Chapter IV: Part TWO: The Dazzling Net

The strangeness of his friend's last speech bothered Andrew a little, on his way back to the house, but not long. The gradual veils of dusk blue, patched with silver, that evening drew solemnly across the sky were too calm and gentle to be flowered with anything more sullen than the palest stripes of Spring rain--a cool air blew from the inlet like a promise given in a whisper--it was, indeed, a night for love and the guitar. Andrew came up the grassy avenue that led to the house with that promise clutched tight in his hand like a Spanish coin.

Tonight, he told himself as he had told himself so often, he would find out the color of his fortune, black or gold. In the interval after supper, when the Gentian ladies had withdrawn, he would speak to his surgeon Cæsar, and know his fate there, at least. Admitted, the Doctor was too liberal and modern a father to give away his daughter against her will--etiquette was etiquette--and it must never be said in the Floridas that a New Yorker lacked proper punctilio. But even if the Doctor did approve--what of Sparta herself? Andrew sifted a thousand little incidents of the past few months between his fingers like grains of sparkling sand. Here she had certainly smiled, yes--and there thanked him most graciously for turning over the leaves of her new song. But there she had been distant as a ghost, and there again, definitely satiric. This balanced that, and left him in troubled confusion. He was so absorbed in love-stricken calculations that he nearly ran into one of the servants, on the stairs, before he realized where he was.

"Ten thousand dev--," he began, in irritation, then, seeing it was Sparta's Minorcan maid, changed his tune abruptly. If this girl were not divinity itself, she was blessed at least by the service of divinity, and he stared at her hungrily, as if he expected to see a golden collar, with godhead's name upon it, around her throat. He had noticed the wench very little after that first awkward encounter in the corridor--she went about her duties as unobtrusively as a spirit--but tonight she seemed to him, somehow, a precious object, and he spoke to her on impulse.

"Is anything wrong?" he said, for now that he came to observe her, she seemed more sombre than usual and her face was a trifle drawn.

"Nothing, _señor_," said the girl, quietly. "Supper will be ready in half an hour." She stood aside for him to pass. He lingered, feeling, in the folly of a lover, that her presence might have some sort of augury for him, if he could only puzzle it out.

"But--there is something the matter, Caterina," he went on, with vague kindliness, "You really look very tired--and the fever-season's coming on. You should go to Dr. Gentian and have him give you a powder of cinchona."

"No, _gracias_, I am quite well, _señor_," said the girl, and sucked in her breath. A dark glow came into her eyes for a second, like the soul of a flame in an obscured mirror, and died again. For some reason, Andrew felt, momentarily, as he had that evening in the corridor when her footsteps had died away so suddenly and left him alone in the very belly of night. The sensation was so acute that he almost put out a hand to steady himself against an assault of shadows. Then he remembered.

"Of course," he said rather aimlessly, "Of course--but still, you don't look very well, Caterina,--and really, now, if you went to--"

"I am quite well," the girl repeated steadily, but he saw a sob rise in her throat. It broke now, and tore her. "But the Minorcans will never have their lands, now--the Minorcans will never have their lands!" she cried, passionately, in a deep, shaken voice, and then pushing him aside with a child's gesture of impotent pain, ran sobbing down the stairs. Andrew gazed after her helplessly, reflecting that Minorcans were very peculiar. One got just so far with them--and then one came up against a blind wall of silence or an inexplicable grief. Her words were meaningless, of course, but coming, as they did, after Sebastian's talk about the thunder, they jarred him and set the pattern of the evening awry. He went to his room with a prickle in his mind, and was not pleased, when he got there, to hear, through the open window, the mutter of other voices in irritated discussion.

He was about to go out and silence the debate--the room next his was a store-room and generally only frequented by servants--when the voices rose higher, and he caught one sentence clearly.

"You've been at that wench, again," said a dry, passionless accent which Andrew was horrified to recognize as Mrs. Gentian's. "I'll not suffer it, Hilary. I'll not suffer it any more."

A low rasping murmur replied. The other voice fell to meet it, and Andrew found himself gripping the back of a chair with a clenched hand. Mrs. Gentian was so taciturn at the best of times that he had come to think of her as a statue rather than a woman--a statue whose worn, fine hands busied themselves interminably with flowers of lace and needlework, but whose memorial mouth was as dedicated to silence as the mouth of a buried nun. Now, though, those lips had opened, and a voice, arid and clear as the rattle of dry palm-branches in the wind, spoke out a hate so weary and long enduring that it hurt the mind.

Andrew closed the window as quickly as he could but he could not shut out the sour, tearless repetition of the words, "I will not suffer it, Hilary. I will not suffer it again," or the hard rasp of the Doctor's voice in reply. He felt very sorry for Dr. Gentian--Mrs. Gentian had the wreck of what must have been a great beauty. The beauty had gone, but its jealousy, apparently, remained--acrid as the dregs of spoilt incense. Andrew had heard, in books, of the lengths to which such ingrown jealousy may lead very worthy women, and shook his head in wise acknowledgment of the strangeness of existence. It was worse, somehow, that Sparta's mother should yield to such a failing. He could not restrain a natural pity for the unhappy lady, but he felt that in combining Sparta's mother with a jealous wife, she had committed, at the least, a serious breach of taste.

He was relieved to find no traces of the quarrel lingering in the air when he came down to the supper-table. Dr. Gentian was pleasanter than usual, if anything, and Mrs. Gentian very composed. He marvelled anew at the deceptiveness of all women but Sparta--he could hardly believe that the cool, terse accents which asked him politely for his verdict on the salad of hearts of cabbage-palm, belonged to the same woman whose voice had been so sere with an exhausted flame a little while ago. Then he was left alone with Dr. Gentian, and it was time for him to put his question. Only now, when the time had come, in spite of any fortification of wine, the question stuck in his throat.

"Shall we take our wine into my study?" said Dr. Gentian and rose, "There is a new herbal I should like to show you--the author has some ingenious ideas upon the domestication of the mulberry-tree in these parts."

Andrew assented gratefully, grasping at the moment's relief. Besides he took it as a good omen that on this night of all nights, Dr. Gentian should invite him to the seldom-visited chamber which he had always visualized as the hidden brain of the plantation.

He took in its details now with care, as if some one of them might give him a clue to his future. The fantastic yet effective diversity of its master's character was displayed in the chamber almost to excess. It was a long, oval, high-ceiled room, hung in blue and gold leather--the domed ceiling was blue, as well, and powdered with small gold stars. There were books and chemical apparatus, a set of chessmen whose kings rode ivory elephants, a foreign dagger with beryls set in the blade. An herbarium stood in a corner beside the articulated skeleton of a child--a violin lay on a carved wooden chest, neighbored by a case of surgical instruments, a pair of dividers and an azimuth. Yet in spite of this litter of incompatible objects and interests, the room gave an impression of neatness and order as precise as that of a captain's cabin on a shipshape frigate. Andrew felt that Dr. Gentian could go blindfold to any single thing in the room and put his hand upon it--and also, that the room was, in a measure, an extension of the soul of its master, and, should he die, would be haunted forever by a light, sure footstep and a tight, Roman smile. He turned over the leaves of the herbal--the plates made a blur of color in his eyes and Dr. Gentian was saying something about mulberries that he should listen to, but his mind was racked, and he could not attend.

"I intended the ceiling as a planetary map, showing roughly the movements of the various heavenly bodies and the transit of the moon," said his host, politely, as Andrew's eyes strayed from the herbal to the ceiling, "But the work was never completed." He sighed. "Perhaps some day, we can manage it."

"It is a splendid chamber, sir," said Andrew, thinking of Sparta.

"It is my retreat," Dr. Gentian confided. "You may not have noticed--but there is deadening in the walls, and when I am secluded here, there are orders I shall not be disturbed. I even have my own staircase to the upper part of the house."

"Really?" said Andrew, marshalling the facts of his birth and worldly circumstances in proper order to present to a father.

"Yes, indeed," said Dr. Gentian. He rose and opened a door at the side--a door flush with the wall. "Would you like to see it--the workmanship is truly ingenious."

He led the way up a short, winding stair, chatting. At a landing, he paused. "We are behind the ceiling now," he said. He slid a little panel back with an oily click. "When I planned my planetary map, I thought to place my moon here and light it with a concealed lamp--a childish fancy enough, but what's life without vagaries? Then I thought my toy might burn the roof down over my head some fine night and gave up the plan. As it is, my moon makes an excellent Judas-hole if I had need of one." He stepped aside. Andrew came forward and peered through a small round opening directly down into the room which they had just left. He muttered something about an interesting device.

"Only a toy," said Dr. Gentian, "and a costly one. I fear I am too fond of toys." He shut the panel with a smooth sound, and waved into the gloom. "The stair there leads direct to the main corridor--I find it convenient, but I will not make you climb any further beyond the moon." He chuckled and led the way down again. "I have always hankered after oddities--'tis my greatest defect. I never realize how I may fatigue others with my hobbies--as I fear I have fatigued you, this evening, Mr. Beard, by your face--"

"Not at all, sir," said Andrew, untruthfully, seated in his chair again. He cleared his throat desperately. "Dr. Gentian--" he said.

"Yes, Mr. Beard?--the bottle lies with you, I think--thank you." The little gurgle of the Doctor's wine into his glass put Andrew off unaccountably. For a moment be thoroughly wished himself heartwhole and a thousand miles away. But he set his teeth and brought up an image of Sparta to aid him.

"Dr. Gentian--" he began again, with an unfortunate sense of repetition.

"Pardon me," interrupted the smiling Doctor politely, "But your glass is already full. You may not have observed it." And Andrew discovered to his horror-that he was spilling a red stream on the table from an overflowing glass.

"Sorry, I'm sure," he mumbled.

"It is nothing," the Doctor assured him. "But I chance to have a peculiar affection for certain years. of Madeira. Pray continue, Mr. Beard--you will find it a trifle difficult to rest the bottle on a walnut--I mention it, merely--pray continue--"

Andrew silently placed the bottle as far from him as possible and wetted his lips.

"Dr. Gentian," he said for the third time, "I crave--I wish--May I humbly crave, sir, your permission to--"

"You may certainly have my most willing permission to pay your addresses to my daughter, Sparta," said the Doctor, briskly snipping Andrew's disjoined stammerings in two. Then, seeing Andrew's stupefied face, he threw back his head and burst into a shout of laughter.

"Why, you silly boy," he said, laughing and wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes, "D'you suppose I haven't seen where your heart's been drifting this last half-year? But the blindest worm in the ground's a crystal-gazer to a young man in love. Here, lad--" and he gave his hand to Andrew across the table. "Shake hands and don't look so solemn. You can have her if you can win her. I can say no more than that, for I won't force her--but that I'll say with a good conscience."

"I can never thank you enough, sir," said Andrew, solemnly, shaking hands.

"Well then--don't thank me at all--that's far the best course for both of us," said the Doctor, cheerfully. "I'll say this, too--the girl has no other attachment I know of, and I'll be glad to give her to you, should she be agreeable. But a word on other matters." He grew serious now. "I am not a young man, Mr. Beard, and somewhat loath to part with my one chick for the few years left me. So I must ask you this--should you marry my daughter, sir, would you intend to remain in the Floridas or return to New York?"

Andrew felt himself unable to think of such petty matters.

"I have grown much attached to the Floridas," he said, smiling. "So much that I should not think of quitting them, if--"

"Good," said the Doctor. "Then we're agreed. I confess--I'd feel a wrench were it to be otherwise. Well, sir--I think that is all I wished to say. The settlements--of course I speak merely in the eventuality, Mr. Beard--had best be discussed between your father and myself--I might even make the voyage North in case--though in these uneasy times--"

"My father is much interested in the Floridas," Andrew blurted out. "It is even possible my father might remove some of his interests here--" He half-regretted the words once they were spoken, but Dr. Gentian had behaved with such admirable candor that it surely behooved him to do likewise.

"Indeed?" said the Doctor quietly. "That is very interesting." He reflected. "Your father is a wise man," he said. "No one knows what this stir in the North may lead to--but the Floridas will stand by the Crown. And should your father--well, well," he broke off. "There'll be time enough to talk of that later. At present, no doubt you're already busy with a sonnet to my daughter's eyebrow and aching for the sight of her. Ah, youth--what a heat in the mind it is, and how we cool when it's over. By the way," he went on more practically, "as you know, I must visit St. Augustine in a month or so, and be gone some time. If this matter we have discussed might be settled before I leave--"

"But sir--I--I--Miss Gentian--" said Andrew, his mind topsy-turvy.

Dr. Gentian laid a paternal hand on his shoulder.

"There, lad--I don't mean to press you--or you her--but take my word for it, the swiftest love is often the surest and lastingest--and your bold, rapid lover is wedded and bedded and got his child on the maid while Sir Timothy Shilly-Shally is still sighing outside her door."

Andrew felt this last advice a trifle frank in tone--but it was an unsqueamish age, and he could hardly quibble with so amiable a prospective father-in-law over niceties of language. He went out of the study, with the other's hand on his shoulder and a bronze call, like the call of a centaur's hunting-horn, in his heart.

2.

He was alone with Sparta in the garden, and his hour was upon him. The opportunity had come so swiftly and easily that he felt bewildered. A word from Dr. Gentian as to the beauty of that strange plant, the cereus, which blooms only at night. A sigh from Sparta that the house was close and she would risk any treachery of the night air for a breath of cool from the river. She had put a light shawl about her shoulders, impatiently, at her mother's insistence. In the white shine of the stars its vivid flowers were darkened and strange, it wrapped her shoulders in a pale fleece, marked obscurely with the imprint of blossoms sprung from fields on the dark side of the moon. Andrew had never seen her more beautiful or less attainable. Her composed face seemed to have no room for thoughts of him or any other man, her eyes were lighted at an indifferent planet, her mouth was a shut flower.

They had seen the cereus and marvelled--the night-flower that blooms when heaven is dark and dies in the sun, showing only the secret hours of the risen planets the perfection of its whiteness, cool, sterile and lovely as a blossom congealed from some metal slighter than foam. They had talked of a dozen, indifferent things as they strolled about. Andrew had long ago discovered that Sparta was very curious of New York and of cities in general. Her childish years were a confused memory of long sea-voyages and strange nurses. The one glimpse of London, seen when she was eleven and her roving father had been interesting Lord Hillsborough in his projects, was hugged like the ghost of a jewel to her breast. She remembered Vauxhall passionately--and the very sprigs on the dresses of the fine ladies in panniered silk who came there in sedan-chairs with a train of tame wits and sniffing lapdogs.

"Sometimes, I confess, Mr. Beard--I must have a foolish heart--I'd rather be an orange girl in the meanest London playhouse than an empress in these exiled Floridas. But then I remember, when I was a child my sole ambition was to be a midshipman on one of His Majesty's frigates so I could carry a dirk and kill Frenchmen--and I calm myself."

Andrew longed to tell her, that he would give her London, a chicken-skin fan, and a lapdog with the arrogant nose of a Chinese god--but his promise to Dr. Gentian held him back. At least, he thought, she should be an empress in the Floridas, if he could make her one. He glanced up the sky--the change Sebastian had predicted was beginning. Clouds hurried across the stars like trotting black sheep--a rampart of darkness built itself up steadily in the glittering wake of the moon. He chose a particular cloud. When it blotted the moon he would speak.

"Mr. Beard--Mr. Beard--is my company so wearisome? You have not honored me with a word these five minutes past." Her shoe tapped on the path. Her face was amused. He stared at her in silence, waiting for his omen. It came at last. The cloud blotted the moon and darkness fell on them both.

"Miss Gentian--Sparta--" he said with a crack in his throat. Then all his elaborate prologue of speech forgotten, he put shaking hands on her shoulders and drew her to him.

"Sparta? You'll marry me?" he said, in that same, cracked, violent voice. She was very near, now. He could see her eyes in the darkness, the grey had gone out of them, they were black as opals, and in each was a tiny gleaming image of his face. She looked at him steadily, for an instant, without replying. Then, "Yes, I'll marry you," she said, the crystal bell of her voice untroubled by doubt or surprise. Then his arms went round her and she kissed him full on the mouth, and he felt his heart stop in his body for that instant of felicity as if the pointed blade of the Spanish bayonet had run him through and through with a golden thorn.

Through the further events of the evening, Andrew moved like a man in trance. There were Sparta's kisses in the garden, which were real, though incredible, and there was the formal reception of their betrothal by Dr. and Mrs. Gentian, which, while equally real no doubt, seemed in memory, vague as a painting upon a dream. He could hear the words on Sparta's lips clearly enough, "Mr. Beard has asked for me in marriage, Father, and I have accepted him, subject to your consent," but of the practical conversation which followed he had little recollection. Dr. Gentian had drunk his health and called him son--he had drunk Dr. Gentian's health--Mrs. Gentian had been terse but agreeable--he was going to marry? Sparta--that remained, unbelievable though it might be, the one steadfast fact in a rocking world. He tried to recall what Mrs. Gentian had said to him--her congratulations had certainly not erred on the side of loquacity.

He was sure she had said no more than, "So you are to marry our daughter, Mr. Beard? I wish you much joy," while she looked at him curiously. But then he had taken her hand to kiss it in acknowledgement and had been surprised to find it trembling. Obviously a lady of deep, if hidden, feeling--and certainly Dr. Gentian's cheery talkativeness more than made up for any curtness of hers.

He must tell Sebastian, in the morning. He had forgotten all about Sebastian till now, he realized with a start. No--not quite forgotten. He had paused an instant as Sparta and he were about to reënter the house, and glancing about idly, had seen two indistinct shapes, a woman's and a man's, part from each other in the shadows of the outbuildings. He suspected them of being lovers, and had felt friendship for them because he was now happy in love. Now he suspected more--that one shape had been Sebastian's and the other that of Caterina, the Minorcan maid. The thought pleased him extraordinarily--he was in that benevolent state when we are generous enough to wish all our friends a bliss only slightly less than our own. He gave Sebastian a suitable wedding, engaged him as chief-overseer on his new plantation and stood godfather to his first child, before he fell asleep to the rushing of light, fierce rain on the roof above his head.

3.

About the time that Andrew and his divinity were first observing the mystery of the cereus, the monkey in Sebastian's hut gave over its attempts to capture a peculiarly elusive flea and began to consider other means of diversion. Its master was away--fleas ceased to interest after a certain time--life in general was a sucked cocoanut and obedience a rusty chain about the body that kept one from all sorts of pleasantly destructive occupations. If the chain could only be got rid of somehow--but there the monkey had never had the slightest success before and hoped for little now. Still, it was worth trying, and the monkey bit at it a couple of times for luck and then squatted down sailorwise and tugged at it till it rattled, delightfully.

To his surprise, it seemed to give a little--Sebastian had hammered the staple in a new place that morning without noticing the rottenness of the wood. The monkey, encouraged, tried again and again, with less result, and was about to give it up and go to sleep, when one last jerk pulled the staple loose and set him free. He bounded instantly upon Sebastian's bed and sat there chattering triumphantly. There were so many breakable objects within easy reach that he did not know quite where to begin. He started by hammering Sebastian's red clay pipe against a stone. It smashed very satisfactorily in a moment or two and he amused himself for some time by carefully distributing the bits inside Sebastian's blankets. Then that too palled and he scuttled over to the door, his chain jingling behind him. The night seemed very large and interesting. There were trees in it. He had not climbed a tree in a long time.

He remedied the lack immediately, but the tree he chose wasn't much of a tree at that--it had no fruit on it to suck and throw away, with a squash, at other men or monkeys. Still, it was good to be independent again, at last. He said so at length, to the surrounding world, and set out upon his travels.

The joys of independence lasted till the first large drops of rain began to soak into his fur. Then they grew a trifle dubious. After all, he had become used to living in a house with a roof on it, and the society of mankind, while often tedious, had its compensations. He had had an adventurous outing and smelled and bitten at all sorts of new and interesting substances. He had proven himself a monkey of ingenuity and initiative. Now, the hut on the edge of the Minorcan quarter seemed snug and warm, and the food he shared with Sebastian more filling, on the whole, than what one could forage for oneself. He would go back--but he had come a considerable distance in his careless rambling and was not quite sure of his bearings.

He looked around him--ah, there was a house with a light in the window. That meant man and warmth and shelter. A different master, perhaps--but he had been so long with Sebastian that he had quite forgotten his first unpleasant experiences with masters.

He slipped down to the ground and jangled over toward the lighted house, shivering as he ran. It was really raining now, and he hated rain like a cat.

Mr. Cave, alone in colloquy with a half-emptied bottle of spirits, heard a sudden ghostly clanking through the dripping pour of the rain, and looking up, saw the Devil in person standing in his doorway with a chain wrapped around his middle. He rubbed horrified eyes and began to pray in a whisper. Then his mind righted itself and he sank back in his chair, muttering. It was only that impudent Minorcan's draggled pet-ape--but it had given him a start, and he did not like being startled when he was in liquor.

The wet monkey had jumped on the table now and sat opposite him, grinning and looking at the bottle of spirits. He grinned back at it. It would be funny to give the miserable little beast some liquor and get it drunk. You could get a chicken drunk on corn soaked in brandy but a drunken monkey would be even more amusing.

"Here," he said, splashed some liquor into a glass and held it out to the monkey. If the monkey behaved itself and proved entertaining when intoxicated, he might even keep it. The Minorcan fellow set a good deal of store by it and laborers had no business keeping pets.

The monkey took the glass trustingly--Sebastian had taught it how to drink from a glass, in the useless way men had. Now it swallowed a gulp of what was inside the glass. The raw liquor stung its throat--it coughed and spat in quaint loathing. Mr. Cave roared--this was even more diverting than he had expected. Then he felt the monkey's sharp teeth almost meet in his thumb, gave a squeal of pain, and struck at it blindly with the bottle.

Even so, the monkey might have escaped, if it had not been for its chain. But the chain tangled its feet as it dodged away--and Mr. Cave's second blow was better aimed than his first.

He stood looking at the dead animal, stupidly. It bled like a man. He hadn't really meant to kill it. But he had--and that Minorcan who owned it was a sullen devil. Well, he'd just have to face it out, if the ugly little swine tried any tricks on him.

He took the limp body of the monkey gingerly by one leg and threw it out of the door. It was raining hard, now--the rain would wash some of the blood off, he thought, inanely. He shivered. Killing an animal wasn't much, but he wished its hands hadn't looked like a dead baby's when he picked it up. He shut the door carefully, bolted it, and returned to his bottle. Now and then he cast an uneasy glance at the window. If the damn little brute hadn't bitten--it should have known he had a quick temper and wouldn't stand biting-- His thoughts trailed off uneasily, into a mist the color of liquor.

Sebastian got back to his hut just before the rain broke, and, finding the monkey vanished, started to search for it at once. At first he did not imagine that it could have gone very far and stood in the doorway, calling, "Amigo! Amigo!" in a crooning voice, for some time. But when no chattering answered from the darkness, he became disturbed and started out to visit the huts nearest him. Even the Greeks answered pleasantly enough--the monkey was quite a favorite in the colony--but none had any news. A Minorcan woman said that she had been awakened by the rattling of a chain outside her window, but that was all.

The rain soaked Sebastian to the skin, as he proceeded on his quest, but he did not notice it. He grew increasingly distraught and cursed himself for not having seen that the monkey was securely chained, before he left the hut. "Amigo! Amigo!" he called again and again, with a dry throat, and promised his name-saint a candle for every arrow that had stuck in his flesh. But there was no answer from either saint or monkey.

He did not know what impulse drove him at last to Mr. Cave's cottage, save that he hated the man and knew the man hated him. It was there, however, in the dripping weeds near the house of his enemy, that he stumbled at last upon the body of his friend. He took it up silently, the head was still bloody in spite of the rain, and the wrinkled face stiff and sad. Then, still in silence, with the dead animal in his arms, he made the complete circuit of the cottage, trying every door and window, noiselessly. But the doors and windows were fastened and the house was dark.

He sat down upon the ground then, still holding the monkey, and burst into a fit of dry sobbing, while the rain beat on him. Then he returned to his hut.

When he got back, he lit two scraps of candle and placed the monkey's body between them. Then he stripped himself to the waist, and, going to the wooden chest that held his few possessions, took out of it a small brass medal, tarnished green by the damp. On it was the image of the Mother of God. Her face was quiet--she had seven swords in her heart. This, together with the knife that Andrew had given him, he also put on the table between the candles. He then knelt and began to pray in Mahonese. The form of prayer was one peculiar to the men of the islands and unacknowledged by Rome. Andrew would have thought him even too alien, if he had seen him then--the muscles of his stripped body trembled with the vehemence of his supplication--he was dedicating Andrew's knife to Our Lady of Vengeance. After a time had passed, he rose again, put on his soaked shirt, and went stiffly out to dig the childish grave.

4.

Next morning, in spite of Andrew's resolve, the two friends did not meet. Instead, Sparta had a wish to go riding through the new-washed and freshly-scented countryside, and when they returned, Dr. Gentian, a cloud on his brow, was dismissing a deputation of the elder Minorcans from his study. He turned to Andrew sharply, the moment he saw him.

"Was your ride a pleasant one, lad?" he said, abstractedly, "Come with me a moment--there is something I would have your advice on."

"Certainly, sir," said Andrew, pleased at being consulted. He turned to Sparta. "You'll excuse me, mistress?" he said lightly.

"I shall excuse you sir," said Sparta smiling, her fingers playing with the lash of her riding-whip.

Dr. Gentian shut the door of his study. "The Minorcans are making trouble," he said without preface. "I thought it best you should know."

"Making trouble?" said Andrew, jarred. He somehow felt that trouble at this time was an insult to his happiness and Sparta's.

"Yes," said Dr. Gentian. He hesitated. "'Tis a long story. The gist of it's this. They say they've served their time for their lands, under our agreement. Now they want them."

Andrew's mind reverted to his encounter with Caterina on that yesterday that seemed so distant. "The Minorcans will never have their lands now," she had said.

"Well, sir--" he began judicially.

Dr. Gentian cut him off. "Yes--that was the agreement," he admitted. "Three years. But there's the religious difficulty. They're Catholics, every man jack of them--Roman Catholics. Now listen to me," he tapped his thumb on the table. "When I first took them on my ships--would they have made conditions then? No. They were starving. I took them because they were starving. I didn't think then--They let me take the Greeks because the Greek Church to our mind's a Protestant church--but if I'd proposed transporting twelve hundred Catholics to the Floridas as settlers--giving them lands--the men at Whitehall would have cracked my whole project like an egg. I had to dissemble a little--how could I refuse starving men?--I thought once they were settled here--but the present governor's my enemy, as you know--"

"Even so, sir--" said Andrew, trying to put in a word.

"See here, lad," said Dr. Gentian, very firmly and gently, "Spain's still plotting to recover the Floridas. If I yield to these men's demands and give them their lands now--the governor can make a mare's nest out of it--enough to link me up with any kind of a trumpery Spanish plot he can bogy the men in England with. Then all New Sparta falls to the ground--and who gains by it? Your friends, the Minorcans? No. I must put them off for the present--till we have a new governor--or--"

"I can see the logic in everything you say, sir," said Andrew, a trifle stubbornly, "but nevertheless--"

The green stone in Dr. Gentian's ring flashed as he stretched out his hand to Andrew.

"Have I treated you like a son, Andrew--yes or no?" he said quite simply, and Andrew felt touched and humbled, but a little trapped as well. After all, whether or not Dr. Gentian had treated him like a son had little to do with his treatment of the Minorcans.

"You have always treated me most kindly, sir," he said, a bit grudgingly, yet hating himself for being grudging. "And yet--"

Dr. Gentian looked hurt. He dropped his hand.

"And yet you are unwilling to take my word on this--even when I assure you that one of my reasons for going to St. Augustine will be my wish to remedy the matter with the governor?"

"Of course, I must take your word, sir--if you put it like that," said Andrew, in a sudden glow of self-reproach.

"Ah," said Dr. Gentian, and laid a hand on his elbow. "Ah--that's my good lad!"

5.

Nevertheless, a tiny crack had come in the polished lacquer of his relation with Dr. Gentian. Dr. Gentian's course of action might be dictated by an expediency entirely honorable--but there must be a Minorcan side, if only a mistaken one. Andrew respected the Minorcans--they had great patience--he could not think of them as lightly aroused. He intended to find out their side--have a long talk with Sebastian--discuss things with some of the elders of the colony. Indeed, he intended much, and as people will, remained satisfied with the intent, while time drifted away, like a bough of wild peaches floating on a lazy stream.

The bright retiarius had caught and bound him in a dazzling net--now its trident poised above him and he did not fear the stroke. His servitude was too happy--why should he be free?--he ran at a golden heel.

He did not go so often to the fields, now, or to Sebastian's hut. For one thing, Dr. Gentian thought he should begin to take up the accounting and governing side of the plantation. Besides, there were expeditions for turtle, down the inlet, to be made in Sparta's company--she handled a boat like a man. There were rides through the green woods and sandy pine-barrens, and once, a dance at a neighboring plantation a day's journey away, where he saw divinity move through the stately patterns of louvre and minuet with a jealous joy. This was no New York courtship, done up in packthread stays, but something hardy and wild as a journey up the face of a crag to take the eggs from the nest of a mountain-eagle, and he rejoiced that it could be so.

Yet it seemed to him, often enough, that now, in betrothal, he was less sure of her heart than ever before. Before, she had seemed strange since she could never be his; now she was to be his indeed, but she still was strange. He could touch the hand, kiss the lips, hear the voice speak love, but in the eyes something remained aloof, a spectator who watched all that befell them both like an enchanter shut in a tower of clouded glass, without love or hate or sin, with only a dispassionate interest in the certain working of a spell. If he could once break that glass with the silver hammer of his desire--perhaps it would come with marriage and the incantation of the flesh. But the days passed, and the enchanter watched, and the glass remained unbroken.

Dr. Gentian went to St. Augustine at last. Andrew would hardly have noticed his departure, save for one thing. The Pride of the Colonies was expected with long-delayed mail from the North and might even bring an answer to the letter he had written his father about his betrothal. The letter had been written in March and it was nearly the end of May now. Then he came back to the house, one evening, after a day at the vats, as Dr. Gentian's deputy, to find his head heavy and thick, and his hands hot. He had caught a little fever, somehow, and was ill for several days.

The illness, after the first bad night had passed, gave him a chance to consider a number of things he had not thought of for some while. Sparta sent her maid to help nurse him, but did not come often herself. He was glad of that--he did not want her to see him with cracked lips and fever in his face. The maid was very quiet and deft--she had cool hands, and moved without little irritating creakings and rustlings, unlike most women.

They talked, now and then. She reminded him of Sebastian. He had been remiss about Sebastian. Sebastian's monkey was dead--he remembered that, now. He had gone to Sebastian to tell him the great news and, while Sebastian had been appreciative enough, Andrew saw that he was sad. He had asked about the monkey.

"Yes, Amigo is dead," said Sebastian, but would say no more, though he looked at a little brass medal that hung around his neck on a cord, and Andrew, who was bursting with talk, had felt rebuffed. He asked the maid about Sebastian now.

"He is well, I think," said the maid, holding a cup to his lips. Andrew drank of the bitter infusion within it gratefully.

"Don't you ever see him?" he said, smiling, when the cup had been taken away.

"He asks for you often. He hopes you will be better soon." She avoided the direct reply.

"Oh, I'll be up and around in no time," said Andrew. "Thanks to your nursing," he added.

"I am glad if my nursing has helped you," said the maid, rather haltingly, as if she had to hunt for the English words. "You are a friend of the Minorcans--or you have been."

"Tell me," said Andrew suddenly. "What did you mean that time in the corridor when you said the Minorcans would never get their lands? Dr. Gentian is going to give them their lands as soon as the governor lets him."

"They will never have their lands," said the girl, sombrely. Her eyes fixed him. "Sometimes Dr. Gentian sits in his tall room with a gold cap on his head," she said, abruptly. "He sits there like a king--he thinks he is a king--_el rey--el rey_--" Her voice rose. "When he thinks that--men are taken into the woods to have their backs combed with steel as the coat of a horse is curried by its servant. That has not happened since you have been here, but it has happened. He had a madness in him, then--a madness that hides--the madness of a drunken king. That is why the Minorcans will never have their lands."

Andrew stared at her, wonderingly. The picture she presented was wholly fantastic, but he could not doubt the sincerity in her face.

"You're mad!" he said, finally, "Mad or--where did you ever hear such a crazy tale?"

"I should not have spoken," said the girl, relapsing into her amazing calm, "You are going to marry my mistress. I should not have spoken."

"What about Mr. Cave?" said Andrew, on impulse. "What do you Minorcans think of Mr. Cave?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders. "He is a dog," she said, quietly enough, though a bitterness colored her voice like rust. "He is mad, too--but only with the madness of a dog."

"You're not very cheerful today," said Andrew, with invalid peevishness, "And where you ever got such a farrago of nonsense--God knows I hate Cave as much as any of you can--but you make everything sound cruel."

She shrugged again. "What do you want me to say?" she said, with that even bitterness. "Life is cruel. Men that are cruel do no more than copy life."

"Don't," said Andrew, wincing, "I'm sorry you're so unhappy. You oughtn't to be so unhappy if you're Sebastian's sweetheart."

"So I am Sebastian's sweetheart?" said the girl and smiled.

"Well--aren't you?"

"Am I? I don't know. How do you know? You are a boy, sometimes--a little, little boy. You must take your medicine."

"I don't want it," complained Andrew, childishly, "You just gave it to me, anyhow."

"You must take it often." She approached him with the cup. "It takes away the fever. See, you are much cooler, this afternoon." She laid a hand on his forehead--the light touch was cool and firm as if she had brushed his brow with a ringdove's feather, fallen upon cool stones.

"There now. Go to sleep. Sleep mends the fever, too."

"Why do you say such things about Dr. Gentian?" said Andrew, impatiently, but she turned away with her finger on her lips and sat down again in her chair. He watched her through half-closed eyes, seeing again the dark Madonna in the niche of the Spanish church, A single lamp burned before it--the face was calm and secret--the face of a gypsy saint--a mystery hung above it like a dove in chains. He could feel the touch of fingers upon his brow, cool as the roots of lilies, bathed in water from the hills. He lay for a long time silent, half-drowsing, thinking of Dr. Gentian in a gold cap and a lamp before an image, and the roots of lilies steeped in a clear, cold stream.

Next morning the fever had gone; his body felt weak, but no longer possessed. He lay alone all morning feeling his strength return to him and listening with mild curiosity to the various noises of the house. The day was hot and sultry, he could feel that inside his skin, but his room was cool and he did not mind. He had a convalescent's desire for visitors and talk, but the only person he saw till noon was the body-servant who brought his breakfast, and the boy slipped away before he could question him much.

He asked for Sparta--Miss Gentian was well, but occupied, she sent her regrets at not being able to visit him till later. Then he asked for the Minorcan maid. The boy stammered and said that she was occupied too, on some work for Mrs. Gentian. He noticed that the boy seemed uneasy and as if he were listening for something in the pauses of his speech, but laid it to the heat. "Here," said Andrew, feeling generous, and getting his purse from under his pillow, tossed him one of the Spanish dollars that still passed current--the boy was a good servant and deserved an occasional coin. The boy murmured his thanks, pouched the dollar quickly, and disappeared, leaving Andrew to idleness and musing.

After a while he fell asleep and woke much refreshed. The house was very quiet and he began to consider getting up. He looked at his watch--it had stopped--but, by the light in the room, it must be mid-afternoon. A tray with food was beside him on the table--someone must have come and gone without rousing him. He was disturbed at the thought that it might have been Sparta. He called for his boy, and no one answered. Then he gave it up and set to his lunch with the first real hunger he had known in some days.

Later, he was wakened from another nap by an indefinite sound like the soft closing of the door of his room. He stared at the door--the curtains near it still moved, but if there had been a visitor, the visitor had departed. He could have sworn that, in the first confused instant of waking, he had seen a face staring in through the closing crack of the door--a face like Sparta's, but not hers, for the eyes in this face were hostile. A dream, probably--the shadows had changed again and the air of the room was charged with a heavy, groping twilight. But as soon as he was fully awake, his decision to get up was taken. The bed had grown wrinkled and uncomfortable, besides, he wanted to find out why nobody had been near him all day.

He dressed clumsily, taking a long time. He was not as well as he had thought, he found--the fever had made him lax, and sweat came on his hands when he bent to put on his shoes. However, he managed things at last, and went over to look at himself in the mirror. His cheeks were a little sunken, and his hair lanker than he would have liked, but otherwise he seemed much as usual. The effort it was to control his body properly did not tell in the glass. He would go downstairs now. He would go down and surprise Sparta with the news of his recovery.

It would be more difficult to get downstairs than he had supposed. The main staircase looked long and formidable--he looked at it and wondered. Then he remembered the other, easier staircase, at the bottom of the corridor, that led directly to Dr. Gentian's high-ceiled study. He found it and started going down--it was dark and winding, but the steps were shorter. He went gingerly and quietly, for fear of falling. At the landing he paused, remembering, with a smile, Dr. Gentian's disquisition on the proposed planetary map for the ceiling. The panel that slid back behind the moon, must be about here--yes. His fingers found the catch. Mechanically, he slid it open and peered through the little round opening into the room below.

What he saw made his fingers shake on the latch of the panel. Sparta Gentian and Mr. Cave were seated in the study, talking. On the table between them was a pair of candles that burnt with a still flame, glasses, and a half-emptied bottle of wine.

"There's no heat in this liquor, Sparta," Cave was complaining in his grunting accents, "Why can't we have rum, you white doll?--you know well enough I'd rather have rum." His coat was pushed back, his shirt open at the throat--his whole face looked stupid and savage as the mask of a boar. Andrew saw them both very plainly, in spite of the gloom in the room. A taste like the taste of bitter aloes came into his mouth, and he felt his heart turn slowly to a dull, hard, gleaming stone.

"You can't have rum because I choose to talk to you, Charles--not watch you fall asleep with your head in your arms," Sparta's lyric voice had never been more flawed with crystal. "If the wine doesn't suit you--spill it on the floor--I'll wipe it up with my kerchief and wear it for a favor."

"By God, I believe you would," grumbled Mr. Cave, reaching out for her hand, "You're a brave wench, Sparta. Come kiss me for a brave wench."

"Not now," said Sparta steadily. "You smell too much of your wine. You've had enough kisses from me till you master the world and make me proud of you."

"You lie, you golden slut!" said Mr. Cave, and thumped his fist on the table, "I've never had enough of your kisses yet--nor likely--unless you've grown so finicky-fine this last month you'd rather have that sick cat in yellow breeches squeeze you because he sets up for a gentleman--the shopkeeping little snotty-nose! Come kiss me, I say--I want to get the taste of him out of my mind."

"You're a sweet fool, Charles," said Sparta, and went around to him. Then Andrew, glaring down at them from his spy-hole, could have groaned aloud, for he saw divinity incarnate sit down on Mr. Cave's knees like a barmaid, and Mr. Cave's red hand bend back the golden head till his mouth could settle with thirsty violence on the lips that Andrew had kissed in the anguish of a boy's first worship. The sight made him sick and faint, but he could not move away. A bleak fascination held him to the hole in back of the moon, through which he beheld, with incredulous agony, the sky of his self-made universe fall to pieces with a jangle of shattered glass and lie in broken stars in the mud at the bottom of the world.

"There," said Mr. Cave, "And there" in the pauses of his noisy embracements, "That's for every time he's paddled with your hand in the dark--and that's for every pimping New York dolly-name he's ever called you! Oh, kiss me, you jewel!" he squeaked in a sort of ecstasy, "Kiss me and tell me who you love with all your body and bones!"

"Enough, Charles, enough," said Sparta, drowsily, her voice very golden. "You know I love no man but you."

"Well, it's time and more that I heard it," said Cave, releasing her. He seemed to grow quite simple, of a sudden. His voice sank--his mouth drooped like a child's. "Where do you think I've been since you two were betrothed? In hell. In the pit of hell. They lie if they say there's no hell--I know--I've smoked in it. To see him walking with you, with his hand on your arm. You'd best be true with me now, wench." He seemed almost pleading, "You'd best be true."

"I am true, Charles."

"But you betrothed--"

She made a gesture. "Father," she said.

"I know your father," said Cave sullenly. "He's a planny man, your father. He's planned to marry you off to a fool with money ever since you were husband-high."

She laughed sharply. "My father is a lucky gentleman," she said. "He may have planned--but God sent him the perfect fool. How can anyone be so utterly a fool as my Andrew, Charles?"

"He loves you," Cave admitted grudgingly. "A man's blinded, then." He stared at his fist.

"Granted," she said, jeeringly. "But--if you think you have been in hell Charles, these last weeks--to have to take that stammering boy in my arms and give him his lollypop kisses--" Her eyes were bright with hate, "I may have to marry him yet--but if I do--"

"If you do, he'll never bed you," said Cave, in a rigid voice. "I'd have his guts on the floor first."

"No," said Sparta, with an edged and terrible smile, "He may bed me yet, Charles--perhaps--but--he shan't marry me."

"And I tell you," said Cave, starting up, with his eyes little, burning holes.

She stopped him with a gesture. "Hush, Charles," she said. "You don't understand me yet, I'd do anything for you, Charles. Sit down and give me some wine."

He obeyed, muttering. She drank the wine in a gulp and wiped her lips.

"Tell me, Charles, how soon will you be ready?"

"I have my men picked now," said Cave, in a thick voice, "Italians mostly. They're ripe. They hate the Mahonese as the devil hates church-bells."

"And the Mahonese are ready to strike, themselves?"

"If they're not they have no bellies," said Cave, impatiently. "They've been pushed to the wall. You'd think they'd have broken before."

"Very well," said Sparta, calmly, "The Minorcans revolt. My father cannot subdue them--unless you choose. He can't get aid from the governor--the governor's against him. If you choose--"

"There's a price," said Cave, glowering. "I want you. I want the plantation. He wants his life and--I'd give him some place, I suppose. If he doesn't choose it that way--By the way--what about that lover of yours?"

"What you will," said Sparta, and smiled.

"I know what I will. But now, sweetheart, what if your father will not--"

"I would not have you too much concerned about my father," said Sparta, reflectively.

Cave stared at her. "By God, you're a cold piece," he said, huskily.

"Not to you, Charles." She rose to her full height. "I'd see you a king, Charles--not the master of one trifling plantation here."

"And who says I couldn't be a king!" said Cave, with a touch of half-drunken defiance. "Haven't bastards been kings before. What was William Conquer but a common bastard--yet he had all England under his teeth? I'm as good a bastard as he was, any day--I can--"

"Then be a king!" she said in a voice that seemed to shake out a banner with a dragon on it above the quiet yellow spearheads of the candles. She brought her clenched hand down on the table as if she wanted to bruise its softness against something hostile and hard. "My father has money hidden somewhere--he must--you have men--strength--we could take ships--Davis did it--Teach was a fool, but Morgan did it--There are pirate kingdoms, still--I tell you this--I'll be a queen or nothing, Charles--I love you very well, but I must be a queen--I'd starve for it--I'd burn my hand in the flame for it--see--"

Her voice sank to a dry whisper, as she stretched her hand out over the nearest candle. Cave snatched it back, at once, with a terrified wordless sound. Then she was clinging to his shoulders, pleading with him, in that fierce, brittle monotone.

"A queen, Charles--they made Harry Morgan a governor--what was Spanish Pizarro but a pirate, yet he held Peru like a king--the time's not over yet--a queen, Charles--and you a king--"

But, "No, lass--no--" he was muttering unsteadily, trying to seem very bold, yet with shaken eyes, "You're trying me with talk like that--'tis impossible--I'll raise the colony on your father right enough--I'll make you a right queen here if that's what you want, but turn pirate against the world and end in the hemp and the chains--"

His unsteady hand was fumbling with her hair, trying to quiet her--she had sunk to the floor now, and was gripping his knees, still pleading.

"Have done, girl--have done!" he said, in weak repetition but she would not be quieted, though Mr. Cave was now fairly sweating with discomfort and surprise. Further protestation was spared him for the moment, for, on the tail of his last sentence, the door opened slowly and admitted the tall, stately figure of Mrs. Gentian to the curious scene. Mr. Cave froze at once, like a rabbit surprised by an owl, but Sparta rose from the floor with some dignity and confronted her mother.

"You fool," said the latter, slowly. "You bawdy little fool."

To Andrew, at his stricken post of observation, her voice was clear and thin as the voice of a corpse speaking from the dust, and he felt the sweat dry on his hands as he heard it.

She turned to Mr. Cave. "Kennel, dog!" she said, tersely, and Mr. Cave, after one blustering, ineffective gesture, caught a glance from Sparta, and passed out of the room with his brow red and his eyes bent on the floor. Then Mrs. Gentian eyed her daughter.

"You madam," she said, without rancor, "You madam in gauze. What do you mean by chambering here with that lackey when the gentleman you're to marry lies sick in his bed upstairs?"

"Faith, madam," said Sparta, hardly, giving her gaze for gaze. "It must run in the blood, I think--for my father, too, has a liking for the servant's hall."

Mrs. Gentian's hand went slowly to her breast, but her face betrayed no emotion.

"You're indeed his very daughter to say that," she said, quietly, and now Sparta's eyes wavered and fell before hers. "But let it be so. I've heard you call the man you're to marry a fool."

"Do you disagree, madam?"

"Not I," said Mrs. Gentian, and laughed. "He's a puff of painted feathers--I'll buy his like for six-pence at a Punch-and-Judy. But, fool or no fool, he's rich, or his father is. Your father needs those riches--and no hot little miss like you is going to lecher him out of them. Do you understand, miss?"

"I had not thought you so greatly attached to my father," said Sparta in a stabbing voice.

"God knows I'm not," said her mother, tiredly. "But I'll not see him humbled."

"And is it your proposal, madam, that I should--"

"I propose this," said Mrs. Gentian. Her hand fell upon Sparta's shoulder and held it. "If this ninny you're to marry once knew what's passed between you and that lawyer's by-blow--he'd throw you aside like an applecore for all his ninnyishness. You must fasten him to you by his ninny's honor or lose him. You'll have him in your room, miss--as soon as he can walk--oh, I'll trust you for that--you have ways that would blind a sailor--but that you'll do. After that--" Her smile was an East wind. "Let him marry you or keep you--it matters little--we have him in a yoke."

Andrew could bear no more. He shut the panel with fumbling fingers and somehow got up the stairs and back to his room. When he reached there, he found the Minorcan girl, just done with tidying his room and about to leave. She gave a soft cry as she saw his face.

"Oh, go away, go away!" he sobbed wildly, as he flung himself into a chair and put his head in his hands. "Go away and pray for me, Caterina--I think I am the unhappiest man in the world!"

6.

Andrew lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling with tormented eyes. He had thought he had known shock before, when his father's easy voice abolished the Beards of Westmoreland with a sentence. But that half-forgotten wound in the vanity of youth seemed like a wound in silk to this present pain. Again he felt the solid floor of life turn under him dizzily and alter--but this time it did not merely change, it blackened while he looked at it to the color of corrupted silver and soiled thunder walked in iron wherever he could see. The knowledge of good and evil had descended upon him at last, and he lay excruciated beneath it, like a harper crucified upon the strings of his own heart.

That his pain might well have seemed unnecessarily acute to any dispassionate observer would hardly have consoled him, had he known it. He saw the whole world now as a lie, which it was no more than it ever had been. But circumstance had mixed in him the fool and the gentleman--qualities both somewhat in disrepair nowadays--and at present, no doubt, the gentleman was somewhat sunk in the fool. The cold brain of heaven, whose thought is a falling star between illusion and illusion, might properly regard his adolescent strugglings with befitting contempt but that task of scorn may, perhaps, be left to it.

A certain, stale equanimity returned to him at last. He was still dazed and shaken but he began to think. At one moment he was quite confident that what he had seen in Dr. Gentian's study was merely a nightmare of the mind--at another that Sparta, for some inexplicable reason, had been playing a game upon the sullen Mr. Cave. But truth seeped in gradually through his defenses and at last he stood ready to accept the fact.

Seen clearly, the situation was only too plausible. He had often thought humbly enough, that it was strange that Sparta should love him, and strange that she should never have loved before. Well, she had loved before, that was all, and if she chose to garland an ass with roses, such was her prerogative. It seemed curious to Andrew that this wise and reasonable thought brought him so little relief. He began to consider just what there was to be done.

He must get away from New Sparta. But then he shuddered--he and Sparta were still betrothed, as much as they ever had been, he remembered with sudden pain. It hardly lay with decency to call her a slut to her father's face--yet what other reason could he give for so sudden a departure? Then there was Mr. Cave's mad plan of an uprising in the colony--a driving of the Minorcans to revolt. Admitted, he now owed Dr. Gentian little but the hate of a bamboozled sailor for his crimp--the Minorcans were still his friends--Sebastian--he could not go without warning them. Now indeed he felt a net on his body and struggled at the cords in futile disgust. His struggles were interrupted by a light knock at the door. He called. The door opened. Sparta was there.

"Why Andrew, dear," she said, looking at him in affectionate surprise. "I thought to find you still in bed with the fever and bring you your supper. But you are well again--and I am so glad."

Her voice was the same dropping skein of gold-and-crystal that he remembered--the same enchanter slept in her eyes.

He looked at her a long time. No, he could not talk to her now.

"My fever's gone," he said at last. "I think I'll come down to supper, if you'll call the boy to lend me his arm."

7.

He was sitting at table in Dr. Gentian's chair. The room had not changed its aspect--the fruit-piece by Vandermoulen still hung above the sideboard where silver glimmered in the candleshine. The ladies he supped with took peaches from a bowl and peeled them delicately with silver knives. There was no mark upon their white hands like the mark of a bloody paw--the wine in the decanter at his elbow seemed excellent St. Lucar,--he could savor its bouquet quite naturally. That was odd, thought Andrew dully, as he ate and drank and talked. He felt vaguely that things should have been different--more in keeping with the tiny, persistent sound that tapped like blood flowing from a wound continually inside his head. He had yet to realize that tragedy may occur in a bandbox and that horror needs no set apparatus of skeletons to make the bones feel cold.

It was odd too, that he should be eating and drinking. He watched his knife cut a piece of meat, his fork carry it to his mouth. The hand did not falter at all, nor the throat refuse to swallow. All his muscles obeyed him handily--it was clever of them. He could question and reply in a normal voice--he found himself listening with every appearance of attention to a long, tedious account by Mrs. Gentian of some customs of the Spaniards in St. Augustine.

It appeared there was one called "Shooting the Jews." On the Saturday morning after Good Friday, when the bells rang hallelujah from the Cathedral, the Spanish inhabitants would shoot at straw dummies labelled Judas and Caiaphas, hung up at the corners of certain streets. Really, how interesting, he heard himself saying, while privately he searched Mrs. Gentian's calm face for any signature which might betray that she had been born in hell and was surprised to find none there.

So the servants went and came, and plates were laid and removed, with the passage of innumerable minutes, till the world grew old and white and tottered upon a dry branch like a dying cripple, and a stone hardened in Andrew's breast, and three people sat enchanted around a long table, peeling peaches and putting the flesh of peaches in their mouths. At last it was over, and he was left with his wine.

He arranged nuts on the table, very carefully, in a cross, in a square, in the initials of his brother's name. His mind seemed to have room for nothing but the exactitude of their patterns. He could think consecutively no longer--he was tired of thinking.

A nut rolled away from under his hand, and he cursed it whiningly and replaced it in its design with nice deliberation. Presently he would go up to his room with the India chintz hangings, and, if he had his wish, would die among its printed flowers like an insect crushed between leaves of painted paper. But that would not happen--people did not die as easily as that.

Mrs. Gentian and Sparta had watched each other all through the meal like cat and cat. A detached part of his consciousness told him that now, in the lifeless voice of a boy repeating a dull lesson. And, for once, Mrs. Gentian had seemed the stronger of the two. Did that mean anything--if it did, he was too tired to think what it might mean.

Presently he was pleading fatigue to the ladies and climbing the stairs to his room. The shadows wavered in the corridor before his candle. He wished, vaguely, that he could see that Minorcan girl, now, as he had first seen her, coming toward him like the image of a barbarous saint walking the sea, the light of a single candle ghostly upon the darkness of her brows. But even if she did come, she would turn to something evil as soon as he touched her. All things turned to evil the moment they were touched. There was evil in the very particles of the air, an impalpable dust of black glass, and people took it into their lungs and turned into dolls of spoilt straw and rotten leather that fell to pieces as they moved.

Sebastian's thunder was coming. He could hear it growl in the distance like a dog on a chain. The thought of the bright blade of lightning gave him a little ease--that at least was clean, and could run sick arrogance to the heart.

He was sitting, still dressed, in a chair in his room. Time had passed, but how long a time he did not know. The candle on the table burnt unevenly, with a smoky flame. The house was quiet--the thunder nearer at hand.

He passed his hand over his forehead and tried to collect his thoughts. The heat in his brain like the throb of blood from a spent artery, had eased a little now--he was still in stupor, but the weight of it was not so extreme. He began to realize that, whatever else might have happened to him, the fever was not yet wholly gone from his body. He must sleep--after he had slept, the beat in his head might stop.

He was about to rise when his eyes were drawn to the door. It was opening--a crack--a gap--letting in soft blackness. He stared at it, without fear or surprise. It might be Death--if it were, he would not lift a hand.

A hand, a bare arm, came slowly out of the darkness. The hand held a white flower between its fingers. It was Sparta's hand.

After what seemed a long time, "Andrew," said Sparta's voice, in a low call. He shut his teeth and would not answer. There was silence, while the hand moved a little and the curtains waved in the draft. Then, "Andrew," said the voice again--the fine gold streaking the crystal with threads of radiance. Then hand and flower were slowly withdrawn and the door closed gradually, leaving Andrew staring like a blind man at where they had been.

His pistols lay on the table near him, in their case. He took one of them out and examined it slowly, with minute care. The priming needed to be changed--this damp weather ruined one's priming. But he made no move to change it. He fiddled with the trigger a moment, a childish look on his face, not thinking of anything; then he forgot why he had taken up the pistol, and stuck it in his pocket to get it out of the way. His hands relaxed--the spinning in his mind began to slacken, like a top running down.

After another while, he rose, stiffly, and smiled. The stupor had passed from him--he knew what he would do. If the world were colored like a bat he would take the color of the world. He would take the instant of brisk desire for the image seen in a cloud and know in its entirety the damnation of possession and the wittiness of the flesh. He would despoil as he had been despoiled and lose the rags of gold he had brought from fool's paradise in the quick heat of the blood as a wise man should.

A sudden glare of heat lightning showed his face to him in the mirror. It was haggard and strange, but he smiled at it and went to the door. Down the corridor, packed with bags of darkness, lay another door with a white flower before it, and he was going there to sleep with a ghost.