Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

The conductor eyed them as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their opportunity.

Allen, sitting there, saw the terror and tragedy of the girl's life. Her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse, rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken, dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake--and this slender young girl, naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse--she was like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.

The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes turned toward her had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead--and baby too!"

"Live for the baby--let him help you out."

"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other mothers; but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too young."

He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child. She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent; the case baffled him.

"Oh, I wish you could help me. I wish I had you all the time. I do! I don't care what you think, _I do, I do!_"

"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said slowly. "My wife knows about you, and----"

"Who told her--did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.

"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied quietly.

She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.

"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here. I'd go insane. Perhaps I'm going insane anyway. Don't you think so?"

"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."

"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"

"Certainly, without question."

"Can I wait and go back with you?"

"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear the wait in this little town; it's not much like the city."

"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so? Please don't laugh."

The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of defending herself. These pert, birdlike ways formed her shield against ridicule and misprision.

He said slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but it's an awful responsibility to be a man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we are responsible as the dominant sex for every tragic, incomplete woman's life."

"Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete example with savage swiftness.

"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own living some way."

"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."

"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way all men would be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your divorce?"

"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."

"What you need is a good husband and a little cottage where you'd have to cook your own food--and tend the baby."

"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this was, I wouldn't have started."

"This is the route you all go," he replied with grim humor, and his words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcées.

She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."

"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust. "Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."

"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."

"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and it brings us into contact with men and women--I'm sick of the whole business."

She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back to the personal.

"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the window pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!" she said, in a low tone.

Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to hear her, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but the woman's God should hear this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.

She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I respect, and you despise me."

"No, I don't; I pity you."

"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of her desire.

His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile even about the eyes. He knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of a woman.

"Our home is yours, just as long as you can bear the monotony of our simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and unmistakable in its sincerity.

She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her head, and they rode in silence.

After they left the car, Allen sat with savage eyes and grimly set mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful, remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.

It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be helpless--that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.

He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life but--he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his responsibility. He followed her on her downward path till he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual acquaintances--alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then----

He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"

* * * * *

On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes debating whether he should tell the story to his wife or not. As the little ones grew weary, the noise of the autumn wind--the lonely, woeful, moaning prairie wind--came to his ears and he shuddered. His wife observed it.

"What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"

"Oh, no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he took his little girl into his arms and held her close.

IV. THE PASSING STRANGER.

This was the story the mystic told:

It was about eleven o'clock of an October night. The street was one of the worst of the city, but it was Monday--one of its quiet nights.

The saloons flared floods of feverish light upon the walk, and breathed their terrible odors, like caverns leading downward into hell. Restless, loitering crowds moved to and fro, with rasping, uncertain footsteps, out of which the click of health had gone.

Policemen occasionally showed themselves menacingly, and the crowd responded to their impact by action quickened, like a python touched with a red-hot rod.

It was nearly time to close, and the barkeepers were beginning to betray signs of impatience with their most drunken customers.

A dark, tall man in cloak and fez moved slowly down the street. His face was serene but somber. In passing the window of a brilliantly lighted drinking place he stopped and looked in.

In the small stall, near the window and behind the counter, sat three women and two men. All had mugs of beer in their hands. The women were all young, and one of them was handsome. They were dressed nattily, jauntily, in modish, girlish hats, and their dainty jackets fitted closely to their slight figures.

Their liquor had just been served, and their voices were ringing with wild laughter. Their white teeth shone from their rouged faces with a mirth which met no answering smile from the strange young man without. He stood like a shadow against the pane.

The smile on the face of the youngest girl stiffened into a strange contortion. Her eyes looked straight ahead into the eyes of the stranger.

Her smile smoothed out. Her face paled; her eyes expanded with wonder till they lost their insane glitter, and grew sad and soft and dark.

"What is it, Nell?" the others asked.

She did not hear them. She seemed to listen. Her eyes seemed to see mountains--or clouds. A land like her childhood's home with the sunset light over it. Her mug fell with a crash to the table. She rose. Her hand silenced them, with beautiful finger raised:

"Listen! Don't you hear him? His eyes are calling me. It is Christ."

The others looked, but they saw only a tall figure moving away. He wore a long black cloak like a priest.

"Some foreign duffer lookin' in. Let 'im look," said one of the other girls.

"One o' them Egyptian jugglers," said another.

"What's the matter of ye, Nell? You look as if you'd seen a ghost of y'r grandmother. Set down an' drink y'r beer."

The girl brushed her hand over her eyes. "I'm going home," she said in a low voice from which all individuality had passed. Her face seemed anxious, her manner hurried.

"What's the matter, Nell? My God! Look at her eyes!--I'm going with her."

The girl put him aside with a gesture. Her look awed him.

One of the others began to laugh.

"Stop! You fool," one of the girls cried. They sat in silence as the younger girl went out, putting aside every hand stretched out to touch her. She walked like one in stupor--her face ghastly. The arch of her beautiful eyebrows was like that of Ophelia in her bitterest moment.

The others watched her go in silence.

One of them drew a sigh and said: "I'm going home, too; I don't feel well."

"I'll go with ye," one of the men said.

"Stay where you are!" said the girl sharply.

* * * * *

Once on the street, the younger girl hurried on the way the stranger had gone. His face seemed before her.

She could see it; she should always see it. It was the face of a young man. A firm chin, a strong mouth with a feminine curve in it, a face with a clear pallor that seemed foreign somehow. But the eyes--oh, the eyes!

They were deep and brown, and filled with an infinite sadness--for her. She felt it, and the knot of pain in the forehead, that was also for her. Something sweet and terrible went out from his presence. A knowledge of infinite space and infinite time and infinite compassion.

No man had ever looked at her like that. There was something divine in the penetrating power of his eyes.

Some way she knew he was not a priest, though his cloak and turban cap looked like it. He seemed like a scholar from some strange land--a man above passion, a man who knew God.

His eyes accused her and pitied her, while they called her.

No smile, no shrinking of lips into a sneer--nothing but pity and wonder, and something else----

And a voice seemed to say: "You are too good to be there. Follow me."

As she thought of him he seemed to stand on an immeasurable height looking down at her.

She had laughed at him--O God!--she flushed hot with shame from head to foot--but his eyes had not changed. His lips had kept their pitying droop, and his somber eyes had burned deep into the sacred places of her thought, where something sweet and girlish lay, unwasted and untrampled.

"He called me. He called me."

* * * * *

Under the trees where the moonlight threw tracing of shadows she came upon him standing, waiting for her. She held out her hand to him like a babe. He was taller than she thought.

He took her hands silently and she grew calm at once. All shame left her. She forgot her city life; she remembered only the sweet, merry life of the village where she was born. The sound of sleigh bells and song, and the lisp of wind in the grass, and songs of birds in the maples came to her.

His voice began softly:

"You are too good and sweet to be so devoured of beasts. In your little Northern home they are waiting for you. To-morrow you will go back to them."

He placed his hand, which was soft and warm and broad, over her eyes. His voice was like velvet, soft yet elastic.

"When you wake you will hate what you have been. No power can keep you here. You will go back to the simple life from which you should never have departed. You will love simple things and the pleasures of your native place."

Her face was turned upward, but her eyelids had fallen.

"When you wake you will not remember your life here. You will be a girl again, unstained and ready to begin life without remorse and without accusing memory. When I leave you at your door to-night, you will belong to the kingdom of good and not to the kingdom of evil."

He dropped her hands and pointed across the park.

"Now go to that gray house. Ring the bell, and you will be housed for the night. _Remember you are mine._ When the bell rings you will 'wake.'"

She moved away without looking back--moved mechanically like one still in sleep.

The man watched her until the door opened and admitted her; then he passed on into the shadow of the narrow street.

And this the listener gravely asked:

"One was chosen, the other left. Were the others less in need of grace?"

BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR.

Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had been before. The gruff old physician--one of the many overworked and underpaid country doctors--shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her husband, as he passed through the room which served as dining room, sitting room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was gone.

Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of the door.

"O doctor, how is she?"

"She is a dying woman, madam."

"Oh! don't say that, doctor. What's the matter?"

"Cancer."

"Then the news was true----"

"I don't know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for years--since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember."

"But, doctor, she never told me----"

"Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for her. If you can make death any easier for her, go and do it. You will find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at all hazards. Don't let her suffer; that is useless. She is likely to last a day or two--but if any change comes to-night, send for me."

When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman who lay there quietly waiting the death angel.

She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.

"O Marthy!" she breathed.

"Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad, or I'd 'a' come before. Why didn't you let me know?" said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms. She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.

"I think you'll soon be around agin," she added, in the customary mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness of her neighbor's words stung her.

"I hope not, Marthy--I'm ready to go. I want to go. I don't care to live."

The two women communed by looking for a long time in each other's eyes, as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears fell from Martha's eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her friend--poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.

"O Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you so. I feel so bad that I didn't come before. Ain't they somethin'?"

"Yes, Marthy--jest set there--till I die--it won't be long," whispered the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and her eyes were thoughtful.

"I will! I will! But oh! must you go? Can't somethin' be done. Don't yo' want the minister to be sent for?"

"No, I'm all ready. I ain't afraid to die. I ain't worth savin' now. O Marthy! I never thought I'd come to this--did you? I never thought I'd die--so early in life--and die--unsatisfied."

She lifted her head a little as she gasped out these words with an intensity of utterance that thrilled her hearer--a powerful, penetrating earnestness that burned like fire.

"Are you satisfied?" pursued the steady lips. "My life's a failure, Marthy--I've known it all along--all but my children. O Marthy, what'll become o' them? This is a hard world."

The amazed Martha could only chafe the hands, and note sorrowfully the frightful changes in the face of her friend. The weirdly calm, slow voice began to shake a little.

"I'm dyin', Marthy, without ever gittin' to the sunny place we girls--used to think--we'd git to, by an' by. I've been a-gittin' deeper 'n' deeper--in the shade--till it's most dark. They ain't been no rest--n'r hope f'r me, Marthy--none. I ain't----"

"There, there! Tillie, don't talk so--don't, dear. Try to think how bright it'll be over there----"

"I don't know nawthin' about over there; I'm talkin' about here. I ain't had no chance here, Marthy."

"He will heal all your care----"

"He can't wipe out my sufferin's here."

"Yes, He can, and He will. He can wipe away every tear and heal every wound."

"No--he--can't. God himself can't wipe out what has been. O Mattie, if I was only there!--in the past--if I was only young and purty agin! You know how tall I was! how we used to run--O Mattie, if I was only there! The world was all bright then--wasn't it? We didn't expect--to work all our days. Life looked like a meadow, full of daisies and pinks, and the nicest ones and the sweetest birds was just a little ways on--where the sun was--it didn't look--wasn't we happy?"

"Yes, yes, dear. But you mustn't talk so much." The good woman thought Matilda's mind was wandering. "Don't you want some med'cine? Ain't your fever risin'?"

"But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds," she went on, waiting a little, "when we picked 'em. An' the sunny place--has been always behind me, and the dark before me. Oh! if I was only there--in the sun--where the pinks and daisies are!"

"You mustn't talk so, Mattie! Think about your children. You ain't sorry y' had them. They've been a comfort to y'. You ain't sorry you had 'em."

"I ain't glad," was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and then she went on, in growing excitement: "They'll haf to grow old jest as I have--git bent and gray, an' die. They ain't ben much comfort to me; the boys are like their father, and Julyie's weak. They ain't no happiness--for such as me and them."

She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did better than speak. She fell to stroking the poor face, and the hands getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it burst from her in a torrent not to be stayed. All her most secret doubts and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterance. Now that death was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff. Martha was appalled.

"I used to think--that when I got married I'd be perfectly happy--but I never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble to me. I never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I've gone further an' further from the sunshiny meadow, an' the birds an' flowers----and I'll never git back to 'em again, never!" She ended with a sob and a low wail.

Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her straining, wide-open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the meadow.

"Mattie, sometimes when I'm asleep I think I am back there ag'in--and you girls are there--an' we're pullin' off the leaves of the wild sunflower--'rich man, poor man, beggar man'--and I hear you all laugh when I pull off the last leaf; an' when I come to myself--and I'm an old, dried-up woman, dyin' unsatisfied!"

"I've felt that way a little myself, Matildy," confessed the watcher in a scared whisper.

"I knew it, Mattie; I knew you'd know how I felt. Things have been better for you. You ain't had to live in an old log house all your life, an' work yourself to skin an' bone for a man you don't respect nor like."

"Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don't you dare die thinkin' that--don't you dare!"

Bent, hearing her voice rising, came to the door, and the wife, knowing his step, cried:

"Don't let him in! Don't! I can't bear him--keep him out; I don't want to see him ag'in."

"Who do you mean? Not Joe?"

"Yes. Him."

Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in feeling, for she herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband through all the trials which had come upon them.

But she met Bent at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting. A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall. Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked in a hoarse whisper:

"How is she, Mis' Ridings?"

"She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed; if I want you I can call you. Doctor give me directions."

"All right," responded the relieved man. "I'll sleep on the lounge in the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door."

When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom, she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps because she had forgotten Martha's absence.

"But the shadows on the meadow didn't stay; they passed on, and then the sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string sweet-williams on spears of grass--don't you remember?"

Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman, till she looked like a thing of marble--all but her dark eyes.

"Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?"

The woman heard with difficulty, and when the question was repeated said slowly:

"No, I like it." After a little--"Don't you remember, Mattie 'how beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness--and love--but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now--just as it did o' future then; an' the whip-poor-wills too----"

The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered it like an echo. The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in on the breeze.

When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the window sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a soul facing the questions which harass philosophers. As she realized her condition of mind she apprehended something of the thinking of the woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond or far back of the wife and mother.

The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then, whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood--never to her later life. Once she said:

"Mother, hold me. I'm so tired."

Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew quiet again.

The eastern moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and still the patient watcher sat beside the bed, listening to the slow breathing of the dying one. The cool air grew almost chill; the east began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank in the dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper's.

"How are you now, dear?" asked the watcher several times, bending over the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.

"I'm tired--tired, mother--turn me," she murmured drowsily, with heavy lids drooping.

Martha adjusted the pillows again, and turned the face to the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding whirl, and the thin limbs, heavy with years of hopeless toil, straightened out in an endless sleep.

Matilda Fletcher had found rest.

UPON IMPULSE

The seminary buildings stood not far from the low, lodgelike railway station, and a path led through a gap in the fence across the meadow. People were soberly converging toward its central building, as if proceeding to church.

Among the people who alighted from the two o'clock train were Professor Blakesly and his wife and a tall, dark man whom they called Ware.

Mrs. Blakesly was plump and pretty, plainly the mother of two or three children and the sovereign of a modest suburban cottage. Blakesly was as evidently a teacher; even the casual glances of the other visitors might discover the character of these people.

Ware was not so easy to be read. His face was lean and brown, and his squarely clipped mustache gave him a stern look. His body was well rounded with muscle, and he walked alertly; his manner was direct and vigorous, manifestly of the open air.

As they entered the meadow he paused and said with humorous irresolution, "I don't know what I am out here for."

"To see the pretty girls, of course," said Mrs. Blakesly.

"They may be plain, after all," he said.

"They're always pretty at graduation time and at marriage," Blakesly interpreted.

"Then there's the ice cream and cake," Mrs. Blakesly added.

"Where do all these people come from?" Ware asked, looking about. "It's all farm land here."

"They are the fathers, mothers, and brothers of the seminary girls. They come from everywhere. See the dear creatures about the door! Let's hurry along."

"They do not interest me. I take off my hat to the beauty of the day, however."

Ware had evidently come under protest, for he lingered in the daisied grass which was dappled with shadows and tinkling with bobolinks and catbirds.

A broad path led up to the central building, whose double doors were swung wide with most hospitable intent. Ware ascended the steps behind his friends, a bored look on his dark face.

Two rows of flushed, excited girls with two teachers at their head stood flanking the doorway to receive the visitors, who streamed steadily into the wide, cool hall.

Mrs. Blakesly took Ware in hand. "Mr. Ware, this is Miss Powell. Miss Powell, this is Mr. Jenkin Ware, lawyer and friend to the Blakeslys."

"I'm very glad to see you," said a cool voice, in which gladness was entirely absent.

Ware turned to shake hands mechanically, but something in the steady eyes and clasp of the hand held out turned his listless manner into surprise and confusion. He stared at her without speaking, only for a second, and yet so long she colored and withdrew her hand sharply.

"I beg your pardon, I didn't get the name."

"Miss Powell," answered Mrs. Blakesly, who had certainly missed this little comedy, which would have been so delicious to her.

Ware moved on, shaking hands with the other teachers and bowing to the girls. He seized an early moment to turn and look back at Miss Powell. His listless indifference was gone. She was a fine figure of a woman--a strong, lithe figure, dressed in a well-ordered, light-colored gown. Her head was girlish, with a fluff of brown hair knotted low at the back. Her profile was magnificent. The head had the intellectual poise, but the proud bosom and strong body added another quality. "She is a modern type," Ware said, remembering a painting of such a head he had seen in a recent exhibition.

As he studied her she turned and caught him looking, and he felt again a curious fluttering rush at his heart. He fancied she flushed a little deeper as she turned away.

As for him, it had been a very long while since he had felt that singular weakness in the presence of a young woman. He walked on, trying to account for it. It made him feel very boyish. He had a furtive desire to remain in the hall where he could watch her, and when he passed up the stairs, it was with a distinct feeling of melancholy, as if he were leaving something very dear and leaving it forever.

He wondered where this feeling came from, and he looked into the upturned faces of the girls as if they were pansies. He wandered about the rooms with the Blakeslys, being bored by introductions, until at last Miss Powell came up the stairway with the last of the guests.

While the girls sang and went through some pretty drills Ware again studied Miss Powell. Her appeal to his imagination was startling. He searched for the cause of it. It could not be in her beauty. Certainly she was fine and womanly and of splendid physique, but all about her were lovely girls of daintier flesh and warmer color. He reasoned that her power was in her eyes, steady, frank as sunlight, clear as water in a mountain brook. She seemed unconscious of his scrutiny.

At last they began moving down the stairs and on to the other buildings. Ware and Blakesly waited for the ladies to come down. And when they came they were in the midst of a flood of girls, and Ware had no chance to speak to them. As they moved across the grass he fell in behind Mrs. Blakesly, who seemed to be telling secrets to Miss Powell, who flushed and shook her head.

Mrs. Blakesly turned and saw Ware close behind her, and said, "O Mr. Ware, where is my dear, dear husband?"

"Back in the swirl," Ware replied.

Mrs. Blakesly artfully dropped Miss Powell's arm and fell back. "I must not desert the poor dear." As she passed Ware she said, "Take my place."

"With pleasure," he replied, and walked on after Miss Powell, who seemed not to care to wait.

How simply she was dressed! She moved like an athlete, without effort and without constraint. As he walked quickly to overtake her a finer light fell over the hills and a fresher green came into the grass. The daisies nodding in the wind blurred together in a dance of light and loveliness which moved him like a song.

"How beautiful everything is to-day!" he said, as he stepped to her side. He felt as if he had said, "How beautiful you are!"

She flashed a quick, inquiring glance at him.

"Yes; June can be beautiful with us. Still, there is a beauty more mature, when the sickle is about to be thrust into the grain."

He did not hear what she said. He was thinking of the power that lay in the oval of her face, in the fluffy tangle of her hair. _Ah! now he knew._ With that upward glance she brought back his boy love, his teacher whom he had worshiped as boys sometimes will, with a love as pure as winter starlight. Yes, now it was clear. There was the same flex of the splendid waist, the same slow lift of the head, and steady, beautiful eyes.

As she talked, he was a youth of seventeen, he was lying at his teacher's feet by the river while she read wonderful love stories. There were others there, but they did not count. Then the tears blurred his eyes; he remembered walking behind her dead body as it was borne to the hillside burying ground, and all the world was desolate for him.

He became aware that Miss Powell was looking at him with startled eyes. He hastened to apologize and explain. "Pardon me; you look so much like a schoolboy idol--I--I seem to see her again. I didn't hear what you said, you brought the past back so poignantly."

There was something in his voice which touched her, but before he could go on they were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Blakesly and one of the other teachers. There was a dancing light in Mrs. Blakesly's eyes as she looked at Ware. She had just been saying to her husband: "What a splendid figure Miss Powell is! How well they look together! Wouldn't it be splendid if----"

"Oh, my dear, you're too bad. Please don't match-make any more to-day. Let Nature attend to these things," Mr. Blakesly replied with manifest impatience; "Nature attended to our case."

"I have no faith in Nature any more. I want to have at least a finger in the pie myself. Nature don't work in all cases. I'm afraid Nature can't in his case."

"Careful! He'll hear you, my dear."

"Where do we go now, Miss Powell?" asked Blakesly as they came to a halt on the opposite side of the campus.

"I think they are all going to the gymnasium building. Won't you come? That is my dominion."

They answered by moving off, Mrs. Blakesly taking Miss Powell's arm. As they streamed away in files she said: "Isn't he good-looking? We've known him for years. He's all right," she said significantly, and squeezed Miss Powell's arm.

"Well, Lou Blakesly, you're the same old irrepressible!"

"Blushing already, you _dear_! I tell you he's splendid. I wish he'd take to you," and she gave Miss Powell another squeeze. "It would be _such_ a match! Brains and beauty, too."

"Oh, hush!"

They entered the cool, wide hall of the gymnasium, with its red brick walls, its polished floor, and the yellow-red wooden beams lining the ceiling.

There were only a few people remaining in the hall, most of them having passed on into the museum. As they came to the various appliances, Miss Powell explained them.

"What are these things for?" inquired Mrs. Blakesly, pointing at the row of iron rings depending from long ropes.

"They are for swinging on," and she leaped lightly upward and caught and swung by one hand.

"Mercy! Do you do that?"

"She seems to be doing it now," Blakesly said.

"I am one of the teachers," Miss Powell replied, dropping to the floor.

It was glorious to see how easily she seized a heavy dumb-bell and swung it above her head. The front line of her body was majestic as she stood thus.

"Gracious! I couldn't do that," exclaimed Mrs. Blakesly.

"No, not with your style of dress," replied her husband.--"I have to pin her hat on this year," he said to Ware.

"I love it," said Miss Powell, as she drew a heavy weight from the floor and stood with the cord across her shoulder. "It adds so much to life! It gives what Browning calls the wild joy of living. Do you know, few women know what that means? It's been denied us. Only the men have known

"'The wild joys of living! the leaping from rock
up to rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree,
the cool silver shock
Of a plunge in the pool's living water.'

I try to teach my girls 'How good is man's life, the mere living!'"

The men cheered as she paused for a moment flushed and breathless.

She went on: "We women have been shut out from the sports too long--I mean sports in the sun. The men have had the best of it. All the swimming, all the boating, wheeling, all the grand, wild life; now we're going to have a part."

The young ladies clustered about with flushed, excited faces while their teacher planted her flag and claimed new territory for women.

Miss Powell herself grew conscious, and flushed and paused abruptly.

Mrs. Blakesly effervesced in admiring astonishment. "Well, well! I didn't know you could make a speech."

"I didn't mean to do so," she replied.

"Go on! Go on!" everybody called out, but she turned away to show some other apparatus.

"Wasn't she fine?" exclaimed Mrs. Blakesly to Ware.

"Beyond praise," he replied. She went at once to communicate her morsel of news to her husband, and at length to Miss Powell.

The company passed out into other rooms until no one was left but Mrs. Blakesly, the professor, and Ware. Miss Powell was talking again, and to Ware mainly. Ware was thoughtful, Miss Powell radiant.

"I didn't know what life was till I could do that." She took up a large dumb-bell and, extending it at arm's length, whirled it back and forth. Her forearm, white and smooth, swelled into strong action, and her supple hands had the unwavering power and pressure of an athlete, and withal Ware thought: "She is feminine. Her physical power has not coarsened her; it has enlarged her life, but left her entirely womanly."

In some adroit way Mrs. Blakesly got her husband out of the room and left Ware and Miss Powell together. She was showing him the view from the windows, and they seemed to be perfectly absorbed. She looked around once and saw that Mrs. Blakesly was showing her husband something in the farther end of the room. After that she did not think of them.

The sun went lower in the sky and flamed along the sward. He spoke of the mystical power of the waving daisies and the glowing greens which no painter ever seems to paint. While they looked from the windows their arms touched, and they both tried to ignore it. She shivered a little as if a cold wind had blown upon her. At last she led the way out and down the stairs to the campus. They heard the gay laughter of the company at their cakes and ices, up at the central building.

He stopped outside the hallway, and as she looked up inquiringly at him, he said quietly: "Suppose we go down the road. It seems pleasanter there."

She acquiesced like one in a pleasure which made duty seem absurd.

Strong and fine as she was, she had never found a lover to whom she yielded her companionship with unalloyed delight. She was thirty years of age, and her girlhood was past. She looked at this man, and a suffocating band seemed to encircle her throat. She knew he was strong and good. He was a little saddened with life--that she read in his deep-set eyes and unsmiling lips.

The road led toward the river, and as they left the campus they entered a lane shaded by natural oaks. He talked on slowly. He asked her what her plans were.

"To teach and to live," she said. Her enthusiasm for the work seemed entirely gone.

Once he said, "This is the finest hour of my life."

On the bank of the river they paused and seated themselves on the sward under a tree whose roots fingered the stream with knuckled hands.

"Yes, every time you look up at me you bring back my boyish idol," he went on. "She was older than I. It is as if I had grown older and she had not, and that she were you, or you were she. I can't tell you how it has affected me. Every movement you make goes deep down into my sweetest, tenderest recollections. It's always June there, always sweet and sunny. Her death and burial were mystical in their beauty. I looked in her coffin. She was the grandest statue that ever lay in marble; the Greek types are insipid beside that vision. You'll say I idealized her; possibly I did, but there she is. O God! it was terrible to see one die so young and so lovely."

There was a silence. Tears came to her eyes. He could only exclaim; weeping was denied him. His voice trembled, but grew firmer as he went on:

"And now you come. I don't know exactly in what way you resemble her. I only know you shake me as no other human being has done since that coffin-lid shut out her face." He lifted his head and looked around. "But Nature is beautiful and full of light and buoyancy. I am not going to make you sad. I want to make you happy. I was only a boy to her. She cared for me only as a mature woman likes an apt pupil, but she made all Nature radiant for me, as you do now."

He smiled upon her suddenly. His somber mood passed like one of the shadows of the clouds floating over the campus. It was only a recollected mood. As he looked at her the old hunger came into his heart, but the buoyancy and emotional exaltation of youth came back also.

"Miss Powell, are you free to marry me?" he said suddenly.

She grew very still, but she flushed and then she turned her face away from him. She had no immediate reply.

"That is an extraordinary thing to ask you, I know," he went on; "but it seems as if I had known you a long time, and then sitting here in the midst of Nature with the insects singing all about us--well, conventions are not so vital as in drawing rooms. Remember your Browning."

She who had declaimed Browning so blithely now sat silent, but the color went out of her face, and she listened to the multitudinous stir and chirp of living things, and her eyes dreamed as he went on steadily, his eyes studying her face.

"Browning believed in these impulses. I'll admit I never have. I've always reasoned upon things, at least since I became a man. It has brought me little, and I'm much disposed to try the virtue of an impulse. I feel as certain that we can be happy together as I am of life, so I come back to my question, Are you free to marry me?"

She flushed again. "I have no other ties, if that is what you mean."

"That is what I mean precisely. I felt that you were free, like myself. I might ask Blakesly to vouch for me, but I prefer not. I ask for no one's opinion of you. Can't you trust to that insight of which women are supposed to be happily possessed?"

She smiled a little. "I never boasted of any divining power."

He came nearer. "Come, you and I have gone by rule and reason long enough. Here we have a magnificent impulse; let us follow. Don't ask me to wait, that would spoil it all; considerations would come in."

"Ought they not to come in?"

"No," he replied, and his low voice had the intensity of a trumpet. "If this magnificent moment passes by, this chance for a pure impulsive choice, it is lost forever. You know Browning makes much of such lost opportunities. Seeing you there with bent head and blowing hair, I would throw the world away to become the blade of grass you break. There, will that do?" He smiled.

"That speech should bring back youth to us both," she said.

"Right action _now_ will," he quickly answered.

"But I must consider."

"Do not. Take the impulse."

"It may be wayward."

"We've both got beyond the wayward impulse. This impulse rises from the profound deeps. Come, the sun sinks, the insect voices thicken, a star passes behind the moon, and life hastens. Come into my life. Can't you trust me?"

She grew very white, but a look of exaltation came into her face. She lifted her clear, steady eyes to his. She reached her hand to his. "I will," she said, and they rose and stood together thus.

He uncovered his head. A sort of awe fell upon him. A splendid human life was put into his keeping.

"A pure choice," he said exultingly--"a choice untouched by considerations. It brings back the youth of the world."

The sun lay along the sward in level lines, the sky was full of clouds sailing in file, like mighty purple cranes in saffron seas of flame, the wind wavered among the leaves, and the insects sang in sudden ecstasy of life.

The two looked into each other's faces. They seemed to be transfigured, each to the other.

"You must not go back," he said. "They would not understand you nor me. We will never be so near a great happiness, a great holiday. It is holiday time. Let us go to the mountains."

She drew a sigh as if all her cares and duties dropped from her, then she smiled and a comprehending light sparkled in her eyes.

"Very well, to the clouds if you will."

THE END OF LOVE IS LOVE OF LOVE.

They lay on the cliff where the warm sun fell. Beneath them were rocks, lichen-spotted above, and orange and russet and pink beneath.

Around the headland the ocean ravened with roaring breath, flinging itself ceaselessly on the land, only to fall back with clutching snarl over the pebbles.

The smell of hot cedars was in the air. The distant ships drove by with huge sails bellying. Occasional crickets chirped faintly. Sandpipers skimmed the beach.

The man and woman were both gray. He lay staring at the sky. She sat with somber eyes fixed on the distant sea, whose crawling lines glittered in ever-changing designs on its purple sweep.

They were man and wife; both were older than their years. They were far past the land of youth and love.

"O wife!" he cried, "let us forget we are old; let us forget we are disillusioned of life; let us try to be boy and girl again."

The woman shivered with a powerful, vague emotion, but she did not look at him.

"O Esther, I'm tired of life!" the man went on. "I'm tired of my children. I'm tired of you. Do you know what I mean?"

The woman looked into his eyes a moment, and said in a low voice:

"No, Charles." But the man knew she meant yes. The touch of her hand grew cold.

"I'm tired of it all. I want to feel again the wonder and mystery of life. It's all gone. The love we have now is good and sweet and true; that of the old time was sweeter. It was so marvelous. I trembled when I kissed you, dear. I don't now. It had more of truth, of pure, unconscious passion, and less of habit. Oh, teach me to forget!"

He crept nearer to her, and laid his head in her lap. His face was knotted with his passion and pain.

The wife and mother sighed, and looked down at his hair, which was getting white.

"Well, Charles!" she said, and caressingly buried her fingers in his hair. "I'll try to forget for your sake."

He could not understand her. He did not try. He lay with closed eyes, tired, purposeless. The sweet sea wind touched his cheek, white with the indoor pallor of the desk worker. The sound of the sea exalted him. The beautiful clouds above him carried him back to boyhood. There were tears on his face as he looked up at her.

"I'm forgetting!" he said, with a smile of exultation.

But the woman looked away at the violet-shadowed sails, afar on the changeful purple of the sea, and her throat choked with pain.

THE END

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D. APPLETON AND COMPANY'S PUBLICATIONS.

BY A. CONAN DOYLE.

Uniform edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50 per volume.

UNCLE BERNAC. A Romance of the Empire.

Illustrated.

This brilliant historical romance pictures Napoleon's threatened invasion of England when his forces were encamped at Boulogne. The story abounds in dramatic incidents, and the adventures of the hero will be followed with intense interest by a multitude of readers.

RODNEY STONE. Illustrated.

"A remarkable book, worthy of the pen that gave us 'The White Company,' 'Micah Clarke,' and other notable romances."--London Daily News.

"A notable and very brilliant work of genius."--London Speaker.

"'Rodney Stone' is, in our judgment, distinctly the best of Dr. Conan Doyle's novels.... There are few descriptions in fiction that can vie with that race upon the Brighton road."--London Times.

THE EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER GERARD.

A Romance of the Life of a Typical Napoleonic Soldier. Illustrated.

"The brigadier is brave, resolute, amorous, loyal, chivalrous; never was a foe more ardent in battle, more clement in victory, or more ready at need.... Gallantry, humor, martial gayety, moving incident, make up a really delightful book."--London Times.

"May be set down without reservation as the most thoroughly enjoyable book that Dr. Doyle has ever published."--Boston Beacon.

THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS. Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by Stark Munro, M. B., to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884. Illustrated.

"Cullingworth, ... a much more interesting creation than Sherlock Holmes, and I pray Dr. Doyle to give us more of him."--Richard le Gallienne, in the London Star.

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ROUND THE RED LAMP. Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life.