to pass before adding, I should think you'd have seen it. She answered as well as a joyous distressful letter. I did see it, Thor, or thought I did, for a while. Only laterally—you mustn't judge by laterally, he broke in hastily— laterally I've had a good deal to go through. Oh, you poor Thor, tell me about it. Nothing would have eased his heart more effectively than to have poured out to her the whole flood of his confidence. It was what he was accustomed to doing when in her company. He could talk to her with more open heart than he'd ever been able to talk to anyone. It would have been a relief to tell her the whole story of Rosie Faye. And if he refrained from taking this course, it was only because he reminded himself that it wouldn't do. It obviously wouldn't do. He was unable to say why it wouldn't do, except on the general ground that there were things a man had better keep to himself. He curbed, therefore, his impasse to all frankness to say, I can't, because there are things I shall never be able to talk about. If I could speak of them to any one, it would be to you. She looked at him anxiously. It's nothing that I have to do with, is it? Only insofar as you have to do with everything that concerns me. Tears in her eyes could not keep her face from growing radiant. Oh, Thor, how can I believe it? It's true, Lois. I can hardly go back to the time when, in my own mind, it hasn't been true. But I'm not worthy of it, she said, half tearfully. I hope it isn't a question of worthiness on the one side or the other. It's just a matter of our belonging together. It was not in doubt, but with imploring looks of happiness that she said. Oh, are you sure we do? He was glad she could accept his formula. It not only simplified matters, but enabled him to be sincere. The fact that in his own way he was quite sincere rends him the more grateful to her for not forcing him, or trying to force him, to express himself insincerely. It was almost as if she devined his state of mind. Words aren't of much use between us, he declared, in his appreciation of this attitude on her part. We're a more or less independent of them, don't you think? She nodded her approval of this sentiment, as her eyes followed the action of her fingers in buttoning her gloves. But I'll tell you what I feel as exactly as I can put it, he went on. It's that you're essential to me, and I'm essential to you. At least, he subjoined humbly. I hope I'm essential to you. She nodded again, her face averted, her eyes still following the movements of her fingers at her wrist. I can't express it in language very different from that, he stammered. Because—well, because I'm not—not very happy, and the chief thing I feel about you is that you're a kind of—of shelter. He'd found the word that explained his state of mind. It was as a shelter that he was seeking her. If there were points of view from which his object was to protect her, there were others from which he needed protection for himself. In desiring her as his wife, he was, as it were, fleeing to a refuge. He did desire her as his wife, even though, but yesterday, he had more violently desired Rosie Faye. The violence was perhaps the secret of his reaction, not that it was reaction so much as the turning of his footsteps towards home. He was homing to her. He was homing to her by an instinct beyond his skill to analyze, though he knew it to be as straight and sure as out of the pigeon to the cot. There was a silence following his use of the word shelter, a silence in which he seemed to envelop him with her deep, luminous regard. The still, remote beauty of the winter woods, the notes of friendly birds, the sweet, wild music of the wind and the treetops accompanied that look, as mystery and incense and organ harmonies go with beledictions. Oh, Thor, you're wonderful, was all she could say when words came to her. You make me feel as if I could be of some use in the world. What's more wonderful still, you make me feel as if I've been of use all these years when I felt so useless. It was in the stress of the sensation of having wandered into far exotic regions in which his feet could only stray, that he said simply, You're home to me. She was so near to bursting into tears that she turned from him sharply and walked up the hill. He followed slowly, swinging the empty basket. Her buoyant step on the snow, over which the frost had drawn the thinnest of shining crusts, gave a nymph-like smoothness to her motion. Having reached the treetop's ridge, she merged on that high altar on which, not twenty-four hours earlier, it sunk face downward in the snow. The snow had drifted again over his footprints and the mark of his form. It was drifting still, in little powdery whirls, across a surface that called tints of crimson and glimpse of far from an angry sunset. It was windy here. As she stood above him, facing the north, her figure poised against a glaring sky, her garment blue backward. Even when he reached her and was standing by her side, she continued to gaze outward across the undulating snow-covered country, in the folds of which an occasional farmhouse lamp shone like a pale twilight star. You see, it's this way, he pursued, as though there had been no interruption. When I'm with you, I seem to get back to my natural conditions, the conditions in which I can live and work. That's what I mean by your being home to me. Other places—he mentioned this much of the confession he had at heart—other places have their temptations, but it's only at home that one lives. He took courage to go on from the way in which her loved hand had stalled into his. I daresay you think I talk too much about work, but after all, we can't forget that we live in a country in the making, can we? In a way, it's a world in the making. There's everything to do, and I wanted to be doing some of it, Lois. He did loathe with a little outburst. I can't help it. I know some people think I'm an enthusiast, and others put me down as a prig, but I can't help it. I know you can't fall, and I can't tell you how much I— she felt for the right word. I admire it. He turned to her eagerly. You're the only one, Lois, who knows what I mean, who can speak my language. You want to be useful, too. And I never have been. Nor I. I've known that things were to be done, but I haven't known how to set about them, or where to begin. Don't you think we may be able to find the way together? She seemed suddenly to cling to him. Oh, Thor, if you'd only make me half as good as you are. Perhaps the ardour with which he seized her was the unspent force of the longing rousin' him by Rosie. Perhaps it blazed up in him merely because she was a woman. For two or three days now his need of the feminine had been acute. Did she minister to that, or did she bring him something that could be offered by but one woman in the world? He couldn't tell. He only knew that he had her in his arms, with his lips on hers, and that he was content. He was content with the sense of fulfilment and appeasement. It was as if he had been straining for a great prize, and won the second. But at a moment when he had expected none at all. There was happiness in it, even if it was a quieter, stader happiness than that of which he now knew himself to be capable. Your home to me, Lowe's. He murmured as he held her. Your home to me. He meant that though there were strange entrancing edens on which he had not been allowed to enter, there was nevertheless a vast peace of mind to be found at the restful, friendly farside. And you're the whole wide world to me, Thor, she whispered, blossoming her arms about his neck, and drawing his face nearer. End of Chapter 15. On leaving Lois and returning homeward, Thor met his brother at the entrance to the avenue. They had not spoken since the preceding night. On purpose to avoid a meeting, Claude had breakfasted early and escaped to town before Thor had come downstairs. In the glimpse Thor had caught of his younger brother as the latter left the house, he saw that he looked white and worried. He looked white and worried still under the glare of street electricity. As they walked up the driveway together, Thor took the opportunity to put himself right in the matter that lay most urgently on his mind. Lois and I had to be married on one of the last days of February, he said, with his best attempt to speak casually. She wants to work at him before Lent, which begins on the first day of March. Have scruples about marrying in Lent in their church? Quite a fair. No one but the two families. Claude asked the question as to which he felt most curiosity. Going to tell father. Tonight, no use shilly-shallying about things of that sort. Father may not like it, but he can't kick. Claude spoke moody. He can't kick in your case. My grown men, Claude, were the only judges of what's right for us. I don't mean any rudeness respect to father, but we've got to be free. Best way as far as I can see is to be open and aboveboard and firm. Then everybody knows where you are. Claude made no response till they reached the doorstep where he lingered. Look here, Thor, he said then. I've got to put this thing through in my own way, you know. Thor didn't need to be told what this thing was. That's all right, Claude. I've got nothing to do with it. You've got something to do with it when you've put up the money. And what I feel, he added complainingly, is that my taking it makes me look as if I was bought. Oh, rot, Claude. Thor made a great effort. Hang it all. When a fellow's in love and going to be married himself, you don't suppose he can ignore his own brother, who's in the same sort of box, and can't be married for the sake of a few hundred dollars? That wouldn't be human. It was not difficult for Claude to take this point of view. But he repeated tenaciously, I've got to do it in my own way. Good Lord, old chap, I don't care how you do it, Thor declared eerily. So long as it's done, just buck up and be a man, and you'll pull it off magnificently. It's the sort of thing you've got to pull off magnificently, or slump. That's what I think, Lord agreed, and sigh him. He hesitated before announcing so bold a programme. And so he had to take her abroad. Oh! forgave a little gasp. He had not expected to have Rosie pass out of his ken. He'd supposed that he should remain near her, watch over her, know what she was doing, and what was being done to her. He was busy trying to readjust his mind, while Claude stammered out suggestions for the payment of Rosie's proposed diary. It was clear without his saying so that he hated doing it. But he did say so, adding that it made him feel as if he was bought. Thor was irritated by the repetition. Let's drop that, Claude, if you don't mind. Be satisfied once for all that if you and Rosie accept the money, it will be as a favour to me. I'm so built that I can't be happy in my own marriage without knowing that you and and she have the chance to be happy in yours. With all the money that's coming to me, and that I've never done any more to deserve than you have, what I'm setting aside will be a trifle. As for the payments, I'll do just as you say. The first quarter will be paid to Rosie on the day you're married, when there'll be a little check for you, for good luck. So go ahead and make your plans. Go broad, if you want to. Dare say it's the best thing you can do. To escape his brother's shame-faced thanks, Thor passed into the porch. I'm not going to tell anyone about it till I'm ready, Claude warned, as he followed. Thor turned. Of course you know that father's on to the whole business. The juicy is. Father told me. How did you suppose I knew anything about it? So that's it. Been wondering all day who could have given me away. That's Uncle Sim's tricks. You, the old fool, had his eye. It was bound to come out somehow, you know, in a little village like this. Natural enough that Uncle Sim should want us to put father wise to a matter of the concerns of the whole family. I thought I'd tell you so that you could take your line. Take what line? How do I know? That's up to you. The line that will best protect Rosie, I suppose. Remember that that's your first consideration now. I only want you to understand that you can't keep father in the dark. I should say it was more dignified and perhaps better policy, not to try. An hour later Mrs. Masterman was commenting at the dinner table on the pleasing circumstance that invitations to Miss Elsie Darling's party had come for the entire family. There were cards not only for the two young men, but for the father and mother also. Since both the older and the younger members of society were included, it was clear that the function was to pass the limitations of a dance and become a ball. Neither Mr. or Mrs. Masterman was superior to this form of entertainment. It was the one above all others that reminded them that they belonged to society in the higher sense. They dined out with tolerable frequency. With tolerable frequency their friends dined with them. As for the afternoon teas to which they were bitten in the course of a season, Mrs. Masterman could scarcely keep count of them. But balls came only once or twice in a winter, and not always so often as that. A ball was a community event. It was an occasion on which to display the fact that the neighbourhood could unite in a gathering more socially significant than the mere frolicking of boys and girls. Moreover, it was an opportunity for proving that the higher circles of the village stood on equal terms with those of the city, with the solidarity of true aristocracies all over the world. On Mrs. Masterman's murmuring something to the effect that Claude would go to the ball, of course. The young man mumbled words that sounded like, Not for mine. The mother understood the response to be a negative, and replied with a protest. Hope it you must, Claude, dear. It was so nice of you to meet Elsie. She's a charming girl, they say, after her years abroad. She concluded with a wrinkling of her pretty brow. It seems to me you don't know many really nice girls. She'd be moved by no more than a mother's solicitude, but Claude kept his eyes on his plate. He knew that his father was probably looking at him, and that Thor was saying, Now's your chance to speak up and declare that you know the nicest girl in the world. Poor Claude was sensible of the opportunity, and yet thought himself paralysed with regards to making use of it. In reply he could only say vaguely that if he had to go he would have to go, and not long afterward Mrs. Masterman rose. The sons followed their parents into the library, pausing to light their cigarettes on the way. By the time they'd crossed the hall, the head of the house had settled himself with the evening paper in his favourite armchair before the slumbering wood fire. Mrs. Masterman stooped over the long table-stroom with periodicals, turning the pages of a new magazine. Thor advanced to a discreet distance behind his father's chair, where he paused and said quietly, Father, I wanted to tell you a mother that I'm engaged to Lois Willoughby, where to be married almost once, toward the end of next month. There was dead silence. As far as could be observed, Masterman continued to study his paper, while his wife still stooped over the pages of her magazine. It was long before the father said, with the seeming indifference meant to be more bitter than gall. That, I presume, is your answer to my move with regards to the father. Very well, Thor, you're your own master. I have nothing to say. Before Thor could explain that it was only the carrying out of a long-plant intention. His stepmother looked up and spoke, I have something to say, Thor, dear. I hope you're going to be very happy. I'm sure you will be. She's a noble girl. Her newly germinating vitality having asserted itself to this extent, she stood aghast till Thor straight up and kissed her, saying, Thank you, Mumfy. She is a noble girl. One of the best. The example had its effect on Claude, who had stood hesitating in the doorway, and now came towards his father's chair, though timidly. Father, I'm going to be married, too. His mother uttered a smothered cry. Masterman turned sharply. Who? You? Implied scorn in the tone put Claude on his metal. Yes, Father, he tried to say with dignity. It was in search of further support for this dignity that he added, in a manner that he tried to make formal, but which became only faltering, to Miss Rosanna Fay. Masterman shrugged his shoulders and returned to his newspaper. There were full three minutes in which each of the spectators waited for another word. Have you nothing to say to me, Father? Claude pleaded and attained curiously piteous. The father barely glanced over his shoulder. What do you expect me to say? To call you a damn fool? Words will be wasted. I'm a grown man, Father. Claude began to protest. Are you? The first intimation I've had of it. But I'm willing to take your word. If so, you must assume a grown man's responsibilities from now on. Claude's throat was dry and husky. What do you mean from now on? I mean from the minute when you've irrevocably chosen between this woman and us. You haven't irrevocably chosen as yet. You still time to reconsider. But if I don't reconsider, Father, if I can't, the joy is between her and us. He returned to his paper. But again his wife's nascent will to live asserted itself. To no one's astonishment more than to her own. It's not between her and me, Claude, she cried, casting as she did so, a frightened glance at the back of her husband's head. I am your mother. I shall stand by you, whoever fails. Her words terrified her so utterly, that before she dared to cross the floor to her son, she looked again beseechingly at the ingray top of her husband's head as it appeared above the back of the armed chair. Nevertheless she stole swiftly to her boy and put her hands on his shoulders. I am your mother, dear, she sobs tremblingly, and if she's a good girl and loves you, I'll accept her. Marcellement turned his newspaper inside out as they pretending not to hear. Four waited till Claude and his mother clinging to each other had crept out of the room before saying, I am responsible for this, Father. There was no change in the father's attitude. So I was opposed. The girl is a good girl, and I couldn't let Claude break her heart. If I did easier to break mine. I don't mean that, Father. Then I can only say that you're as successful in what you don't mean as in what you do. I don't understand. No, perhaps not, but it would be futile for me to try to explain to you. Good night. For a main way he was. It isn't futile for me to try to explain to you, Father. I know Rosie Faye, and you don't. She's a beautiful girl with that strong character which Claude needs to give him backbone. He's in love with her, and he's made her fall in love with him. It wouldn't be decent on his part or honourable on ours. The father interrupted wearily. He'll spare me the sentimentalities. The facts are bad enough. When I want instructions in decency and on, and I'll come to you, and I'll get them. In the meantime, I've said good night. But, Father, we must talk about it. Master enraged himself in his chair and turned. Thor, he said sternly, his words getting increased effect from his chance-like lisp. If you knew how painful your presence is to me, you go. Thor finished. There was nothing left for him but to turn. And yet he had not gone many steps beyond the library door, before he heard his father fling the paper to the floor, uttering a low groan. The young man stood still, shifting between two minds. Should he go away and leave his father to the mortifying sense that his sons were setting him at defiance? Or should he return and insist on full explanations? He would have done the latter had it not been for the words, if you knew how painful your presence is to me. He still heard them. They cut him across the face, across the heart. He went on upstairs. As he passed the open door of Mrs. Marsman's room, he heard Claude saying, O mother darling, if you knew her, you'd feared about her just as I do. When she's dressed up as a lady, she'll put every other girl in the shade. You'll see she will. After she's had a year or two in Paris. Thor entered the room while the mother was crying out, Paris? Why, Claude, dear, what are you talking about? How are you going to live, let alone Paris? That's all right, mother, don't fret. I can get money. I'm not a fool. Look here, he added, in a confidential tone, winking at Thor over her shoulder. I'll tell you something. It's a secret, mind you, not a word to father. I'm all right for money now. She could only repeat in a tone of mystification. All right for money now. Claude made an inarticulate sound of ascent. Got it all fixed. Oh, but how? I said it was a secret. He winked at his brother again. I shouldn't tell even you, and you've been such a spanking good mother to back me up, that I want to ease your mind. She threw an imploring look at her stepson, though she addressed her son. Oh, Claude, you haven't done anything wrong, have you? Forged, or embezzled, or whatever it is they do in banks? No, mother, it's all on the square. Because of Thor's presence here, I did. If it will make you any more cheerful, I'll tell you this, too. It's not going to be my money. It'll be Rosie's. Strictly speaking, I can't have anything to do with it. She'll have about five thousand dollars a year. When it's all over and we're married, you can put father wise to that, but not before, mind you. But, Claude, darling, I don't understand a bit. How can she have five thousand dollars a year when they're as poor as poor, and she hasn't a relation who could possibly— He, too, threw a glance at Thor. She may not have a relation, but she might have a friend. Now, mother, this is just between you and me. If you hadn't been such a spanking good mother, I shouldn't have told you a word of it. Yes, but, Claude, think. What sort of a friend could it possibly be who give a girl all that money? Why, it's ridiculous. It isn't ridiculous, is it, Thor? You leave it to me, Mumphy. But it is ridiculous, Claude, dear. You'll see if it isn't. No man in the world would settle five thousand dollars a year on a girl like that without a penny, and if he had a reason and a very good reason, too. Would he, Thor? She demanded of her stepson, whom she had not hitherto included. She continued to address him. I don't care who he is or what he is. Don't you agree with me? Wouldn't anybody agree with me who had his senses? Thor's heart jumped. This was a view of his intentions, and he had not foreseen. Fortunately, he could disarm his stepmother by revealing himself as the God from the machine, for she were considered no more than just that he should use part of his inheritance for Claude's benefit. He might have made the attempt there and then, had not Claude done it for himself. Now you leave it to me, Mumphy, dear. I know exactly what I'm about. I can't explain, but I'll tell you this much more. It'll make your mind quite easy, that it's all on my account that Rose is to have the money. He gave his brother another look. She didn't marry me. She wouldn't get it. At least, he had him more doubtfully. I don't think she would. See? Mrs. Mastman confessed that she didn't see quite, but her Thor made it clear that she was influenced by Claude's assurances, while Thor felt it prudent to go on his way up the second stairway. End of CHAPTER XVI There were both amazement and terror in Rose's face, when, at dusk next day, Claude strolled down the flowery path of the hot-house. Since Thor had turned from her on almost the same spot, forty-eight hours previously, no hint from either of the brothers had come her way. Through the intervening time she'd lived in an anguish of wonder. What was happening? What was to happen still? Would anything happen at all? Had Claude discovered the astounding fact that the elder brother was in love with her? If he had, what would he do? Would he go wild with jealousy, or would he never have anything to do with her again? Either case was possible, and the latter more than possible, if he had received a hint of the degree in which she had betrayed herself to Thor. As to that, she didn't know whether she was glad or sorry. She knew how crude had been her self-revelation and how shocking, but the memory of it gave her a measure of relief. It was like a general confession, like the open declaration of what had been too long kept buried in the heart. It had been a shameful thing to own that, loving one man, she would have married another man for money. But a worse shame lay him being driven to that pass. For this she felt herself but partly responsible, if responsible at all. What did she, Rosie Faye, care for money in itself? Put succinctly, her first need was of bread, of bread for herself and for those who were virtually dependent on her. After bread she wanted love and pleasure and action and admiration, and whatever else made up life, but only after it. She was craving for them, she was stifling for lack of them, but they were all secondary, the very best of them was secondary. Only one thing stood first, and that was bread. Undoubtedly her fragments had revolted for Masterman. But what did he know of an existence which left the bareest possible margin for absolute necessity? What would life have meant to him had he never had a day since he first began to think when he'd been entirely free from anxiety as to the prime essentials? Rosie couldn't remember a time when the mere getting of their pinched daily food hadn't been a matter of contrivance with some doubt as to his success. She couldn't remember a time when she'd ever been able to have a new dress or a pair of boots without long calculation beforehand. On the other hand, she remember many a time when the pinched food couldn't be paid for, and the new dress or the pair of boots had come almost within reach only to be whisked aside that the money might be used for something still more needful. In a world of freedom and light and flowers and abundance, her little soul had been kept in a prison where the very dole of bread and water was stinted. She had never been young. Even in childhood she had known that. She had known it and been patient with the fact, hoping for a chance to be young when she was older. If money came in then, money for boots and a bread for warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, for fuel and rent and taxes and light and the pay of the men and the innumerable details which, owing to her father's dreaminess, she was obliged to keep on her mind. If money were ever to come in for these things, she could be young with the best. She could be young with the intense happiness that would come from spirits long thwarted. It might never now be a lighthearted happiness, but it would be happiness for all that. It would be the deeper and the more satisfying and the more aware of itself for its years of suppression. To her long experience in denial Rosey could only oppose a heart more empirically exacting in its demands. Her tense little spirit didn't know how to do otherwise. From lines of ancestry that had never done anything but toil with patient relentlessness to ring from the soil whatever it was capable of yielding, she had inherited no habit of compromise. In them it had been called grit, but a softer generation having let that word fall into disuse, Rosey could only account for herself by saying she wasn't a quitter. She meant that she could neither forgo what she asked for, nor be content with anything short of what she conceived to be the best. Could she have done that? She might have enjoyed the meager good time of other girls in the village. She might have listened to the advances of young Breen the gardener, or of Matt's colleague in the grocery store, but she had never presented such possibilities for her own consideration. She was like an ant that sees but one object to the errand on which it has set out, disdaining diversion. And if it had all summed itself up into what looked like a hard, unlovely, avariciousness, it was because poor Rosey had nothing to tell her the values and correlations of the different ingredients in life. For the element that suffuses good fortune and ill-fortune alike with corrective significance, she had imbibed from her mother one kind of scorn, and from her father another. She knew no more of it than did Thor Masterman. Like him, she could only work for a material blessing with material hands, though without his advantages for molding things to his will. He had his advantages through money. Since all things material are measured by that, by that, Rosey measured them. The matter and the measure were all she knew. They meant safety for herself and for her parents, and protection for Matt when he came out of jail. How could she do other than spend her heart upon them? What choice had she when the alternative lay between Claude and love on the one side, and on the other Thor with his hands full of daily bread for them all? With Claude and his love there went nothing besides. While with Thor and his daily bread there would be peace and security for life. She asked it of herself. She asked it in imagination of him. What else could she do but sell herself when the price on her poor little body had been set so high? She had spent two burning rebellious days. All the while she was cooking meals or setting tables or washing dishes or making beds or selling flowers or pruning or watering or addressing envelopes for the monthly bills. Her soul had been raging against the unjust code by which she would have to be judged. Thor would judge her, Claude would judge her if he knew. Anyone who knew would judge her, and women most fiercely of all. But what did they know about it? What did they know of twenty odd years of going around in a cage? What did they know of the terror of seeing the cage itself demolished and being without a protection? Did they suppose she wouldn't suffer in giving up her love? Of course she would suffer. The very extremity of her suffering would prove the extremity of her need. Passionately Rosie defended herself against her imaginary accusers, because unconsciously she accused herself. Nevertheless, Claude's sudden appearance startled her, though the set of his shoulders, tiring through the dusk, transported her to the enchanted land. Here were mountains and lakes and palaces and plashed marble steps and the music of lutes and banquets of ambrosial things to which daily bread was as nothing. Claude brought them with him. They were the conditions of that glorious life in which he had his being. They were the conditions in which she had her being too, the minute she came within his sphere. She passed through some poignant seconds as he approached. For the first time since her ittle had begun to give a new meaning to existence, she perceived that if he renounced her it would be the one thing she couldn't bear. She might have the strength to give him up. For him to give her up would be beyond all the limits of endurance. She put it to herself thirstily in saying it would break her heart. But he dispelled her fears by smiling. He smiled from what was really a long way off. Even she could see that he smiled from pleasure, though she couldn't trace his pleasure to his delicious feeling of surprise. If she ceased to be a dried in a wood, it was to become the armida of an enchanted garden. She could have no idea of the figure she presented to a connoisseur in girls, as from a background of palms, fern trees, and banked masses of bloom, she stared at him with lips half-parted and wide, frightened eyes. Submitting to this new witchery, in the same way as he was yielding to the heavy, languorous perfumes of the place, Claude smiled continuously. The fat's all in the fire, Rosie, he said, a loud whisper as he drew nearer. So we've nothing to be afraid of any longer. It was some minutes before she could give concrete significance to these words. In the meantime she occupied herself with assuring him that there was no one in the hot house but herself, and that in this gloaming they could not be seen from outside. She even found a spot, a kind of low staging from which foliage plants had recently been moved away, on which they could sit down. They did so, clinging to each other, though, conscious of her coarse working dress, she was swept by a shameful sense of incongruity in being on such terms with this fortlessly attired man. She did her best to shrink from sight, to blot herself out in his embrace, unaware that, to Claude, the very roughness and the scent of growing things gave her a savage, earthy charm. He explained the situation to her word by word. When he told her that their meetings were known to his father, she hid her face on his breast. When he went on to describe how resolute he had been in taking the bull by the horns, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his face with the devotion of a dog. On hearing what a good mother Mrs. Masterman had been, utterances which welled up out of her heart as if she had been crying were like broken phrases of blessing. As a matter of fact she was only half listening. She was telling herself how mad she had been infancing for an instant that she could ever have married Thor, that she could ever have married any one, no matter how great the need or how immense the compensation. Having confronted the peril, she knew now, as she had not known it hitherto, that her heart belonged to this man who held her in his arms, for him to do with it as he pleased. He might treasure it, or he might play with it, or he might break it. It was all one. It was his. It was his, and she was his, to shatter on the wheel or to trample in the mire just as he was inclined. It was so clear to her now that she wondered she hadn't seen it with equal force in those days when she was so resolute in declaring that she knew what she was doing. And yet within a few minutes she saw how difficult it was to surrender herself, even mentally, without reserves. She was still listening, but partially. She recognized plainly enough that the things he was saying were precisely those which a month ago would have filled her soul with satisfaction. He loved her, loved her, loved her. Moreover, he had found the means of sweeping all obstacles aside. They were to be married as soon as possible, just as soon as he could arrange things. Thor and his mother were with them, and his father's conversion would be only a matter of time. These assurances, by which all the calculations of her youth were crowned, found her oddly apathetic. It was not because she had lost the knowledge of their value, but only that they had become subsidiary to the great central fact that she was his, without money or price on his side, and no matter of what cost on hers. It was only when he began to murmur a semitra here in plans for the future, in which she detected the word, Paris, that she was frightened. Oh, Claude, darling, how could I go to Paris from this so much for me to do here? It could not be said that he took offence, but he hinted at reproval. Here, dearest, where? Here where we are. I don't see how I could go away. But you'd have to go away if we were married. Would it be necessary to go so far? Wouldn't it be the farther the better? For some things, but, oh, Claude, I have so many things to consider. But I thought that when a woman married, she left. Her father and mother and everything, yes, I know. But how can I leave mine when I'm the only one who has any head? Mother's getting better, but father's not much good, except for mooning over books. And then, she hesitated, but whipped herself on. Then there's Matt. He'll be out before long. Someone must be here to tell them what to do. He withdrew his arms from about her. Of course, if you're going to raise so many difficulties. I'm not raising difficulties, Claude, darling. I'm only telling you what difficulties there are. God knows I wish there weren't any. But what can I do? If it were just going to Paris and back. Well, why not go and come back when we're obliged to? In the end they compromised on that, each considering it enough for the present. Rosie was unwilling to dampen his honor when for the first time he seemed able to enter into her needs as a human being with cares and ties. He discussed them all, displaying a wonderful disposition to shoulder and share them. He went so far as to develop a philanthropic interest in Matt. Rosie had never known anything so amazing. She'd clasped him to her with a kind of fear lest the man should disappear in the god. I'll talk to Thor about him, Lord said confidently. Gotta be in his bonnet, Thor, as about helping Japs who come out of Jail and all that. Rosie shuddered. He was curiously distasteful for her to apply to Thor. She felt guilty toward him. If she could do as she chose she would never see him again. She said nothing, however, while Claude went on. Thor's a top-hold brother, you know. You'll find that out one of these days. Lots of things I shall have to explain to you. He added about leading up to it. He's engaged to Lois Wellaby. Rosie sprang from his arms. What? Already? She was standing. He looked up at her curiously. Already? Already how? What do you mean by that? She tried to recapture her position. Why, already, right after us? She receded herself getting possession of one of his hands. To this tenderness he made no response. He seemed to ruminate. Say, Rosie, he began at last, but apparently thought better of what he had meant to say. All right. He broke in carelessly, going on to speak of the wisdom of leaving the public out of their confidence until their plans were more fully matured. Thor's to be married about the twentieth of next month, he continued, while Rosie was on her guard against further self-betrayal. After that we'll have Lois on our side, and she'll do a lot for us. By the time Claude emerged from the hot house it was dark. Glad of the opportunity of slipping away unobserved, he was hurrying towards the road, when he found himself confronted by Jasper Faye. In the latter's voice there was a sternness that got its force from the fact that it was so mild. You've been in the hot house, Mr. Claude? Claude laughed. In his present mood of happiness he could easily have announced himself as Faye's future son-in-law. Nothing but mateys of prudence held him back. He answered, jestingly, Been in to see if you had any American beauties. No, Mr. Claude, we don't grow them. No kind of American beauties. Claude laughed again. I don't know about that. Good night, Mr. Faye. Glad to have seen you. He passed on, with spirits slightly dashed, because his condescension met with no response. He was so quick to feel that Faye's silence struck him as hostile, it struck him as hostile with a touch of uncanniness. On glancing back over his shield he saw that Faye was following him watchfully, like a dog that sneaks after an intruder till he has left the premises. Being sensitive to the creepy and the sinister, Claude was glad when he had reached the road. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of The Sight of the Angels by Basil King The provision that for the moment he was to lead his customary life and rosy hers made it possible for Claude to attend the ball by which Mrs. Darling drew the notice of the world to her daughter. He did so with hesitations, compunctions, reluctances, and repugnances which in no wise diminished his desire to be present at the event. It took place in the great circular ballroom of the city's newest and most splendid hotel. The ballroom itself was white and gold and louis cares. Against this background a tasteful decorator had constructed a colonnade that reproduced in flowers the exquisite marble circle of the Bosque at Versailles. An imitation of Girardot's fountain splashed in the centre of the room and cooled the air. Claude arrived late. He did so partly to compromise with his compunctions and partly to accentuate his value. In gatherings at which young men were sometimes at a premium none knew better than he the heightened worth of one where no more were to be looked for and who carried himself with distinction. Handsome at any time. Claude rose above his own levels when he was in evening dress. His figure was made for a white waistcoat, his feet for dancing pumps. Moreover he knew how to enter a room with that modesty which prompts a hostess to be encouraging. As he is to have rather timidly in the doorway, long after the little receiving group had broken up, Mrs. Darling said to herself that she had never seen a more attractive young man, whoever he was. She was glad afterward that she had made this reservation, for without it she might have been prejudiced against him on learning that he was Archie Masterman's son. As it was, she could feel that the sins of the Fathers were not to be visited on the children, especially in the case of so delightful a lad. Mrs. Darling had an eye for masculine good looks, particularly when they were accompanied by a suggestion of the thoroughbred. Claude's very shyness, the gentlemanly hesitation which on the threshold of a ballroom has no dandified airs of seeming too much at ease, had this suggestion of the thoroughbred. Mrs. Darling, dragging a long pink train and waving slowly a bespangled pink fan, moved toward him at once. How do you do so glad to see you? I'm afraid my daughter is dancing. There was something in her manner that told him she had no idea who he was, something that could be combined with polite welcome only by one born to be a hostess. Claude had that ready perceptual of his role which makes for social success. He bowed with the right inclination and spoke with the gravity dictated by respect. I'm afraid I must introduce myself, Mrs. Darling. I'm so late. I'm Claude Masterman. My father is—oh, there here are so lovely your mother looks. Really, there's not a young girl in the room can touch her. Won't you find someone and dance? I'm sorry, my daughter, but later on I'll find her—why, matey, there you are. I thought you'd never come. How do you do, my dear? A more important guest than himself being greeted, Claude felt at liberty to move on a pace or two and look over the scene. For the outer rim of the circle, that which came beneath the colonnade, was raised by two steps above the space reserved for dancing. The coup d'oeuvre was therefore extensive. A mass of colour, pleasing and confused, revolved languorously to those strains of the Viennese operetta in which the waltz might be said to have finished the autocracy of its long reign. The rhythm of the dancers was as regular and gentle as the breathing of a child. In glide and turn, in balance and smoothness, in that lift which was scarcely motion, there was the suggestion of frenzy restrained, of passion lulled, which emanates from the barely perceptible heave of a slumbering summer sea. It was dreamy to a charm. It was graceful to the point at which the eye begins to sicken of gracefulness. It was monotonous, with the force of a necromantic spell. It was soothing. It also threw a hint of melancholy into a gathering intended to be gay. It was as though all that was most sentimentally lovely, in the essence of the nineteenth century, had concentrated its strength to subdue the daring spirit of the twentieth, winning a decade of success. Now, however, that the decade was passed, there was indications as revolt. On the arc of the circle most remote from the eye of the hostess, audacious couples were giving way to bizarre little dips and kicks and attitudes, named by outlandish names, inaugurating a new freedom. Claude stood alone beneath one of the wide, delicate, floral arches, a spectator who was not afraid of being observed. In reality he was noting to himself the degree to which he had passed beyond the merely pleasure-seeking impulse. In Rosie and Rosie's cares he had come to realities. He was rather proud of it. With regard to the young men and young women swirling in this variegated whirlpool, as well as those who, wearied with the dance, were sitting or reclining on the steps, where rugs and cushions had been thrown for their convenience, he felt a distinct superiority. They were still in the childish stage, on he was grown to be a man. To the pretty girls with their Porisian frocks and their relatively idle lives, Rosie, with her power of tackling actualities, was as a human being to a race of marionettes. It would be necessary for him, in deference to his hosts, to step down among them in a minute or two and twirl in their company. But he would do it with a certain pity for those to whom this sort of thing was really a pastime. He would do it as one for whom pastimes had lost their meaning, and who would be in some sense taking a farewell. The music breathed out its last drowsy cadence, and the whirlpool resolved itself into a series of shimmering, subsidiary eddies. There was a decentralising movement towards the rugs and cushions on the steps, or to the seclusion of seats skillfully empowered amid groups of palms. Dowagers sought the rose-cutter cites against the walls. Gentlemen, clasping their white-loved hands at the base of their spinal columns, bent in graceful conversational postures. A few pairs of attractive young people continued to pace the floor. Claude remained where he was. He remained where he was partly because he hadn't decided what else to do, and partly because his quick eye had singled out the one girl in the room who embodied something that was not embodied by every other girl. When first he saw her, she was standing beside the Girardon fountain in conversation with a young man. The fact that the young man was his friend Chiva brought her directly within Claude's circle, and stirred that spirit of emulation which five minutes earlier he thought to have outlived. The girl was adjusting something in her corsage, a glance flying upward from the action of her fingers towards Chiva's face, not shyly or coquettishly, but with a perfectly straightforward nonchalance which might have made anything from indifference to defiance. Claude knew the precise moment at which she noticed him by the fact that she'd lanced toward him twice in rapid succession, after which Chiva glanced towards him too. He understood then that she'd been sufficiently struck by him to ask his name, and judged that Biddy would treat him to some such partable epithet as awful-ass, in order to keep her attention on himself. In this apparently he didn't succeed, for presently they began to saunter in Claude's direction. The latter stood his ground. In the knowledge that he could endure scrutiny, he stood his ground with an ease that plainly roused the young lady's interest. With her hand on the arm of her cavalier she sauntered forward and, swerving slightly, sauntered by. She sauntered by with a lingering look of curiosity that seemed to throw him a challenge. Never in his life had Claude received such a look. It was perhaps the characteristic look of the girl of the twentieth century. It was neither bold nor rude nor self-assertive, but it was unconscious, inquiring, and unabashed. For Claude it was a new experience, calling out in him a new response. It was a rule with Claude never to take the initiative with girls of his own class, or with those who, because they lived in the city while he lived in the village, felt themselves geographically his superiors. He found it wise policy to wait to be sought, and therefore fell back toward his hostess with compliments for her scheme of decoration. He got the reward he hoped for when Mrs. Darling called to her daughter, saying, Earl, see, dear, come here. I wanted to introduce Mr. Claude Masterman. So it happened that when the nineteenth century was putting forth a further effort with the swinning phrases of the barcarel from the Comte de Hoffmann adapted to the Boston, Claude found himself swaying with the twentieth. They had not much to say. Whatever interest they felt in each other was guarded, taciturn. When they talked it was in disjointed sentences on fragmentary subjects. You've been abroad, haven't you? Yes, for the last five years. Do you like being back? The answer was doubtful. Rather, for some things. And as though to explain this lack of enthusiasm, everybody looks alike. She'd qualify this by adding, you don't. And neither do you, he stated, in the matter-of-fact tone, which he felt to be suited to the picantly matter-of-fact in her style. It was a minute or two before I thought of them spoke again. You've got a brother, haven't you? My father's his guardian or something. Sent into these statements, Claude said further, he couldn't come tonight because he's going to be married on Thursday. Oh, to that Miss Willoughby, isn't it? A jerky pause was followed by a jerky addition. I think she's nice. Yes, she is. Top hell, says my brother. She threw back her head to fling him up a smile that struck him as adorably straightforward. I like to hear one brother speak of her another like that. You don't often. Oh, well, every brother couldn't, you know. They had circled and reversed more than once before she sighed. I wish I had a brother or a sister. It's an awful bore being the only one. Better to be the only one than one of too many. More minutes have gone by in the suave swinging of their steps to often back some of the land measures when she asked abruptly, Do you skate? Sometimes, do you? I go to the Coliseum. Claude's next question slipped out with a daring simplicity he knew how to employ. Do you go on particular days? I generally go on Tuesdays. If she was moved by an afterthought it was without flurry or apparent sense of having committed an indiscretion. Not every Tuesday, she said quietly, and dropped the subject there. When, a few minutes later, she was resting on a rug thrown down on the steps, with Claude posed gracefully by her side, Archie Masterman found the opportunity to stroll near enough to his wife to say in an undertone, Do you see, Claude? In his answer was no more than a flutter of the eyelids, but a flutter of the eyelids quite sufficient to take in the summing up of significant, unutterable things in her husband's face. By the time Thor and Lois had returned from their honeymoon in early May, the line of battle in Claude's soul had been extended. The Claude who might be was fighting hard to get the better of the Claude who was. It was nevertheless the Claude who was that spoke in response to the elder brother's timid inquiry concerning the situation as it affected Rosie Faye. Hardly knowing how to frame his question, Thor had put it awkwardly, done anything yet? No. In the little smoking-room that had been lends and was now falls, Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby having retired already to their petty-true part share, they puffed at their cigars in silence. It had been the wish of both Bride and Brightroom that Claude should dime with them on their second evening at home. Thor had manoeuvred for these few minutes alone with his brother in order to get the information he was now seeking. For his own assurance there were things he needed to know. He wanted to feel convinced that he hadn't acted hastily, that in marrying he had made no mistake. There would be proof of that when he saw that Claude and Rosie had found their happiness in each other, and that in what he himself had done. There had been no other way. He wished that Uncle Sim's puristic refrain wouldn't hum so persistently in his memory. Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure! He didn't believe in a Lord's leisure, but neither did he want to be afraid of his own haste. He had grown so self-conscious on the subject that it took courage for him to say, Isn't it getting to be about time? Claude drew the cigar from his lips and stared obliquely. Look here, old chap, I thought I was to put this thing through in my own way. Oh, quite so, quite so. Claude's thrust went home when he said, I don't see why you should be in such a hurry about it. He followed this by a question that Thor found equally pertinent. Why the devil are you? Because I thought you were. Well, even if I am, I don't see any reason for rushing things. Oh, would you call it rushing? He threw off carelessly. Ah, here you go, good deal to the darlings. Not any often, other than they ask me. Well, then they ask you pretty often, don't they? Well, I suppose they do, when they feel inclined. I haven't counted the number of occasions. No, but I dare say Rosie has. I'm not a fool, Thor. I don't talk to Rosie about the darlings. Not of the darlings about her, that's the point. At least it's one of the two points, and both are important. It's no more unjust for Rosie Faye to know nothing of Elsie Darling than it is for Elsie Darling to know nothing of Rosie Faye. Oh, rot for! Claude sprang to his feet, knocking off the ash of his cigar into the far place. What do you think I'm up to? I don't know, and what I'm afraid of is that you don't know. If you think I mean to leave Rosie in the lurch, I don't think you mean it, no. Then if you think I'd do it, the surest way not to do it is to do the other thing. I'll do the other thing when I'm ready, not before. Oh, that's just what I thought would happen. And this is just what I thought would happen. That because you've put up that confounding money you tried to make me feel I was bored. Well, I'm not bored, see? Rather than bribed to doing what I mean to do anyhow, I'll not do it at all. Oh, if you mean to do it anyhow. Claude ranted on his brother indignantly. Say, Thor, do you think I'm going to be a damn scoundrel? Do you think you'd be a damn scoundrel if you didn't put it through? I should be worse. Even a damn scoundrel can be called a man, and I should have forfeited the name. There, does that satisfy you? Up to a point, yes. Claude sniffed. You're such a queer chap, Thor. And if I've satisfied you up to a point, I ought to be content. Oh, I'm all right, Claude. I only hope that you'd be able to go on with it for some better reason than just not to be a scoundrel. Good Lord, old chap, I'm crazy about it. If Rosie wouldn't hum and whore, I'd be the happiest man alive. Oh, say Rosie hums and whores, does she? What about? Mother confounded family of hers must do this for the father, and that for the mother, and some of the elfs of the beastly cub that's in jail. You could see the position that puts me in. But if you're really in love with her, I'm really in love with her, but not with them. I never pretended to be, but I have to marry the bunt, the cub and all. Thor couldn't help thinking of the opening he would have had here for his own favourite kinds of activity. Then that'll give you a chance to help them. Also stuck on helping people as you, old chap, won't help myself. But you've got help, whereas they've got no one. You'll be a god-centre to them. That's just what I'm afraid of. Who wants to be a god-centre to people? I should think any one would. If I'm a god-centre to them, it shows what they must be. Mustn't undervalue yourself. Besides, you know what they were when you began. Oh, hang it all for. I didn't begin it. It happened. Thor's eyes followed his brother as the latter began moving restlessly about the room. Well, you're glad it happened, aren't you? Lord stopped abruptly. Of course I am. But what stumps me is why you should be. See here, would you be as keen on it if I was going to marry someone else? Before so leading a question, Thor had to choose his words. I'd be just as keen on it. Only if you were going to marry someone else, someone in circumstances more like your own, you wouldn't require so much of my sympathy. Well, it beats me, Lord admitted, starting for the door. I know you're a good chap at heart. Top hole, of course. But I shouldn't have supposed you were as good as all that. I'll be darned if I should. Thor thought it best not to inquire too precisely into the suggestions implied by all that, contending himself with asking, When may I tell Lois? Lord answered over his shoulder as he passed into the hall. Teller myself, perhaps now. He joined his sister-in-law in the drawing-room, though he didn't tell her. He was on the point of doing so once or twice, but sheered off to something else. Awful queer fellow, Thor. Can you make him out? Lois was doing something with white silk or thread, which she hooked in and out with a crocheting implement. The action, as she held the work up, showed the beauty of her hands. On her lips there was a dim, happy smile. Making Thor out is a good deal like reading in a language you're just beginning to learn. You only see some of the beauties yet, but you know you'll find plenty more when you get on a bit. In the meanwhile the idioms may bother you. Claude, who was leaning forward limply his elbows on his knees, made a circular protesting movement of his neck and head as though his collar fitted him uncomfortably. Well, he's all Greek to me. But they say Greek richly repays those who study it. Ha! Though I've not built that way. Do you know why he's got such a bee in his bonnet about— he was going to say, in order to read up to his announcement, about Faye the gardener? But he couldn't. The words wouldn't come out. The prospect of telling anyone that he was going to marry a little rosy Faye terrified him. He hardly understood now how he could have told his father or mother. He would never have done it if Thor hadn't been behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night, which made his situation indurable. So he changed the form of his question to be in his bonnet about helping people. Oh, it isn't a bee in his bonnet. It's just himself. He can't do anything else. He said moody. Perhaps he doesn't help them as much as he thinks. He doesn't as much as he wants to. I know that. Well, why not? She dropped her work to her lap and looked vaguely toward the dying fire. I rare was that of a person who had already considered the question, though to little purpose. I don't know. Sometimes I think he doesn't go the right way to work. And yet it can hardly be that. Certainly no one could go to work with a better heart. Claude was referring inwardly to Rosie's five thousand a year, and perceiving that he created as many difficulties as he did away with, when he said, Things everything are a matter of dollars and cents. She received this pensively. Perhaps. And yet Thor's warning sent Claude to see Rosie on the following afternoon. It was not his regular day for coming, so this his appearance was a matter of happy terror, tempered only by the fact that he caught her in her working dress. His regular days were those on which Jasper Faye took his garden truck to town. Faye rarely returned then, before six or seven, so that with the early twilight there was time for an enchanted hour in the gloaming. The gloaming and the blossoms and the languorous heat and the heavy scents continued to act on Claude's senses as a love-filter might in his veins. It was the kind of meeting to be clandestine. Secrecy was a necessary ingredient in its deliciousness. The charm of the whole relation was in its being kept sub-Rosa. Sub-Rosa was the term. It should remain under the rose where it had had its origin. It should be a stolen bliss in a man's life and not a daily staple. That was something which Thor would never understand, that a man's life needed a stolen bliss to give it piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which, when it ceased to be hidden, ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they were mysteries, not because they were proclaimed and expounded in the marketplace. Rosie, in her working dress among the fern-trees and the great white Easter lilies, was Rosie as a mystery, as a bliss. It was the pity of pitties that she couldn't be left so where she belonged, in the state in which she met so beautifully all the requirements of taste. To drag her out and put her into spheres she wasn't meant for, and endow her with five thousand dollars a year, was like exposing a mermaid, the glory of her own element, by pulling her from the water. He grew conscious of this, as he always did the minute they touched on the practical. In general he avoided the practical in order to keep within the range of topics of which his love was not afraid. But at times it was necessary to speak of the future, and when they did, the poor mermaid showed her fins and tail. She could neither walk nor dance nor fly, she could only flounder. There was no denying the fact that poor little Rosie floundered. She flounded because she was obliged to deal with life on a scale of which she had no experience, but as to which claw to keenly develop social sensibilities. Not that she was pretentious, she was only what he called pathetic, with a pathos that would have made him grieve for her if he hadn't been grieving for himself. He had asked her idea of their married life, since she had again expressed her inability to fall in with his. Oh, Rosie, let us go and live in Paris! he had exclaimed, to which she had replied, as she had replied so many times already. Poor darling, how can I? How can I leave them when there's no one else? Then if we get married, what do you propose that we should do? He had never come to anything so bluntly definite before. With that common sense of hers, which was always looking for openings that would lead to common sense results, Rosie took it as an opportunity. She showed that she had given some attention to the matter, though she expressed herself with hesitation. They were sitting in the most imbarred recess the hot-house could afford, and in a little shrine she kept free, yet secret, for the purpose of their meetings. She let him hold both her hands, for her face and most of her person were averted from him as she spoke. She spoke with an anxiety to let him see that in marrying her he wouldn't be letting himself down too low. There's that little house in Schoolhouse Lane, she thought, the lipids used to live in it. Well, if we lived there I could manage with a girl. She brought out the subordinate clause with some confusion, for the keeping of a girl was an ambition to which it was not quite easy to aspire. She thought it best for her to be bold and stammered on. We could get one for about four a week. He let her go on. And if we lived in the lipid house I could slip across our own yard, and across Mrs. Willard's yard, she wouldn't mind, and keep an eye on things here. Mother's ever so much better. She's taking hold again. Then why could we go and settle in Paris? Because don't you see, Claude, that's not the only thing. The father and Matt and the business. I must be on hand to prop them up. If I were to go, everything would come down with a crash. Even if your father didn't make any more trouble about the lease. I suppose if we were married he wouldn't do that. Though he kept silence, his nervous, fastidious, superfine soul was screaming. Why couldn't he have been allowed to keep the poignant joy of touching her, of breathing her acrid, earthy atmosphere, of kissing her lips and her eyelids to himself? It was an intoxication. But no one wanted intoxication all the time. It was curious that a life in this delirious state should be forced on him by the brother who wished him well. It was still more curious that he should feel obliged to force it on himself in order not to be a cad. He didn't despise raising for the poverty of her ideals. On the contrary, her ideas were exactly suited to the little rustic thing she was. If he could have been Streffen to her, Claude, he would have been perfect. But he couldn't be Streffen. He could be nothing but a neurotic 20th-century youth, sensitive to such amenities and refinements as he had, and eager to get more. He was the type to go sporting with Amaryllis in the shade. But the shade was what made the exercise enchanting. His obscure rebellion against the power that forced him to drag his love out into the light impilled him to say, without knowing quite why, Did Thor ever speak of you and me being married? Because he was pressing out to him so closely, he felt the shudder that ran through her frame. It seemed to run through his own as he waited for her reply. No. Rosie never told a lie unless she thought she was obliged to. She thought it now because of Claude's jealousy. She'd seen flashes of it more than once and always at some mention of his brother. She was terrestric and as she felt his arm relax its embrace, terrestric unless Thor should have already given the information that would prove she was lying. She asked trembling, did he ever say he had? Do you think he'd say it if he hadn't? No, I don't suppose so. Then why should you ask me that? She surprised him by bursting into tears. Oh, Claude, don't be cross with me. Don't say what you've said the last time you were crossed. You go away and never come back again. If you did that, I should die. I couldn't live. I should kill myself. They followed one of the scenes of soothing in which Claude was especially adept, and which he especially enjoyed. The pleasure was so exquisite that he prolonged it, so that by the time he emerged from the hot-house, Jasper Faye was standing in the yard. As the old man's back was turned, Claude endeavored to slip up by, unobserved and silent. He succeeded in the silence, but not in being unobserved. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the dim figure dogging him, as it had dogged him on a former occasion, with the bizarre sinister suggestion of a beast about to spring. Claude could afford to smile at Serp's certain idea in connection with poor old Faye, but his nerves were shaken by certain passionate desperate utterances he had just heard from Rosie. She was in general so prudent, so self-controlled, that he had hardly expected to see her give way either in weeping or in words. She had broken down in both respects, while his nature was so responsive that he felt as if he had broken down himself. In the way of emotions it had been delicious or wonderful. It was a revelation of the degree to which the little creature loved him. It was a sensation in itself to be loved like that. It struck him as a strange new discovery that in such a love there was a value not to be reckoned by money or measured by social refinements. New, strange harmonies swept through the Aeolian harp of his being. Harmonies both tragic and exultant by which he felt himself subdued. It came to him conclusively that if, in marrying Rosie, there were many things to forego, there would at least be compensation. And yet he shivered at the stealthy creeping behind him of the shadowy old man by whom he felt instinctively that he was hated. End of chapter 19