PART SIX

LOT & COMPANY: II

1

BELLAIR reached New York on a mid-May morning from the west, and walked up Seventh avenue to his old room. It was a time of day that he had seldom known the street and step. There was a different expression of daylight upon them. Of course, he had met these matters on many Sundays, but Sunday light and atmosphere was invariably different to his eyes--something foreign and false about it. He saw the old hall-mark, however, in the vestibule--the partial sweeping.... It had always been her way; all things a form. The vestibule and stone steps had to be swept--that was the law; to be swept with strength and thoroughness was secondary. He rang, and asked the servant for the woman of the house.

Waiting, he found himself in a singular depression of mind. The City had cramped and bewildered him. A small oval of grey-white cloud appeared in the dark hall. It came nearer, and Bellair saw the face of dusty wax--smaller, a little lower from his eyes. It came very near, and was upturned. The vision was dim, and the memory; all the passages slow and cluttered.

“It is Mr. Bellair,” she said, without offering her hand.

“Yes. I’ve come back.”

“I haven’t a room--for you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“And about your things in storage--I would be glad for the space now. Could you take care of this to-day?’

“Yes,” he answered.

“I have the bill ready.”... She called the servant who came with the broom. “On my table among the papers you will find Mr. Bellair’s bill for storage. Please get it.”

Bellair heard the servant on the stairs, one, two, three flights; then a long silence. He had never been quite sure where the landlady slept, believing that she hovered from basement to sky-light according to the ebb and flow of the tenant tides. The double-doors from the hall to the lower front room were slightly ajar. This, the most expensive in the house, appeared to be vacant. The servant was gone a long time. The landlady did not leave him alone in the hall. They did not speak. The darkness crept upon Bellair as if he were in a tank that was slowly but surely being filled, and presently would cover him. The paper was brought, the charge for six months’ storage, meagre. Bellair paid it, and offered more. He thought of her hard life, but the extra money was passed back to him.

“I have that present in keeping,” she said.

“What present?”

“That you gave me the night you went away----”

“But I gave it to you. Would you not take a little gift from one who had been in your house five years?”

“Money easily got, goes the same,” she answered.

Then Bellair realised how stupid he had been. She had seen the newspapers. She had been afraid to trust him alone in that bare hall. The smell of carpets stifled him.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said. “But hold the present a little longer. Perhaps you will not always feel that it came so easily. I’ll send for my goods at once.... Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Bellair.”

He was ill. The side-door of a famous hotel yawned to him directly across the street from his step. He was not sure they would take him. Registering, he stopped to think where he was from, adding Auckland, N. Z.... Yes, his bags would be brought from the station. They gave him a room, and Bellair stood in the centre of it.

For a few moments he actually weakened--limbs and mind. It wasn’t New York alone, nor the sordid incident across the street, reminding him so ruthlessly of Lot & Company and all that had been and was still to do; rather it was a giving way to a loneliness that had been rising for almost a month, wearing him to a shadow of himself, and giving him battle night and morning. Like many another solitary young man, he had brooded much upon what a certain woman might be. He had found that in those women he met, certain spaces must be filled in by his own compassion--and these spaces did not endure. Always in a test they separated from the reality. But the Faraway Woman day by day had fulfilled; even where his idealism failed, she completed the picture of the woman above him and of irresistible attraction.

She had come nearer and nearer. She was magic in this way. He had regarded her at first distantly and askance at the rail of the _Jade_. A gasp now came from him. That was so impossible and long ago.... She had not called him any more than a peasant woman. And yet one after another her rarities had unfolded; it would always be so. She was the very fountain of romance to him; the essence of whose attraction is variableness of days. Of all the days together, there had been no two alike--no two hours alike. He had watched her face under the light--never twice the same. The child, the maiden, the mother, the love-woman, the saint--lips passional, devotional ... then those wonder-moments when the old tragedies came back to her eyes.

They stirred him as if he had known her long ago; and yet nothing of this had come to him at first. How crude and coarse he had been not to see. Lot & Company and New York had covered her from his eyes. He had to fast and pray and concentrate upon her being, as a devotee upon the ball of crystal to begin upon her mysteries. Every man has his Lot & Company, his New York--the forces that bind him to the world. A man bound to the world can see but the body of a thing--the paint of a picture, just the outline and pigment of a picture or a bit of nature--just the body of a woman.

Something came to him that instant--of the perfect law of all things. Those caught in the body of events see but that, hear but that, anticipate but that--the very secret of all the misery and shortsightedness in the world. A man must rise, lift the centre of consciousness above the body of things, even to see physical matters in their true relation. It was all so thrillingly true to him in this glimpse--that a man can never see properly the sequence of his actions unless he can rise above them--that those in the ruck never know what they are about....

He tried to remember her face, as he stood in the hotel room. Failing, his mind returned to their days together. He was apart now and could view them, one by one, in their wonder and beauty. He was torn with them. At different times on the long voyage he had dwelt separately upon the episodes. Some had worn him to exhaustion. People on the ship had believed him a man with a great grief. At first, he looked about from face to face searching for some one whom he might tell, but there was no reception for his story. He had to stop and think that he was different and apart.... She had always been apart.

He had carried it alone, moving hushed and alone with his story; lying open-eyed in his berth through the hours of night, and often through the afternoons, an open book face downward upon his chest, his pipe cold ... living again the different moments in the rooms of the stone cottage, in the garden, on the shore; their journeys together, their breakfasts and luncheons and evenings together.

The boy was gone from him, from face and body. He did not know what had come instead, but he knew that he carried a creative image in his heart; something of the fragrance of her lingering about him. It had come to him at night alone on deck--the sweetness of her--on the wind. All that he wanted, all that he dreamed best of life and labour and love ... and yet after all, what had he to do with her in relation to these intimate things? Friend, companion, confidante--she was everything that a woman could be, except---- Had not the substance of that kind of giving died for her in the passing of the preacher?... Something of her story frightened him. She had learned the ultimate realness of loving. The man who entered her heart now would have to come with an immortal seal upon him. There was but one who could take up the fatherhood of the Gleam.... Bellair did not feel the man; did not know what she had given him; did not know what had come to him--to his face and carriage and voice. He had not yet lifted himself above so that he could see. Those whom he met, however, were struck with a different Bellair, and those who could not understand thought him touched a little queerly--as a man after sunstroke or any great light.

... It was now noon. He thought of his old friend, Broadwell, of the advertising-desk at Lot & Company. Perhaps Broadwell would dine with him. He called. The voice came back to him.... Yes, he would come at once. Bellair asked him to the hotel. In the interval he called the Trust company in whose keeping the thousand dollar surety had been, inquiring if Lot & Company had collected the amount. The answer was returned presently to the effect that Lot & Company had presented his release and collected the amount with interest four days after his departure.

Bellair hearkened to a faint singing somewhere within and found it had to do with Bessie. He called Brandt’s and ascertained that the same quartette was to sing there at nine in the evening. This was also one of the things he had come to do.

Broadwell was a trifle late, but all urbanity. There was something of the salesman’s manner and enunciation about him. Bellair fell away after the greeting, caught in a sort of mental flurry in which the picture of another luncheon engagement recurred to his mind--the day he had passed the desk and cage of Mr. Sproxley with the stranger named Filbrick, and his own telling of the cashier’s passionate honour.... When he came back to see clearly the face of Broadwell, he found that he personally was being scrutinised with odd intensity. Could it be that Broadwell had something more than a personal friendly interest? His questions did not seem adroit, and yet he wanted to know so much--of the ship, of Auckland, but especially of this long drive back to New York.

“Are you stopping here?” he asked.

“Yes. My old room was just opposite, but I was told that the house was full.”

“So you came here?”

“Yes.”

“And are you going to stay in New York?”

“I don’t know, Ben. There are a few things to see to.”

“Are you looking for a job?”

“Well, no. Not exactly, at least.”

Try as he might, Bellair could not feel free, as of old time. He felt the other wanted something, and this checked his every offering. He knew that Broadwell, at least six months before, could not have believed ill of Lot & Company, and there was no apparent change. The disclosure of the press must have righted itself in the office so far as he, Bellair, was concerned; surely Broadwell did not share the dread of him the landlady had shown; and yet, it was hard to broach these things. The advertising-man apparently had no intention of doing so.

“We’ve all missed you on the lower floor,” he said.

“Are there any changes?”

“Very few.”

“Who took my place?”

“Man from outside. Mr. Rawter brought in the man--middle-aged. Mr. Sproxley knew him, too.”

“Poor devil,” said Bellair, but not audibly. They had not dared to open the ledger revelations to any one in the office, but had found a man outside who was doubtless familiar with such books, doubtless one who had been deformed in the long, slow twistings of trade. Perhaps this one had children. Children were good for Lot & Company’s most trusted servants. It was well to have a number of children, like Mr. Sproxley--for their wants are many, and a man’s soul cannot breathe in the midst of many wants and small salary.

“Are you coming over to the office?”

“Yes, I find I have to. Some folks are taking the end Lot and Company gave the newspapers about my leaving. They were very much in a hurry about giving out that newspaper story--with the money in the vaults.”

Broadwell regarded him seriously. “I suppose they took the point of view that there could be but one motive for your leaving, without giving notice. Most firms would----”

“I wonder if most firms would?” Bellair asked. “Men have lapses other than falling into thievery. At least a firm should look up the facts in the case first. It’s a rather serious thing to charge a man with departure with funds. For instance, the public will glance through the details of such a charge, and miss entirely a denial afterward. Are you under bond?”

“No, I don’t handle company funds----”

“Suppose you were--and one night you came to the end of your rope--found you couldn’t go back--found it was a life or death matter of your soul, whether you went back or not. Still you had some salary coming and say a thousand dollars’ surety. You took this amount exactly--salary and bond and interest to the dollar, and left a note saying so, in place of the amount; also a note releasing to your firm the amount of the bond and interest, and stating clearly the item of salary--I say, would you expect to find yourself charged with embezzlement in next day’s paper?”

Broadwell’s shoulders straightened.

“Not in next day’s paper,” he said, with a smile.

Bellair did not miss the cut of this.

“You think that my case was not like that exactly?” he asked.

“I can’t see why a firm would give such a story to the press--unless they uncovered a loss,” Broadwell said slowly.

“Lot & Company couldn’t have uncovered a loss without looking in the very place where my note was, which proved there was no loss. Lot & Company couldn’t have collected my bond without proceedings--unless they found my release of it. And the bond was collected.”

“Then I can’t see any reason for incriminating--any one,” said Broadwell.

“Well, there was a reason--though the facts of my case are exactly as stated. Lot & Company had a reason. I haven’t decided whether it will be necessary to make that known.... But I didn’t bring you here to discuss this affair. I wanted to see _you_----”

Just then Mr. Broadwell was paged. A messenger was said to be waiting for him in the lobby.

“Send him in,” Broadwell said thoughtlessly.

Davy Acton came, and Broadwell saw his error. Bellair perceived that his luncheon-companion had made known his engagement at the office before leaving....

“Sit down, Davy. I’m glad to see you----”

The boy had grown. Bellair noted that simple thing, as he noted the fact also that Davy was tortured with embarrassment, and had not meant to come in. He wriggled his hand forward to take Bellair’s, which was held toward his, and then looked down shamefacedly, as if _he_ had been charged with theft. Bellair knew well that the boy’s trouble was how to meet him--formerly a friend, but now an outcast from the firm. A kind of darkness stole over him. He saw now that Broadwell believed him a thief, even as the landlady had believed; but in the case of neither of these did the dread finality come to him, as from the face of this stricken boy.

This was the thought that shot through Bellair’s mind, “No one liked Davy so well as I did; no one tried to help him as I did; and now he thinks my liking and my helping, a part of the looseness of character which made me a thief.”

The thought was strange, yet natural, too. It came into the darkness which had covered the abode of Bellair’s consciousness.

* * * * *

“A bit of copy--that I missed getting off,” Broadwell was saying. “I was excited when you called.... All right, Davy. I’ve told ’em where to find it on the back of the note.... And now Bellair--you were saying----”

2

Bellair watched for the turn on the part of Broadwell that would reveal the character of his message, for he did not believe the matter of the copy for the printer. The chill was thick between them, yet Bellair managed to say:

“I’m not here for reprisal or trouble-making. It’s rather a novelty to be innocent, yet charged with a thing; certainly one sees a look from the world that could come no other way. I want to see you again--soon. I’ve got a story to tell you. It was a big thing to me. We used to have things in common. I’d like to tell you the story and see how it strikes you----”

“Good. I’m to spare----”

“Suppose you come here to lunch to-morrow----”

“No, you come with me.”

“I’d prefer it the other way,” Bellair declared. “It’s my story you are to listen to.”

As they parted, there was just a trace of the old Broadwell, that left Bellair with a feeling of kindness.

“I’m interested to hear that story,” the advertising-man said. “It did something to you apparently. Pulled you down a lot--but that’s not all. I can’t make it out exactly--but you’ve got something, Bellair.”

That was a long afternoon.... He had been gone less than six months; and yet was as much a stranger, as a young man coming in from the West for the first time. The hours dragged. The City did not awe him, but so much of it struck him in places tender. He could give and give; there seemed no other way, no other thing to do. He sat on a bench in Union Square, and talked with an old man who needed money so badly that Bellair reflected for some time the best way to bestow it without shock. The old fellow looked so near gone, that one feared his heart would break under any undue pressure of excitement.

Bellair concluded he had better buy a stimulant first of all, so he led the way across the Square to Kiltie’s. They lined up against the bar, and warmed themselves, the idea in Bellair’s mind being to give something beside money. Now the old man (not in the least understanding more than it was the whim of the stranger to do something for him), was so intent on what was to be done that he could not listen. Bellair had to come to the point. They went to a table for a bite of lunch, and the spectacle of a beggar’s mind opened--a story lacking imagination and told with the pitiful endeavour to fit into what was imagined to be the particular weakness of this listener.

For months, Bellair had not touched the little orbit of the trodden lives. The story was not true, for no single group of ten words hinged upon what had been said, or folded into the next statement. The old man was not simple, but his guile was simple, and the simplicity of that was obscene. Begging might be a fine art, but men chose or fell into their work without thought of making an art of it. The old man did not know his own tremendous drama. Had he dared plainly to be true, he would have captivated the world with his own poor faculties. Behind the affectations were glimpses of great realities--if only the fallen mind could accept his days and tell them as they came--just the imperishable fruits of his days. As it was, the whiskey swept them farther away, and the creature attempted to act; his pitiful conception of effects were called into being. The throb of it all was the way the world was brought back to Bellair. His whole past city life thronged into mind. This was but a shocking example of myriads of lives--trying to be what their undeveloped senses prompted for the moment, rather than to be themselves. This was the salesman’s voice and manner, he had seen in Broadwell.... He stopped his revery by handing over the present.

The old man’s eyes were wild now with hope and anguish to get away; a mingling of fear, too, lest the great sum of money in one piece be counterfeit; lest the stranger ask it back, or some one knock him down and take it away.

“I sat in a small boat,” Bellair was saying, “for ten days, with very little food and water. I saw one man die like a beast of thirst--or fear of thirst; and I saw another man master it--so that he died smiling--as only a man can die----”

Bellair did not finish. He had tried to catch the old man’s attention with this--to hold it an instant, thinking that some word would get home, something of the immortal facts in his heart, something greater than cash ... but the old man believed him insane, a liar, a fool or all three.

“Yes, yes,” he said, looking to the side, and to the door.

So he could listen, neither before nor afterward. Bellair eased his agony by letting him go--the money gripped in his hands, his limbs hastening, eyes darting to the right and left, as he sped through the swinging door.... For several moments, Bellair sat in the sorrow of it--lost in the grimmest of all tragedies--that here we are, a human family, all designed for lofty and majestic ends, yet having lost the power to articulate to each other. Suddenly Bellair remembered that the old face had looked into his for a swift second, when he was released--shaken, ashen, a murmur of something like “God thank you,” on the trembling lips. There was a bit of a ray in that.... Then he settled back into the tragedy again. It was this--that the old man had thought him insane for trying to help him; that he had seen something foreign and altogether amiss in the landlady’s eyes, in Ben Broadwell’s, and what was more touching to him, in Davy Acton’s.

Bellair straightened his shoulders. The misery of the thing oppressed him until he brought it to the laugh. Formerly he would have tried to escape. It was not his business if the old man would not be helped; he had tried. If a man can succeed in radiating good feelings and a spirit of helpfulness, he has done his part; the consequences are out of his hand. He saw that he had wanted to help; that what he had taken from the open boat and from the woman had brought this impulse to the fore in all his thinking. After that he must be an artist in the work; must become consummate; but having done his best--he must not spend energy in moods and personal depressions.... As for Lot & Company, he must meet them on their own footings--forgetting everything but their points of view. It was his business now to make a black spot clean, and it was an ugly material matter to be coped with as such, calling forth will-power and acumen of a world kind. He would see if he was to fail.

Bellair’s laugh was hard at first, from the tensity of the temptation to give up and let New York have its way in his case. Having whipped that (and it was a fair afternoon’s work) the smile softened a little, and he entered upon the task of the evening.

... Brandt’s was just as he had left it. The crowd increased; the quartette came. Bessie was lovely as ever; slightly different, since he had thought of her so much in the old hat. She did not see him, but her smile was like a flower of warmth and culture. A touch of the old excitement mounted in his breast, as they sang.... This was New York--among men--food and drink and warmth. This, too, was life; these were men who toil every day, who cannot take months to dream in, who cannot cross the sea and observe heroes and saints, but men who crowd and toil and fight, even expire, for their pleasures--such were the surgings of Bellair’s brain in the midst of the music. Bessie was the arch of it all--the arch of the old home, New York,--not this Bessie, but the Bessie that might be, the significant woman it was his work to make and mould. He was living his own thoughts, as much as listening. They vanished when the music stopped.... He sent a waiter to her with this written on a blank card:

“Will you sing _Maying_ for an old friend?”

... The song choked the wanderer, and this was the new mystery of _Maying_--that it left him at the stone gate of a door-yard beyond windy Auckland....

* * * * *

He sent forward a gift of flowers, and was in a daze when she came to him and sat down.

“I have only a few minutes. We sing once more and then go. How dark and thin you look!”

He wanted to see her after her work was done, but dared not ask until other things were said.... There were words that left no impress, until he heard himself saying:

“I read the New York papers at sea----”

“... The reporters came to me. I had told some one of seeing you. It was just after I had read the news. It was new to me to have reporters come--and somehow they got what they wanted----”

“Oh, that didn’t matter. Only it was all unnecessary. My accounts there were never other than straight.”

She said she was glad. He saw she was more glad to drop the subject, and didn’t exactly believe him.

“And you’ve had luck away?”

“Yes, in several ways--beside money.”

It seemed necessary to add the last. He was struck with the shame and pity of it; yet it had to do with seeing her again.

“Are you going to be in New York long?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to talk with you to-night, after you are through. I might know better then--how long I am to stay.... Is it possible?”

“Yes--yes, I think so.”

“When?”

“After the _Castle_”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to be given a chance--in two weeks--a real chance,” she declared. “I’ll tell you later.”

He tried to make himself believe that it was just as it had been; that Bessie was the same, the meaning of New York and the fortune that had come to him. How could she sing so, if it were not true?

“The formal try-out is two weeks from to-day,” she added. “The rest is done. It’s the chance for life--one of the leads with the _King Follies_ for next season. They’ve already heard me. I need to do no more, than has been done?”

“Just singing?”

“There are many lines and some dancing--oh, it’s a chance to storm the piece--if I can.”

She enlarged and detailed the promise; Bellair forgot many things he had to say.

“Is that all you want, Bessie?”

“What?”

“This chance.”

Her brows knit with irritation. It was her high tide, and he did not seem able to rise with it. Still she dared not be angry with him.

“Don’t you see--it’s everything?”

“A good salary, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes----”

“And you are all fixed for it?”

“All but clothes--the old struggle. You helped me wonderfully before.”

“Perhaps I could help you again?”

“Oh, could you?” She was joyousness aflame--her whole nature winging about him.

Deep within, he was empty and bleak and cold. He wanted to give her money, but somehow could not make it easy for her. It cheapened him in his own eyes.... He was silent--his thoughts having crossed the world. There is no one to explain the sentence that ran through his mind, “... _who buys wine for the Japanese girls in Dunedin, since Norcross was conscripted in the service we all shall know?_”

“... But what am I to do for you,” he heard the girl inquire, “since you are--not going away to-night?”

He quaked at the old recall. Perhaps he had forgotten a little how to be sharp and city-wise; at least, he did not make himself clear at once.

“You have your mornings, don’t you, Bessie?”

“Not if I’m to have new clothes. That’s morning work----”

“There’s so much to say. I’ve thought about you in a lot of strange places----”

She leaned forward and said with a pitiful quiet, “Once, you only wanted me to be good.”

Then it dawned on him. “Good God, Bessie,” he cried, “I don’t want you to be bad!”

She regarded him, playing with the stem of her glass, as of old time. A curious being he was to her, and quite inexplicable.

“You love me?” she asked.

The bass now beckoned, and she fled.

3

Bellair saw that one may have a gift from heaven, a superb singing-voice, for instance, but that one must also furnish the thought behind it. It was not that Bessie Brealt lacked ambition; in fact, she had plenty of that, but it was the sort that cannot wait for real results. She did not see the great singer; she had not a thought to give with her song. She had not the emotions upon which a great organ of inspiration might be built with the years. Already she was touched with the world; the world stirred her desires; matters of first importance in her mind were the things she wanted.

She was not different from the thousands, from the millions, in this. He had not altogether lost the conviction that she might be made different. Already she was singing too much; her voice would never reach its full measure under these conditions. She would suffer the fate of the countless high-bred colts that are ruined by being raced too young, being denied the right to sound maturity. She should have been out of the life-struggle for years yet; in the country, in the perfect convent of natural life. She had not answered the true call, but meanwhile a call had come; its poison had entered. Bellair saw that the process before him, if any, was to break before building.... If consummate art were used, might not Bessie be helped to conceive the great career? Of course that thought must come first. However, he was far from believing that any art of his could be consummate.... Speaking that night of her new opportunity, he said:

“They will rehearse you a great deal--then performances twice a day--and you’re not more than twenty----”

“Just twenty----”

“You should be forty--before giving your voice so much work----”

She laughed. “Forty, I will doubtless be finished. Forty, and before, the fat comes----”

“People can forget fat--when a great voice is singing----”

“The great voices have sung from children,” she answered.

He believed this untrue; at least, he believed that with conservation, a more sumptuous power was attainable. “They have sung naturally perhaps, but not professionally. If they were called into the stress of life very young, any greatness afterward was in spite of the early struggle, not because of it. The voice is an organ that wears out. It is not the same as the character which improves through every test. If you were to spend ten years in study--ten years, not alone in vocal culture, but in life preparation and the culture of happiness----”

“I suppose you would have me give up this chance with the _Follies_?” she asked with the control that suggests imminent fracture.

“Yes. There is nothing that passes so quickly--as the voice of a season. It is the plaything of a people without memory. If you had ever listened to the best of the light opera singers, in contrast to a really developed talent----”

But this was not the way. Bellair finished the sentence vaguely, not with the sharpness of the idea that had come to him. She was nervous and irritable and tired. She was enduring him, much as one endures a brother from the country, for whom allowances must be made; also there was a deeper reason.

“Perhaps what I think of you,” he said, stirring to thrill her some way if possible, “is really a fiery thing, Bessie. I think of you singing great hordes of creatures into unity of idea that would lift them from beasts into men. The world is so full of sorrow and dulness of seeing; the world is in a cloud--I want you to sing the clouds away. If you could wait--just wait, as one holding a sure and perfect gift--until the real call comes to you, and then sing, knowing your part, not in pleasure and amusement, but in life, in the stirring centres of struggle and strife. If you would go forth singing that great song of yours--from your soul! It would be like a voice from the East--to bring the tatters of humanity together. I felt all this vaguely when I first heard you--six months ago. I have thought of it nights and days on the ocean--in times when we had to live on our thoughts, hold fast to them or go mad, for we had two days’ water for ten, and two days’ food for ten. Then I remembered how I came into Brandt’s, torn that night, not knowing what to do--dull-eyed and covered with wrongs. You sang me free. For the minute you sang me out of all that. I could not have freed myself perhaps--without that song. I know that there are thousands of men like me to be freed----”

Bellair felt on sure ground now. This was his particular manner and message--the finest and strangest thing about him--the fact that had always appeared, making him different even from Fleury and the woman,--the thought that he was average--and not more impressionable than the multitudes. If they could be reached, they would make the big turn that he had been shoved into.

“... Thousands just as I was that night, preyed upon by trade, dull-witted with the ways of trade, the smug, the bleak, the poisonous tricks of trade, born and bred--their real life softened and watered and wasted away ... thousands who could turn into men at the right song, the right word. I always thought of you, Bessie--as one of the great helpers. If you can wait, the way will come. I will help you to wait. I came back to New York to help you----”

She picked up his glass and smelled it, her eyes twinkling. “Splendid,” she said, “but are you quite sure you haven’t a stick in this ginger-ale?”

Bellair leaned back. He hadn’t touched _it_ yet. Perhaps something would come, better than words. It was not straight-going--this work that he had dreamed; always a shock in bringing down dreams from Sinai; always something deadly in meeting the empirical. He smiled. “Just ginger-ale, Bessie, but you are a stimulant. You are more beautiful than before. Not quite so girlish, but there is something new that is very intense to me----”

She leaned toward him now, very eager.

“I wondered what you would see. The difference was plain at once in you.... Tell me what you see----”

“Just between the fold of the eye and the point of the chin----” he answered.... (Queerly now he imagined himself talking on the shore to the little Gleam; it gave him just the touch that helped.) “--a little straightening of the oval, and the little puff at the mouth-corners drawn out. Why, Bessie, it’s just the vanishing child. And you are taller. I’m almost afraid to speak--to try to put it into words, how pretty you are----”

She was elate and puzzled, too. “Where did you get anything like that?” she asked. “It’s what made me remember before. Always when you get through preaching--you pay for it----”

It was out before she thought--yet for once the exact unerring thing that was in her mind.

He treasured it; saw that his appeal was certain this way; that he must be of the world, and right glib to master her. The way of reality was slow; he must never fail to pay for preaching.... They laughed, and the weariness went from her eyes. The bloom of her health was at its height. Now as Bellair watched her, thinking of the world-ways, she suddenly swept home to him--the old forbidden adventure of her, the meaning of money and nights, her homelessness, the city, the song, the price she would pay if he demanded it.

The thing was upon him before he realised. It had all been the new Bellair until now. His body had lain as if in a vault of wax, its essential forces in suspension. Suddenly without warning, the wax had melted away. He did not instantly give battle to the gust of desire--met it eye-to-eye. Bellair felt his own will, and knew he would use it presently. He was rather amazed at the power of the thing as it struck him, and the nature of it, so utterly detached from the redolence and effulgence he had known in the Stone House. This was not the old Hunting Companion who had come with garlands; a minkish aborigine, this, who had come empty-handed, whose hands were out to be filled.

The meaning of all that Stackhouse had left in wallets and sea-girt archipelagoes was in this sullen-eyed entity--in the _O_ formed of thirsting lips. Bellair tried to check it before it came--the thought that this was peculiarly a New York manifestation, one destined to be Bessie Brealt’s familiar in future years.... He did not have to use his will. He lost himself in thinking of her plight.

“... Please bring the coffee,” she was saying to the waiter, her hand lifted, as if she would touch his sleeve, the familiarity of one who had sung here many nights. “Yes, he will have coffee. He is merely away somewhere.... Yes, we will have it smoked with cognac--but here--do it here. I like to see it burn....”

“Very well, Miss Brealt----”

The lights had all come back to Bellair. He was miserable--the adventure palled. There had been no lift, nor tumultuous carrying away. The quick change chilled him. Her words one by one had chilled him.... At least, he had demanded a madness to-night. Bessie did not have the wine of madness in her veins. This much had been accomplished. He could not break training coldly.... And now he felt as if the day had drained him to the heart, as if the day had come to an end, and he must rest.

He turned to her. “I found a little check-book for you to-day, but you must go to the bank and give them your signature. It is made of leather, small enough for your purse almost. The bank-book is with it. You will find a little account started.... And now I will call a cab for you----”

“But your coffee----” she said.

“Yes, we will have that----”

He had to get away for a moment. His heart was desolate with hunger.... The smell of the kitchen made him think of the galley of a ship....

* * * * *

“Oh, what can I do for you?” Bessie asked, when he returned.

“It’s what you can do for yourself that interests me----”

“But I must go with the _Follies_--if I win. It’s the career--the beginning!”

“If you must.”

“And when shall I see you?”

“Here to-morrow night--if you will.”

“Yes,” she said eagerly.

4

On the way to Lot & Company’s the next morning Bellair smiled at the sense of personal injustice which had returned to him. He held fast to a sort of philosophical calm, but permitted his energy to be excited by a peculiar blending of contempt and desire to wring the truth from Lot & Company at any price.

Suddenly he stopped. Lot & Company was merely something to master. Lot & Company was but an organised bit of the world which he had met; all men had their own organisations to face, to comprehend the vileness and illusion of, and then to get underfoot, neck and other vitals.... Bessie had helped him. There was something in that.... He felt the fighting readiness within him, and an added warning not to raise his voice. He must deal with Lot & Company on the straight low plane of what-was-wanted. That was the single level of the firm’s understanding.

Davy Acton smiled at him shyly--the first face after the pale telephone-miss at the door. Davy was more at home in these halls and floors than in the hotel dining-room. Bellair heard the jovial voice of Mr. Rawter behind his partition. From the distance, Broadwell glanced up and waved at him. Mr. Sproxley’s black eyes were fixed in his direction from behind the grating of his cage. Mr. Sproxley came forward, greeted him and returned. Bellair had asked to see the elder Mr. Wetherbee, but it appeared that Mr. Seth was not in.

“I’ll speak with Mr. Nathan Lot,” said Bellair.

“Mr. Lot is occupied.”

“Mr. Jabez then.”

Mr. Jabez came forth presently.... He had been married in the interval, according to Broadwell; the fact had touched the wide, limp mouth. A very rich girl had joined pastures with Jabez; so that this coming forward was one of the richest young men in New York, representing the fortune of his mother which the dreaming Nathan had put into works; representing the fortune he had recently wedded with or without dreaming, and also the Lot & Company millions. Mr. Jabez also stood for the modern note of the firm; he was designed to bring the old and prosperous conservatism an additional new and up-to-the-hour force of suction.... Mr. Jabez smiled.

“Hello, Bellair,” he said with a careless regard,--doubtless part of the modern method, the laxity of new America which knows no caste. The thought had formed about him something to this effect: “What’s the use of me carrying it--you will not be able to forget you are talking to forty millions?”

“Come in,” he added and Bellair followed.

Mr. Nathan was beyond the partition. The atmosphere of the dreamer had looped over into the son’s sanctum.... Bellair began at the point of his handing the letter, addressed to Mr. Nathan, to the station-porter at the last moment from the platform of the Savannah Pullman.

“But mails don’t miscarry,” said Mr. Jabez, impatiently.

“That’s a fact. Perhaps mine wasn’t mailed. Of course,” he added quietly, “you didn’t require that letter. You had my note of release in the safe. They say at the Trust company that you collected the thousand dollars and interest within four days after I left.”

“Suppose every employé who has a deposit of faith--should tie us up that way?”

“It would be well to find out what he has done--before calling in the police.”

“What do you want, Bellair?”

Mr. Jabez could hold his temper, when its display was an inconvenience.

“I want a paper signed by you for Lot & Company, stating that you were in error when you charged me with absconding with company funds; that my accounts were afterward found to be entirely correct.”

Jabez Lot surveyed him. There was some change which he did not understand. The paper asked for, was a mere matter of dictation, a thing that might be forced from the firm. He believed, however, that Bellair wanted something else.

“I think the wisest plan for us will be to turn your case over to our attorney,” he said.

“Why?” Bellair asked. The full episode of the Nubian File and Mr. Prentidd passed through his mind.

“You see these affairs are adjusted better out of the office----”

“Why?”

“As a matter of fact, Bellair,” Mr. Jabez said patiently, “Lot & Company is eager to make amends for its mistake----”

There was a slow, quiet cough, the most natural and thoughtless sort of cough from the inner office. Bellair wondered if the modern method of Mr. Jabez was wearing a bit upon the dreamer, or if he were really lost in some inscrutable departure of mind.

“That would seem natural,” said he. “It would seem the direct, clear way. I am not boisterous; I threaten nothing.”

Bellair knew that this reminder of the Prentidd episode did not help his cause, but he wished nothing to be lost from the force he possessed. At the same time, he knew that it was the policy of Lot & Company to give nothing unforced. He was interested.

“We hadn’t thought of it, of course,” the future head now said, “but I have no doubt that Lot & Company has something as good for you as your old place, if you----”

“But I do not want a position,” said Bellair.

“What is it you want--again?”

“I want a paper, saying that I stole nothing, that Lot & Company was in error in charging me with taking funds----”

“A sort of explanation of our course?”

“Not exactly--a statement of your course, and that you incriminated me unjustly----” Bellair spoke with slow clearness.

“I really believe you had better see Mr. Jackson.”

“Why?”

“Because this is most unusual----”

Another cough was heard.

“Unusual--to straighten out a wrong that has hurt a man?”

“The way you ask it. Lot & Company is willing to take you back----”

“But I do not want to come back. You say that Lot & Company is eager to make amends----”

Davy Acton came in, saying that Mr. Jabez was called to the advertising department for a moment.... To Bellair this was like an interruption of an interesting story, but he did not wait long. The scene was merely shifted. He was in Mr. Nathan’s room. Mr. Rawter joined them and Mr. Jabez returned directly. The latter reopened the conversation by relating justly and patiently what Bellair asked.

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t have such a paper,” said Mr. Nathan, brushing his fingers through his hair, as if to force his thoughts down. He was not a whit older. The same identical dandruff was upon his shoulders.

Mr. Rawter laughed jovially: “Don’t you see? That’s just it. Individually, that is exactly the situation--but a big house--all its ramifications affected--and who’s to be responsible for Lot & Company as a whole?”

“It was Lot & Company that incriminated me,” said Bellair.

“I told Mr. Bellair----” Mr. Jabez began.

“Mr. Bellair had better come back to the House--that in itself is our acknowledgement,” interrupted his father. Evidently the son was not yet finished in training.

Bellair turned to Mr. Jabez, who explained the point of Bellair’s unwillingness to return. There was silence at this, as if it were entirely incomprehensible.

“Have you taken a position elsewhere in New York?” Mr. Nathan asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“On that--I cannot be sure.”

Mr. Rawter now arose and came forward, placing his arm across Bellair’s shoulder. The latter winced, but not physically. For an instant it had fired and fogged him. “Bellair, my boy, on the face of it--this that you ask would seem very simple,” he began. “I would ask it in your case, but think of us. By misunderstanding, we let out the fact that you had gone with funds not your own.... You were away. We looked for you everywhere before this happened----”

“You let it out,” said Bellair. “It is very simple. Call it in again----”

“It isn’t so simple.”

“I might come back to work for you,” Bellair added, “and those who knew would say, ‘He hadn’t anything. Instead of locking him up, Lot & Company took him back to work out what he had taken----’”

“I might give you a personal letter, saying I was very sorry, that in the bewilderment of the moment, we jumped at the conclusion that you were identified with the missing funds----”

“But the funds were not missing. You could not look into the vault-box without finding my letter.”

“Our funds were not all in that box, Bellair.”

“They would know by next morning, if I had broken into your bank----”

Mr. Nathan appeared to be gone from them, his eyes softened with visions.

“Write him the letter, Mr. Rawter----” suggested Mr. Jabez.

It struck Bellair like a hated odour--this tool for unclean work, Rawter’s part in the establishment. He did not hasten now, though he knew they were waiting for his answer. The head of the sales resumed:

“Yes, I will do this gladly--in fact, it would relieve my mind to do this in the most cordial terms, but I would be interested first in learning just what disposition of it was intended----”

“It would be mine,” said Bellair. “Of course, I should use it as I thought fit.”

“I was thinking--in adjusting the tone of the letter, the wording, you know----”

“Adjust the tone--the wording--to the facts--that would seem best. But I would not accept such a letter from you personally. It would have to be written for Lot & Company----”

Mr. Nathan now showed signs of coming back.

“Let us have a day to think it over, Bellair,” he said.

“In that case--my part is finished. I have asked to be lifted out of a shameful position. You acknowledge that I have this lift coming.” It was at this point that an inspiration arrived. “All that there is left, naturally and equitably, is for you to do your part. A man’s name is of more importance than a firm’s name, and in any event, no man nor firm was ever hurt by squaring a crooked action.”

Mr. Nathan appeared to welcome the slight heat of this remark. It brought the moment nearer in which hands might be washed and the attorney summoned. But Bellair was not heated, Mr. Rawter fumed a little.

“What do you mean by a man’s name being more important than a firm’s name?” he demanded.

“A firm shares its responsibility. A man shoulders it alone.”

“And what do you mean by your part being finished?”

“I have worked in this office five years,” Bellair answered. “I never saw nor heard of a man in my position, or in a similar position of asking something, who profited by allowing delay. I will put the matter out of mind if the letter is not furnished to-day. Of course, I expect to get it. In fact, I have the pressure to force the issue--although it seems trivial for me to mention it.”

Bellair had thought of Mr. Prentidd again. There was doubtless a case of some kind pending on the matter of the Nubian File. Mr. Prentidd was no man to stop. It would not have been settled within six months. Lot & Company knew of his knowledge of this affair. Bellair plunged:

“In fact, there is a case against Lot & Company, to which I might add a singular weight of testimony. As for my own, it would go to the same counsel----”

Mr. Nathan ruffled his hair and the silent fall of grey white dust followed. Bellair felt pent. After so long a time at sea, it was hard for him to breathe in this place. He wearied now of the game, although Mr. Nathan was palpably down, present in the material plane.

“Bellair,” said he, turning about in his chair, “the added pressure of a discredited employé doesn’t count for much as testimony in any case----”

“I realised at once the reason why you discredited me--to cripple for the time being any knowledge I might care to use against you. However, you have all granted that I am not discredited. The only item mentioned in the charge was the item covered by the Trust company. You would have to work with Mr. Sproxley to show a deficit in the books having to do with my departure----”

“Bellair,” said Mr. Nathan, “a poor man can never win a suit against a strongly backed firm----”

“That is unfortunately true,” said Bellair, “but I am not poor. I came into an inheritance during the past six months. The fact is, I think I could spend as much money to buy justice as Lot & Company would be willing to spend to prevent it.”

“Bellair,” said Mr. Nathan, “you will find it impossible to move the press in your behalf against the firm of Lot & Company, with our advertising contracts among the valuable ones in the city lists----”

Knowledge now counted. “You do not advertise in the _Record_,” he declared. “I have often heard from the advertising department that there is a rupture between this office and that paper, dating over a quarter of a century----”

Mr. Nathan touched a button for his stenographer. She lit upon the little chair beside him like a winged seed.

* * * * *

“To all Parties interested: Mr. Bellair left our employ suddenly and without furnishing customary warning,” the president dictated. “Finding a certain explanation in the vault, instead of a sum slightly over one thousand dollars belonging to this firm, we hastily assumed that his sudden departure was energised by the usual conditions. In fact, such a suspicion was stated to the press by this firm. We have since found Mr. Bellair’s accounts to be correct in every detail, and we furnish this letter to express in part our concern for Mr. Bellair’s character which our hasty conclusion impinged upon. Mr. Bellair left a letter of explanation in the vault, but his action in leaving abruptly and without explanation forced us on the spur of the moment to discredit it. However, the statement of his letter proved true, and the money taken by Mr. Bellair was the exact amount of his surety bond, with stipulated interest, and his salary to the hour of departure.”

* * * * *

“You have heard it?” Mr. Nathan inquired.

“Yes, it will do,” said Bellair.

The president nodded to his stenographer, who whisked out. “It will be ready in a moment,” he said. “I will sign it for Lot & Company.... Bellair, are you sure you don’t want your old desk back?”

“Quite sure,” said Bellair.

Mr. Jabez and Mr. Rawter had departed. Bellair glanced at his watch. It was a moment past the hour of Mr. Broadwell’s leaving for luncheon. The advertising-man, of course, was aware of his presence in the lower office. Bellair stepped out, however, to make sure of his appointment. Broadwell, hat in hand, was engaged in talk with Mr. Jabez. Bellair returned to the office of the president to wait for the stenographer. Not more than two minutes later, Davy Acton came in with this message:

“Mighty sorry to call luncheon off. Am hurrying to catch a train for Philadelphia for the rest of the day. Will see you later.--Broadwell.”

... Bellair folded this thoughtfully. The stenographer brought the letter with copy. The front draft was approved for signature, and Bellair’s morning work accomplished.

In the hall he met Davy Acton, and followed a quick impulse.

“Davy, lad, how soon will you be ready to go out to lunch?”

“In about three minutes----”

“I’ll wait for you. I’m going your way.”

Davy’s customary exit was the side-door. Bellair waited there accordingly. The girls were coming down the iron stairway from the bindery. He stepped back in the shadow to let them pass. There were figures and faces that clutched at his throat.... And then a story began, half way up the first flight, and came nearer and nearer, the voice carrying easily to one who listened with emotion:

“Did you know that Mr. Bellair was back?... Bellair, the absconding clerk--Mr. Sproxley’s assistant. Lot & Company has refused to prosecute. He will not be arrested.... And think of his nerve--asking his old position back----”

... They saw merely the back of a man, if they saw him at all. The talk was not interrupted on the way to the street and beyond.... Bellair came up with a start to find the boy at his side.

5

For a square or two, Davy Acton walking beside him, Bellair did not speak. He had needed that last bit. The morning would have blurred his hard-earned knowledge of Lot & Company and the world, without that moment under the iron stairs. It was hard to take, but a man mustn’t forget such realities as this. He loses his grip on the world when he forgets. Happy to lose, of course, but the point of his effectiveness is gone when these rock-bottom actualities are forgotten.... He looked down, Davy was hopping every third step to keep up. Bellair had quickened his pace to put the stench of the swamp farther behind him, but it was still in his nostrils.... He laughed.

“I was thinking, Davy, and the thoughts were like spurs. We’re in no hurry, really.”

He would not take the boy to a stately and formal dining-room for him to be embarrassed. Bellair felt that he had something very precious along; a far graver solution than luncheon with Broadwell. They sat down at a little table in the corner of one of the less crowded restaurants. As they waited, Bellair said, drawing out the paper he had received from the dreaming Mr. Nathan:

“I want you to see this first. In fact, I was particularly concerned about getting it, just to show you. Davy, it hit me like a rock--the way you looked at me in the hotel yesterday. I couldn’t have that. We’ve been too good friends----”

Davy read the letter carefully, deep responsibility upon his understanding.

“Did you have trouble getting it?” he asked finally.

“It took the forenoon, Davy. I found that they had not taken the trouble to tell my old friends on the different floors that I was not a thief. What was worse for me, they let you think so----”

“I wouldn’t believe it at first,” said Davy.

“I’m glad of that.”

“I said to Mr. Broadwell, that they’d find out differently and be sorry. They didn’t let us know when they found out----”

“That’s why it was important for me to come back----”

“But why did you go away like that?”

The boy’s mind dwelt in the fine sense of being treated as an equal. Bellair felt called upon to be very explicit and fair:

“I came to the time when I couldn’t live with myself any longer--and stay in the cage with Mr. Sproxley. I saw a ship in the harbour the Sunday before--a sailing-ship,” he began, and then made a picture of it; also of his own hopelessness and what the years would mean, not touching specific dishonesties, but suggesting the atmosphere which had suddenly become poisonous to him. He did not forget that Davy had no other place, that he must keep a certain sense of loyalty, or be destroyed in such conditions.

“It would have taken two weeks to get clear in the ordinary way,” he added. “My decision came the day of the squabble with Mr. Prentidd in the office. I had to leave right then--was off for Savannah that very night----”

“And you found the ship there?” Davy asked eagerly.

“I beat her there a day and a half. Then we sailed for South America. I want to tell you the whole story. This is not the place. Could you come up in my room after supper to-night?”

“I think my mother will let me come----”

“Tell me about your mother, Davy. Is she well? I remember I meant to meet her some time.”

“Yes--just the same. You know she works a little, too----”

“Where?” Bellair asked absently.

Davy swallowed, and before he spoke, the man saw with a queer thrill that the boy hadn’t yet learned to lie.

“Well, she goes out three days a week--to do the laundry work--for people who have had her a long time.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I’m hoping to get where she won’t have to.”

“Of course.”

The dinner was brought. Bellair tried to make up for the place--in quantity. Neither spoke for the present. The man was hungry, too.

“I’m glad you told me that,” he said after a time, “glad you told me just that way.”

Davy applied himself further. Manifestly here was a point that he need not follow.

“Davy, you’ll come through. You’re starting in the right hard way--the old-fashioned way. It won’t be so slow as you think----” He was reminded now of what Fleury had said about the little Gleam that first night in the open boat.

“Slow but sure at Lot & Company’s--if a fellow does his part and works hard----”

Davy was being brought up in the usual way.

Bellair said: “I’m coming over to see you at your house some evening soon--if I may.”

“Sure.... It isn’t much of a house.”

“I’m not so certain about that. Anyway, I want to come. We’ll talk about it again this evening. You ask your mother when she’ll let me----”

“You might come to-night---instead of me coming to the hotel----”

“No, I want to talk with you alone.”

Davy looked relieved.... He was on his way presently, and the town appeared better to Bellair that afternoon. At five he was in the hotel-lobby when a hand plucked his sleeve and he looked down into the whitest, most terrified face, he had ever seen.

“I’m fired!” was the intelligence that came up from it, and there was reproach, too.

“Come on upstairs, but first take it from me that you’ll be glad of it, in ten minutes----”

Bellair had to furnish a swift, heroic antidote for that agony.

“You haven’t been home, of course?” the man asked in the elevator.

“No.”

“Could we send a messenger to your mother--so she wouldn’t worry, and you wouldn’t have to go home until after we talk?”

“Yes.”

“All right, I’ll see to that at once.”

Davy wrote with trembling hands. The messenger was asked to bring an answer from Mrs. Acton.

“Now tell me,” said Bellair.

“Old Mr. Seth was down when I got back. You know he only comes down for an hour or two now in the middle of the day. He called me to him, and asked where I had been to lunch. I said with you. That was all, until four o’clock, when Mr. Eben came to me and asked if you had shown me anything--a letter from Lot & Company, for instance. I said yes. He went away, and at half-past four, he called me again, handed me my weekly envelope, saying that they would not need me any longer. I came right here. It seemed, I couldn’t go home----”

“Davy, lad, I’m glad I’m not broke, but if I were and couldn’t do a thing to make up--it would be a lucky day for you.”

Bellair ordered supper served in the room. They were free and alone. Faith returned to the boy, enough for the hour. Davy was consulted carefully upon the details of the order, a subtle suggestion from Bellair from time to time. Something of the long dinners on the _Jade_ had come to his mind in this rôle. He had learned much about food that voyage, the profundity and emptiness of the subject. Bellair told his story, making it very clear to Davy--this at first:

“The office was doing to me just what it would do to you, Davy. It was breaking me down. The floors of Lot & Company are filled with heart-broken men. They do not know it well; some of them could never know, but there are secrets in the breasts of men there, that you wouldn’t dream of. It is so all over New York. Trade makes it so--offices, the entire city, crowded with heart-broken men.... They say first, ‘Why, every one is out for himself and the dollar--why not I?’ You and I were taught so in our little schooling. Then Lot & Company taught us. They are old masters--generations of teachers. Cramped and bleak, but loyal to the one verb--_get_. In all the Lot family, Davy, there is not a true life principle such as you brought to the office in the beginning. But if Lot & Company were unique--they would be an interesting study. The city is crowded with such firms--heart-breakers of men, the slow, daily, terrible grind; every movement, every expression, a lie--until to those inside, the lie is reality--and the truth a forbidden and terrible stranger. Every man has his Lot & Company.

“Davy, I breathed a bit of open that Sunday--so that I could see, but the next morning it closed about me again. It was Mr. Prentidd who helped me out. They stole from him and lied to him. Face to face, eye to eye, old Seth Wetherbee, the Quaker, lied to him, taking hundreds of dollars in the lie--millionaires taking hundreds of dollars from a poor inventor. I had the book of the London transaction before me, which showed the truth as they talked, and Mr. Sproxley came and took the book from me, and shut it in the safe.... And then when I left, they knew I had their secrets. You wondered why they called me a thief, when I was not. It was plain, Davy, to spoil anything I might say about their methods. Instantly they discredited me, because I was one of six or seven in the office who knew that they were thieves and liars. And why did they fire you to-day for lunching with me? Because they were afraid of what I might have told you. And why did they send Broadwell to Philadelphia when they knew he was to have lunch with me? For fear of what I might tell Broadwell. Even now they will not tell the different floors that I am exonerated.... But they are afraid, Davy--that’s their hell. That is their life--fear and the lie. Imagine men standing straight up to heaven--spines lifted from the ground, but going back to the ground--who knows but their souls already belly-down?--because they break the hearts of men, and live with fear and the lie.”

He told of Fleury and Stackhouse and the Faraway Woman--of McArliss, of striking the reef, and day by day in the open boat.... Davy’s eyes bulged. The boy saw Stackhouse at one end and quiet manhood in the other. He sat with Bellair, whom he could understand, in the point of balance between these forces. Bellair told of the stars and the child, and the distance from which they viewed the little things of the world and the grand simplicity of God. He pictured the man Fleury had become--the straight-seeing, the fearless, the ignited man, who mastered the lie in his heart and the animal in his abdomen--the man he, Bellair, wanted to be, and wanted Davy to be.... The _Formahaut_ came, with Spika agleam to the northward, and Fleury died--the picture in his mind of a man, rising rather than falling.... Bellair told him of the first moment he heard the real voice of Fleury, as he stood on the tilted deck of the _Jade_ in the dark, while he went back for water.... “I’ll hold a place for you!”

“A real man always says that, Davy. A real man will hold a place for you. And I thought, as I saw Stackhouse die and remembered his life, that he was the saddest and most terrible animal in human form. He was a glutton and a coward, but mainly he broke his own heart and not others. He was a slave to his stomach, but there was life, not creeping death, in his mind. I saw the pictures that moved there, low, vivid pictures, animal dreams, but he was not a destroyer of children or a breaker of the hearts of men. Low Nature was loose in him, but it was not a predatory instinct alone. Having enough, he could give. He could give fifty thousand dollars and a wallet full of valuable papers for a bottle of whiskey--but the Lots and the Wetherbees would have died clutching their money. I learned Stackhouse, Davy--only to understand that there is a depth below his. I think I should have taken you out somehow--if they hadn’t let you go----”

Davy asked questions, and the story came better and better. The thing that held him especially was the last days in the open boat.

“And did you really suffer less when you decided to make it a fast?”

“Yes, that was true in my case. Many have set out to fast ten days, and done with as little as we did. Of course it was harrowing, because we didn’t know when it would end; then the little baby was there, and the mother.”

“And you think _he_ was really as happy as he said?”

“Davy, lad, Fleury was a prince. He would have given you his shirt. He had himself going so strong _for us_--that the fire of happiness ran through him. I’ll give you some books about that. It’s really a fact. You can’t suffer pain, when you’ve got something really fine up your sleeve for another. Perhaps you’ve felt it at Christmas----”

“You’re all out of yourself-like----”

“That’s it,” said the man.

More words would have stuck in his throat. Davy got it--got something of it. Bellair had come to ask so little, that this seemed a great deal.... He followed Davy down and into the street. It was still two hours before he was due at the _Castle_.

“How long does it take to get to your house, Davy?”

“About twenty-five minutes. It’s ’way down town.”

“Suppose I should go home and meet your mother. I have the time----”

“Yes, come with me. She will be watching.”

They passed a delicatessen-store, ripe cherries in the window, and a counter full of provisions that would have been far more thrilling had they not dined so well.

“Do you suppose we might take home an armful of these things?” Bellair asked.

Davy dissuaded weakly.... That clerk must have thought him mad, for Bellair merely pointed to bottles and jars and baskets--until they were both loaded. There was a kind of passion about it for the man. He hated to stop; in fact did not, until it occurred to him that this was not the last night of the world, and that Davy doubtless required many more substantial matters, which would furnish a rapturous forenoon among the stores--to-morrow forenoon....

They sat in an almost empty downtown subway train, their bundles about them, the stops called by the guard. They both hunched a little, when the stop nearest Lot & Company’s was called, but did not speak. Farther and farther downtown--the last passengers leaving. It was the hour the crowds move upward. Strange deep moments for Bellair--moments in which this was more than Davy sitting beside him. This was Boy--Davy Acton but the symbol of a great need.

6

A hurried walk to the east with their bundles to a quarter that Bellair had not known before, past the great stretches of massive buildings which the day had abandoned, to a low and older sort that carried on a night-life of their own, where children cried, halls were narrow, and the warmth became heaviness.... A plump little woman who had not lost hope (she did not see the stranger at first because the boy filled her eyes); a dark, second-floor hall, a little room with a lamp and a red table-cloth; a door at either end, and opposite the door they entered, one window.... How bewildered she was with the bundles, desiring to prepare something for them right away. Indeed, it would have helped her to be active in their behalf.... Bellair was smiling.

Davy told part and Bellair part. Presently all was forgotten in the presence of the calamity that had befallen. It was slow to change her mind about Lot & Company. Davy had impressed upon her for two years the lessons administered there. Not to be changed in a moment, this estimate--that before all poverty, before all need, and above all hope, a place at Lot & Company’s was a permanent place, “if a fellow did his part”--that Lot & Company was an honest house. Davy told of the paper Mr. Bellair had forced from them, and Bellair touched upon the life he had led in those halls, just a little and with haste. To help him to speak authoritatively, he added that he would help Davy to another position.... Then he looked around, and glanced at his watch. There was a small anteroom which they occupied.... Bellair had asked about the other door. “An empty room,” Mrs. Acton told him.

Of course it was for rent. On the spur of the moment, he declared he would take it, asked her to rent it for him, insisting on paying in advance. He would come in the morning--have his things brought later.... No, Davy was not to look for a position to-morrow. Davy must devote himself to him to-morrow. He left them happily. The mother called after him in hopeless excitement that he had left enough to rent the room all summer.

He did not show the Lot & Company paper to Bessie; in fact, he never showed it but once, and that was to Davy Acton immediately after it was obtained. He had thought of taking it across the street to show the landlady, but perhaps that would merely have added to her living confusion. It had been most important for Davy, but to reopen the subject with Bessie, his manner might have touched an “I-told-you-so” indelicacy.... She was happy when he found her that night. Clothes in quantity were already begun--the next ten forenoons at the dressmakers’. She thanked him charmingly, studied him with a quizzical expression that invariably haunted him afterward.

Bellair could never tell just what would do it, but occasionally through an hour’s chat, he would say something, just enough above her comprehension to challenge her. Once opened, her faculties were not slow, but the life she had chosen, held her mind so consistently to its common level that the habit was formed. Mainly when he spoke above her, she ceased to listen, ignored him; but when something he said just hit home, she praised him with animation, as one would a sudden gleam of unexpected intelligence on the part of a child. It became one of his most remarkable realisations that a man who has anything worth while to say must come down to say it, just as certainly as he must go up to get it.

The sense of adventure with her did not return this night, though she had seemed to accept him differently from before; as if he belonged, part of her impediment mainly, but at moments of surpassing value, like a machine that one packs a day for a half-hour’s work it may do. His money had purchased something.

Bellair sat in the dark of his room, feet on the window-sill, hat still on, at two o’clock, his last night in the hotel where he never had belonged. He was very tired and longed for sleep; and yet there was a different longing for sleep than that which belonged to physical weariness. It had to do with his hunger for the Faraway Woman. This startled him. What was that refreshing mystery afterward? Did he go to her in sleep--did she come? Why was it that the burden of parting invariably increased through the long days? It had been so on the ship. In the morning he could live; then the hours settled down, until it seemed he must leap back to her; the ship’s ever increasing distance at times literally twisting his faculties until he was dazed with pain.

He had not thought of this before. Why was it always when the pressure increased and the ardour mounted--that he longed for sleep?... Nothing came to his work-a-day brain from the nights. His dreams were of lesser matters--and yet, something within pulled him to unconsciousness like the rush of a tide. It gave him a sense of the vastness, a glimpse of the inner beauty of life.

Far below in the side-street a heavy, slow-trotting horse clattered by. The motors were more and more hushed, even the hell of Broadway subdued. A different set of sounds came home to him, but he did not interpret for the present; their activity playing upon deeps of their own--a bridge swung open between them and his exterior thoughts....

Slowly all exterior matters slipped away--the mother and Davy and Bessie. The bridge between the surface and the deeps swung to, and he heard the sounds that had been thrilling his real being all the time as he sat by the window--the liner whistles that crossed Manhattan from the harbour, the deep-sea bayings which seemed to be calling him home.

7

Bellair must have rested well in a few hours, for he arose early, feeling very fit in and out. For years the man he had seen in the glass when he was alone, had aroused little or no curiosity; a sort of customary forbearance rather. The fact is, he had not looked close for years. This morning as he shaved, something new regarded him from the face, still deeply dark from the open boat. He called it a glint, but would have designated it as something that had to do with power in another. It was fixed--something earned and delivered.

Perhaps it was something she had seen.

This animated him. It had come from Fleury and the fasting, but most of all from contemplating her face and her nature. Was it the arousing of his own latent will? Was it because he was lifted above Lot & Company? What part of it had come from the anguish of separation? Truly a man must build something if he manages to live against the quickened beat of a hungry heart.

The face was very thin, too. He had felt that so often as he used the morning knife, but he saw it now. Thin and dark, and the boy gone altogether.... Bellair smiled. Lot & Company had tried to take the boy. Had they not failed, the man would never have come, but something craven in the place of the boy, something tied to its own death, its soul shielded from the light--a shield of coin-metals.

He shuddered, less at the narrowness of his own escape, than at New York whose business came up to him now through the open windows.... The shaving had dragged. He was not accustomed to study his own face. The very novelty of it had held him this time--and especially the thought of what she might have seen there. Suddenly he wanted something big to take back to her--a manhood of mind and an integrity of soul--something to match that superb freedom she had wrung from the world. A thousand times the different parts of her story had returned to his mind, always filling him with awe and wonder. She had come like one with a task, and set about it from a child, against all odds, putting all laws of men beneath--as if the task had been arranged before she came. He knew that the essence of this freedom was in the hearts of women everywhere, but she had made it manifest, dared all suffering for it. And yet with all the struggle behind her, the gentleness which he had come to know in her nature was one of the great revelations. It gave him a vision of the potential beauty of humanity; it made him understand that one must be powerful before one can be gentle; that one must master one’s self before one dare be free. All that he had was far too little to bring home to her. This morning he felt that nothing short of the impossible was worth going after.

A little later as he was leaving the room, the telephone rang. The operator said that a gentleman wanted to see him. On the lower floor, Bellair glanced into the eyes of a young man who wanted something; “glanced _into_” is somewhat inaccurate; rather his eyes glanced from the other’s, and took away a peculiar, indescribable interest. It was the look of a colt he had seen, a glitter of wildness and irresponsibility in a face that was handsome but not at its best.

Bellair had seen something of the expression in the faces of young men who had been fathered too much; those who had not met the masterful influence of denial, and had been allowed to lean too long. The face had everything to charm and to express beauty and reality with, but the inner lines of it were not formed; the judgments lacking, the personal needs too imperious. He had made the most of well-worn clothing, but appeared to feel keenly the poorness of it.

“I came in here yesterday,” he said hastily. “It all happened because the ledger was turned back. I glanced at it, as one will, and standing out from the page was ‘Auckland, N. Z.’ It was as if written in different colour to me. I followed the line back to the name--and tried to see you yesterday afternoon and last night. You didn’t come in----”

“You come from Auckland?” Bellair asked.

“Yes----”

“How long?”

“It’s more than a year.... Small thing to meet a stranger on, but it was all I had. Auckland is so far and so different--that when I saw it--it seemed there must be a chance----”

“Of course. I know how it is,” said Bellair. “Do you want to get back?”

“That isn’t it, exactly, though I haven’t anything here----”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“N-no.”

“Come in with me and we’ll talk. I have a half-hour to spare.”

Bellair heard his voice and wondered at the coldness of it. He remembered afterward the covered billiard-tables at the far end of the hall and the dimness of the hall’s length, as he led the way. His own custom was a pot of coffee and a bit of toast, but the other’s possible need of food had a singular authority over him, so he made out that this was one of the main feeding features of his day.... But the other was intent upon certain things beside food. He had been unlucky. Everything that he had tried in the year of New York had failed him somehow--little ventures, positions lost--and always some one was to blame, not this one who spoke and had suffered so. Bellair hearkened for one note that would confine itself to the unfinished mouth and the unstable character; one note that would suggest the possibility of a clue that the series of failures lay in his own shortcomings of strength and quality, but the boy had not this suggestion in his heart.

“Are you married?” Bellair asked.

“No.”

There was an instant’s lull, and then was turned off another story of misfortune:

“... I didn’t want to marry her. I got her in trouble down in New Zealand. Her father wanted me to marry her--was willing to pay for it--but a fellow can’t take a chance like that. We came up together with the kid to New York, but everything broke bad for me----”

The voice went on, but Bellair lost his face. There was a greenish-yellow light between their faces, at least, for Bellair’s eyes, and the floor seemed shaken with heavy machinery. Bellair knew the burn of hate, and the thirst to kill--and then he was all uncentred, like a man badly wounded. He arose.

“... The fact is, I don’t think she was quite _right_. None of them are----”

“I won’t be able to hear any more of that just now,” Bellair said slowly. “I’m leaving this hotel to-day for other quarters. But to-morrow morning at ten, I shall be here and listen to what you want. Perhaps I can set you straight a bit--for the present, anyway. And this--is so you won’t miss any meals in the meantime----”

Bellair handed him money.

“Please excuse me,” he added. “And finish your breakfast----”

He called the waiter and signed the card. Then he turned as if to look around the room. He located the door by which they had entered, drew his hands strangely across his eyes. Effusive gratefulness was seeking his ears from the young man in the chair. Bellair lifted his hand as if to cut off the voice, and then started for the door, his step hastening.

8

It was truly a tenement quarter in which Davy and his mother lived. The fact awed Bellair somewhat. Had he been a cripple in a wheeled-chair, confined to one side of one block, he could have found a life’s work.... Little faces that choked him everywhere. One might toss coins at their feet, but the futility of that was like a cry to God.

Davy’s mother was making his room ready. By some chance it faced the east; between ten and noon, there was sunlight. Forty years ago it had been the kitchen of a second-floor apartment, doubtless respectable. Only the scars of the kitchen fixtures remained, like organs gone back to a rudiment in swift involution. Water now was to be had in but one place on each floor--in the hall, and the natives came there with their pitchers and cans as tropical villagers, morning and evening to the well.

Mrs. Acton had spared a bit of carpet, which looked as if it had been scrubbed; and just below the window the tip of a heaven-tree waved. It was thin as his single bed, but even that growth seemed miraculously attained, as if the seed must have held all the nourishment. Bellair stared down through shadows and litter, and could discern no more than a crack in the stone pavement, from which this leafy creature had come to him. Quite as miraculously it was, with the myriad children in the streets and halls. Certainly this was a place to keep tender. Davy had gone forth on an errand.

“What was he interested in especially when he was little?” Bellair asked.

“Boats--boats,” said the mother.

It struck the man queerly that he had not noted this. Davy had devoured his little list of sea stories, and had listened as no one else to the open boat narrative, but the man fancied it just the love of adventure. Bellair’s mother might have said the same thing.

“Did he draw them, you mean?” he asked.

“Yes, and played with them. His father was a seaman, Mr. Bellair.”

Bellair’s father had not been a seaman, but there was little to that. They were one in the initial proclivity. Perhaps if the truth were shaken down, there was something in this fact that had to do with their relation.

“Could I have breakfast and supper here with you?” he asked suddenly.

The woman looked startled. “You see, I am away three days a week.”

It was Bellair’s idea to make this impossible, so he insisted:

“My wants are simple. I might not be here always to supper--but, of course, I should want to pay for it. It would be pleasant--we three together--and no matter to me if supper were a bit late. You see, Mrs. Acton, now that I’ve begun, I insist on having a home. I lived in one room for five years, and that sort of thing is ended. A hotel is no better.”

Davy returned and Bellair took him forth at once, impatient to continue the adventure of the purchases, begun the night before. Hours passed. Once Davy looked up to him in a mixture of awe and joy:

“Why are you buying so many things for us, Mr. Bellair?”

“Sit down,” the man answered.

They were in a retail clothier’s. The salesman drew back.

“Davy,” said Bellair, “it’s the most natural thing. First I have the money and you have the needs. Second, we are friends----”

Bellair had felt many things hammering for utterance, but when he had come thus far, he found that the whole ground was covered.... The boy hurried home, but Bellair was not ready. With all his affection for the lad, he wanted to be alone. He had held himself to Davy’s needs for hours; but through it all, the sentences--so brief and thoughtless across the breakfast table--recurred smitingly. They hurt everything in him and in an incredible fashion. He marvelled that he had been able to reply quietly. His face burned now, and he thought of the Faraway Woman--how gentle she had been, blaming nothing, holding no sense of being wronged. It was that which helped him now, though his heart was hot and aching.... One must have compassion for the world--one whose home is the house of such a woman.

“It must not hurt the Gleam,” he said half-aloud. This was the burden of all his effort. “The Gleam is hers. I must not let the thought of this touch the Gleam--not even in my mind.”

The young man was stranded in New York. They met as arranged the next morning. Many difficulties were related, and the perversities of outside influences and the actions of others. The great regret was that at a certain time when he _had_ the money more than a year ago, the young man had delayed for a day to purchase a certain little tobacconist’s shop on Seventh avenue. A friend of his had advised him against it, and plucked the fruit himself. This gave Bellair an idea.

In the next ten days, everything seemed waiting for the manager of the _Follies_ to decide the case of Bessie Brealt. Davy was permitted to look for a new job, but Bellair made light of his unsuccess.... He did not look up Broadwell again, understanding clearly that the advertising-man would endanger his position in calling on him. Bellair was not ready to be responsible for such a loss to Broadwell. Employés of Lot & Company did not change easily.... He was frequently, but never long with Bessie during these days. There were moments of disturbing sweetness, and moments that he struggled quickly to forget, as Nature sets about hastily to cover unseemly matters upon the ground.

Now that the great event of her life had come, Bessie required much sleep, and cared for her beauty as never before. She already lived, for the most part, in the actual substance of victory, as only the young dare to do; yet she lost none of her zeal in preparation.... Bellair held to the original idea, though the means was not yet articulate. He was sensitive enough to realise that a man may be impertinent, even when trying to help another.

The tremendous discovery in this interval was that the open boat events which had proved so salutary and constructive in his own case, did not appear to have a comparable effect upon others when he related them. He began to believe that he had not authority, and that he must somehow try to gain authority by making good with men. He had his story to tell. He had seen the spirit and the flesh--beast and saint--watched them die. All life and hope and meaning were caught and held, as he saw it, between the manner of the deaths of two men. This experience had changed him--if not for the better--then he was insane.

It was hard for him to grasp, that the thing which had changed him could not change others--even Bessie. Yet those who listened, except Davy and his mother, appeared to think that he was making much of an adventure for personal reasons. He tried to write his story, but felt the bones of his skull as never before. He began, “I am a simple man,” but deep guile might be construed to that.... “I want nothing,” he wrote, “but to make you see the half that I saw in the open boat,” and he heard the world replying in his consciousness, “The open boat is on this man Bellair’s nerves. It’s his mania. The sun or the thirst _did_ touch him a bit.”...

He became afraid to talk much even with Bessie, and New York boomed by, leaving him out--out.... He tried to lift the signs of misery on the way to the home of Davy’s mother, and in the surrounding halls, but the extent and terror of it dismayed him; and remarkably enough, always this same answer came: that he must get himself and the South Sea business in hand before a true beginning could be made here....

It wasn’t on Seventh avenue that he found a cigar store to suit his purpose in this interval, but the promise was certainly as good as the old one. He put the New Zealand young man in charge, on a basis designed to challenge any one’s quality; and having done this in a businesslike fashion, Bellair made haste to escape. The sense was cool and abiding in his mind that in this case, as in Lot & Company’s, the circle was complete. Still he retained the suspicion that the young man did not believe him sane.

He followed the singer when she permitted, to dressmakers, rehearsals, quartette performances and meals; found other men following singers similarly, in all their byways of routine; he disliked them, disliked himself.

He had not told her of his fortune, because he knew in his heart it would change everything. He helped in many small ways, and allowed her to believe what she chose. She had never identified him with large things, did not think the present arrangement could last, and made as much as possible of the convenience. They were together on the night before her try-out, though as usual it was but a matter of moments. Bellair used most of them in silence. The tension of hurry always stopped his throat. He longed for one full day with her, a ramble without the clock; yet what would he do with it--he, who dared not go to the water-front alone--to whom the night whistling of steamers in the harbour was like the call of the child of his heart?

“You are at your best,” he said. “Your voice was never sweeter than to-night. You must go now and sleep. To-morrow, of course, you will win, and when may I come?”

Her face clouded. Perhaps because he said the opposite, the thought of possible defeat came now with a clearness which had not before appealed to her unpracticed imagination.

“You may come to my room at twelve--no, at one. I shall go there at once after the trial--and you shall be first.”

It pleased him, and since she did not seem inclined to leave just then, Bellair found himself talking of the future. Perhaps he did not entirely cover his zeal to change a little her full-hearted giving of self to the foam. Bessie bore it. He had not spoken of the open boat, but something he said was related to it in her mind.

“To-morrow will settle everything,” she declared.... “And I don’t like that other woman on the ship. She isn’t human. You think it amazing because she didn’t cry and scream. That isn’t everything.... She’d be lost and unheard of here in New York.”

“Yes, that is probably true.”

“It’s all right for people who don’t write or paint or sing--to talk about real life and what’s right work in the world, but artists see it differently. Anyway, it’s the only job we’ve got.”

Bellair never forgot that, or rather what she had meant to say.

“Singing is what drew me to you, Bessie. What I object to is what the world tries to do with its singers, and that so many singers fall for it.”

“The world lets you more or less alone--until you make good. Plenty of time after that to answer back.”

She yawned. It was as near reality as they had gotten, and Bellair, who asked so little, had a glimpse again of the loveliness he had first taken to sea--even to the kiss at the last. She also granted him this:

“You’ve been good to me. I couldn’t have done without you----”

He lay awake long. The house in which he lived was very silent, and it pressed so close to the sea.

9

She was only partly dressed when he came early the next afternoon, but was not long in letting him in. Before any words, he knew that she had won. A man often has to readjust hastily after the night before. It was so with Bellair now. Her eyes were bright with emotions, but a certain hardness was shining there. It was an effort for her to think of him and be kind. He would have seen it all in another’s story.

His glance kept turning to her bare arm, upon which a hideous vaccination-scar was revealed. _They_ had not thought of her singing in those days.... She had never spoken of her house or her people. It was enough that those days were finished. Bellair could understand that. Her victory was all through her now, satisfying, completing her. She did not love money for its own sake or she would have treated him differently. All her surplus energy, even her passion, was turned to this open passage of her career. Having that, previous props could be kicked away; at least, Bellair felt this.

“Yes, it’s all done. A month of solid rehearsal--then the road. I take the second part, but I hope to come back in the first----”

“You were at your best at the trial?”

“After the first moment or two.... And no more Brandt’s or _Castle_--no more with the other three--God, how sick I am of them--and of this room!”

“Will you lunch with me?”

“Yes--I have until three.”

It was shortly after one. She talked with animation about her work, her eyes held to a glistening future. She finished her dressing leisurely, with loving touches, abandoning herself completely to the mirror as an old actress might, having conceded the essential importance of attractions. She studied her face and figure as if she were the maid to them. Bessie dressed for the world, not for herself, certainly not for Bellair. Without, in the world--streets, restaurants, theatres--there existed an abstraction which must be satisfied. She had not yet entered upon that perilous adventure of dressing for the eyes of one man. She did not think of Bellair as she lifted her arms to her hair. On no other morning could she have been so far from the sense of him in her room. Empires have fallen because a woman has lifted her naked arms to her hair with a man in the room.

An older woman would have rewarded him for being there; an older woman never would have put on her hat for the street without remembering her humanity. There was something in Bessie that reserved the kiss for the last. Possibly after the last song of the day, a kiss remained. She put on the flowers he brought; even that did not remind her, nor the dress he had bought for her--asking him if he approved, not that she cared, but because she was turning before the glass with the thing upon her body and mind. She would have asked a child the same.

They went to Beathe’s for luncheon, which was also Bessie’s breakfast. There, it may have been that she was ready to forget herself, knowing it would keep for a little. In any event, she seemed to see Bellair as he ordered for her, as if recalling that he had made many things move easily of late, and that it was pleasant to have these matters, even luncheons, conducted by another. Thinking of him, the voyage was instantly associated:

“I said last night that I didn’t like that woman,” she began. “I didn’t mean just that, of course. But a woman can see another woman better than a man. There are women who keep their mouths shut and get great reputations for being wise and all that. They never associate with women. You’ll always find them with men, playing sister and helping and saying little. Men get to think they’re the whole thing----”

“I suppose there are,” said Bellair.

He wished she had not picked up this particular point again; and yet a certain novelty about this impressed him now, and recurred many times afterward--that it was she who had broached the subject.

“Do you think a man knows men better than a woman does?” he asked.

Bessie had not thought of it; she was not sure.

Nor was Bellair. “The fact is, it doesn’t greatly matter what women think of women, and what men think of men--compared to what men and women think of each other,” he observed.

“You say you didn’t know that other man at first--that preacher,” she remarked.

“That’s true. There had to be danger--I had to hear his voice in danger.”

Bellair was lifted to his life-theme. He had never really told it in one piece. He did not mean to now, but Fleury came clearly to mind. The food was served and it was quiet behind the palms. If he could only say something for her heart. She seemed ready. Points of human interest were crowding to mind--perhaps he could hold her with them.

“... His every thought was for others,” he was saying. “I disliked him at first, but he was so kind and good-natured throughout that he could not fail to impress me a bit, but I didn’t really see him before the night of the wreck, when he arose to take things in hand. It was not noise, nor voice, but a different force. He seemed to rise--so that the huge Stackhouse was just a squealing pig before him. He had no fear. You looked into his face and wanted to be near him, and to do what he said. I caught his secret. A fool would. It was because he wasn’t thinking of himself. It seems, Bessie, as sure as you live--that the more a man gives out in that pure way Fleury did for us all--the more power floods into him. It came to him in volumes. We all knew it--even Stackhouse----

“And this is what I’m getting at. _You’ve_ got the chance to use it. I can’t yet. I seem to be all clotted with what I want, but you can! You did. You pulled me out of the crowd, not knowing me at all--made me come to you--changed me. You can _give_ with your singing--to hundreds--so that they will answer in their thoughts, and do things strange to themselves at first. They’ll want to die for you--but that isn’t the thing for you. You must want to sing for them--want to give them your soul all the time. Greater things will come to you than this--this which makes you happy. All that the world could give you--you will come to see--doesn’t matter--but what you can give the world----”

He saw her falling away from his story. It crippled him. He did not think he could fail so utterly.

“But you _were_ a thief,” she said.

“I--was what?”

“You preach all the time, but you were a thief----”

He had heard aright. His hand reached for the wallet, that contained the letter from Lot & Company, but fell from it again.

“If you like,” he answered, “but I saw a beast die in the open boat--and saw a saint die----”

“You preach--preach--preach!” she cried, and her own points of view returned with greater intensity. “You’ve been kind--but, oh, you bore me so! You have been kind--but oh, don’t think you fail to make one pay the price! You were sunstruck, or crazed--and you come back preaching. I’m sick of you--just in my highest day, after the months of struggle--I hate you----”

Bellair heard a ship’s bell. It was dark about him--a cool, serene dark. The air fanned him softly and sweet; the place rocked--just for an instant, as if he were at sea.

“I hate you when you preach,” she finished. Her voice was softer. He knew she was smiling, but did not look at her face. She had delivered him. He was calm, and ineffably free, the circle finished.

“_Oh, that we two were Maying_----” he muttered, his thoughts far down the seas--remote and insular, serene and homing thoughts.

“It takes two to sing that,” she said.

“Yes.”

“But, I’m so sick of that----”

“You must have sung it many times,” he said.

He did not want to linger. A certain hush had come to her from him. It was not yet three.... He seemed surprised to find it broad day in the street. She touched his sleeve, drawing him to the curb, away from the crowds which astonished him. Clearly something was wrong with his head.

“Bessie--before your salary begins--have you everything? Isn’t there something----?”

She smiled and hesitated. He rubbed his eyes.

“I’m so glad I thought of it,” he said, drawing forth the brown wallet.

His gift bewildered her, but she did not ask him this time what he wanted. Instead she asked:

“But where are you going?”

“Why, Bessie, I’m going home.”