CHAPTER IV.

Vane's dressing-room was a tasteful chamber, cool and light. Its walls, its furniture, and its hangings told of a wide range of interest. There was nowhere any obvious bias; the æsthetic was no more insistent than the sporting. Orson Vane loved red-haired women as Henner painted them, and he played the aristocratic waltzes of Chopin; but he also valued the cruel breaking-bit that he had brought home from Texas, and read the racing-column in the newspaper quite as carefully as he did the doings of his society. Some hint of this diversity of tastes showed in this, the most intimate room of his early mornings. There were some of those ruddy British prints that are now almost depressingly conventional with men of sporting habits; signed photographs of more or less prominent and personable personages were scattered pell-mell. All the chairs and lounges were of wicker; so much so that some of the men who hobnobbed with Vane declared that a visit to his dressing-room was as good as a yachting cruise.

The morning was no longer young. On the avenue the advance guard of the fashionable assault upon the shopping district was already astir. The languorous heat that reflects from the town's asphalt was gaining in power momentarily.

Orson Vane, fresh from a chilling, invigorating bath, a Japanese robe of exquisite coolness his only covering, sat regarding an addition to his furniture. It had come while he slept. It was proof that the adventure of the night had not been a mere figment of his dreams.

He touched a bell. To the man who answered the call, he said:

"Nevins, I have bought a new mirror. You are to observe a few simple rules in regard to this mirror. In the first place, to avoid confusion, it is always to be called the New Mirror. Is that plain?

"Quite so, sir."

"I may have orders to give about it, or notes to send, or things of that sort, and I want no mistakes made. In the next place, the cord that uncovers the mirror is never to be pulled, never to be touched, save at my express order. Not--under any circumstances. I do not wish the mirror used. Have you any curiosity left, Nevins?

"None, sir."

"So much the better. In Lord Keswick's time, I think, you still had a touch of that vice, curiosity. Your meddling got you into something of a scrape. Do you remember?"

"Oh, sir," said the man, with a little gesture of shame and pain, "you didn't need reminding me. Have I ever forgotten your saving me from that foolishness?"

"You're right, Nevins; I think I can trust you. But this is a greater trust than any of the others. A great deal depends; mark that; a very great deal. It is not an ordinary mirror, this one; not one of the others compares with it; it is the gem of my collection. Not a breath is to touch it, save as I command."

"I'll see to it, sir."

"Any callers, Nevins?"

"Mr. Moncreith, sir, looked in, but left no word. And the postman."

"No duns, Nevins?"

"Not in person, sir."

"Dear me! Is my position on the wane? When a man is no longer dunned his credit is either too good or too bad; or else his social position is declining." He picked up the tray with the letters, ran his eye over them quickly, and said, "Thank the stars; they still dun me by post. There should be a law against it; yet it is as sweet to one's vanity as an angry letter from a woman. Nevins, is the day dull or garish?"

"It's what I should call bright, sir."

"Then you may lay out some gloomy clothes for me. I would not add to the heat wittingly. And, Nevins!"

"Yes sir."

"If anyone calls before I breakfast, unless it happens to be Professor Vanlief,--Vanlief, Nevins, of the Vanliefs of New Amsterdam--say I am indisposed."

He dressed himself leisurely, thinking of the wonderful adventures into living that lay before him. He rehearsed the simple instructions that Vanlief had given him the night before. It was all utterly simple. As one looked into the mirror, the spirit of that one lay on the surface, waiting for the next person that glanced that way. There followed a complete exodus of the spirit from the one body into the other. The recipient was himself plus the soul of the other. The exodus left that other in a state something like physical collapse. There would be, for the recipient of the new personality, a sense of double consciousness; the mind would be like a palimpsest, the one will and the one habit imposed upon the other. The fact that the person whose spirit passed from him upon the magic mirror was left more or less a wreck was cause for using the experiment charily, as the Professor took pains to warn Orson. There was a certain risk. The mirror might be broken; one could never tell. It would be better to pick one's subjects wisely, always with a definite purpose. This man might be used to teach that side of life; that man another. It was not a thing to toy with. It was to be played with as little as human life itself. Vivisection was a pastime to this; this implicated the spirit, the other only the body.

Consideration of the new avenues opening for his intelligence had already begun to alter Vane's outlook on life. Persons who remarked him, a little later, strolling the avenue, wondered at the brilliance of his look. He seemed suddenly sprayed with a new youth, a new enthusiasm. It was not, as some of his conversations of that morning proved, an utter lapse into optimism on his part; but it was an exchange of the mere passive side of pessimism for its healthier, more buoyant side. He was able to smile to himself as he met the various human marionettes of the avenue; the persons whose names you would be sure to read every Sunday in the society columns, and who seemed, consequently, out of place in any more aristocratic air. He bowed to the newest beauty, he waved a hand to the most perennial of the faded beaux. The vociferous attire of the actors, who idled conspicuously before the shop-windows, caused him inward shouts of laughter; a day or so ago the same sight would have embittered his hour for him.

At Twenty-third street something possessed him to patronize one of the Sicilian flower-sellers. The man had, happily, not importuned him; he merely held his wares, and waited, mutely. Orson put a sprig of lily-of-the-valley into his coat.

Before he left his rooms he had spent an hour or so writing curt notes to the smartest addresses in town. All his invitations were declined by him; a trip to Cairo, he had written, would keep him from town for some time. He took this ruse because he felt that the complications of his coming experiment might be awkward; it was as well to pave the way. Certainly he could not hope to fulfil his social obligations in the time to come. An impression that he was abroad was the best way out of the dilemma. The riddance from fashionable duties added to his gaiety; he felt like a school-boy on holiday.

It was in this mood that he saw, on the other side of the avenue, a figure that sent a flush to his skin. There was no mistaking that wonderful hair; in the bright morning it shone with a glow a trifle less garish than under the electric light, but it was the same, the same. To make assurance surer, there, just under the hat--a hat that no mere male could have expressed in phrases, a thing of gauze and shimmer--lay a spray of lilies-of-the-valley. The gown--Vane knew at a glance that it was a beautiful gown and a happy one, though as different as possible from the filmy thing she had worn when first he saw her, in the mirror, at night.

At first unconsciously, and then with quite brazen intent, he found himself keeping pace, on his side of the street, with the girl opposite. He knew not what emotion possessed him; no hint of anything despicable came to him; he had forgotten himself utterly, and he was merely following some sweet, blind impulse. Orson Vane was a man who had tasted the froth and dregs of his town no less thoroughly than other men; there were few sensations, few emotions, he had not tried. Almost the only sort of woman he did not know was The woman. In the year of his majority he had made a summer of it on the Sound in his steam yacht, and his enemies declared that all the harbors he had anchored in were left empty of both champagne and virtue. Yet not even his bitterest enemy had ever accused him of anything vulgar, brazen, coarse, conspicuous.

Luke Moncreith was a friend of Vane's, there was no reason for doubting that. But even he experienced a little shock when he met Vane, was unseen of him, and was then conscious, in a quick turn of the head, that Vane's eyes, his entire vitality, were upon a woman's figure across the avenue.

"The population of the Bowery, of Forty-second street, and of the Tenderloin," said Moncreith to himself, "have a name for that sort of thing." He clicked his tongue upon his teeth once or twice. "Poor Orson! Is it the beginning of the end? Last night he seemed a little mad. Poor Orson!" Then, with furtive shame at his bad manners, he turned about and watched the two. Even at that distance the sunlight glowed like a caress upon the hair of her whom Orson followed. "The girl," exclaimed Moncreith, "the girl of the mirror." He came to a halt before a photographer's window, the angle of which gave him a view of several blocks behind.

Orson Vane, in the meanwhile, was as if there was but one thing in life for him: a meeting with this radiant creature with the lilies. Once he thought he caught a sidelong glance of hers; a little smile even hovered an instant upon her lips; yet, at that distance, he could not be sure. None of the horrible things occurred to him as possibilities; that she might be an adventuress, or a mere masquerading shop-girl, or an adroit soubrette. No tangible intention came to the young man; he had not made it clear to himself whether he would keep on, and on, and on, until she came to her own door; whether he would accost her; whether he would leave all to chance; or whether he would fashion circumstances to his end.

The girl turned into a little bookshop that, as it happened, was one of Vane's familiar haunts. It was a place where one could always find the new French and German things, and where the shopman was not a mere instrument for selling whatever rubbish publishers chose to shoot at the public. When Vane entered he found this shopman, who nodded smilingly at him, busy with a bearded German. The girl stood at a little table, passing her slim fingers lovingly over the titles of the books that lay there. It was evident that she had no wish for advice from the assistant who hovered in the background. She did not so much as glance at him. Her eyes were all for her friends in print. She did look up, the veriest trifle, it is true, when Orson came in; it was so swift, so shy a look that he, in a mist of emotions, could not have sworn to it. As for him, a boyish boldness took him to the other side of the table at which she stood; he bent over the books, and his hands almost touched her fingers. In that little, quiet nook, he became, all of a moment, once more a youth of twenty; he felt the first shy stirrings of tenderness, of worship. The names of the volumes swam for him in a mere haze. He saw nothing save only the little figure before him, the shimmer of rose upon her face passing into the ruddier shimmer of her hair; the perfume of her lilies and some yet subtler scent, redolent of fairest linen, most fragile laces and the utterest purity, came over him like a glow.

And then the marvel, the miracle of her voice!

"Oh, Mr. Vane," he heard her saying, "do help me!" Their eyes met and he was conscious of a bewildering beauty in hers; it was with quite an effort that he did not, then and there, do something absurd and stupid. His hesitation, his astonishment, cost him a second or so; before he caught his composure again, she was explaining, sweetly, plaintively, "Help me to make up my mind. About a book."

"Why did you add that?" he asked, his wits sharp now, and his voice still a little unsteady. "There are so many other things I would like to help you in. A book? What sort of a book? One of those stories where the men are all eight feet high, and wear medals, and the women are all models for Gibson? Or one of those aristocratic things where nobody is less than a prince, except the inevitable American, who is a newspaper man and an abomination? Or is it, by any chance," he paused, and dropped his voice, as if he were approaching a dreadful disclosure, "poetry?"

She shook her head. The lilies in her hair nodded, and her smile came up like a radiance in that dark little corner. And, oh, the music in her laugh! It blew ennui away as effectually as a storm whirls away a leaf.

"No," she said, "it is none of those things. I told you I had not made up my mind."

"It is a thing you should never attempt. Making up the mind is a temptation only the bravest of us can resist. One should always delegate the task to someone else."

The girl frowned gently. "If it is the fashion to talk like that," she said, "I do not want to be in the fashion."

He took the rebuke with a laugh. "It is hard," he pleaded, "to keep out of the fashion. Everything we do is a fashion of one sort or another." He glanced at her wonderful hat, at the gown that held her so closely, so tenderly. "I am sure you are in the fashion," he said.

"If Mr. Orson Vane tells me so, I must believe it," she answered. "But I wear only what suits me; if the fashion does not suit me, I avoid the fashion."

"But you cannot avoid beauty," he urged, "and to be fair is always the fashion."

She turned her eyes to him full of reproach. They said, as plainly as anything, "How crude! How stupidly obvious!" As if she had really spoken, he went on, in plain embarassment:

"I beg your pardon. I--I am very silly this morning. Something has gone to my head. I really don't think I'd better advise you about anything to read. I--"

"Oh," she interrupted, already full of forgiveness, since it was not in her nature to be cruel for more than a moment at a time, "but you must. I am really desperate. All I ask is that you do not urge a fashionable book, a book of the day, or a book that should be in the library of every lady. I am afraid of those books. They are like the bores one turns a corner to avoid."

"You make advice harder and harder. Is it possible you really want a book to read, rather than to talk about?"

"I really do," she admitted, "I told you I had no thought about the fashion."

"You are like a figure from the Middle Ages," he said, "with your notion about books."

"Am I so very wrinkled?" she asked. She put her hand to her veil, with a gesture of solicitous inquiry. "To be young," she sighed, with a pout, "and yet to seem old. I am quite a tragedy."

"A goddess," he murmured, "but not of tragedy." He laughed sharply, and took a book from the table, using it to keep his eyes from the witchery of her as he continued: "Don't you see why I'm talking such nonsense? If it meant prolonging the glimpse of you, there's no end, simply no end, to the rubbish I could talk!"

"And no beginning," she put in, "to your sincerity."

"Oh, I don't know. One still has fits and starts of it! There's no telling what might not be done; it might come back to one, like childishness in old age." He put down the book, and looked at her in something like appeal. "There is such a thing as a sincerity one is ashamed of, that one hides, and disguises, and that the world refuses to see. The world? The world always means an individual. In this case the world is--"

"The world is yours, like _Monte Cristo_," she interposed, "how embarassed you must feel. The responsibility must be enervating! I have always thought the clever thing for _Monte Cristo_ to have done was to lose the world; to hide it where nobody could find it again." She tapped her boot with her parasol, charmingly impatient. "I suppose," she sighed, "I shall have to ask that stupid clerk for a book, after all. He looks as if he would far rather sell them by weight."

"No, no, I couldn't allow that. Consider me all eagerness to aid you. Is it to be love, or ghosts, or laughter?"

"Love and laughter go well together," she said. "I want a book I can love and laugh with, not at."

"I know," he nodded. "The tear that makes the smile come after. You want something charming, something sweet, something that will taste pleasantly no matter how often you read it. A trifle, and yet--a treasure. Such a book as, I dare say, every writer dreams of doing once in his life; the sort of book that should be bound in rose-leaves. And you expect me to betray a treasure like that to you? And my reward? But no, I beg your pardon; I have my reward now, and here, and the debt is still mine. I can merely put you in the way of a printed page; while you--" He stopped, roving for the right word. His eyes spoke what his voice could not find. He finished, lamely, and yet aptly enough, "You--are you."

"I don't believe," she declared, with the most arch elevation of the darkest eyebrows, "that you know one book from another. You are an impostor. You are sparring for time. I have given you too much time as it is. I am going." She picked up her skirts with one slim hand, turned on a tiny heel, and looked over her shoulder with an air, a mischievousness, that made Orson ache, yes, simply ache with curiosity about her. He put out a hand in expostulation.

"Please," he pleaded, "please don't go. I have found the book. I really have. But you must take my word for it. You mustn't open it till you are at home." He handed it to the clerk to be wrapped up. "And now," he went on, "won't you tell me something? I--upon my honor, I can't think where we met?"

"One hardly expects Mr. Orson Vane to remember all the young women in society," she smiled. "Besides, if I must confess: I am only just what society calls 'out.' I have seen Mr. Orson Vane: but he has not seen me. Mr. Vane is a leader; I am--" She shrugged her shoulder, raised her eyebrows, pursed up her mouth, oh, to a complete gesture that was the prettiest, most bewildering finish to any sentence ever uttered.

"Oh," said Orson, "but you are mistaken. I have seen you. No longer ago than last night. In--"

"In a mirror," she laughed. Then she grew suddenly quite solemn. "Oh, you mustn't think I didn't know who you were. It was all very rash of me, and very improper, my speaking to you, just now, but--"

"It was very sweet," he interposed.

"But," she went on, not heeding his remark at all, "I knew you so well by sight, and I had really been introduced to you once,--one of a bevy of debutantes, merely an item in a chorus--and, besides, my father--"

"Your father?" repeated Orson, jogging his memory, "you don't mean to say--"

"My father is Augustus Vanlief," she said.

He took a little time to digest the news. The clerk handed him the book and the change. He saw, now, whence that charm, that grace, that beauty came; he recalled that the late Mrs. Vanlief had been one of the Waddells; there was no better blood in the country. With the name, too, there came the thought of the wonderful revelations that were presently to come to him, thanks to this girl's father. A sort of dizziness touched him: he felt a quick conflict between the wish to worship this girl, and the wish to probe deeper into life. It was with a very real effort that he brushed the charm of her from him, and relapsed, again, into the man who meant to know more of human life than had ever been known before.

He took out a silver pencil and held it poised above the book.

"This book," he said, "is for you, you know, not for your father. Your father and I are to be great friends but--I want to be friends, also, with--" he looked a smiling appeal, "with--whom?"

"With Miss Vanlief," she replied, mockingly. "My other name? I hate it; really I do. Perhaps my father will tell you."

She had given him the tip of her fingers, her gown had swung perfume as it followed her, and she was out and away before he could do more than give her the book, bow her good-bye, and stand in amaze at her impetuousness, her verve. The thought smote him that, on the night before, he had seen her, in the mirror, and spurned the notion of her being other than a sham, a mockery. How did he know, even now, that she was other than that? Yet, what had happened to him that he had been able so long to stay under her charm, to believe in her, to wish for her, to feel that she was hardly mortal, but some strange, sweet, splendid dream? Was he the same man who, only a few hours ago, had held himself shorn of all the primal emotions? He beat these questionings back and forth in his mind; now doubting himself, now doubting this girl. Surely she had not, in that dining-room, been sitting with her father? Would he not have seen them together? Perhaps she was with some of her family's womenfolk? Yes; now he remembered; she had been at a table with several other ladies, all elderly. He wished he knew the name one might call her, if ... if....

Luke Moncreith came into the shop. Orson caught a shadow of a frown on the other's face. Moncreith's voice was sharp and bitter when he spoke.

"Been buying the shop?" he asked.

"No," said Orson, in some wonder. "Only one book."

"Hope you'll like it," said the other, with a manner that meant the very opposite.

"I? Oh, I read it ages ago. It was for somebody else. You seem very curious about it?"

"I am. You aren't usually the man to dawdle in bookshops."

"Dawdle?" Orson turned on the other sharply. "What the deuce do you mean? Are you my keeper, or what? If I choose to, I can _live_ in this shop, can't I?"

"Oh, Lord, yes! Looks odd, just the same, you trailing in here after a petticoat, and hanging around for--" he pulled out his watch,--"for a good half hour."

Orson burst out in a sort of clenched breath of rage. He kept the phrases down with difficulty. "Better choose your words," he said. "I don't like your words, and your watch be damned. Since when have my--my friends taken to timing my actions? It's a blessing I'm going abroad."

He turned and walked out of the shop, fiercely, swiftly. As the fresh air struck his face, he put his hand to it, and shook his head, wonderingly. "What's the matter with Moncreith? With me?" He thought of the title of the book he had just given away. "Are we all as mad as that?" he asked himself.

The title was "March Hares."