 CHAPTER 17 A DRAWN BATTLE It was about this time, if I recollect a right, for I am the girl who does not keep a diary, that Romeo invited me to dinner. I have two reasons for my avoidance of the besetting sin of diary writing. The first is that I am usually dog-tired with work when evening comes, so that to ask me to fill in a journal with the day's events is like asking a galley slave to take a skull in a pleasure boat after his toil is over. The second is that if you keep no diary it cannot be used in evidence against you, and yet tis true by rigid self-examination. I have steered clear of capital crimes. But I remember always Ophelia's wise saw. We know what we are, we know not what we may be. Romeo invited me with caution, and tentatively he began by remarking, as if for no special reason, that he was giving a dinner next week at the Savoy, a dinner devised for a particular purpose. Then he added after a while that his mother would be there. This to inspire confidence, dear fellow, as though I ever doubted him. Next he inquired in a rather timid voice, whether, if his mother picked me up, by the way, in her brome, I would mind joining the party. My mother has not called upon you yet, he murmured in an apologetic parenthesis, looking up at me as scants from under his ridged eyebrows, with an interrogative lid. But perhaps you would waive that. From the way he said it I could read much. I felt instinctively she was a black satin old lady of the straightest sect. Romeo had implored her to call. She had refused point blank to go and see a typewriter girl, who lived in one room, in an impossible street in Soho. Romeo had begged and prayed. The mother had presented the true stiff neck of the black satin order. Then Romeo had planned this dinner. As a means of introducing me, confident, dear boy, that if once we were brought together, his mother, well, would think as much of me as he did. Poor, purrblind Romeo, I pitied him for that. How little he had fathomed black satin psychology. I hesitated a moment. Not on Romeo's account. Not even on the mother's. I do not fear the smoothest black satin. But because of the mere material difficulty of a gown, which just at first rose insuperable. Otherwise I thought so much of Romeo now. He had begun to play so large a part in the unwritten dramas of my future, with which I lulled myself to sleep. That I felt at all costs I must be present at this dinner and face the mother. A mother is almost inevitable. The sooner one gets over her, like measles, the better. I had one evening dress, or the ghost of one, which had descended to me from the days when I was a lady. Its sleeves carried date, but the bodice and skirt were of that fanciful kind which is above the fashion, and therefore never either in it or out of it. The color was sweet, white, shot with faint streaks of the daintiest pink, like the first downy stage of budding willow catkins. On the other hand I was still in mourning for my dear father. Had I loved him less I should have shrunk from wearing that gown. But my sorrow was not of the sort that measures itself by yards of crepe, which is why I have troubled you with it so little in this narrative. I reflected a moment. Then I answered, yes, it will give me great pleasure. But it gave Romeo great pleasure, was visibly written on his face. He had expected a no, and was delighted at my acceptance. I knew by his eyes he had anticipated and even exaggerated the dress difficulty. I did not misinterpret his pleased look, however. I never thought Romeo was in love with me. I knew he was interested in me, both personally and as a possible authoress. And I saw he wished much to bring me officially into his mother's circle. More than that I did not believe, or rather, if I am to tell you the precise truth. I thought Romeo was falling in love with me by slow steps, but mistaking his love for mere interest and friendliness. For a week I was a woman, not merely a typewriter. I worked hard at that gown, first planning, then executing my alterations. Dear little Elsie helped me with it like a Trojan. Nay, in cutting out and fitting, she displayed or developed unexpected talent. When dress was in question, she was no longer stupid. The woman in her grew. She showed taste and skill. Indeed I have noted in life, throughout, that taste has no necessary connection, direct or inverse, with intelligence or stupidity. It is a native endowment, which may break out anywhere. She was glad it was a dinner, not a dance. Her religious opinions would not have sanctioned her assisting me with a ball-dress. But all sects alike approve the habit of feeding. I must admit that when it came to the details of my gown, she showed herself at once, most frankly, worldly. Elsie had little chance of making dresses for herself poor child, but she aided me with her needle and her advice, till I was truly grateful. The way she reorganized the sleeves to a Parisian model made one believe in alchemy. We spent a few shillings on new tool and lining. Every evening we had an orgy of dressmaking. Whole packets of pins, snippets of silk on the floor. Before the end of the week we had transformed that old gown of mine into a joy forever. It was better than new. As it fell in soft folds the blush showed on the ridge and cream white in the hollows. When I tried it on, Elsie bent over me and raptured. You dear thing, she cried, hugging me. To the danger of the tool. I always knew you were pretty, but I never knew till now you were splendidly beautiful. And I will honestly admit that the frock became me. The day arrived at last. Elsie came round to help me dress my hair. We made more of this dinner than I should have made of being presented in the days of my grandeur, such as it was. Dear little Elsie had brought me some flowers from a friend's garden at Ealing. Choice sweet-scented flowers with a background of maidenhair. If I had believed her I would have thought no fairy princess ever looked more radiant than I looked that evening. And indeed our joint efforts on the gown repaid us with interest. When the last touch had been given, Elsie kissed me on both cheeks. He will propose to-night, she whispered. I know he will. He can't help himself, dear. You are so captivating. I blushed for I had never mentioned his name to Elsie. But then I forgot that Elsie, too, was a woman. At ten minutes to eight the brome arrived adore. Never before had our street beheld so distinguished an equipage. This was unfortunate for the children next door. Came to gaze at me with dirty faces, an unaffected interest exclaiming, Oh my, don't she look a real lidey, as I made a rush for the carriage. Romeo's mother was precisely what I had painted her. A lady Montague of the Severist, with coffee-colored point lace, a Cornelia, one shade too stout for the mother, of the grocchi. Her smooth white hair looked not gentle but forbidding. She listened to what I said with well-bred reserve. Too stiff to acquiesce, too polite to contradict, too stony to show interest. At the hotel we were ushered into a handsome private room, most gracefully decorated with crimson arabesques on white paneling. The party consisted of Romeo and his mother, with some six or eight more, including a prebandary, among whom the chief guests seemed to be a certain amiable-faced Lady Donisthorpe and her husband, Sir Everard. I named them in this order, for though the husband was a man of some force and character, early English, comfortable, Lady Donisthorpe, like Paul, was the chief speaker. She seemed what is called a womanly woman, one of those tranquil women with soft rounded outlines who look like wax but within are flint. She reminded me most of all of a pouter pigeon. She apologized much because dear Meta could not come. It was such a disappointment. The poor child had been taken ill, nothing serious, she was glad to say, but impossible to go out. She hoped Romeo would excuse her. Romeo expressed most courteous regret at dear Meta's enforced absence, though I, who knew him now so well, and was used at the office to note the varying degrees of cordiality or boredom in his reception of authors, inferred at once from his eyes that he was somewhat relieved at heart by dear Meta's non-appearance. It was clear to me, too, that Lady Donisthorpe flung Meta inartistically at his head. Twenty times during the evening she referred, with a rigid smile and a puff of the pouter bust, to one of dear Meta's sweet ways or to something delightful that dear Meta had said or done for somebody. The impression she left upon me was that Meta must be an insipid paragon with all the virtues and their concomitant insupportability. Romeo's absent smile at each such advertisement of Meta's charming qualities, so gentle, so unaffected, made me feel convinced that he was of the same opinion. To put it plainly, Lady Donisthorpe showed want of tact in her crude mode of placarding Meta. She had another trick of manner which disturbed my peace of mind. Like most of the newly enriched, she attached an excessive importance to the, after all, somewhat negative quality of ladylikeness. The highest praise she could accord to each achromatically charming girl of her acquaintance was that of being a perfect lady. She flung the phrase in my teeth, apart from the fact that it seems to imply a somewhat narrow standard. I always suspect women who insist upon this point of being themselves cotton-backed ladies. I knew her type. She belonged to an aristocracy recruited by the names of all the best known brands of beer, soap, and whiskey. I protest, however, that just at first I began by treating Romeo's mother and Lady Donisthorpe with the utmost cordiality, for had I not good reasons for desiring to conciliate them, but their treatment chilled me. I could see they had come prepared to dislike me for a conceited upstart. In return I soon found I disliked their texture. Cornelia was cold. I felt she regarded my humour as ill-timed. Lady Donisthorpe had the vulgar fear of vulgarity. I do not share it. Nature is vulgar enough. We can only be perfect ladies on the Donisthorpe pattern by shutting our eyes, shutting our ears, and shutting our noses to most things around us. Now I will not shut my eyes nor my mouth, either. If facts obtrude themselves, I recognise them. I fear Lady Donisthorpe thought it painfully unladylike of me to have lived in the East End, and positively rude to tell stories of slop-makers. She raised her tortoise-shell glasses at the very word as a mute protest. In fine both were conscious of a social barrier. So was I, with a difference. Lady Donisthorpe moved in what calls itself good society, but Gentile would have been scarce too hard a word to describe her. Those mothers swept into dinner on Sir Everard's arm, a three-decker under full sail. Romeo offered me his. I gathered it was because Mata had not arrived as expected. Always handsome he looked handsomer in evening-dress. A waxy white flower lay on each plate. Romeo pinned mine on my bodice. Lady Donisthorpe's placid eyes did not let the action pass unnoticed. The dinner, by which you shall understand the food, was the best I ever tasted. The champagne, in the judgment of one who is no judge, was a thought too dry, but delicious. The mousse de jambeau was an epicure's dream. I really enjoyed myself. Besides, I was conscious that Romeo liked my dress and felt some mild surprise to see how well I looked in it. He had hitherto known me in my black office gown alone. I forgot my poverty and was once more a lady. It suits me better. I blossom under it. I did not even object to Sir Everard for being a millionaire. It was hardly his fault. Millionaires, after all, are an outcome of the age. One can but regret that they absorb its income. Lady Donisthorpe's talk reeked of wealth till I felt it would be delightful to get home at night and see something cheap again. My seat was between Romeo and a clever young man, with keen eyes and pond-snay, a rising physiologist. It relieved me to learn he was not an electrical engineer. All the young men I used to meet in my pre-typewriting days had been given over to riotous electrical engineering. My neighbor's hobby was a cheerful one, the identity of genius and madness. He took paradise lost and the Vatican frescoes for premonitory symptoms of acute mania. He held the steam engine to be a by-product of the insane temperament. Yet he urged his thesis so well that, on his own showing, I foresaw he must be qualifying for residence in an asylum. When I told him so, he cavalled at my graceful compliment. To escape his retort, I turned to the other side and joined talk with Romeo and the Prebendary. I do not know what a Prebendary does. His functions are more mysterious than even the Arca Dioconal. But I have said I love mystery, and I found the Prebendary a capital talker. Romeo was charming as always, more charming to me that night I fancied than ever. Perhaps it was because he had never seen me dressed like a human being before. But also I think he was conscious of his mother's keen eyes and Lady Donisthorpe's steely glance, smiling ever her set smile. She felt Mata's chances were slipping from her visibly. She was an ox-eyed Hera, a little run to seed, and now almost cow-faced, but cat-like in her watchfulness. To counteract the chilling effect of the two mothers, one a feather-bed, the other a poker, and to put me at my ease, Romeo behaved with the sweetest courtesy. He talked to me. He drew me out. If I ever can be brilliant, which is not for me to judge, I was brilliant that evening. I flashed to my own surprise, Romeo's admiration, and the two elder women's scarcely concealed hostility put me on my metal. I was not angry with his mother. It was comprehensible, of course. Mothers are made like that. We erect each other into a class and judge accordingly. Could any woman with an aquiline nose and white hair neatly dressed by an immaculate maid sit by unperturbed while her only son paid open court to a typewriter girl? I suppose I should have felt as she did had I been put in her place. Being put in my own, I naturally did my best to let myself be seen to the greatest advantage. So did Romeo. Having brought me there, he was determined I should be treated with proper respect. He insisted on talking to me. Lady Donis Thorpe's cat-like graciousness, Cornelia's Roman austerity, only increased his anxiety to do me honour. The more his mother froze, the more Lady Donis Thorpe, smiling her mechanical smile and gently crushing, raised her tortoise-shell eyeglasses to decide whether I was human. The more did Romeo draw me out, and the more did I scintillate. Till at last all the table was talking to me, or listening to me. I laughed and raised laughter. I sparkled and parried, when Lady Donis Thorpe interposed sweetly, and so you'd type right at the office how fatiguing it must be on purpose to disconcert me. I had my repartee ready. At least it preserves me from being a perfect lady. I could see Romeo was pleased. I was a social success. I had justified his temerity. In the midst of our fencing, of a sudden Cornelia drew out a gold pencil, wrote something on a card, and handed it across to him. Romeo glanced at it and crumpled it up. I could guess by his face her note had not pleased him. As you will, he answered across the table. Then he turned to me once more. That was delicious, he said. And what did you reply to him? I went on with my story. Still I could gather that he was annoyed. Not only annoyed, indeed, but perplexed and troubled. When our dinner solemnized, we withdrew to the comfortable divans of the balcony for Turkish coffee. All the party crowded round me, saved the two mamas. They did not sit apart but joining our group. They preserved an austere moral aloofness. The rest, however, redeemed their abstention. Even Sir Everard was untrue to poor Meta's chances. I was flushed by this time, and the men's eyes told me I was looking my prettiest. The two other girls of the party chimed in and encouraged me. So did the Prebendary. I talked easily and brightly. Sir Everard laughed again and again at my sallies. He was a portly old gentleman, with a massive white waistcoat, very like a toad as he leaned back on the ottoman. His voice, too, was a purr. He was a toad, not a natterjack. But Romeo has stolen away to give some mysterious orders. I felt rather than saw that something had gone wrong, somewhere with the machinery. We were to adjourn to a theatre. We drove round in state. Our stalls were near the centre. Lady Donisthorpe, in claret-coloured velvet, looked truly imposing. In one of the interludes, I looked round at the pit, directly behind me, in the front row, sat a foxy-headed man, staring open-eyed towards me. It was the Grand Vizier, accompanied by a lady, no doubt with brains, and concealing but imperfectly the fact that he had been dining. For a moment, a rare moment, I felt really disconcerted. Under any other circumstances it would only have amused me had the Vizier leaned forward and shouted, Good evening, Miss, in his own dialect. But tonight, with the eyes of those two mothers fixed stonely on my face, I confess I trembled lest he should rise in his seat, wave one hairy hand, and call out loudly across the intervening rows. Allow me to introduce my fiancee to you, Miss Appleton. I looked away hastily, not before he had caught my eye. I expected to see his goggle eyes fall out and drop upon the floor. He was so evidently surprised at my transfigured appearance. The last time he had parted from me, it was beneath the golden symbol of St. Nicholas, at the shop in the Strand. To light upon me there, that night, dressed like a lady, surrounded by a little court, made much of by the men, and flushed from the Savoy, might naturally astonish him. However he behaved with better taste than I could have anticipated. He nudged his companion and whispered in her ear, but kept his face averted. He was puzzled, I felt sure. Still he has sense enough to know that this greeting would be ill-timed and good-feeling enough to prevent him from forcing himself upon my notice. When the play was over, Romeo led me to the door. I was still hot and uncertain. So far as he was concerned, this evening was for me a great triumph. Every man and woman there, save only the two mothers, had paid me much attention, and I will even venture to add, admired me. I had looked and talked my best, and I was satisfied with my performance. But the two elder women hung like black clouds, lowering in the rear. I could feel them disapproving of me with various degrees of rancor. One feared for her son, the other for her daughter. Very natural I knew, but so too was my own attitude. No woman is born to be merely a typewriter. At the door Romeo led me by myself into a well-appointed brome. Then I knew what had happened. For Nelia had written across to him that she declined to take me back in her carriage to Soho, and Romeo, to save me the knowledge of that slight, has slipped away at the hotel and ordered another carriage to await me at the theatre. He held my hand in his own for a brief space after he put me into it. It was so good of you to come, he said. I have so much enjoyed this talk with you. But the two mothers hardly gave me the tips of their fingers, and bowed distantly as I drove away alone, with chilly politeness. When I got back to my room my feelings were mixed, the jealous gods thus alloy our triumphs. Romeo had seen me at last as I really was, but I had innocently disturbed the peace of two families. I did what every other woman would have done in my place, sat down to a good cry, and thought about Romeo, end of Chapter 17. CHAPTER 18 An Autumn Holiday I have large estates in Hartfordshire, and the adjoining counties, free of land tax. Some noble Marquis, I am assured, lays claim to the bare loam, the plowed fields, the turnips. But who counts mere mud? The rest is mine to do as I will with. He may keep the rents, tis, for me to enjoy the green lawns, the huge buttressed beech trees, the broad circles of shade where drowsy sheep lie huddled. I own the stripling streams that break against sharp stones, in the sloping stickles, or expand on the shallows between, into placid pools, skimmed over by water beetles, who dart and dance nimbly in interlacing whirly gigs. The sky overhead is mine, mine the road underfoot, the scent of rain-wetted earth, the broken song of the thrushes, the startled scream of the jay as he bursts through the rustling oak leaves, the long sweep of the swift. Having himself on the air from the battlements of the church tower, all these I own by virtue of my freehold in the saddle of my bicycle. Such a sabine farm costs not to manage. It gives pure delight without counter-poise of trouble. I visited mine often, both on summer evenings and on Saturday afternoons or Sundays. Only in my time at Romeo's a whimsical fancy seized me, being ever irresponsible, to spend my Sabbath mornings in such churches within easy reach of London, as were dedicated to my chosen ally, St. Nicholas. I ran them down with care in an Anglican directory. If the day were doubtful, I strayed no farther afield than to St. Nicholas Coal Abbey in the city, where in a dark bay of the Isle I prayed the prayer, now nearest to my heart, which I leave you to guess. Often as my patron had failed me at a pinch, still oftener had he proved kind. I was prepared to give him one more chance of distinguishing himself. But if the day promised to be fair, I got under way the times, and was spinning down the roads that lead northward out of town, while the smocked milkmen still stood balanced by frothing pales in the meadows. London lay a vast blur behind me. Cows on the common chewed the cut of penury. Their eye was pensive. Commissioner Lynn showed a nasty jack-in-office disposition to disturb them. He was called to heal with difficulty. Then I would seek some country church, with low tower and wooden lich-gate, where St. Nicholas still bore sway, spite of iconoclast or puritan, to pour out my heart's wish to I know not what power that compels the universe. It was my want to lean the bicycle meanwhile against the churchyard you, or some convenient tombstone, leaving the commissioner in charge. He was well fitted for the task by his unregenerate monopolist views on private property, backed up by a fine row of persuasive white arguments. These weekly trips made me careless of holiday. I waited to take my summer outing, till it should suit Romeo's convenience. I was so much his personal secretary that I must delay my vacation till he could take his, and it had long been arranged that he should put it off till late September, his partner having desired to go away in August. Romeo never eluded again to that evening at the Savoy, but I knew it had brought him not but disappointment. He had desired to include me within his mother's spear, and Cornelia, gathering up her Roman robe, had declined. Yet from that time he was more deferential and more courteous, if possible, than even his want. It was decided that his holiday should begin on the fifteenth of September, as the time drew nearer, Romeo grew visibly distressed and depressed. The spring failed in his step. I fancied he was suffering some internal conflict. His manner was distraught. He sat at times as if he hardly heard what was passing. It was plain to see he was struggling within himself. Irreconcilable feelings drew him alternately in opposite directions. On the fourteenth he came down to the office as usual, but sat gloomy and moody. He did not tell us whether he was bound. Nay, more he gave orders that no letters should follow him. He made some mystery of his destination. At three o'clock he went home, bidding me, good-bye with more reserve than was his want. He kept his glance averted. I could see he was fighting hard to avoid breaking down. This holiday must mean much to him. He could not look me in the face to bid me good-bye. The tremor of his eyelids was as of one who holds back tears with difficulty. I wished him a pleasant trip. He answered a hurried, thank you, and rushed out to his carriage. If I had known where he was going, I think I should have followed him. As the thought passed through my mind, Puck came in for some money out of hand. It was my duty to keep the petty cash for Romeo's personal office expenditure. I want nine shillings, miss, the boy said. Bedickers, North Italy, and Hares, Venice. My heart gave a quick bound. I had surprised his objective. I am an erratic creature. In one second my mind was made up. I should follow him. I had still the twelve guineas I had received for my story. Thank heaven I am improvident. The bourgeois vice of thrift is one from which my family has never suffered. The Puritan blood in our veins must have been too generously diluted. Besides, have I not learned from more modern political economy that saving is the source of all the evils of capitalism, and do I not give thanks daily that I show not the faintest tendency to develop in that direction? I have made up my mind never to be a capitalist, and up to date I see every chance of my keeping my resolution. So I decided to spend my twelve guineas like a man, to please myself, leaving Providence or St. Nicholas to make good the deficiency. This is called faith, and is a cardinal virtue. I gave Romeo two clear days' start, lest I should travel along with him, and seem to be dogging him. Then I set out alone on my way to Venice. I am nothing if not frank, therefore I do not seek to deny the truth that I went to Italy on purpose to follow Romeo. Unwomanly you say. What a false convention. Yes, I am always frank. I think the day has almost come for frankness. Men novelists have depicted us as men wish us to be. We have meekly and obediently accepted their portrait. To some extent even, we have striven against the grain to model ourselves upon it. A man's ideal is the girl that shrinks, the sweetly unconscious girl whose scarce nose she loves till his strong arm glides round her, and he clasps her to his heart. Then with a sudden awakening she awakens to the truth, and knows she has loved him long, loved him from the beginning. That I say is a man's woman. Her purity, her maidenly modesty, are quite unapproachable by concrete feminine humanity. She is too delicate in mind ever to dream that she can love spontaneously of her own mere motion. She loiters in the shade. She waits to be wooed. She is coy, undecided, shrinking, timid. There was a time, I suppose, when such women were common. I do not know, for have I not Shakespeare to the contrary? But the type was once true, I dare say, and widely distributed. Still has not time altered it? In the world in which we live, men are no longer ardent. We scarce affect to conceal the fact that they grow shy of marriage. As a necessary consequence, women have changed too. The woman of this age often knows she loves, knows it poignantly, breathlessly, and must use those weapons which the world allows her if she would gain the affection of the man who has taken her maiden fancy. She cannot by open means pursue him, I admit. But she has recourse to the immemorial feminine devices of ruse and stratagem. I have Shakespeare on my side, I say. As I remember Rosalind, a man drew her, yet I see in her pure woman. She loves, she knows she loves, she longs frankly for her lover, and that is the way with women as I have found them. Why did I follow Romeo? Why did Rosalind fly to the forest of Arden? Only once, scarcely once, had Romeo seen me as I was, that evening of the dinner. At the office, what was I but the typewriter girl? If I could meet him in Italy, he would know me as myself, we could talk more freely. He might pluck up heart of grace to break the ice, and tell me he loved me, for I knew he was fond of me. I could not now doubt it. When he talked to me, it was with those unmistakable side-long glances which a woman's heart can interpret. Then he broke off suddenly. But his mother was against me. His mother wished him to marry Lady Donisthorpe's dear Meta. In London I knew I had little chance to prevail over that perfect lady. But in Venice, ah, what miracles may not happen in Venice. Mirage of the lagoons, you show men everything. I had not set foot in the enchanted city since my father took me when I was a girl of sixteen. But I remembered it well. I knew every refluent ditch of it. I could have found my way on foot through little aimless lanes that wander in and out, from the piazza to the ghetto. If Romeo met me there by accident, if we loitered together among those churches and galleries, if I told him of my saints, if I pointed him out my best beloved pictures, surely the struggle within him would be settled in my favour. He would prefer my wayward gypsy American fantasy to dear Meta's insipid graces of the perfect lady. He would know which he preferred, in spite of his mother and Lady Donisthorpe's crude advertisements. My one regret was that I could not take Mr. Commissioner and Elsie with me. CHAPTER XIX When Linnaeus first saw Gorson blossom he fell on his knees and thanked God. Our modern Pharisees who say grace before meet, never I fancy, say grace before Venice. And yet there is only one Venice. From the moment you arrive in the dusk at the station and stroll down slippery steps to your gondola, to glide with stealthy movement along the lesser canals, under mysterious bridges where mysterious bystanders lean over to watch you, unknown forms that creep from dark doors and unknown streets, do you not thank God, like Linnaeus, that he has brought you to Venice, and does not this feeling of gratitude and wonder for that living romance deepened on you each day that you remain, do not long to float forever down those noiseless ways, to gaze up forever at those water-stained palaces, to dream for all time among those innocent faced St. Ursulus, Mint, Annus, and Cuman indeed, when God has given us Venice, the country or the South, I pine in London. I had loitered on my way out, breaking my nights at Lucerne and Milan, that Romeo might have time to reach his journey's end with certainty before my arrival, and on my first morning of freedom by the motionless lagoons, I set out early to renew my acquaintance with Venice. I did not know where Romeo was stopping, nor did I seek to find out. I'd left everything to St. Nicholas. If chance should throw me in my Romeo's way, well and good, if chance chose to be unkind, better so than that I should track him. Besides in Venice you cannot long fail to meet whoever else is there. All the world gravitates towards the center of the piazza. Sooner or later you must needs cross the path of everyone in the city. I set out from my hotel on foot. I love footing it in Venice. I love the intricate tangle of narrow paved alleys, overhung by stone sills and rusty iron balconies, by which the walker threads his way through the mazes of the city. Millionaires in gondolas never know it. You must ramble to see Venice. Past little dim shops were red watermelons, sliced open, and strings of yellow carrots adorned the slabs. Past odors of saltfish and rank-whiffs of garlic, past cavernous recesses where, from murky tinteretto-like gloom, the light of a little lamp just serves to throw up the tinsel crown of our lady. So suddenly at once, under the columns of a portico, into the open sky of the Great Square, the thronging turmoil of pigeons, the liberal flood of southern sunshine, the strong shadow of the campanile flung like a fallen obelisk on the floor of the piazza, the mighty flagstaffs of the dead republic, and beyond them all, low and squat, a riot of white domes, the fantastic many pinnacled carbon front of St. Mark's, glowing golden in the palucid air of mourning. I stood still and drew a deep breath. It was even as I thought, graced before St. Mark's. For what we are about to receive, there is but one Venice. Holding my breath all the while, I drew nearer the great porches, with their round arched tops, and gazed up at the mosaics. My soul steeped herself in beauty. I reveled in an orgy of jasper and porphyry. How gross to give thanks for beef and pudding! But none for Carpaccio, Bellini, Titian. Out of the great dream of form and color, bit by bit, as I gazed, distinct visions framed themselves. Palm leaves and lilies, robed shapes of angels, half-translucent alabaster shafts or capitals, rich foliage of a canvas, wandering lines of tracery. In the midst of it all, one little relief held my eye at last. A flat relief of quaint Romanesque workmanship, beautiful with the winning beauty of infantile art. Two birds that faced one another, and pecked at a bunch of grapes. When all at once I was aware of a start of surprise beside me, I turned round. My heart fluttered for a second. It was Romeo, Venice faded. Though I had come out to him, I was taken aback at his presence. He gave a little gasp. What, you here? He faltered out. Miss Appleton, Juliette. Yes, I answered, assuming an air of unconcern. I thirsted for a breath of Italy again. It is nearly five years since I had been out of England. But this is fate, he blurted out. I came here to avoid you. I was in a mischievous mood. I can go away again, I answered, looking deep into his eyes and half curtsying. It is not for me to interfere with my employer's holiday. He cast to me an imploring look. Juliette, he cried, do not jest. Do not break my heart. This is no time for pleasantry. My child, my child, I have suffered. I saw it in his face, and yet I could not conceive what was his trouble. Could a mother count for so much? I had never known mine. You look ill, I said. So different from what you looked last week in London. When I do anything for you, I will really go away at once, if you desire it. He restrained himself with an effort from seizing my hands. Then and there, in the open piazza, go away, he cried. Go away. No, that is not my trouble. I wish you not to go away. I wish you to stay with me always. Juliette, you must have guessed it. You must have known it in London. Do not tell me. You did not know. You saw that I loved you. I thought so at times I answered in a very low voice. But why then did you wish to run away from me? He glanced about him with uneasy eyes. Now this has come, he burst forth. I must fight it out boldly. I must face it like a man. Juliette, where can we go? I must talk alone with you. Let us take a gondola, I suggested, my heart throbbing high with joy. For I felt I had triumphed now. His mother and dear Meta, the Ox-eyed Lady Donisthorpe, were wholly forgotten. A gondola, he echoed. A gondola? Ah! How clever you are! Of course. I never thought of that. There we can talk uninterrupted. We moved towards the Molo. I hailed a gondolier. Put up the felte, say, I said, so that we may not be overlooked. The man raised the little black box and shut us in, as in a sedan chair. Romeo gazed admiration again, and you talk Italian. Wither, Signore. The gondolier asked. Where shall we go? Romeo inquired, turning to me. Where you will, I answered. It is all Venice. I did not add that with him by my side all the world would be Venice. He pointed towards the open, where we would be less observed. The gondolier nodded. Then the old fancy seized me. To San Nicolò de Lido, I cried. It seemed like an omen. My patron saint had always brought me luck, and his church lay before me. In this crisis of my fate I would commend myself to his favour. I told Romeo why I chose that way. He smiled a little sadly. May it turn out as you wish, he exclaimed. May St. Nicholas help us. I sat by his side on the soft black cushions, never uttering a word. Acidly, quietly happy. I was in no hurry to speak. The sense that I had Romeo alone to myself at last was joy enough for me. He took my hand in his. I let it lie there unresisting. Words only spoil such first thrills of fruition. Touch is the mother's sense of love. It needs no interpreter. At last Romeo broke the charmed silence. I gave a little sigh as he broke it. Oh, why so soon, I asked. But like a man he was eager to speak and explain himself, they are so precipitate. What am I to do, Juliet? He cried, burying his face in his hands. Your coming has thrown me back upon my first resolve. It has driven me from my stronghold. When I tore myself away from you in London, and no longer saw your eyes, those great magnetic, uncomplaining eyes of yours, those eyes that had bewitched me, I made up my mind that I must go through with it now and try to forget you. Not try, but pretend, for it would be all pretence. Since the first day you came, daily and daily you have meant more and more to me. It was hard to break away from you, but I broke away and came here, so that I might be free from the spell. For while I saw your eyes I could think of nothing else, and now chance has thrown you in my path again, and I cannot go through with it. Not chance, I'm a rid-low, not chance, but St. Nicholas. I have come with the money that my story brought me. He smiled at my little conceit, for I had told him in London of my half-fancyful cult of the poor-made saint, and I had called my little tale a ward of St. Nicholas. You are a brownie, he cried, gazing at me. You wild thing! What brought you here? I laughed, the Goddard railway, and my love of adventure. I was sickening of England. I had a migratory instinct, like birds when they gather on the telegraph wires in autumn, or restless Spanish sheep in the spring, when they herd and leap, uneasy to be driven to their pastures in the mountains. What a wild thing you are, he repeated. A brownie, a brownie! I wonder where you got it from. From my gypsy ancestry, I suppose, I answered. Gypsy! But I thought you told me you were American. On my father's side, yes, but on my mother's, Lolan Scott, or Anglo-Indian. She was a Bailey of the Borders, and I suspect all borderers of sharing the blood of the Faz and the Pitolengros. There was plenty of intermarriage. No doubt, he mused, the difference must have been slight between a moss trooper and a gypsy. Each had much the same gentility. And indeed, I remember, the Lord and Earl of little Egypt was summoned to Edinburgh as a peer of parliament. At any rate, I said gaily, whether it is true or false, it accounts to my mind for the magmairely's vain in me. I was born a random vagrant in the world, a parapetetic philosopher. I love movement. I love freedom. Bohemia. Why, I could tell your fortune now if you cared to cross my hand with silver. He gazed into my eyes. I do not doubt it, he answered, for it lies in your hands today. I thrilled, and it was still. The gondola glided over the glassy water. Soon he began again, Gypsy, I want your help. You must make my fortune, not tell it. Show me how to act. Show me how to get free. What can I do in this crisis, Juliet? My Juliet. How can I answer, I replied, tis for your own heart to say. I know you are fond of me, but your mother has money, I suppose, and you prefer your mother. He withdrew the arm that lay half round me, and set up facing me in surprise. My mother, he cried. My mother? Why, Juliet, my child, what do you mean? It is not my mother, I think of. Not her. But poor Mata. A pang darted through me. Then you love her. I exclaimed. That woman's daughter, lover, I do not say that. Yet Juliet, consider, put yourself in her place. I have been five years engaged to her. It burst upon me like a thunderbolt. Why had I never guessed it? From the first day we met I had taken it for granted. Unreservedly, unthinkingly, that Romeo was heart-free and unfettered as I was. Even when I met Lady Donis Thorpe, I imagined too fast that she was flinging Mata openly at his head, but not that he was betrothed to her. My own heart must have blinded me. Now that I realized it all, I stood aghast at the way woman's instinct had failed me. How had I managed to misunderstand? I saw in a flash that the conflict I had observed in Romeo, before he left London, was a conflict in his soul between love and honour. He seized my hand again. It is that that made it so difficult, he whispered. From the first day you came I began to love you. I fought against it hard. Oh, so hard! I tried to talk little with you. Day after day I felt you sitting there, with your great gypsy eyes fixed ever steadily on your sheet of paper, and your heart going forth to me. I knew it went forth to me. I could feel it in the room. A subtle wave or thrill throbbed ever between us. I began to love you, and still I fought hard. But the more we talked together, the more did I feel you were the woman God made for me, and that Mata was not. At last I had a great struggle, a great struggle with my heart, and came out of it as I thought victorious. I fled from you here, where the Donislorps had come, to remain with Mata till the day I married her. It was what honor demanded. I made love yield to honor. I withdrew my hand slowly. Give me time to think this out. It has burst upon me so suddenly. Oh, Romeo, till this moment I never dreamt you were engaged to her. Why, Romeo, I smiled, though my heart was aching. I remembered that he did not know what I had always called him. Now I told him my fancy. You have never been anything but Romeo to me, I murmured. He seized my hand again. Juliet, I am your Romeo. I felt it from the first. We were meant for one another. I know it, I cried. I know it. And this woman, who is not yours, has stolen you from me. You are mined by natural fitness, and she took you. She took you. We leaned back on the seats and mused. John Deleur sang low to himself a soft, Venetian love song. After some minutes I began again. Of course, I murmured. It is Lady Donis Thorpe's daughter. Of course, five years ago I proposed to her. Then why did you not marry? I cried vehemently. I hate these long engagements. They are vile for everybody. Her stepfather would not permit it, till she came of age. She is a warden chancery, and he has influenced with the court. Till her marriage, her mother has some interest in the property. And Sir Everard, to preserve it, being fabulously rich already, made an excuse that a publisher was hardly the person to whom she might expect to aspire, though he permitted, or rather encouraged, the engagement. And she is not yet of age? In October. I gave an impatient wave of the hand. But she was a child when you proposed to her. A child? We were both children. We did not know our own minds. The nemesis of it is that I know mine now, while she remains still at the childish standpoint. She loves you? In her baby way, yes. Else it were all easy. But it would break her poor heart. Such a trusting little creature. And you love her? Juliet I thought I did once. But then I had not learned what love meant. She was only my Rosalind. I did not know the world of difference between a sweet little wax doll, with masses of light, yellow toe for hair, and a woman, a thinking woman with heart, soul, brain, courage, a woman who could face life full of intrepid self-reliance, a woman with nerve, audacity, spirit, a woman with Homeric love of danger and adventure, a woman made dearer by her sense of humor, the married twinkle of her eye, her gay laugh at misfortune. I feel now that I need a comrade and a help. Meet for me, someone who could brace me up for the battle of life, someone with great thoughts, fine fiber, noble impulses. I cannot go back to Meta. I could have done it last night. This morning, with you by my side, I feel it. I know it. Impossible. He drew a long breath. I lay back on the cushion. Romeo, I said, pleading my rival's cause. You must go back to her. Never he answered. Never. I temporized. This is not a question to decide all at once. Let us think it over slowly. Let us lay it before St. Nicholas. If I lay it before St. Nicholas, he cried. With you beside me, the oracle can give but one answer I warrant. For I want you. I need you. My whole being cries out for you. We paused again. The water was cat-sye-green. The inexorable gondola glided on towards the Lido. We talked it over, claws by claws. A light began to break upon me. The nearer I drew to San Nicolo. The clearer grew the light. Aught a man to wreck two lives, his own and the girl's, whom he means to marry, for my private fate I ignored. In order to satisfy a false sense of honor, what, after all, was this honor? A bugbear dressed up to frighten us from the truth. And what was the truth? That Romeo was rushing madly into marriage, with a girl for whom he was not fit. And who was not fit for him? Romeo I said at last. Could you make her happy? That's the rub, he answered. It could hardly be for long. I could give her my hand, but not my heart. For my heart, my heart, Juliet, is yours. Yours only. Then for her sake set her free, I cried. The whole man, body, soul, and spirit, or nothing. So I think, he murmured, the question is, when one has made a mistake, a mistake that involves final ruin for two lives, which is the better, after all, to repair it beforehand while repair is still possible, or bow to an antiquated ideal of honor, an ideal that comes to us from an age when women were toys, all alike, and run one's head into a noose from which there will be no escaping. For her sake, as well as my own, and yours, ought I not to tell her, frankly, but gently, that this marriage she desires must mean misery for both of us? I tried to be impartial, though impartiality is hard, when your own love and life lie trembling in the balance. You ought, I answered, if you feel sure you cannot truly love her. Juliet, I can never love anyone but you. I know you for my counterpart. My love did not come suddenly. It grew up by degrees from living so near you, and it has grown, grown, grown like a vast growth in my heart, till it has absorbed my nature. I have watched you every day, talked with you, listened to you. You know me, and you understand me. But Meta, dear little soul, she seems to me like a child. I cannot share life with her. I can only take care of her. You have originality. Initiative. Meta's soul has the shape that her mother has put upon it. Look how you loved and appreciated my verses. Your criticism, your help, were of infinite use to me. In each word that you altered, I felt you were right. Your suggestion of harmonious, in that last line, where I had written consistent, made a full close for the sonnet in sonorous organ music, and turned my prose into poetry. Whereas when I gave Meta my book, she read it through, and then kissed me. How clever of you, you dear boy, to be able to write verses. Would such a help be meet for me? I clung to his hand. It was hard to decide. But in a very low voice I faltered out. I think not, Romeo. He talked of my poor attempts at writing stories. He praised them, as he had always done. You will be famous yet, my child, and I shall be proud. Whatever comes, that I was the first to encourage you. He appreciated me. I appreciated him. Surely if marriages are made in heaven, we too were molded for one another. Not alike, but complementary. And then how rash to dream of marrying one woman. And even before marriage, you love another better. Is that the way to ensure a happy home? Is that the safe path to a life of wedded confidence? We drew near to San Nicolò at last. Let us go in, I said seriously, and submit ourselves to the saint. His body lies within. We will kneel together before it. But I thought you told me St. Nicholas lay thrown in a gorgeous shrine in Barry, he objected. Why, of course, I answered. What is the use of being a saint if you cannot have two bodies and be in two places at once? And what is the use of faith if it does not enable you to believe the impossible? I do believe it, he answered, since I came to Venice to be out of your enchantment, and found you here more deliciously enchanting than ever, the fascination of your eyes. I cut him short with a gesture, but I was glad he praised them. We landed by the steps and entered the Sailor's Church. I led Romeo up to a scalloped niche by the Tribune, where I had often prayed as a girl with my father. We knelt down side by side before the jeweled shrine that contains the blessed dust of St. Nicholas of Myra, I hope not irreverently. I may be what the warden at our guild was fond of calling me an amiable heathen, but at least I am sincere. Fears stole down my cheek. I asked with an earnest heart for light, for guidance. We know not, indeed, whose saintly bones repose at peace within that sculptured marble altar tomb. Nor does it matter to me much whether they be or be not those of the benign Bishop of Myra. I accepted them as the symbol of that power above ourselves, to which our hearts go forth at moments of doubt, of fear, of anguish, and to such a power I prayed unfainedly that at this turning point of my life I might be led aright, might form the just judgment unbiased by self-profit, holding an equal scale between myself and my rival. As I knelt there a single flashing ray of light beat down through a little window above upon San Nicolò's altar slab, it guilt the niche for a moment. It fell in gold on the tessellated floor, then it passed away as a cloud covered the sun. Rightly or wrongly I accepted the omen. Tears stood in my eyes still, but they were tears of gladness. Saint Nicholas has answered, I whispered. What did he say to you, Romeo? Romeo looked me in the face solemnly as he made reply. He said, better tell her early than tell her too late. Save her while she can be saved, and let three hearts be lightened. Venice hung like a haze. The row back to the Molo was a lane in paradise. End of chapter 19 Chapter 20 Where for art thou, Romeo? At the Molo we parted. The Donis Thorpe's Romeo said, must long have been expecting him, fidgeting that he did not arrive. He knew not what lame excuse he could rake up to satisfy them. It was agreed on both sides, however, and impressed with last words, that he must not break poor Mata's heart prematurely, by too abrupt and avowal of his new decision. We were to break it by degrees, to give her three days of purgatory. Meanwhile Romeo promised he would not see me again, at least to speak together, though he asked leave wistfully, to pass under my window once each morning and smile at me, just so as to make sure of my presence. I wanted this interval. I wished to see whether he would remain firm to his purpose when he was removed for a day or two from that magnetism of my eyes on which he dwelt so strongly. I spent the three days of grace in wandering about Venice. For the most part I avoided the Great Square, St. Mark's, the Academy, all the familiar tourist haunts, because I did not desire collision with the Donis Thorpe's. Most of my time I devoted to the out-of-the-way streets and the out-of-the-way sites, which are so infinitely amusing. The funny little alleys were the true Venetians' stroll. The funny little compie, where old men and children lie stretched in the shade on the north side of some small church, as fellow dear huddle on the north side of the domed oaks in a park at Noontide. Every turn revealed some passing picture. As I had said to Romeo, it was all Venice. Not a remote, sunless lane, with walls of peeling plaster, tufted with pelletry. That is not dear to my heart, not a sluggish side canal into whose stagnant green water. Branches of acacia and trailing sprays of Virginia creeper hang from beyond the mouldering garden-grill. But I love and cherish it. So Romanesque windows high up on some red-washed steeple, with twin round arches, tall and narrow, held apart in the midst by one twisted column. Great patches of sunlight falling through quarter-foils. In dazzling relief on the deep, recessed gloom of the logea, wee bridges that rise arched like a cat's back over streams strewn with cabbage leaves, where market-boats from mestre laid in high with pumpkins crawl slowly down the channel. Do I not know them all? Are they not etched on my brain by some fadeless process of mental photography? In spite of my haunting these remote herbyways, however, I did once by accident catch sight of the Donis-thorps. They were seated with the Prebendery at a cafe in the Great Piazza, as I crossed it one afternoon on my way home from San Zacharia, where I had been feasting on saints in the placid enjoyment of every form of martyrdom. Sir Everard, leaning back on his chair and sipping black coffee with a small brown cap, pushed well off his forehead, a brown tourist suit, and a capacious yellow waistcoat, amply displayed in front of him, looked more absurdly like a fat toad than ever. Lady Donis-thorpe smiling sweetly upon Venice in general, with her ladylike softness, her mechanical amiability, her powder-pigeon suavity, yet showed marks about the eyes of some inner dissatisfaction. They did not observe me. I stole close behind them, anxious to see the immaculate, colorless Meta. I wished to know for myself what manner of girl she might be, but she was not with them, gone off no doubt for a stroll round the square with Romeo. That thought drove me quickly home, like a frightened rabbit. I rushed under the clock tower, and along the thronged Merceria to my hotel on a side canal. I could not have endured to see them together like lovers. Had I no qualms, meanwhile, I, Mary, had I. Do you think I slept much through those three long nights of suspense and torture, if I tramped from church to church in picture to picture during the day? It was but to escape from my own stinging thoughts for a moment. I argued it all out over and over again with myself. When we two had been seated side by side in the gondola, Romeo's arm half stealing round my waist. My head half pillowed one second on Romeo's shoulder. The question of ethics had been translucent as crystal. We saw quite clearly our course was mapped out for us by eternal equities. Even in Meta's interest I was advising him for the best. The whole man I had said, body, soul, and spirit, or else nothing. That was woman's full gospel of the new dispensation. Less than that could be no true marriage. And is it not better, under such conditions, to change one's mind early than to change it too late? Is it not better for you to speak the truth, even at great risk of pain and humiliation to a woman you have loved, than to tie her for life to a man who cannot give her his whole heart unreservedly, enthusiastically? Is it not better for her to be made miserable once than to be made miserable forever? In advising Romeo to break off this one-sided engagement, was I not advising him most of all in Meta, Donis Thorpe's interest? At times I even felt as if I had succeeded in doing a great favour unasked to Meta. But in the dead hour of night, when all Venice slept, and the last Stalee had answered the last primae under my bedroom window, one stanza of immemorial, kept ever recurring most inopportunely to my mind. I heard it in the creaking of the vein on the dogana, in the lap of the water against the honeycombed walls, in the sigh of the wind through the arches of the belfry. It was a reproachful sound, the voice of that conscience, which I flattered myself. The generation of whom I am one had analysed away forever. Hold thou the good, define it well, for fear divine philosophy should push beyond her mark and be procurus to the Lords of Hell. The Lords of Hell. The Lords of Hell. It clanged with the hour, from the great Campanilla. Was that where my Sophisms were taking me, I wondered, the Lords of Hell. The Lords of Hell. Had I advised Romeo a right, as the woman who loves a man should strive to advise him at dangerous passes? On the third day of the three I rose early from my sleepless bed, tired of tossing off the quilt, and wandered out by myself eastward through the tortuous labyrinth of elbow-bending streets that spreads between St. Mark's and St. George of the Slavonians. I was bound no wither in particular. I let each narrow-flagged alley, each canal-side causeway, lead me onward where it would, but without design on my part. I found myself at last on the small paved platform, with the slimy green steps that catches the morning sun, in front of San Giorgio Dele Shaboni, San Giorgio, I thought to myself. I must stray in here for a while, for rest and meditation. After Nicholas of Myra has not the ever-blessed George been most of all my patron, let me lay before him my doubts, a poor maiden's doubts. It may be that the courteous young saint will resolve them. I pushed aside the padded curtain, and sat down on one of the seats. Venetian women were there with their babies, praying, dark-haired, dusky-eyed, poorly clad, eager-spirited. For a while my eyes strayed to those ever-exquisite Carpaccio's high-ranged on the left-hand wall, which tell the pretty tale of the tutelary saint with naïve Venetian idealistic realism. I scarce knew which of the two chief actors I admired the more. In the episode of the slaying of the dragon, so familiar to me from my own life, the beautiful graceful youth with his loose golden hair, rippling free on the wind, or in the scene of the baptism, the kneeling princess Cleodaland, her long fair tresses flowing richly down her back, as she bends to receive the sacrament of the font at the hands of her chivalrous and devout deliverer. Saint George I fancied in his earnest, clear face, somehow recalled my Romeo. But the princess, I shuddered, what ill omen was this? The princess, whom he baptized, was a fair-haired maiden. I knew Meta was fair. Had he not spoken of her masses of yellow toe, a cold thrill ran down my spine. O Saint Nicholas, O Saint George, avert the omen, I pulled out my little silver crucifix, and, clasping it tight, decided to lay my case before the Madonna herself, who reigns in the altarpiece. Am I a Catholic, then, you ask? That is alien to this story. There are three subjects which I declined to discuss. Bi-metalism, the sex question, and my religious convictions. As I bent my knees before our lady on the shrine, a loose sobbed by my side distracted my attention. It came from a young girl a little apart in the gloom. Her face lay hidden in her hands. All gloved hands, like a lady's, but her fine, fibred hair, was golden and luxuriously abundant. I glanced from her to the Carpaccio, and from the Carpaccio to her. Yes, it could not be Gainesade. This was the Princess Cleodaland. Had her Saint George proved untrue, she was crying bitterly. I knew at once that was the right explanation. The sound of her sobs betrayed it. For there are species in crying. There is the cry of the mother for the loss of her son. There is the cry of the wife for the faithlessness of her husband. There is the cry of the maiden for the defection of her lover. Each has its own note, recognizable at the first sound to those who have once heard it. We talk in such cases of woman's intuition. It were truer, I think, to call it inference. Or inference it is, from delicate observation. All women observed keenly the symptoms of emotion, at moments of exaltation, or passion. They observed them with an almost miraculous acuteness. I knew in a second that Cleodaland had lost her lover's heart. And I guessed in a flash that Cleodaland was Meta. She was dressed like a lady, and out at this early hour, when she and I, alone of our class, driven from our beds by alternative aspects of the self-same problem, were abroad among the Fisher women. I gazed at her with the respect one always accords to sorrow. My heart misgave me how easy it was in the gondola to philosophize in the abstract. But here, on dry land, and in sight of this poor child with the breaking heart, philosophy in the concrete seemed to present its own fresh difficulties. Of a sudden she raised her face and glanced across at me. Pityously her eyes met mine. I started, the wisp of a figure, the pathetic blue eyes, the sunny fluff of hair. It was Makayla. I took it in with a great gulp. Makayla was Meta then, and Meta, Makayla. I could not understand it. For the inscription on her card said, not Donis Thorpe, but Miss Allardice, and had she not told me that her Christian name was Margaret? But I had no time to think it out just then. With a little cry of pleasure she came over to me, still weeping. You dear thing, she whispered, holding out her gloved hand. What a comfort to see you. I want to have a talk with you. You were so good to me at Homewood. I saw it was inevitable. I must face Meta now. I took her hand in mine with a deep sense of repentant treachery. Come out with me, dear, I said, for she melted my heart. Tell me all your trouble. She pressed my hand in return. I knew you would be good to me, she answered. You are odd, but oh so good. I saw it in your big eyes the first day I met you. Do you know your eyes are magnetic? They seem to draw one. Though I have been told, I answered bitterly. Where can we go to talk, she asked. She had a caressing voice. I am sure you will do me good. And I do so want to talk this over with somebody else besides Mama. Mama is like a feather-bed. She is kind in her way, but so soft and comfortable. Nothing seems to make a dint in her. Inventedness forsook me. I had no suggestion to offer except another gondola. And even at that moment, when the world, world, round madly with myself for pivot, I was dimly conscious as one is often conscious of such trifles at a great crisis that always in Venice, when people wanted a tet-a-tet, they must have taken a gondola. Nowhere else in that tangle of narrow streets and small squares could one go unobserved for a second. We called a gondolier. Where shall we tell him to take us, Makayla asked? It was not in her nature to suggest a route spontaneously. Out on the open, I replied, we shall be less overlooked there. Then I added a little morosely. If you are not afraid, I shall drown you. She smiled through her tears. You were always so queer, she said, but so kind. She did not guess how much more reason I had now for drowning her. She jumped lightly into the boat. She was a light little atomy. You could have blown her away with a good puff, like thistle down. The gondolier took us across by San Giorgio Maggiore. Makayla sat by my side, holding my hand in hers. If ever in my life I felt guilty that minute. So all those months I had been doing in earnest what I had said in jest, unconsciously playing Carmen to her Makayla. I had stolen away her Don Jose, and had never known it. She told me hurriedly how the man to whom she was engaged had always seemed to love her. Oh, so much! Till five months ago, Hal, since that time his love had been gradually fading, how it had faded all away, till she was wretched, hopeless. She cried so intensely that I laid her head on my shoulder, towards a soft little head. I felt like a man to her, as I tried to comfort her. Five years she sobbed out. Five years all forgotten. You must have been a child at the time when you began to love him, I murmured. She raised her head. Yes, a child. That's what makes it so much worse. We have loved and been loved since we were both children. Every thought, every pleasure we have shared with one another. I was cycling with him that day when I first met you. We have grown up together. He has grown into my heart, ever closer and closer. What is his name, I asked, trembling. She told me. I hardly needed to ask it. Why, I know him a little, I said. But I thought he was engaged to a daughter of Lady Donisthorps. Yes, of course, Lady Donisthorps is my mother. But her name is Meta, and you are Margaret Allardice. Mama married again. I told you I had a stepfather. She went on with her story. She loved him more and more. Her heart was bound up with him, after so long a time, too. If he had told her three years ago, but five years, you could never make five years seem nothing. And can you account for it, I inquired, to see how much she knew, stroking her sunny hair with my hand as I did so. You dear thing, how sweetly sympathetic you are. Oh, yes, but it is almost too dreadful to tell. A hateful woman, a typewriter girl at his office. Could you ever have believed a person like that would come between us? Perhaps I ventured to suggest. She did not mean it. Did not mean it? Oh, she did, the dreadful creature. She has bewitched him. He loves her best now. And yet you would think that the years must count. The years must count. She sobbed and became inaudible. Has he told you of her, I faltered? Oh, no, he says nothing. He only lets me feel it. But Mama met her once. At a dinner Toto gave at the Savoy, a hateful, vulgar creature. Mama and his mother both spoke to him of the way he treated her, the attention he paid her, bringing a woman like that to dine with ladies. It was unpardonable. Some typewriters are ladies, Makayla, I put in softly. I am a typewriter myself. Ah, yes, but that is different. You are so sweet, so gentle. You know so much. You have been brought up like a lady. You have sympathy and magnetism. This other creature, mother said it was horrid to be in the same room with her. So loud, so noisy. And she's here now. She's here. She has followed him to Venice on purpose to thwart us. He came out to stay with me till the day we were to be married. And this woman, when she saw her hold on him was failing, rushed after him to prevent it. Can you believe such wickedness? Mama saw her with him in a gondola. Oh, I can't bear to say it, dear. In a gondola, near the riva, with his arm around her. Perhaps I hazarded. When she came here she did not know he was engaged. Perhaps if we could speak to her we might play upon some chord in her better nature. Makayla looked up at me admiringly. You beautiful, broad-minded person, she cried. How good you are, how tolerant. You make allowances and excuses for everyone, I declare. How I wish I was like you. But she has no better nature, I believe. Mama says she is a person lost to all sense of shame. Why the stories she told at that dinner of totos about the places she had been in and the people she had met were quite beyond, you know, quite beyond. Oh, too dreadful for anything. I risked another card. My dear little friend, I said, I speak of the thing that I know. She has a better nature. Oh, God, how it was battling now against love of Romeo in her heart, how it was grappling and struggling. I am almost sure I have met this girl of whom you speak. There is a typewriter stopping at the same hotel as myself, and I think she was out in a gondola the other day. With your Romeo, let us call him Romeo. It is more real and agreeable, as Dick Swibbler said to the Marchioness, and is the only way in which I can talk about people. I maundered on to gain time, for though outwardly I was jesting, within I was fighting wild beasts at Ephesus. Now she has talked to me of your Romeo, and I assure you solemnly, when she arrived in Venice, she had not an idea he was engaged. Of that I am confident. Ah, but she knows it now, I am sure. And yet, she bewitches him, I played one card still, a more doubtful and dangerous card than any. Perhaps I answered, but the years must count. You are right in that. Remember, as you say, I am, I hope, broad-minded. I try to see things from everybody's point of view. From yours I see now that Romeo is behaving, cruelly. From the typewriter girls I see that she loves him deeply, very deeply. But tis a new love, fresh-grown, however firmly it may have rooted itself. It has no claim on the score of age as against yours. And if she is told so calmly and frankly, she may perhaps realize it. From Romeo's I see, well, more than I like to tell you. I paused and hesitated. The effort to gain time made me didactic. Life is the interaction of individualities, I said, each seeing things its own way. This is the attempt to reconcile them. Let us try here if we can make this typewriter girl see something a little beyond her own point of view. See, as you say, that the years must count. She is not wholly bad, whatever Lady Donis Thorpe may tell you. I will be your ambassador. I will speak to her. I will speak to Romeo. I will try to make them feel what you have made me feel, that the years should count. And I will come to San Giorgio of the Slavonians to tell you what success I have had in my embassy at this time to-morrow. She brightened up at the idea. She thanked me profusely. He loves me still, she said, a little. Only this girl bewitches him. Oh, I have read about her eyes and her hair in his verses. He thought no one knew. He put it so darkly, all wrapped up in words. But I could see they were hers, though he thinks me so silly. I am clever enough where one's heart is concerned. I can catch at a straw then, but if she were once away, I am sure he would come back to me. She nestled into my shoulder. You dear thing, she cried again, grinding her teeth with affection. You have put fresh hope in me. Thank you, dear, I answered. Do you remember at home would I called you Makayla, because you were so fair, like the girl in the opera? Now this typewriter girl is dark, and she has been playing Carmen to you, stealing your love away from you by her clever ways and her blandishments. She has gypsy attractiveness. But Makayla, I am sure she did not mean it. If she had known of you, if she might have seen you, she could not have wronged you. Do you recollect what I said to you in the train that day? You dear little thing, no one could ever hurt you. Well I am sure the typewriter woman would feel as I do, if she knew you. But I want to make you promise me one thing. If I bring you back your Romeo, you will forgive her. You will never again call her a horrid creature. She soothed my hand in turn. I could promise you anything, she said. I never knew anyone so tender and helpful. We bid the gondolier a turn. She held my hand still, blue sky in her eyes shone after the rain. Only to think, she cried, I have met you three times, no more. And yet I feel you are a dear friend, the sort of friend who would do anything for one. You have reason, I answered. When I returned to the Molo, a crushed heart and a doubtful one had embarked in that gondola. A crushed heart and a doubtful one disembarked from it again, but they had changed places. Three days ago I had seen through the gates of Paradise, today an angel with a flaming sword stood to bar my entrance, and worst of all, I knew his name was Justice. CHAPTER XXI I trailed back to my hotel, surely the most abject soul in Venice. Makayla's misapprehension of my motives I did not resent. The American eagle in my breast had scarce a flap left, a more draggled plume bird I had seldom seen, but all was at an end. I had lost my Romeo, my interview with the first of the two delinquents whom I had engaged to lure back to the path of rectitude. I got over quickly on my way home. It was not a hard one. The culprit, sitting meekly on the penitence bench, listened to all my blame with a contrite heart, and in consideration of her contrition I condoned her evil deeds. It was easy to condone, for here I knew all, and to know all is to forgive all. Makayla would have forgiven had she seen into that poor mangled heart as I did. Looking back over my life dispassionately, from the calm height of XXIII, as if I were looking at some other woman's life, I think I can say I have never acted wrong grossly and unforgivably wrong, given the circumstances. It is those alone that others fail to understand. If they understood, they must sympathize where they now blame us. Could Makayla have watched, stage by stage, the slow organic growth of my love for Romeo? Could she have felt the inevitability, the consecutiveness of the way it unfolded? Could she have realized its foregone certainty? As an outcome of two natures, I think, dear little soul, even she would have hesitated to call me that horrid woman. But it was all past now, and she had regained her Romeo. One culprit had recanted. I had still to face my embassy to the second high contracting party. I sat by the balcony-open window of my bedroom and looked down into the canal. It was almost the hour for Romeo's daily passage. No barges with firewood drifted lazily by. Then a boatload of purple egg-fruit and heaped golden melons, with a gondola or two loitering on the lookout for passengers, like our London crawlers. At last my heart began to beat, not high as it had beaten the two previous mornings, but with a low foreboding. Another gondola swung with a graceful curve round the huge bosses of the Corner Palace. In it a familiar crush Tyrely's hat, and beneath the hat, Romeo, he gazed up at me, smiled and waved one hand, but his look was anxious. I leaned out and called to him. Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, he rose and glanced at me with checked breath and eager eyes. Come up here, I faltered. I want to speak with you. In your room, he cried, hesitating. I felt it was no moment to stand on false convention. Yes, in my room, I answered. Have I not told you I have confidence in myself and my guardian angel? He waved the gondolaeer to the steps, leaped lightly out, English athlete that he was, and was with me in a moment. I might have treated the situation melodramatically and hissed out at him, traitor, but then it is true I unconsciously shared his treachery. Out of that, I treated it like a woman and burst into tears before him. He drew a chair by my side, his white face quivered. You have seen Mata? He faltered out. I could feel his heart throb. Yes, I answered. I have seen her, and I find I know her. Romeo, we were all wrong. We were deceiving our own hearts with specious sofasms. She said to me, in her soft, small voice, all choked with tears, the years must count, the years must count, and she was right when she said it. He flung himself upon me. Juliet, he cried, dear Juliet, I too have suffered. I have battled with my own soul. The beast has fought the angel, and the angel, the man in me. When I see her, when I am with her, so gentle, so childish, so cruelly hurt by my coldness, or what she thinks my coldness, how can I have the heart to break to her the resolution we formed? Yet the moment I leave her, I know it is the right one. It would be wrong of me to marry her now, having found my true mate, wrong for her own sake, the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, or nothing. Do not go back on your own words. It would be treason to the eternal cause of woman. He spoke so vehemently that I faltered. Him Makayla's pale face, with the gentle blue eyes swollen red from weeping, came up like a mist before me. You shall not wrong that child, I cried. Much as I love you, Romeo, not even for my sake will I allow you to wrong her. She is right, and we are wrong. The years must count. She has grown up with your love inextricably twined by rootlets and tendrils through the fiber of her being. To tear it away now were to tear her very heart out. She lives on your affection. To see is to understand. Before I saw her, I thought as we thought at the Lido. Now I know better. I will not allow you to wrong her. He drew away a step and looked me over with his keen eyes from head to foot. I quailed before his glance, so full it was of admiration. My Juliet, he cried. Why talk? I love you for this better than I have ever loved you. That you can contemplate such a sacrifice for honour's sake and for justice, the greater to the less. You, tomato, shows me you are more worthy to be loved than even I thought you. I cannot marry anyone but you. You, you, you, oh God, he flung himself upon me in an ecstasy. To think that in a world which holds such a woman as you, they should call upon me to content myself with that wax doll of Ameta. I un-twined his arms quietly. I was fighting now the battle of my sex, and I almost forgot myself in my advocacy of Makayla. You shall not speak so of her, I cried. The girl whom you have loved for years. The girl to whom you have uttered such vows, on whom you have bestowed such kisses. It is an insult to our sex. The years must count, the years, and the endearments. He stood away and began again, Juliet, he murmured, in caressing tones, and in his flute-like voice, as if he loved to repeat my name. There is one woman in the world supremely fitted for me. She has courage, she has wit, imagination, fancy. She can hold her own, vivacious, brave, strenuous. One of her stray black elf-locks is worth all, Mata's loose gold. Yet she has high purpose enough to plead another woman's cause against her own heart, her own happiness. Her brain is alert, her eyes electric, her soul womanly. The more she argues, the more does she make me admire her, reverence her, worship her, go on pleading if you will, dear heart. I love to hear you, to watch you. But every word you say, every hand you move, for Mata only strengthens my resolve, that you I will have, or I will have nobody. Against your will I will make you happy. He sat down by my side again and bent towards me coaxingly. In his low, sweet voice he began to reason. I listened while he said over again every argument we had used together by the shrine of St. Nicholas, with others like them. If he married Mata, how could she hold his heart? She would be the mistress of his house, a sort of superior pet bird, to be tricked out in fine feathers, to be coaxed, stroked, fondled, but not a wife. If he married me, we should go through the world together, equally paired, soul-wetted, each mirroring the other's mind, each respecting, admiring, reinforcing the other. We too were natural compliments. Why seek to throw him back from the higher upon the lower? I listened and trembled. What he said was so flattering to one's own inner vanity, seems so exactly what one thought in private, when one dared to be frank with oneself, had such a show of eternal and immutable reason that the temptation to go back on my word, and accept his argument as true, was almost irresistible. If I had not seen Makayla, I think I should have yielded. Love, one's own heart, the man one adores at one's feet, these are dangerous assailants. But I closed my eyes, and there Makayla's blue eyes rose up, appealing to me in the gondola. With that piteous cry, the years must count, the years must count, wailed out ever from her heart, and I knew I was fighting the common battle of womanhood. If I were to turn traitor now, I should turn traitor to whatever I had within me, best worth calling a conviction. He seized my hand and kissed it. When the lips of the man you love touch you, it is hard to refuse. But I drew the hand away. He followed it up. His breath was warm upon my cheek, my bosom rose in a tumult. I began to fear I had presumed too much upon my guardian angel. If Romeo pressed me hard now, I must throw Makayla overboard. I must forget his honor, the years that count, the battle of my sex, all that is sacred on earth. Everything saved myself and Romeo. If he asked me, I must say, yes, let the white girl go, I will be yours, my Romeo. Then conscious of my own weakness, with an impulse as if from without, of a sudden I flung myself on my knees, and prayed silently and earnestly for strength to do right, strength to refrain from betraying Makayla. Romeo stood off with clasped tans, observing me in dead silence. I rose from my knees another woman, the soul of womanhood found voice within me. Romeo, dear Romeo, I cried, facing him, and speaking like one inspired. It is not a question for you. It is a question for me. I love you with all my soul, but I refuse to marry you. I will not be a traitor. The years must count. Go back to Meta. He caught my hand in his. I let it lie like a stone. Do not send me away, he implored. Let me stop with you a little. I sank into a chair. He did the same. But remember a gasp between two sighs. This is final. Rose rose to his eyes. He began to speak once more. You must not think, dearest, he said. I have not felt for Meta. Not all these nights have I slept. But honestly, in the dark, I thought it out, and I came to the conclusion it would be best in the end, even for Meta. Romeo, I said, raising my eyes. Do you love me? He made a hasty gesture, as if he would fling himself upon me once more. I waved him off with one open palm. Then promise me, promise me, you will go back to Meta. I cannot, he cried, I love you. Will you go back to Meta? It was a hard, long struggle. We parried, thrust, marched, counter-marched, evaded. But I had taken it in hand, and I determined to finish it. Inch by inch, falling back, but still fighting, he gave way. He saw I was in earnest. Between each line of defense, each logical hedge, he tried to argue it out again. I cut him short with a hasty gesture. A man, yes, he can forget the years, but a woman, never. At last, worn out, he promised. In the agony of my excitement, I took his yielding as a personal triumph. I had asked of my lover a difficult gift, and by dint of woman's armory, had prevailed on him to grant it. But you will stop on at the office, he asked at last, holding his breath. I turned on him. How could I, for Meta's sake, impossible, for my own and infamy, and I must never see you again? I bowed my head. These things are made so, it is yes or no. If yes, for life, if no, then never. He advanced towards me with his lips trembling visibly. I may say goodbye, he faltered. My heart leaped to break its strings. I knew not what to say, at last. Yes, if it is goodbye, and if you go back to Meta, he seized me in his arms. I will not deny that for one whole minute I lay there sobbing happy. It is little for a lifetime. Then I moved him away softly. He clung to me, panting, now you must go, I whispered. Do not tell her it was I. Keep my secret. I opened the door. For a second he lingered. I waved him away. I could endure it no longer. Looking back and breathing hard, he passed through into the passage. I turned the key in the lock to satisfy myself that that embassy was fulfilled. Then I fell on the bed and cried a low cry, Romeo, Romeo. CHAPTER XXII I clung to the rigging. So my poor little odyssey had come to an end in shipwreck. Mr. Samuel Butler must be wrong, after all. I doubt a woman's ability to handle these sustained epics. I was to get no farther on my way to Ithaca than the episode of Vaesha, nor would any Nasekeia come forth to aid me. After I had cried my hearts full, cried till that point when you begin to leave off and to laugh like a child at nothing, for pure weariness, the humorous element which inevitably enters into all human tragedy pressed itself upon me. On the stage, art never lets these incongruous incidents intervene at critical moments to disturb the current. In real life, they will uptrude their faces, like Paul Pry, and tis my misfortune and my good luck, that with some grain of hyna in my composition I cannot shut my eyes to them. So here the comic muse, masquerading as common sense, stepped in with one grotesque reminder. You have no money to pay your way back to London. Now gypsy or American or Anglo-Indian, or what you will, I am true Britain in this, that whatever misfortune lowers, I see one path of safety, the road home to London. If only I could get back to London is the Britain's heartfelt cry of distress in a foreign land. He can starve in comfort, so he may starve in Piccadilly. I have already explained that I am wholly free from the vile vice of prudence. To take no thought for the morrow is to me an article of religion, though tis rare among those who profess to accept it as a divine injunction. Acting on this principle, I had bought a single second-class ticket to Venice, as my funds were insufficient to pay for a return. It was my idea, when I started, to trust for my journey home to the saint who lies at the Lido. Now, however, I found myself in an awkward predicament. Saint Nicholas had played me a last bad turn. I had bought, per force, a new travelling costume before I left England, for I recognized that my rational dress with the knickerbockers would harmonize ill with the genius of Venice. The rest of my cash in hand had gone for beds at Lucerne, or Milan, and passing necessaries. I stood face to face with an Italian court of bankruptcy, liabilities my hotel bill, assets five paper lira. To borrow from Romeo was now clearly impossible, and the canals are so redolent of thirty generations of Venetian refuse that suicide does not offer here its normal allurements. This brought the revulsion. I lay on my bed and laughed to think that, broken hard or not, I could not get away from Venice. By evening I had a headache. I was crying once more, but the worst of headache is that it never kills. The next morning I woke from a short snatch of sleep, with a dull pain in my left side. It was moral, not physical. I rose to ease it by action. Oublier voyager! I had still qualms of conscience. I, who fancied, I had dissected conscience out of existence. But this time they were reversed. Had I done right, after all, in speeding Romeo to his fate, would Machiola be a mate for him? Was it not better, as it was before, for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, at least? St. Nicholas, help! John Stuart Mill, stand by me. I dressed, bathed my eyes, and went out to keep my appointment. I was early at San Giorgio, but Machiola was before me. As I lifted the heavy curtain, her eyes shone happiness. In her radiant countenance I read my doom. She was calmly, serenely joyous. I beckoned her to the campo. She flitted out, and with a charming baby impulse, flung her arms around me. Tears rose in my eyes. It was sweet to see her happy. I held her hand and said nothing. Well, he has explained all, she whispered. You were a deer to speak to him. And I cried, how true it is that explanations explain nothing. Yes, he told Mama he did not know the typewriter girl was coming to Venice. He went out with her in a gondola, because he met her by accident. And it was such a surprise to him, and he wanted to avoid Mama. But he is not going to see her again, and I believe he will dismiss her. No, dear, I said gently, unable to restrain myself. He will not dismiss her, because she will go away of her own accord. She does not intend to remain with him. I have seen her, and I can assure you, she is better than you think. She did not know Romeo was engaged. And when she fully realized it, she relinquished all claim to him. Or rather admitted, she had never had one. Makayla, dear child, you must not be hard upon her. You promised to forgive her. I feel sure she has suffered, for she loved him devotedly. How good you are, Makayla cried. You sympathize so with everyone. She has promised me, I went on, that she will never again see him, that she will avoid him with care, that she will not speak to him nor write to him. She will try to forget him, though to forget him is as impossible for her as for you. But she will be true to you. She will keep her word. I can answer for her as I could answer for myself. She spoke with such earnestness. She is tearing out her heart. But because she thinks it right, she will tear it out ruthlessly. Makayla smiled a tranquil smile. And it is all right now, she said. We are to be married in October, as we arranged originally. We walked along the canal. We walked side by side. But great gulfs separated us. At last I spoke again. You forgive her, Makayla? Oh yes, dear, I forgive her. If she did not know, of course, it was natural. He is such a dear. She could not help falling in love with him. So I feel, I said. She glanced up at me with inquiring blue eyes. I think for a second she half suspected the truth, for I had spoken too deeply. We walked on in silence a little farther. Then Makayla began again, brimming over with her happiness. I haven't a quarter thanked you, but I am so grateful. You were a sweet to see them both. You will come to my wedding. No, dearest, I answered, driving back the tears with a fierce effort. If so, I should be breaking a solemn promise. Again she seemed to suspect, and again the doubt went from her. It was all a mistake, she continued, in a childish, sunny way. A passing cloud, and Toto seemed so distressed. I couldn't help feeling sorry to see him so sorry for me. It has touched him very deep. He cried a great deal. He has been crying all the time. But it is all right now. We shall be quite happy. I swallowed a lump. What a child it was. And there lay the irony. I think I could have spared Romeo better, had I felt I was sparing him to more of a woman. Self-sacrifice for some great soul would be easy. But for a bit of thistle-down? And yet I loved her. I told Mama how kind you had been, Makayla went on quite guilessly. And she wants to see you so much. You must come and dine with us at our hotel. How long do you stop in Venice? I paused and reflected. I had done her a service, a very great service, what need to stand on trifles. For I do not share the vulgar dread of putting myself under an obligation. Dear little Makayla, I said, spanning her arm with one hand it was so fairy-like and tiny, and drawing her towards me I will confess the truth. I am travelling with that typewriter girl. I know her intimately. Now I want to spirit her away from Venice at once. So that she may not see Romeo, and that Romeo may not see her. It would be awkward for both of them. But I have no money. I borrowed from you once and repaid you faithfully. If I borrow from you again, I will repay in like manner. This is a worse straight than homeward. I shall need six or seven pounds. My dear, can you lend it to me? She drew out the dainty purse. Why of course, dear, if I have it. Maybe one hundred and fifty, two hundred lira. Will that be enough for you? Yes, my dear, I gasped out, taking the crumpled notes and crushing them in my folded hand. If I work my fingers to the bone you shall have it back. We walked on towards the Molo. Oh, gray, gray Venice, the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Back, back, Stuart Mill, get thee behind me, Satan. A gondola approached. I hailed it. Where are you going, she cried, surprised. Away, I said, at once. It is better, safer. I will give the devil no chances. Then to the gondolaire. Hold off a little. He held off beyond jumping distance. Makayla hung over on the bridge close by, wondering. Makayla, I cried. Now I will tell you, an impulse came over me. I could no longer resist it. It was I who stole your Romeo's heart by mistake. It was I who played Carmen and beguiled your Don Jose. It was I who sent him back. I am the typewriter girl. You, she cried, waving to me to return. Oh, you dear thing, come back. If it was you, how good you have been. Why I can see it in your face. You have suffered for my sake. Come back and let me kiss you. Oh, dearest, I said, melting. I must go. I dare not trust myself. Goodbye, forever. Goodbye to you. Goodbye to Romeo. Give him that message for me. I will never again see him. I turned to the gondolaire. Quick, row for all you are worth, to my hotel first. Then on to the railway station. If this book succeeds, I mean to repay Makayla. Meanwhile, in any case, I am saving up daily every farthing to repay her, for I am still a typewriter girl at another office. End of Chapter 22 End of The Typewriter Girl