Chapter 4

WINGS

I

One evening early in October Mary telephoned Farraday to ask if she could consult him with reference to the Byrdsnest. He walked over after dinner, to find her alone in the sitting room, companioned by a wood fire and the two sleeping lovebirds.

James had been very busy at the office for some time, and it was two or three weeks since he had seen Mary. Now, as he sat opposite her, it seemed to him that the leaping firelight showed unaccustomed shadows in her cheeks and under her eyes, and that her color was less bright than formerly. Was it merely the result of her care of her baby, he wondered, or was there something more?

“I fear we've already outstayed our time here, Mr. Farraday,” Mary was saying, “and yet I am going to ask you for an extension.”

Farraday lit a cigarette.

“My dear Mrs. Byrd, stay as long as you like.”

“But you don't know the measure of my demands,” she went on, with a hesitating smile. “They are so extensive that I'm ashamed. I love this little place, Mr. Farraday; it's the first real home I've ever had of my own. And Baby does so splendidly here--I can't bear the thought of taking him to the city. How long might I really hope to stay without inconveniencing you? I mean, of course, at a proper rent.”

“As far as I am concerned,” he smiled back at her, “I shall be overjoyed to have you stay as long as the place attracts you. If you like, I will give you a lease--a year, two, or three, as you will, so that you could feel settled, or an option to renew after the first year.”

“But, Mr. Farraday, your mother told me that you used to use the place, and in the face of that I don't know how I have the selfishness to ask you for any time at all, to say nothing of a lease!”

“Mrs. Byrd.” Farraday threw his cigarette into the fire, and, leaning forward, stared at the flames, his hands clasped between his knees. “Let me tell you a sentimental little story, which no one else knows except our friend Mac.” He smiled whimsically.

“When I was a young man I was very much in love, and looked forward to having a home of my own, and children. But I was unfortunate--I did not succeed in winning the woman I loved, and as I am slow to change, I made up my mind that my dream home would never come true. But I was very fond of my 'cottage in the air,' and some years later, when this little house became empty, I arranged it to look as nearly as I could as that other might have done. I used to sit here sometimes and pretend that my shadows were real. You will laugh at me, but I even have in my desk plans for an addition, an ell, containing a play room and nurseries.”

Mary gave a little pitiful exclamation, and touched his clasped hands. Meeting her eyes, he saw them dewy with sympathy.

“You are very gracious to a sentimental old bachelor,” he said, with his winning smile. “But these ghosts were bad for me. I was in danger of becoming absurdly self-centered, almost morbidly introspective. Mac, whose heart is the biggest I know, and who laughs away more troubles than I ever dreamed of, rallied me about it, and showed me that I ought to turn my disappointment to some use. This was about ten years ago, when his own life fell to pieces. I had been associated with magazines for some time, and knew how little that was really good found its way into the plainer people's homes. At Mac's suggestion I bought an insolvent monthly, and began to remodel it. 'You've got the home-and-children bug; well, do something for other people's'--was the way Mac put it to me. Later we started the two other magazines, always keeping before us our aim of giving the average home the best there is. To-day, though I have no children of my own, I like to think I'm a sort of uncle to thousands.”

He leant back, still staring into the fire. There was silence for a minute; a log fell with a crash and a flight of sparks--Farraday replaced it.

“Well, Mrs. Byrd,” he went on, “all this time the little ghost-house stood empty. No one used it but myself. It was made for a woman and for children, yet in my selfishness I locked its door against those who should rightfully have enjoyed it. Mac urged me to use it as a holiday house for poor mothers from the city, but, somehow, I could not bring myself to evict its dream-mistress.”

“Oh, I feel more than ever a trespasser!” exclaimed Mary.

He shook his head. “No, you have redeemed the place from futility--you are its justification.” He paused again, and continued in a lower tone, “Mrs. Byrd, you won't mind my saying this--you are so like that lady of long ago that the house seems yours by natural right. I think I was only waiting for someone who would love and understand it--some golden-haired young mother, like yourself, to give the key to. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that the little house should at last fulfil itself. Please keep it for as long as you need it--it will always need you.”

Mary was much moved: “I can't thank you, Mr. Farraday, but I feel deeply honored. Perhaps my best thanks lie just in loving the house, and I do that, with all my heart. You don't mind my foolish little name for it?”

“The Byrdsnest? I think it perfect.”

“And you don't mind either the alterations I have made?”

“My dear friend, while you keep this house I want it to be yours. Should you wish to take a long lease, and enlarge it, I shall be happy. In fact, I will sell it to you, if in the future you would care to buy. My only stipulation would be an option to repurchase should you decide to give it up.” He took her hand. “The Byrdsnest belongs to Elliston's mother; let us both understand that.”

Her lips trembled. “You are good to me.”

“No, it is you who are good to the dreams of a sentimentalist. And now--” he sat back smilingly--“that is settled. Tell me the news. How is my godson, how is Mr. Byrd, how fares the sable Lily?”

“Baby weighs fourteen and a half pounds,” she said proudly; “he is simply perfect. Lily is an angel.” She paused, and seemed to continue almost with an effort. “Stefan is very busy. He does not care to paint autumn landscapes, so he has begun work again in the city. He's doing a fantastic study of Miss Berber, and is very much pleased with it.”

“That's good,” said Farraday, evenly.

“But I've got more news for you,” she went on, brightening. “I've had a good deal more time lately, Stefan being so much in town, and Baby's habits so regular. Here's the result.”

She fetched from the desk a pile of manuscript, neatly penned, and laid it on her guest's knee.

“This is the second thing I wanted to consult you about. It's a book-length story for children, called 'The House in the Wood.' I've written the first third, and outlined the rest. Here's the list of chapters. It is supposed to be for children between eight and fourteen, and was first suggested to me by this house. There is a family of four children, and a regulation father and mother, nurse, governess, and grandmother. They live in the country, and the children find a little deserted cottage which they adopt to play in. The book is full of their adventures in it. My idea is--” she sat beside him, her eyes brightening with interest--“to suggest all kinds of games to the children who read the story, which seem thrilling, but are really educational. It's quite a moral little book, I'm afraid,” she laughed, “but I think story books should describe adventures which may be within the scope of the ordinary child's life, don't you? I'm afraid it isn't a work of art, but I hope--if I can work out the scheme--it may give some practical ideas to mothers who don't know how to amuse their children.... There, Mr. Editor, what is your verdict?”

Farraday was turning the pages in his rapid, absorbed way. He nodded and smiled as he looked.

“I think it's a good idea, Mrs. Byrd; just the sort of thing we are always on the lookout for. The subject might be trite enough, but I suspect you of having lent it charm and freshness. Of course the family is English, which is a disadvantage, but I see you've mixed in a small American visitor, and that he's beginning to teach the others a thing or two! Where did you learn such serpent wisdom, young lady?”

She laughed, amazed as she had been a year ago at his lightning-like apprehension.

“It isn't humbug. I do think an American child could teach ours at home a lot about inventiveness, independence, and democracy--just as I think ours might teach him something about manners,” she added, smiling.

“Admitted,” said he, laying down the manuscript, “and thank you for letting me see this. I claim the first refusal. Finish it, have it typed, and send it in, and if I can run it as a serial in The Child at Home, I shall be tremendously pleased to do so. If it goes, it ought to come out in book form, illustrated.”

“You really think the idea has something in it?”

“I certainly do, and you know how much I believe in your work.”

“Oh, I'm _so_ glad,” she exclaimed, looking far more cheerful than he had seen her that evening.

He rose to go, and held her hand a moment in his friendly grasp.

“Good night, dear Mrs. Byrd; give my love to Elliston, and remember that in him and your work you have two priceless treasures which, even alone, will give you happiness.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, her eyes shining; “good night, and thank you for the house.”

“Good night, and in the house's name, thank you,” he answered from the door.

As she closed it, the brightness slowly faded from Mary's face. She looked at the clock--it was past ten.

“Not to-night, either,” she said to herself. Her hand wandered to the telephone in the hall, but she drew it back. “No, better not,” she thought, and, putting out the lights, walked resolutely upstairs. As, candle in hand, she passed the door of Stefan's room, she looked in. His bed was smooth; a few trifles lay in orderly array upon his dressing table; boots, from which the country dust had been wiped days ago, stood with toes turned meekly to the wall. They looked lonely, she thought.

With a sigh, she entered her own room, and passed through it to the nursery. There lay her baby, soundly sleeping, his cheek on the pillow, his little fists folded under his chin. How beautiful he looked, she thought; how sweet his little room, how fresh and peaceful all the house! It was the home of love--love lay all about her, in the kind protection of the trees, in the nests of the squirrels, in the voices and faces of her friends, and in her heart. Love was all about her, and the sweetness of young life--and she was utterly lonely. One short year ago she thought she would never know loneliness again--only a year ago.

The candle wavered in her hand; a drop of wax fell on the baby's spotless coverlet. Stooping, she blew upon it till it was cold, and carefully broke it off. She sat down in a low rocking chair, and lifting the baby, gave him his good-night nursing. He barely opened his sleep-laden eyes. She kissed him, made him tidy for the night, and laid him down, waiting while he cuddled luxuriously back to sleep.

“Little Stefan, little Stefan,” she whispered.

Then, leaving the nursery door ajar, she undressed noiselessly, and lay down on the cool, empty bed.

II

The following afternoon about teatime Stefan bicycled up from the station. Mary, who was in the sitting room, heard him calling from the gate, but did not go to meet him. He hurried into the room and kissed her half-turned cheek effusively.

“Well, dear, aren't you glad to see me?” he asked rather nervously.

“Do you know that you've been away six days, Stefan, and have only troubled to telephone me twice?” she answered, in a voice carefully controlled.

“You don't mean it!” he exclaimed. “I had no idea it was so long.”

“Hadn't you?”

He fidgeted. “Well, dear, you know I'm frightfully keen on this new picture, and the journeys back and forth waste so much time. But as for the telephoning, I'm awfully sorry. I've been so absorbed I simply didn't remember. Why didn't you ring me up?”

“I didn't wish to interrupt a sitting. I rang twice in the evenings, but you were out.”

“Yes; I've been trying to amuse myself a little.” He was rocking from one foot to the other like a detected schoolboy.

“Hang it all, Mary,” he burst out, “don't be so judicial. One must have some pleasure--I can't sit about this cottage all the time.”

“I don't think I've asked you to do that.”

“You haven't, but you seem to be implying the request now.”

She was chilled to silence, having no heart to reason him out of so unreasonable a defense.

“Well, anyway,” he said, flinging himself on the sofa, “here I am, so let's make the best of it. Tea ready?”

“It's just coming.”

“That's good. When are you coming up to see the picture? It's going to be the best I've done. I shall get Constantine to exhibit it and that stick of a Demeter together, and then the real people and the fools will both have something to admire.”

“You say this will be your best?” asked Mary, whom the phrase had stabbed.

“Well,” he said reflectively, lighting a cigarette, “perhaps not better than the Danaë in one sense--it hasn't as much feeling, but has more originality. Miss Berber is such an unusual type--she's quite an inspiration.”

“And I'm not, any more,” Mary could not help adding in a muffled voice.

“Don't be so literal, my dear; of course you are, but not for this sort of picture.” The assurance sounded perfunctory.

“Thank goodness, here comes the tea,” he exclaimed as Lily entered with the tray. “Hullo, Lily; how goes it?”

“Fine, Mr. Byrd, but we've shorely missed you,” she answered, with something less than her usual wholehearted smile.

“Well, you must rejoice, now that the prodigal has returned,” he grinned. “Mary, you haven't answered my question yet--when are you coming in to see the picture? Why not to-morrow? I'm dying to show it to you.”

She flushed. “I can't come, Stefan; it's impossible to leave Baby so long.”

“Well, bring him with you.”

“That wouldn't be possible, either; it would disturb his sleep, and upset him.”

“There you are!” he exclaimed, ruffling his hair. “I can't work down here, and you can't come to town--how can I help seeming to neglect you? Look here”--he had drunk his tea at a gulp, and now held out his cup for more--“if you're lonely, why not move back to the city--then you could keep your eye on me!” and he grinned again.

For some time Mary had feared this suggestion--she had not yet discussed with Stefan her desire to stay in the country. She pressed her hands together nervously.

“Stefan, do you really want me to move back?”

“I want you to do whatever will make you happier,” he temporized.

“If you really needed me there I would come. But you are always so absorbed when you're working, and I am so busy with Baby, that I don't believe we should have much more time together than now.”

“Neither do I,” he agreed, in a tone suspiciously like relief, which she was quick to catch.

“On the other hand,” she went on, “this place is far better for Baby, and I am devoted to it. We couldn't afford anything half as comfortable in the city, and you like it, too, in the summer.”

“Of course I do,” he answered cheerfully. “I should hate to give it up, and I'm sure it's much more economical, and all that. Still, if you stay here through the winter you mustn't be angry if I am in town part of the time--my work has got to come first, you know.”

“Yes, of course, dear,” said Mary, wistfully, “and I think it would be a mistake for me to come unless you really wanted me.”

“Of course I want you, Beautiful.”

He spoke easily, but she was not deceived. She knew he was glad of the arrangement, not for her sake, but for his own. She had watched him fretting for weeks past, like a caged bird, and she had the wisdom to see that her only hope of making him desire the nest again lay in giving him freedom from it. Her pride fortified this perception. As she had said long ago, Mary was no bargainer.

In spite of her comprehension, however, she warmed toward him. It was so good to see him lounging on the sofa again, his green-gold eyes bright, his brown face with its elfish smile radiant now that his point was won. She knew he had been unkind to her both in word and act, but it was impossible not to forgive him, now that she enjoyed again the comfort of his presence.

Smiling, she poured out his third cup of tea, and was just passing it when there was a knock, and McEwan entered the hall.

“Hello, Byrd,” he called, his broad shoulders blocking the sitting room door as he came in; “down among the Rubes again? Madam Mary, I accept in advance your offer of tea. Well, how goes the counterfeit presentment of our friend Twinkle-Toes?”

Stefan's eyebrows went up. “Do you mean Miss Berber?”

“Yes,” said McEwan, with an aggravating smile, as he devoured a slice of cake. “We're all expecting another ten-strike. Are you depicting her as a toe-shaker or a sartorial artist?”

“Really, Wallace,” protested Mary, who had grown quite intimate with McEwan, “you are utterly incorrigible in your Yankee vein--you respect no one.”

“I respect the President of these United States,” said he solemnly, raising an imaginary hat.

“That's more than I do,” snorted Stefan; “a pompous Puritan!”

“For goodness' sake, don't start him on politics, Wallace,” said Mary; “he has a contempt for every public man in America except Roosevelt and Bill Heywood.”

“So I have,” replied Stefan; “they are the only two with a spark of the picturesque, or one iota of originality.”

“You ought to paint their pictures arm in arm, with Taft floating on a cloud crowning them with a sombrero and a sandbag, Bryan pouring grape-juice libations, and Wilson watchfully waiting in the background. Label it 'Morituri salutamus'--I bet it would sell,” said McEwan hopefully.

Mary laughed heartily, but Stefan did not conceal his boredom. “Why don't you go into vaudeville, McEwan?” he frowned.

“Solely out of consideration for the existing stars,” McEwan sighed, putting down his cup and rising. “Well, chin music hath charms, but I must toddle to the house, or I shall get in bad with Jamie. My love to Elliston, Mary. Byrd, I warn you that my well-known critical faculty needs stimulation; I mean to drop in at the studio ere long to slam the latest masterpiece. So long,” and he grinned himself out before Stefan's rising irritation had a chance to explode.

“Why do you let that great tomfool call you by your first name, Mary?” he demanded, almost before the front door was shut.

“Wallace is one of the kindest men alive, and I'm quite devoted to him. I admit, though, that he seems to enjoy teasing you.”

“Teasing me!” Stefan scoffed; “it's like an elephant teasing a fly. He obliterates me.”

“Well, don't be an old crosspatch,” she smiled, determined now they were alone again to make the most of him.

“You are a good sort, Mary,” he said, smiling in reply; “it's restful to be with you. Sing to me, won't you?” He stretched luxuriously on the sofa.

She obeyed, glad enough of the now rare opportunity of pleasing him. Farraday had brought her some Norse ballads not long before; their sad elfin cadences had charmed her. She sang these now, touching the piano lightly for fear of waking the sleeping baby overhead. Turning to Stefan at the end, she found him sound asleep, one arm drooping over the sofa, the nervous lines of his face smoothed like a tired child's. For some reason she felt strangely pitiful toward him. “He must be very tired, poor boy,” she thought.

Crossing to the kitchen, she warned Lily not to enter the sitting room, and herself slipped upstairs to the baby. Stefan slept till dinner time, and for the rest of the evening was unusually kind and quiet.

As they went up to bed Mary turned wistfully to him.

“Wouldn't you like to look at Elliston? You haven't seen him for a long time.”

“Bless me, I suppose I haven't--let's take a peep at him.”

Together they bent over the cradle. “Why, he's looking quite human. I think he must have grown!” his father whispered, apparently surprised. “Does he make much noise at night nowadays, Mary?”

“No, hardly any. He just whimpers at about two o'clock, and I get up and nurse him. Then he sleeps till after six.”

“If you don't mind, then,” said Stefan, “I think I will sleep with you to-night. I feel as if it would rest me.”

“Of course, dearest.” She felt herself blushing. Was she really going to be loved again? She smiled happily at him.

When they were in bed Stefan curled up childishly, and putting one arm about her, fell asleep almost instantly, his head upon her shoulder. Mary lay, too happy for sleep, listening to his quiet breathing, until her shoulder ached and throbbed under his head. She would not move for fear of waking him, and remained wide-eyed and motionless until her baby's voice called to her.

Then, with infinite care, she slipped away, her arm and shoulder numb, but her heart lighter than it had been for many weeks.

She had forgotten to put out her dressing gown, and would not open the closet door, because it creaked. Little Elliston was leisurely over his repast, and she was stiff with cold when at last she stole back into bed. Stefan lay upon his side. She crept close, and in her turn put an arm about him. He was here again, her man, and her child was close at hand, warm and comforted from her breast. Love was all about her, and to-night she was not mocked. Warm again from his touch, she, too, fell at last, with all the dreaming house, asleep.

III

Stefan stayed at home for several days, sleeping long hours, and seemingly unusually subdued. He would lie reading on the sofa while Mary wrote, and often she turned from her manuscript to find him dozing. They took a few walks together, during which he rarely spoke, but seemed glad of her silent company. Once he called with her on Mrs. Farraday, and actually held an enormous skein of wool for the old lady while she, busily winding, told them anecdotes of her son James, and of her long dead husband. He made no effort to talk, seeming content to sit receptive under the soothing flow of her reminiscences.

“Thee is a good boy,” said the little lady, patting his hand kindly as the last shred of wool was wound.

“I'm afraid not, ma'am,” said he, dropping quaintly into the address of his childhood. “I'm just a rudderless boat staggering under topheavy sails.”

“Thee has a sure harbor, son,” she answered, turning her gentle eyes on Mary.

He seemed about to say more, but checked himself. Instead he rose and kissed the little lady's hand.

“You are one of those who never lose their harbor, Mrs. Farraday. We're all glad to lower sail in yours.”

On the way home Mary linked her arm in his.

“You were so sweet to her, dear,” she said.

“You're wondering why I can't always be like that, eh, Mary!”

She laughed and nodded, pressing his arm.

“Well, I can't, worse luck,” he answered, frowning.

That evening, while they sat in the dining room over their dessert, the telephone bell rang. Stefan jumped hastily to answer it, as if he felt sure it was for him, and he proved right.

“Yes, this is I,” he replied, after his first “hello,” in what seemed to Mary an artificial voice.

There was a pause; then she heard him say, “You can?” delightedly, followed by “To-morrow morning at ten? Hurrah! No more wasted time; we shall really get on now.” Another pause, then, “Oh, what does it matter about the store?” impatiently--and at last “Well, to-morrow, anyway. Yes. Good-bye.” The receiver clicked into place, and Stefan came skipping back into the room radiant, his languor of the last few days completely gone.

Mary's heart sank like a stone. It was too obvious that he had stayed at home, not to be with her, but merely because his sitter was unobtainable.

“Cheers, Mary; back to work to-morrow,” he exclaimed, attacking his dessert with vigor. “I've been slacking shamefully, but Felicity is so wrapped up in that store of hers I can't get her half the time. Now she's contrite, and is going to sit to-morrow.”

Mary, remembering his remark about McEwan, longed to say, “Why do you call that little vulgarian by her first name?” but retaliatory methods were impossible to her. She contented herself with asking if he would be home the next evening.

“Why, yes, I expect so,” he answered, looking vague, “but don't absolutely count on me, Mary. I've been very good this week.”

She saw that he was gone again. His return had been more in the body than the spirit, after all. If that had been wooed a little back to her it had winged away again at the first sound of the telephone. She told herself that it was only his work calling him, that he would have been equally eager over any other sitter. But she was not sure.

“Brace up, Mary,” he called across at her, “you're not being deserted. Good heavens, I must work!” His impatient frown was gathering. She collected herself, smiled cheerfully, and rose, telling Lily they would have coffee in the sitting room.

He spent the evening before the fire, smoking, and making thumbnail sketches on a piece of notepaper. She sang for some time, but without eliciting any comment from him. When they went up to bed he stopped at his own door.

“I think I'll sleep alone to-night, dear. I want to be fresh to-morrow. Good night,” and he kissed her cheek.

When she came down in the morning he had already gone. Lying on the sitting room table, where it had been placed by the careful Lily, lay the scrap of notepaper he had been scribbling on the night before. It was covered with tiny heads, and figures of mermaids, dancing nymphs, and dryads. All in face or figure suggested Felicity Berber.

She laid it back on the table, dropping a heavy book over it. A little later, while she was giving Elliston his bath, it suddenly occurred to Mary that her husband had never once during his stay alluded to her manuscript, and never looked at the baby except when she had asked him to. She excused him to herself with the plea of his temperament, and his absorption in his art, but nevertheless her heart was sore.

For the next few weeks Stefan came and went fitfully, announcing at one point that Miss Berber had ceased to pose for his fantastic study of her, called “The Nixie,” but had consented to sit for a portrait.

“She's slippery--comes and goes, keeps me waiting interminably,” he complained. “I can never be sure of her, but she's a wonderful model.”

“What do you do while you're waiting for her?” asked Mary, who could not imagine Stefan enduring with equanimity such a tax upon his patience.

“Oh, there's tremendous work to be done on the Nixie still,” he answered. “It's only her part in it that is finished.”

One evening he came home with a grievance.

“That fool McEwan came to the studio to-day,” he complained. “It was all I could do not to shut the door in his face. Of all the chuckleheads! What do you think he called the Nixie? 'A tricky piece of work!' Tricky!” Stefan kicked the fire disgustedly. “And it's the best thing I've done!”

“As for the portrait, he said it was 'fine and dandy,' the idiot. And the maddening thing was,” he went on, turning to Mary, and uncovering the real source of his offense, “that Felicity positively encouraged him! Why, the man must have sat there talking with her for an hour. I could not paint a stroke, and he didn't go till I had said so three times!” completed Stefan, looking positively ferocious. “What in the fiend's name, Mary, did she do it for?” He collapsed on the sofa beside her, like a child bereft of a toy. Mary could not help laughing at his tragic air.

“I suppose she did it to annoy, because she knew it teased,” she suggested.

“How I loathe fooling and play-acting!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Thank God, Mary, you are sincere. One knows where one is with you!”

He seemed thoroughly upset. Miss Berber's pin-prick must have been severe, Mary thought, if it resulted in a compliment for her.

The next evening, Mary being alone, Wallace dropped in. For some time they talked of Jamie and Elliston, and of Mary's book.

He was Scotch to-night, as he usually was now when they were alone together. Cheerful as ever, his cheer was yet slow and solid--the comedian was not in evidence.

“Hae ye been up yet to see the new pictures?” he asked presently. She shook her head.

“Ye should go, bairn, they're a fine key. Clever as the devil, but naething true about them. After the Danaë-piff!” and he snapped his fingers. “Ye hae no call to worry, you're the hub, Mary--let the wheel spin a wee while!”

She blushed. “Wallace, I believe you're a wizard--or a detective.”

“The Scottish Sherlock, eh?” he grinned. “Weel, it's as I tell ye--tak my word for't. Hae ye seen Mrs. Elliot lately?”

“No, Constance went up to their place in Vermont in June, you know. She came down purposely for Elliston's christening, the dear. She writes me she'll be back in a few days now, but says she's sick of New York, and would stay where she is if it weren't for suffrage.”

“But she would na',” said McEwan emphatically.

“No, I don't think so, either. But she sees more of Theodore while she stays away, because he feels it his duty to run up every few days and protect her against savage New England, whereas when she's in town she could drive her car into the subway excavations and he'd never know it. I'm quoting verbatim,” Mary laughed.

McEwan nodded appreciatively. “She's a grand card.”

“She pretends to be flippant about husbands,” Mary went on, “but as a matter of fact she cares much more for hers than for her sons, or anything in the world, except perhaps the Cause.”

“That's as it should be,” the other nodded.

“I don't know.” There was a puzzled note in Mary's voice. “I can't understand the son's taking such a distinctly second place.”

McEwan's face expanded into one of his huge smiles. “It's true, ye could not. That's the way God made ye, and I'll tell ye about that, too, some day,” he said, rising to go.

“Good-bye, Mr. Holmes,” she smiled, as she saw him out.

Before going to bed that night Mary examined her conscience. Why had she not been to town to see Stefan's work? She knew that the baby--whose feeding times now came less frequently--was no longer an adequate excuse. She had blamed Stefan in her heart for his indifference to her work--was she not becoming guilty of the same neglect? Was she not in danger of a worse fault, the mean and vulgar fault of jealousy? She felt herself flushing at the thought.

Two days later Mary put on her last year's suit, now a little shabby, kissed the baby, importuned the beaming Lily to be careful of him, and drove to the train in one of the village livery stable's inconceivably decrepit coupes.

It was about twelve o 'clock when she arrived at the studio, and, ringing the bell, mounted the well-known stairs with a heart which, in spite of herself, beat anxiously. Stefan opened the door irritably, but his frown changed to a look of astonishment, followed by an exuberant smile, as he saw who it was.

“Here comes Demeter,” he cried, calling into the room behind him. “Why, Mary, I'm honored. Has Elliston actually released his prisoner at last?” He drew her into the studio, and kissed her almost with ostentation.

“Let's suspend the sitting, Felicity,” he cried, “and show our work.”

Mary looked about her. Her old home was almost unchanged. There was the painted bureau, the divan, the big easel, the model throne where she had posed as Danaë. It was unchanged, yet how different. From the throne stepped down a small svelt figure-it rippled toward her, its gown shimmering like a fire seen through water. It was Felicity, and her dress was made from the great piece of oriental silk Stefan had bought when they were first married, and which they had used as a cover for their couch.

Mary recognized it instantly--there could be no mistake. She stared stupidly, unable to find speech, while Miss Berber's tones were wafted to her like an echo from cooing doves.

“Ah, Mrs. Byrd,” she was saying, “how lovely you look as a matron. We are having a short sitting in my luncheon hour. This studio calms me after the banal cackling of my clients. I almost think of ceasing to create raiment, I weary so of the stupidities of New York's four hundred. Corsets, heels”--her hands fluttered in repudiation. She sank full length upon the divan, lighting a cigarette from a case of mother-of-pearl. “Your husband is the only artist, Mrs. Byrd, who has succeeded in painting me as an individual instead of a beauty. It's relieving”--her voice fainted--“very”--it failed--her lids drooped, she was still.

Stefan looked bored. “Why, Felicity, what's the matter? I haven't seen you so completely lethargic for a long time. I thought you kept that manner for the store.”

Mary could not help feeling pleased by this remark, which drew no response from Felicity save a shadowy but somewhat forced smile.

“Turn round, Mary,” went on Stefan; “the Nixie is behind you.”

Mary faced the canvas, another of his favorite underwater pictures. The Nixie sat on a rock, in the green light of a river-bed. Green river-weed swayed and clung about her, and her hair, green too, streamed out to mingle with it. In the ooze at her feet lay a drowned girl, holding a tiny baby to her breast. This part of the picture was unfinished, but the Nixie stood out clearly, looking down at the dead woman with an expression compounded of wonder and sly scorn. “Lord, what fools these mortals be,” she might have been saying.

The face was not a portrait--it was Felicity only in its potentialities, but it was she, unmistakably. The picture was brilliant, fantastic, and unpleasant. Mary said so.

“Of course it is unpleasant,” he answered, “and so is life. Isn't it unpleasant that girls should kill themselves because of some fool man? And wouldn't sub-humans have a right to ribald laughter at a system which fosters such things!”

“He has painted me as a sub-human, Mrs. Byrd,” drawled Felicity through her smoke, “but when I hear his opinion of humans I feel complimented.”

“It seems to me,” said Mary, “that she's not laughing at humans in general, but at this particular girl, for having cared. That's what makes it unpleasant to me.”

“I dare say she is,” said Stefan carelessly. “In any case, I'm glad you find it unpleasant--in popular criticism the word is only a synonym for true.”

To Mary the picture was theatrical rather than true, but she did not care to argue the point. She turned to the portrait, a clever study in lights keyed to the opalescent tones of the silk dress, and showing Felicity poised for the first step of a dance. The face was still in charcoal--Stefan always blocked in his whole color scheme before beginning a head--but even so, it was alluring.

Mary said with truth that it would be a fine portrait.

“Yes, I like it. Full of movement. Nothing architectural about that,” he said, glancing by way of contrast at the great Demeter drowsing from the furthest wall. “The silk is interesting, isn't it?”

Mary's throat ached painfully. He was utterly unconscious of any hurt to her in the transfer of this first extravagance of theirs. If he had done it consciously, with intent to wound, she thought it might have hurt her less.

“It's very pretty,” she said conventionally.

“Bare, perhaps, rather than pretty,” murmured Miss Berber behind her veil of smoke.

Mary flushed. This woman had a trick of always making her appear gauche. She looked at her watch, not sorry to see that it was already time to leave.

“I must go, Stefan, I have to catch the one o'clock,” she said, holding out her hand.

“What a shame. Can't you even stay to lunch?” he asked dutifully. She shook her head, the ache in her throat making speech difficult. She seemed very stiff and matter-of-fact, he thought, and her clothes were uninteresting. He kissed her, however, and held the door while she shook hands with Felicity, who half rose. The transom was open, and through it Mary, who had paused on the landing to button her glove, overheard Miss Berber's valedictory pronouncement.

“The English are a remarkable race--remarkable. Character in them is fixed--in us, fluid.”

Mary sped down the first flight, in terror of hearing Stefan's reply.

All that evening she held the baby in her arms--she could hardly bring herself to put him down when it was time to go to bed.

IV

On November the 1st Mary received their joint bank book. The figures appalled her. She had drawn nothing except for the household bills, but Stefan had apparently been drawing cash, in sums of fifty or twenty-five dollars, every few days for weeks past. Save for his meals and a little new clothing she did not know on what he could have spent it; but as they had made nothing since the sale of his drawings in the spring, their once stout balance had dwindled alarmingly. One check, even while she felt its extravagance, touched her to sympathy. It was drawn to Henrik Jensen for two hundred dollars. Stefan must have been helping Adolph's brother to his feet again; perhaps that was where more of the money had gone.

Stefan came home that afternoon, and Mary very unwillingly tackled the subject. He looked surprised.

“I'd no idea I'd been drawing so much! Why didn't you tell me sooner?” he exclaimed. “Yes, I've given poor old Henrik a bit from time to time; I thought I'd mentioned it to you.”

“You did in the summer, now I come to think of it, but I thought you meant a few dollars, ten or twenty.”

“Much good that would have done him. The poor old chap was stranded. He's all right now, has a new business. I've been meaning to tell you about it. He supplies furniture on order to go with Felicity's gowns--backgrounds for personalities, and all that stuff. I put it up to her to help find him a job, and she thought of this right off.” He grinned appreciatively. “Smart, eh? We both gave him a hand to start it.”

“You might have told me, I should have been so interested,” said Mary, trying not to sound hurt.

“I meant to, but it's only just been arranged, and I've had no chance to talk to you for ages.”

“Not my doing, Stefan,” she said softly.

“Oh, yes, the baby and all that.” He waved his arm vaguely, and began to fidget. She steered away from the rocks.

“Anyhow, I'm glad you've helped him,” she said sincerely.

“I knew you would be. Look here, Mary, can we go on at the present rate--barring Jensen--till I finish the Nixie? I don't want Constantine to have the Demeter alone, it isn't good enough.”

“I think it is as good as the Nixie,” she said, on a sudden impulse. He swung round, staring at her almost insolently.

“My dear girl, what do you know about it?” His voice was cold.

The blood rushed to her heart. He had never spoken to her in that tone before. As always, her hurt silenced her.

He prowled for a minute, then repeated his question about their expenses.

“I don't want to have to think in cents again unless I must,” he added.

Mary considered, remembering the now almost finished manuscript in her desk.

“Yes, I think we can manage, dear.”

“That's a blessing; then we won't talk about it any more,” he exclaimed, pinching her ear in token of satisfaction.

The next day Mary sent her manuscript to be typed. In a week it had gone to Farraday at his office, complete all but three chapters, of which she enclosed an outline. With it she sent a purely formal note, asking, in the event of the book being accepted, what terms the Company could offer her, and whether she could be paid partly in advance. She put the request tentatively, knowing nothing of the method of paying for serials. In another week she had a typewritten reply from Farraday, saying that the serial had been most favorably reported, that the Company would buy it for fifteen hundred dollars, with a guarantee to begin serialization within the year, on receipt of the final chapters, that they enclosed a contract, and were hers faithfully, etc. With this was a personal note from her friend, congratulating her, and explaining that his estimate of her book had been more than borne out by his readers.

“I don't want you to think others less appreciative than I,” was his tactful way of intimating that her work had been accepted on its merits alone.

The letters took Mary's breath away. She had no idea that her work could fetch such a price. This stroke of fortune completely lifted her financial anxieties, but her spirits did not rise correspondingly. Six months ago she would have been girlishly triumphant at such a success, but now she felt at most a dull satisfaction. She hastened, however, to write the final chapters, and deposited the check when it came in her own bank, drawing the next month's housekeeping money half from that and half from Stefan's rapidly dwindling account. That she was able to do this gave her a feeling of relief, no more.

Mary had now nursed her baby for over four months, and began to feel a nervous lassitude which she attributed--quite wrongly--to this fact. As Elliston still gained weight steadily, however, she gave her own condition no thought. But the last leaves had fallen from the trees, sea and woods looked friendless, and the evenings were long and lonely. The neighbors had nearly all gone back to the city. Farraday only came down at week-ends, Jamie was busy with his lessons, and Constance still lingered in Vermont. As for Stefan, he came home late and left early; often he did not come at all. She began to question seriously if she had been right to remain in the cottage. Her heart told her no, but her pride said yes, and her pride was strong; also, it was backed by reason. Her steady brain, which was capable of quite impersonal thinking, told her that Stefan would be actively discontented just now in company with his family, and that this discontent would eat into his remaining love for her.

But her heart repudiated this mental cautioning, crying out to her to go to him, to pour out her love and need, to capture him safely in her arms. More than once she nerved herself for such an effort, only to become incapable of the least expression at his approach. Emotionally inarticulate even in happiness, Mary was quite dumb in grief. Her conversation became trite, her sore heart drew a mantle of the commonplace over its wound; Stefan found her more than ever “English.”

So lonely was she at this time that she would have asked little Miss Mason to stay with her, but for the lack of a spare bedroom. Of all her friends, only Mrs. Farraday remained at hand. Mary spent many hours at the old lady's house, and rejoiced each time the pony chaise brought her to the Byrdsnest. Mrs. Farraday loved to drive up in the morning and watch the small Elliston in his bath, comparing his feats with her memories of her own baby. She liked, too, to call at the cottage for mother and child, and take them for long rambling drives behind her ruminant pony.

But the little Quakeress usually had her house full of guests--quaint, elderly folk from Delaware or from the Quaker regions of Pennsylvania--and could not give more than occasional time to these excursions. She had become devoted to Mary, whom she secretly regarded as her ideal of the woman her James should marry. That her son had not yet met such a woman was, after the loss of her husband, the little lady's greatest grief.

In the midst of this dead period of graying days, Constance Elliot burst one morning--a God from the Machine--tearing down the lane in her diminutive car with the great figure of Gunther, like some Norse divinity, beside her. She fell out of her auto, and into an explanation, in one breath, embracing Mary warmly between sentences.

“You lovely creature, here I am at last! Theodore hadn't been up for a week, so I came down, to find Mr. Gunther thundering like Odin because I had promised to help him arrange sittings with you, and had forgotten it. I had to bring him at once. He says his group is all done but the two heads, and he must have yours and the baby's. But he'll tell you all about it. Where is he? Elliston, I mean. I've brought him some short frocks. Where are they, Mr. Gunther? If he's put them in his pockets, he'll never find them--they are feet long--the pockets, I mean. Bless you, Mary Byrd, how good it is to see you! Come into the house, every one, and let me rest.”

Mary was bubbling with laughter.

“Constance, you human dynamo, we'll go in by all means, and hold our breaths listening to your 'resting'!”

“Don't sass your elders, naughty girl. Oh, my heavens, I've been five months in New England, and have behaved like a perfect gentlewoman all the time! Now I'm due for an attack of New Yorkitis!” Constance rushed into the sitting room, pulled off her hat and patted her hair into shape, ran to the kitchen door to say hello to Lily, and was back in her chair by the time the others had found theirs. Her quick glance traveled from one to the other.

“Now I shall listen,” she said. “Mary, tell your news. Mr. Gunther, explain your ideas.”

Mary laughed again. “Visitors first,” she nodded to the Norwegian who, as always, was staring at her with a perfectly civil fixity.

He placed a great hand on either knee and prepared to state his case. With his red-gold beard and piercing eyes, he was, Mary thought, quite the handsomest, and, after Stefan, the most attractive man she had ever seen.

“Mrs. Byrd,” he began, “I am doing, among other things, a large group called 'Pioneers' for the Frisco exhibition. It is finished in the clay--as Mrs. Elliot said--all but two heads, and is already roughly blocked in marble. I want your head, with your son's--I must have them. Six sittings will be enough. If you cannot, as I imagine, come to the city, I will bring my clay here, and we will work in your husband's studio. These figures, of whom the man is modeled from myself, do not represent pioneers in the ordinary sense. They embody my idea of those who will lead the race to future greatness. That is why I feel it essential to have you as a model.”

He spoke quite simply, without a trace of flattery, as if he were merely putting into words a self-evident truth. A compliment of such staggering dimensions, however, left Mary abashed.

“You may wonder,” he went on, seeing her silent, “why I so regard you. It is not merely your beauty, Mrs. Byrd, of which as an artist I can speak without offense, it is because to my mind you combine strong mentality and morale with simplicity of temperament. You are an Apollonian, rather than a Dionysian. Of such, in my judgment, will the super-race be made.” Gunther folded his arms and leaned back.

He was sufficiently distinguished to be able to carry off a pronouncement which in a lesser man would have been an impertinence, and he knew it.

Constance threw up her hands. “There, Mary, your niche is carved. I don't quite know what Mr. Gunther means, but he sounds right.”

Mary found her voice. “Mr. Gunther honors me very much, and, although of course I do not deserve his praise, I shall certainly not refuse his request.”

Gunther bowed gravely from the hips in the Continental manner, without rising.

“When may I come,” he asked; “to-morrow? Good! I will bring the clay out by auto.”

“You lucky woman,” exclaimed Constance. “To think of being immortalized by two great artists in one year!”

“Her type is very rare,” said Gunther in explanation. “When does one see the classic face with expression added? Almost always, it is dull.”

“Now, Mary, produce the infant!” Constance did not intend the whole morning to be devoted to the Olympian discourse of the sculptor.

The baby was brought down, and the rest of the visit pivoted about him. Mary glowed at the praises he received; she looked immeasurably brighter, Constance thought, than when they arrived.

On the way home Gunther unbosomed himself of a final pronouncement. “She does not look too happy, but her beauty is richer and its meaning deeper than before. She is what the mothers of men should be. I am sorry,” he concluded simply, “that I did not meet her more than a year ago.”

Constance almost gasped. What an advantage, she thought, great physical gifts bring. Even without this man's distinction in his art, it was obvious that he had some right to assume his ability to mate with whomever he might choose.

Early the next morning the sculptor drove up to the barn, his tonneau loaded with impedimenta. Mary was ready for him, and watched with interest while he lifted out first a great wooden box of clay, then a small model throne, then two turntables, and finally, two tin buckets. These baffled her, till, having installed the clay-box, which she doubted if an ordinary man could lift, he made for the garden pump and watered his clay with the contents of the buckets.

He set up his three-legged turntables, each of which bore an angle-iron supporting a twisted length of lead pipe, stood a bucket of water beneath one, and explained that in a few minutes he would be ready to begin. Donning a linen blouse, he attacked the mass of damp clay powerfully, throwing great pieces onto the skeleton lead-pipe, which he explained had been bent to the exact angle of the head in his group.

“The woman's figure I modeled from ideal proportions, Mrs. Byrd, and this head will be set upon its shoulders. My statue will then be a living thing instead of a mere symbol.”

When Mary was posed she became absorbed in watching Gunther's work grow. He modeled with extraordinary speed, yet his movements had none of the lightning swoops and darts of Stefan's method. Each motion of his powerful hands might have been preordained; they seemed to move with a deliberate and effortless precision, so that she would hardly have realized their speed had the head and face not leaped under them into being. He was a silent worker, yet she felt companioned; the man's presence seemed to fill the little building.

“After to-day I shall ask you to hold the child, for as long as it will not disturb him. I shall then have the expression on your face which I desire, and I will work at a study of the boy's head at those moments when he is awake.”

Mary sincerely enjoyed her sittings, which came as a welcome change in her even days. Gunther usually stayed to lunch, Constance joining them on one occasion, and Mrs. Farraday on another. Both these came to watch the work, Gunther, unlike Stefan, being oblivious of an audience; and once McEwan came, his sturdy form appearing insignificant beside the giant Norseman. Wallace hung about smoking a pipe for half an hour or more. He was at his most Scotch, appeared well pleased, and ejaculated “Aye, aye,” several times, nodding a ponderous head.

“Wallace, what are you so solemnly aye-ayeing about? Why so mysterious?” enquired Mary.

“I'm haeing a few thochts,” responded the Scot, his expression divided between an irritating smile and a kindly twinkle.

“Well, don't be annoying, and stay to lunch,” said Mary, dispensing even justice to both expressions.

Stefan, returning home one afternoon half way through the sittings, expressed a mild interest in the news of them, and, going out to the barn, unwrapped the wet cloths from the head.

“He's an artist,” said he; “this has power and beauty. Never sit to a second-rater, Mary, you've had the best now.” And he covered the head again with a craftsman's thoroughness.

Mary was sorry when the sittings came to an end. On the last day the sculptor brought two men with him, who made the return journey in the tonneau, each guarding a carefully swathed bust against the inequalities of the road. Gunther bowed low over her hand with a word of thanks at parting, and she watched his car out of sight regretfully.

V

The week's interlude over, Mary's days reverted to their monotonous tenor. As November drew to a close, she began to think of Christmas, remembering how happy her last had been, and wondering if she could summon enough courage for an attempt to engage Stefan's interest in some kind of celebration. She now admitted to herself that she was actively worried about her relations with him. He was quite agreeable to her when in the house, but she felt this was only because she made no demands on him. Let her reach out ever so little for his love, and he instantly became vague or restless. Their intercourse was friendly, but he appeared absolutely indifferent to her as a woman; she might have been a well-liked sister. Under the grueling strain of self-repression Mary was growing nervous, and the baby began to feel the effects. His weekly gains were smaller, and he had his first symptoms of indigestion.

She redoubled the care of her diet, and lengthened her daily walks, but he became fretful, and at last, early in December, she found on weighing him that he had made no gain for a week. Terrified, she telephoned for Dr. Hillyard, and received her at the door with a white face. It was a Sunday morning, and McEwan had just dropped in with some chrysanthemums from the Farradays' greenhouse. Finding Mary disturbed he had not remained, and was leaving the house as the doctor drove up.

Dr. Hillyard's first words were reassuring. There was absolutely nothing to fear in a week's failure to gain, she explained. “It always happens at some stage or other, and many babies don't gain for weeks.”

Still, the outcome of her visit was that Mary, with an aching heart, added a daily bottle to Elliston's régime. In a week the doctor came again, gave Mary a food tonic, and advised the introduction of a second bottle. Elliston immediately responded, palpably preferring his bottle feedings to the others. His fretfulness after these continued, he turned with increased eagerness to his bottle, and with tears of disappointment Mary yielded to his loudly voiced demands. By Christmas time he was weaned. His mother felt she could never forgive herself for failing him so soon, and a tinge of real resentment colored for the first time her attitude toward Stefan, whom she knew to be the indirect cause of her failure.

The somewhat abrupt deterioration of Mary's magnificent nervous system would have been unaccountable to Dr. Hillyard had it not been for a chance encounter with McEwan after her first visit. The Scotchman had hailed her in the lane, asking for a lift to a house beyond the village, where he had some small errand. During a flow of discursive remarks he elicited from the doctor, without her knowledge, her opinion that Mary was nervously run down, after which he rambled at some length about the value of art, allowing the doctor to pass his destination by a mile or more.

With profuse thanks for her kindness in turning back, he continued his ramblings, and she gathered the impression that he was a dull, inconsequential talker, that he considered young couples “kittle cattle,” that artists were always absorbed in their work, that females had a habit of needless worrying, and that commuting in winter was distracting to a man's labors. She only half listened to him, and dropped him with relief, wondering if he was an anti-suffragist. Some memory of his remarks must, however, have remained with her, for after her next visit to Mary she found herself thinking that Mr. McEwan was probably neither an anti-suffragist, nor dull.

A little before Christmas McEwan called on Constance, and found her immersed in preparations for a Suffrage bazaar and fête.

“I can't talk to any one,” she announced, receiving him in a chaos of boxes, banners, paper flowers, and stenographers, in the midst of which she appeared to be working with two voices and six hands. “Didn't the maid warn you off the premises?”

“She did, but I sang 'Take back the lime that thou gavest' in such honey tones that she complied,” said Mac.

“Just for that, you can give the fête a two-inch free ad in The Household Magazine,” Constance implacably replied.

He grinned. “I raise the ante. Three inches, at the risk of losing my job, for five minutes alone with you.”

“You lose your job!” scoffed Constance, leading the way into an empty room, and seating herself at attention, one eye on her watch. “Proceed--I am yours.”

Mac sat opposite her, and shot out an emphatic forefinger.

“The Berber girl's middle name is Mischief,” he began, plunging in medias res; “Byrd's is Variability; for the last five months the Mary lady's has been Mother. Am I right?”

Constance's bright eyes looked squarely at him.

“Wallace McEwan, you are,” she said.

His finger continued poised. “Very well, we are 'on,' and _our_ middle name is Efficiency, eh?”

“Yes,” Constance nodded doubtfully, “but--”

McEwan's hand slapped his knee. “Here's the scheme,” he went on rapidly. “Variable folk must have variety, either in place or people. If we don't want it to be people, we make it place, see? Is your country house closed yet?”

“No, I fancied I might go there to relax for a week after the fête.”

“A1 luck. You won't relax, you'll have a week's house-party, sleighing, skating, coasting, all that truck. The Byrds, Farraday (I'll persuade him he can leave the office), a couple of pretty skirts with no brains--me if you like. Get me?”

Constance gasped, her mind racing. “But Mary's baby?” she exclaimed, clutching at the central difficulty.

“You're the goods,” replied McEwan admiringly. “She couldn't shine as Queen of the Slide if she was tied to the offspring--granted. Now then.” He leant forward. “She's had to wean him--you didn't know that. Your dope is to talk up the house-party, tell her she owes it to herself to get a change, and make her leave the boy with a trained nurse. The Mary lady's no fool, she'll be on.”

Constance's eyes narrowed to slits, she fingered her beads, and nodded once, twice.

“More trouble,” she said, “but it's a go. Second week in January.”

He grasped her hand. “Votes for Women,” he beamed.

She looked at her watch. “Five minutes exactly. Three inches, Mr. McEwan!”

“Three inches!” he called from the door.

VI

Christmas was a blank period for Mary that year. Stefan came home on Christmas eve in a mood of somewhat forced conviviality, but Mary had had no heart for festive preparations. Stefan had failed her and she had failed her baby--these two ever present facts shadowed her world. She had bought presents for Lily and the baby, a pair of links for Stefan, books for Mrs. Farraday and Jamie, and trifles for Constance and Miss Mason, but the holly and mistletoe, the tree, the new frock and the Christmas fare which normally she would have planned with so much joy, were missing. Stefan's gift to her--a fur-lined coat--was so extravagant that she could derive no pleasure from it, and she had the impression that he had chosen it hurriedly, without much thought of what would best please her. From Constance she received a white sweater of very beautiful heavy silk, with a cap and scarf to match, but she thought bitterly that pretty things to wear were of little use to her now.

It was obvious that Stefan's conscience pricked him. He spent the morning hanging about her, and even played a little with his son, who now sat up, bounced, crowed with laughter, clutched every article within reach, and had two teeth. Mary's heart reached out achingly to Stefan, but he seemed to her a strange man. The contrast between this and their last Christmas smote her intolerably.

In the afternoon they walked over to the Farradays', where there was a tree for Jamie and a few friends, including the chauffeur's and gardener's children. Here Stefan prowled into the picture gallery, while Mary, surrounded by children, was in her element. Returning to the drawing room, Stefan watched her playing with them as he had watched her on the Lusitania fifteen months before. She was less radiant now, and her figure was fuller, but as she smiled and laughed with the children, her cheeks pink and her hair all a-glitter under the lights, she looked very lovely, he thought. Why did the sight of her no longer thrill him? Why did he enjoy more the society of Felicity Berber, whom he knew to be affected and egotistic, and suspected of being insincere, than that of this beautiful, golden woman of whose truth he could never conceive a doubt?

A feeling of deep sadness, of unutterable regret, swept through him. Better never to have married than to have outlived so soon the magic of romance. Which of them had lost the key? When Mary had furled her wings to brood over her nest he had thought it was she; now he was not so sure.

Walking home through the dark woods he stopped suddenly, and drew her to him.

“Mary, my Beautiful, I'm drifting, hold me close,” he whispered. Her breath caught, she clung to him, he felt her face wet with tears. No more words were spoken, but they walked on comforted, groping their way under the damp fingers of the trees. Stefan felt no passion, but his tenderness for his wife had reawakened. For her part, tears had thawed her bitterness, without washing it away.

The next morning Constance drove over.

“Children,” she said, hurrying in from the cold air, “what a delicious scene! I invite myself to lunch.”

Mary was playing with Elliston on a blanket by the fire, Stefan sketching them, the room full of sun and firelight. The two greeted her delightedly.

“Now,” she said, settling herself on the couch, “let me tell you why I came,” and she proceeded to unfold her plans for a house-party at Burlington. “You've never seen our winter sports, Mary, they're glorious, and you need a change from so much domesticity. As for you, Mr. Byrd, it will give you a chance to learn that America can be attractive even outside New York.”

Both the Byrds were looking interested, Stefan unreservedly, Mary with a pucker of doubt.

“Now, don't begin about Elliston,” exclaimed Constance, forestalling objections. “We've heaps of room, but it would spoil your fun to bring him. I want you to get a trained nurse for the week--finest thing in the world to take a holiday from maternity once in a while.” She turned to Stefan as a sure ally. “Don't you agree, Mr. Byrd?”

“Emphatically,” beamed he, seizing her hand and kissing it. “A glorious idea! Away with domesticity! A real breath of freedom, eh, Mary?”

Constance again forestalled difficulties.

“We are all going to travel up by night, ten of us, and Theodore is engaging a compartment car with rooms for every one, so there won't be any expense about that part of it, Mary, my dear. Does it seem too extravagant to ask you to get a trained nurse? I've set my heart on having you free to be the life of the party. All your admirers are coming, that gorgeous Gunther, my beloved James, and Wallace McEwan. I baited my hooks with you, so you simply _can't_ disappoint me!” she concluded triumphantly.

Stefan pricked up his ears. Here was Mary in a new guise; he had not thought of her for some time as having “admirers.” Yet he had always known Farraday for one; and certainly Gunther, who modeled her, and McEwan, who dogged her footsteps, could admire her no less than the editor. The thought that his wife was sought after, that he was probably envied by other men, warmed Stefan's heart pleasantly, just as Constance intended it should.

“It sounds fascinating, and I certainly think we must come,” Mary was saying, “though I don't know how I shall bring myself to part with Elliston,” and she hugged the baby close.

“You born Mother!” said Constance. “I adored my boys, but I was always enchanted to escape from them.” She laughed like a girl. “Now you grasp the inwardness of my Christmas present--it is a coasting outfit. Won't she look lovely in it, Mr. Byrd?”

“Glorious!” said Stefan, boyishly aglow; and “I don't believe two and two do make four, after all,” thought Constance.

All through luncheon they discussed the plan with animation, Constance enlisting Mary's help at the Suffrage Fête the first week in January in advance payment, as she said, for the house-party. “Why not get your nurse a few days earlier to break her in, and be free to give me as much time as possible?” she urged.

“Good idea, Mary,” Stefan chimed in. “I'll stay in town that week and lunch with you at the bazaar, and you could sleep a night or two at the studio.”

“We'll see,” said Mary, a little non-committal. She knew she should enjoy the Fête immensely, but somehow, she did not feel she could bring herself to sleep in the little studio, with Felicity the Nixie sneering down at her from one wall, and Felicity the Dancer challenging from the other.

But it was a much cheered couple that Constance left behind, and Stefan came home every afternoon during the week that remained till the opening of the bazaar.

Being in the city for this event, Mary, in addition to engaging a nurse, indulged in some rather extravagant shopping. She had made up her mind to look her best at Burlington, and though Mary was slow to move, when she did take action her methods were thorough. She realized with gratitude that Constance, whom she suspected of knowing more than she indicated, had given her a wonderful opportunity of renewing her appeal to her husband, and she was determined to use it to the full. Incapable--as are all women of her type--of coquetry, Mary yet knew the value of her beauty, and was too intelligent not to see that both it and she had been at a grave disadvantage of late. She understood dimly that she was confronted by one of the fundamental problems of marriage, the difficulty of making an equal success of love and motherhood. She could not put her husband permanently before her child, as Constance had done, and as she knew most Englishwomen did, but she meant to do it completely for this one week of holiday, at least.

Meanwhile, amidst the color and music of the great drill-hall where the suffragists held their yearly Fête, Mary, dispensing tea and cakes in a flower-garlanded tent, enjoyed herself with simple whole-heartedness. All Constance's waitresses were dressed as daffodils, and the high cap, representing the inverted cup of the flower, with the tight-sheathed yellow and green of the gown, was particularly becoming to Mary. She knew again the pleasure, which no one is too modest to enjoy, of being a center of admiration. Stefan dropped in once or twice, and waxed enthusiastic over Constance's arrangements and Mary's looks.

On one of these occasions Miss Berber suddenly appeared in the tent, dressed wonderfully in white panne, with a barbaric mottle of black and white civet-skins flung over one shoulder, and a tight-drawn cap of the fur, apparently held in place by the great claws of some feline mounted in heavy gold. She wore circles of fretted gold in her ears, and carried a tall ebony stick with a gold handle, Louis Quatorze fashion. From her huge civet muff a gold purse dangled. She looked at once more conventional and more dynamic than Mary had seen her, and her rich dress made the simple effects of the tent seem amateurish.

Neither Mary nor she attempted more than a formal salutation, but she discoursed languidly with Constance for some minutes. Stefan, who had been eating ice cream like a schoolboy with two pretty girls at the other side of the tent, came forward on seeing the new arrival, and after a good deal of undecided fidgeting, and a “See you later” to Mary, wandered off with Miss Berber and disappeared for the rest of the afternoon. In spite of her best efforts, Mary's spirits were completely dashed by this episode, but they rose again when Stefan met her at the Pennsylvania Station and traveled home with her. As they emerged from the speech-deadening roar of the tunnel he said casually, “Felicity Berber is an amusing creature, but she's a good deal of a bore at times.” Mary took his hand under the folds of their newspaper.

VII

On the evening of their departure Mary parted from her baby with a pang, but she knew him to be in the best of hands, and felt no anxiety as to his welfare. The nurse she had obtained was a friend of Miss McCullock's, and a most efficient and kindly young woman.

Their journey up to town reminded Mary of their first journey from Shadeham, so full of spirits and enthusiasm was Stefan. The whole party met at the Grand Central, and boarded the train amid laughter, introductions, and much gay talk. Constance scintillated. The solid Mr. Elliot was quite shaken out of his sobriety, McEwan's grin was at its broadest, Farraday's smile its pleasantest, and the three young women whom Constance had collected bubbled and shrilled merrily.

Only Gunther appeared untouched by the holiday atmosphere. He towered over the rest of the party calm and direct, disposing of porters and hand-baggage with an unruffled perfection of address. Mary, watching him, pulled Stefan's sleeve.

“Look,” she said, pointing to two long ribbons of narrow wood lashed to some other impedimenta of Gunther's. “Skis, Stefan, how thrilling! I've never seen them used.”

Stefan nodded. “I'd like to get a drawing of that chap in action. His lines are magnificent,” Mary had never been in a sleeping car before, and was fascinated to see the sloping ceilings of the state-rooms change like pantomime trick into beds under the deft handling of the porter. She liked the white coat of this autocrat of the road, and the smart, muslin trimmings of the colored maid. She and Stefan had the compartment next their host's; Farraday and McEwan shared one beyond; Gunther and his skis and Walter, the Elliot's younger son, completely filled the next; Mrs. Thayer, a cheerful young widow, and Miss Baxter and Miss Van Sittart, the two girls of the party, occupied the remaining three. The drawing room had been left empty to serve as a general overflow. To this high-balls, coffee, milk and sandwiches were borne by white-draped waiters from the buffet, and set upon a magically installed table. Mrs. Thayer, Constance, and the men fell upon the stronger beverages, while Mary and the girls divided the milk.

Under cover of the general chatter McEwan raised his glass to Constance.

“I take off my hat to you, Mrs. Elliot, for a stage manager,” he whispered, glancing at the other women. “A black-haired soubrette, a brown pony, and a redheaded slip; no rivals to the leading lady in this show!”

Their train reached Burlington in a flurry of snow, and they were bundled into big, two-seated sleighs for the drive out of the city.

Mary, wrapped in her fur-lined coat and covered with a huge bearskin, watched with interest the tidy, dignified little town speed by. Even Stefan was willing to admit it had some claims to the picturesque, but a little way beyond, when they came to the open country, he gave almost a whoop of satisfaction. Before them stretched tumbled hills, converging on an icebound lake. Their snowy sides glittered pink in the sun and purple in the shadows; they reared their frosted crests as if in welcome of the morning; behind them the sky gleamed opalescent. Stefan leant forward in the speeding sleigh as if to urge it with the sway of his body, the frosty air stung his nostrils, the breath of the horses trailed like smoke, the road seemed leading up to the threshold of the world. The speed of their cold flight was in tune with the frozen dance of the hills--Stefan whooped again, intoxicated, the others laughed back at him and cheered, Mary's face glowed with delight, they were like children in their joy.

The Elliot house lay in a high fold of the hills, overlooking the lake, and almost out of sight of other buildings. Within, all was spacious warmth and the crackle of great wood fires; on every side the icy view, seen through wide windows, contrasted with the glowing colors of the rooms. A steaming breakfast waited to fortify the hastily drunk coffee of the train. After it, when the Byrds found themselves in their cozy bedroom with its old New England furniture and blue-tiled bathroom, Stefan, waltzing round the room, fairly hugged Mary in excited glee.

“What fun, Beautiful, what a lovely place, what air, what snow!” She laughed with him, her own heart bounding with unwonted excitement.

The six-day party was a marked success throughout. Even the two young girls were satisfied, for Constance contrived the appearance of several stalwart youths of the neighborhood to help her son leaven the group of older men. Mrs. Thayer flirted pleasantly and wittily with whoever chanced to be at hand, Mr. Elliot hobnobbed with Farraday and made touchingly laborious efforts to be frivolous, and McEwan kept the household laughing at his gambols, heavy as those of a St. Bernard pup.

Constance darted from group to group like a purposeful humming-bird, but did not lack the supreme gift of a hostess--that of leaving her guests reasonably alone. All the women were inclined to hover about Byrd, who, with Gunther, represented the most attractive male element. As the women were sufficiently pretty and intelligent, Stefan enjoyed their notice, but Gunther stalked away from them like a great hound surrounded by lap-dogs. He was invariably courteous to his hostess, but had eyes only for Mary. Never seeming to follow her, and rarely talking to her alone, he was yet always to be found within a few yards of the spot she happened to occupy. Farraday would watch her from another room, or talk with her in his slow, kind way, and Wallace always drew her into his absurd games or his sessions at the piano. But Gunther neither watched nor chattered, he simply _was_, seeming to draw a silent and complete satisfaction from her nearness. Of the men he took only cursory notice, talking sometimes with Stefan on art, or with Farraday on life, but never seeking their society.

Indoors Gunther seemed negative, outdoors he became godlike. The Elliots possessed a little Norwegian sleigh they had brought from Europe. It was swan-shaped, stood on low wooden runners, and was brightly painted in the Norse manner. This Gunther found in the stable, and, promptly harnessing to it the fastest horse, drove round to the house. Striding into the hall, where the party was discussing plans for the day, he planted himself before Mary, and invited her to drive. The others, looking out of the window, exclaimed with pleasure at the pretty little sleigh, and Mary gladly threw on her cap and coat. Gunther tucked her in and started without a word. They were a mile from the house before he broke silence.

“This sleigh comes from my country, Mrs. Byrd; I wish I could drive you there in it.”

He did not speak again, and Mary was glad to enjoy the exhilarating air in silence. By several roads they had gradually climbed a hillside. Now from below they could see the house at some distance to their right, and another road running in one long slope almost straight to it from where they sat. Gunther suddenly stood up in the sleigh, braced his feet, and wrapped a rein round each arm.

“Now we will drive,” said he. They started, they gathered speed, they flew, the horse threw himself into a stretching gallop, the sleigh rocked, it leapt like a dashing wave. Gunther half crouched, swaying with it. The horse raced, his flanks stretched to the snow. Mary clung to her seat breathless and tense with excitement--she looked up at the driver. His blue eyes blazed, his lips smiled above a tight-set jaw, he looked down, and meeting her eyes laughed triumphantly. Expanding his great chest he uttered a wild, exultant cry--they seemed to be rushing off the world's rim. She could see nothing but the blinding fume of the upflung snow. She, too, wanted to cry aloud. Then their pace slackened, she could see the road, black trees, a wall, a house. They drove into the courtyard and stopped.

The hall door was flung open. They were met by a group of faces excited and alarmed. Gunther, his eyes still blazing, helped her down and, throwing the reins to a waiting stable-boy, strode silently past the guests and up to his room.

“Good heavens! you might have been killed,” fussed Mr. Elliot. Farraday looked pale, the women laughed excitedly.

“Mary,” cried Stefan, his face flashing with eagerness, “you weren't frightened, were you?”

She shook her head, still breathless.

“It was glorious, you were like storm gods. I've never seen anything so inspiring.” And he embraced her before them all.

After this episode Gunther resumed his impassive manner, nor did any other of their outdoor sports draw from him the strange, exultant look he had given Mary in the sleigh. But his feats on the toboggan slide and with his skis were sufficiently daring to supply the party with liberal thrills. His obvious skill gained him the captaincy of the toboggan, but after his exhibition of driving, most of the women hesitated at first to form one of his crew. Mary, however, who was quite fearless and fascinated by this new sport, dashed down with him and the other men again and again, and was, with her white wraps and brilliant pink cheeks, as McEwan had prophesied, “the queen of the slide.”

Stefan was intoxicated by the tobogganing, and though he was only less new to it than Mary he soon became expert. But on his skis the great Norwegian was alone, the whole party turning out to watch whenever he strapped them to his feet. His daring leaps were, Stefan said, the nearest thing to flying he had ever seen. “For I don't count aeroplanes--they are mere machinery.”

“Ah, if the lake were frozen enough for ice-boating,” replied Gunther, “I could show you something nearer still. But they tell me there is little chance till February for more than in-shore skating.”

Only in this last named sport had Gunther a rival, Stefan making up in grace what he lacked in practice. Beside his, the Norwegian's skating was powerful, but too unbending.

Mary, owing to the open English winters, had had less experience than any one there, but she was so much more graceful and athletic than the other women that she soon outstripped them. She skated almost entirely with Stefan, only once with Gunther, who, since his strange look in the sleigh, a little troubled her. On that one occasion he tore round the clear ice at breakneck speed, halting her dramatically, by sheer weight, a few inches from the bank, where she arrived breathless and thrilled.

Seeing her thus at her best, happy and admired, and full of vigorous life, Stefan found himself almost as much in love as in the early weeks of their marriage.

“You are more beautiful than ever, Mary,” he exclaimed; “there is an added life and strength in you; you are triumphant.”

It was a joy again to feel her in his arms, to know that they were each other's. After his troubled flights he came back to her love with a feeling of deep spiritual peace. The night, when he could be alone with her, became the happy climax of the day.

The amusements of the week ended in an impromptu dance which Constance arranged by a morning at the telephone. For this, Mary donned her main extravagance, a dress of rainbow colored silk gauze, cut short to the ankle, and worn with pale pink slippers. She had found it “marked down” at a Fifth Avenue house, and had been told it was a model dubbed “Aurora.” With it she wore her mother's pearl ornaments. Stefan was entranced by the result, and Constance almost wept with satisfaction.

“Oh, Mary Byrd,” she cried, hugging her daintily to avoid crushing the frock; “you are the best thing that has happened in my family since my mother-in-law quit living with me.”

That night Stefan was at his best. Delighted with all his surroundings, he let his faunlike spirits have full play, and his keen, brown face and green-gold eyes flashed apparently simultaneously from every corner of the room. Gunther did not dance; Farraday's method was correct but quiet, and none of the men could rival Stefan in light-footed grace. Both he and Mary were ignorant of any of the new dances, but Constance had given Mary a lesson earlier in the day, and Stefan grasped the general scheme with his usual lightning rapidity. Then he began to embroider, inventing steps of his own which, in turn, Mary was quick to catch. No couple on the floor compared with them in distinction and grace, and they danced, to the chagrin of the other men and girls, almost entirely together.

Whatever disappointment this caused, however, was not shared by their hostess and McEwan. After enduring several rounds of Mac's punishing dancing, Constance was thankful to sit out with him and watch the others. She was glad to be silent after her strenuous efforts as a hostess, and McEwan was apparently too filled with satisfaction to have room left for speech. His red face beamed, his big teeth glistened, pleasure radiated from him.

“Aye, aye,” he chuckled, nodding his ponderous head, and again “Aye, aye,” in tones of fat content, as the two Byrds swung lightly by.

“Aye, aye, Mr. McEwan,” smiled Constance, tapping his knee with her fan. “All this was your idea, and you are a good fellow. From this moment, I intend to call you by your first name.”

“Aye, aye,” beamed McEwan, more broadly than before, extending a huge hand; “that'll be grand.”

The dance was the climax of the week. The next day was their last, leave-takings were in the air, and toward afternoon a bustle of packing. Stefan was in a mood of slight reaction from his excitement of the night before. While Mary packed for them both he prowled uncertainly about the house, and, finding the men in the library, whiled away the time in an utterly impossible attempt to quarrel with McEwan on some theory of art.

They all left for the train with lamentations, and arrived in New York the next morning in a cheerless storm of wet snow.

But by this time Mary's regret at the ending of their holiday was lost in joy at the prospect of seeing her baby. She urged the stiff and tired Stefan to speed, and, by cutting short their farewells and jumping for a street car, managed to make the next train out for Crab's Bay. She could hardly sit still in the decrepit cab, and it had barely stopped at their gate before she was out and tearing up the stairs.

Stefan paid the cab, carried in their suitcase, and wandered, cold and lonely, to the sitting room. For him their home-coming offered no alleviating thrill. Already, he felt, Mary's bright wings were folding again above her nest.

VIII

Refreshed, in spite of his natural reaction of spirits, by the week's holiday, Stefan turned to his work with greater content in it than he had felt for some time. His content was, to his own surprise, rather increased than lessened by the discovery that Felicity Berber had left New York for the South. Arriving at his studio the day after their return from Vermont, he found one of her characteristic notes, in crimson ink this time, upon snowy paper.

“Stefan,” it read, “the winter has found his strength at last in storms. But our friendship dallies with the various moods of spring. It leaves me restless. The snow chills without calming me. My designing is beauty wasted on the blindness of the city's overfed. A need of warmth and stillness is upon me--the south claims me. The time of my return is unrevealed as yet. Felicity.”

Stefan read this epistle twice, the first time with irritation, the second with relief. “Affected creature,” he said to himself, “it's a good job she's gone. I've frittered away too much time with her as it is.”

At home that evening he told Mary. His devotion during their holiday had already obscured her memory of the autumn's unhappiness, and his carefree manner of imparting his tidings laid any ghost of doubt that still remained with her. Secure once more in his love, she was as uncloudedly happy as she had ever been.

In his newly acquired mood of sanity, Stefan faced the fact that he had less work to show for the last nine months than in any similar period of his career, and that he was still living on his last winter's success. What had these months brought him? An expensive and inconclusive flirtation at the cost of his wife's happiness, a few disturbing memories, and two unfinished pictures. Out of patience with himself, he plunged into his work. In two weeks of concentrated effort he had finished the Nixie, and had arranged with Constantine to exhibit it and the Demeter immediately. This last the dealer appeared to admire, pronouncing it a fine canvas, though inferior to the Danaë. About the Nixie he seemed in two minds.

“We shall have a newspaper story with that one, Mr. Byrd, the lady being so well known, and the subject so dramatic, but if you ask me will it sell--” he shrugged his fat shoulders--“that's another thing.”

Stefan stared at him. “I could sell that picture in France five times over.”

Constantine waved his pudgy fingers.

“Ah, France! V'là c' qui est autre chose, 's pas? But if we fail in New York for this one I think we try Chicago.”

The reception of the pictures proved Constantine a shrewd prophet. The academic Demeter was applauded by the average critic as a piece of decorative work in the grand manner, and a fit rebuke to all Cubists, Futurists, and other anarchists. It was bought by a committee from a western agricultural college, which had come east with a check from the state's leading politician to purchase suitable mural enrichments for the college's new building. Constantine persuaded these worthies that one suitable painting by a distinguished artist would enrich their institution more than the half dozen canvases “to fit the auditorium” which they had been inclined to order. Moreover, he mulcted them of two thousand dollars for Demeter, which, in his private estimation, was more than she was worth. He achieved the sale more readily because of the newspaper controversy aroused by the Nixie. Was this picture a satire on life, or on the celebrated Miss Berber? Was it great art, or merely melodrama? Were Byrd's effects of river-light obtained in the old impressionist manner, or by a subtler method of his own? Was he a master or a poseur?

These and other questions brought his name into fresh prominence, but failed to sell their object. Just, however, as Constantine was considering a journey for the Nixie to Chicago, a purchaser appeared in the shape of a certain Mr. Einsbacher. Stefan happened to be in the gallery when this gentleman, piloted by Constantine himself, came in, and recognized him as the elderly satyr of the pouched eyes who had been so attentive to Felicity on the night of Constance's reception. When, later, the dealer informed him that this individual had bought the Nixie for three thousand, Stefan made no attempt to conceal his disgust.

“Thousand devils, Constantine, I don't paint for swine of that type,” said he, scowling.

The dealer's hands wagged. “His check is good,” he replied, “and who knows, he may die soon and leave the picture to the Metropolitan.”

But Stefan was not to be mollified, and went home that afternoon in a state of high rebellion against all commercialism. Mary tried to console him by pointing out that even with the dealer's commission deducted, he had made more than a year's income from the two sales, and could now work again free from all anxiety.

“What's the good,” he exclaimed, “of producing beauty for sheep to bleat and monkeys to leer at! What's the good of producing it in America at all? Who wants, or understands it!”

“Oh, Stefan, heaps of people. Doesn't Mr. Farraday understand art, for instance?”

“Farraday,” he snorted, “yes!--landscapes and women with children. What does he know of the radiance of beauty, its mystery, the hot soul of it? Oh, Mary,” he flung himself down beside her, and clutched her hand eagerly, “don't be wise; don't be sensible, darling. It's March, spring is beginning in Europe. It's a year and a half since I became an exile. Let's go, beloved. You say yourself we have plenty of money; let's take ship for the land where beauty is understood, where it is put first, above all things. Let's go back to France, Mary!”

His face was fired with eagerness; he almost trembled with the passion to be gone. Mary flushed, and then grew pale with apprehension. “Do you mean break up our home, Stefan, for good?”

“Yes, darling. You know I've counted the days of bondage. We couldn't travel last spring, and since then we've been too poor. What have these last months brought us? Only disharmony. We are free now, there is nothing to hold us back. We can leave Elliston in Paris, and follow the spring south to the vineyards. A progress a-foot through France, each day finding colors richer, the sun nearer--think of it, Beautiful!” He kissed her joyously.

Her hands were quite cold now, “But, Stefan,” she temporized, “our little house, our friends, my work, the--the _place_ we've been making?”

“Dearest, all these we can find far better there.”

She shook her head. “I can't. I don't speak French properly, I don't understand French people. I couldn't sell my stories there or--or anything,” she finished weakly.

He jumped up, his eyes blank, hands thrust in his pockets.

“I don't get you, Mary. You don't mean--you surely can't mean, that you don't want to go to France _at all_? That you want to _live_ here?”

She floundered. “I don't know, Stefan. Of course you've always talked about France, and I should love to go there and see it, and so on, but somehow I've come to think of the Byrdsnest as home--we've been so happy here--”

“Happy?” he interrupted her. “You say we've been happy?” His tone was utterly confounded.

“Yes, dear, except--except when you were so--so busy last autumn--”

He dropped down by the table, squaring himself as if to get to the bottom of a riddle.

“What is your idea of happiness, Mary, of _life_ in fact?” he asked, in an unusually quiet voice. She felt glad that he seemed so willing to talk things over, and to concede her a point of view of her own.

“Well,” she began, feeling for her words, “my idea of life is to have a person and work that you love, and then to build--both of you--a place, a position; to have friends--be part of the community--so that your children--the immortal part of you--may grow up in a more and more enriching atmosphere.” She paused, while he watched her, motionless. “I can't imagine,” she went on, “greater happiness for two people than to see their children growing up strong and useful--tall sons and daughters to be proud of, such as all the generations before us have had. Something to hand our life on to--as it was in the beginning--you know, Stefan--” She flushed with the effort to express.

“Then,”--his voice was quieter still; she did not see that his hands were clenched under the flap of the table--“in this scheme of life of yours, how many children--how many servants, rooms, all that sort of thing--should you consider necessary?”

She smiled. “As for houses, servants and things, that just depends on one's income. I hate ostentation, but I do like a beautifully run house, and I adore horses and dogs and things. But the children--” she flushed again--“why, dearest, I think any couple ought to be simply too thankful for all the children they can have. Unless, perhaps,” she added naïvely, “they're frightfully poor.”

“Where should people live to be happy in this way?” he asked, still in those carefully quiet tones.

She was looking out of the window, trying to formulate her thoughts. “I don't think it matters very much _where_ one lives,” she said in her soft, clear tones, “as long as one has friends, and is not too much in the city. But to own one's house, and the ground under one, to be able to leave it to one's son, to think of _his_ son being born in it--that I think would add enormously to one's happiness. To belong to the place one lives in, whether it's an old country, or one of the colonies, or anywhere.”

“I see,” said Stefan slowly, in a voice low and almost harsh. Startled, she looked at him. His face was knotted in a white mask; it was like the face of some creature upon which an iron door has been shut. “Stefan,” she exclaimed, “what--?”

“Wait a minute,” he said, still slowly. “I suppose it's time we talked this thing out. I've been a fool, and judged, like a fool, by myself. It's time we knew each other, Mary. All that you have said is horrible to me--it's like a trap.” She gave an exclamation. “Wait, let me do something I've never done, let me _think_ about it.” He was silent, his face still a hard, knotted mask. Mary waited, her heart trembling.

“You, Mary, told me something about families in England who live as you describe--you said your mother belonged to one of them. I remember that now.” He nodded shortly, as if conceding her a point. “My father was a New Englander. He was narrow and self-righteous, and I hated him, but he came of people who had faced a hundred forms of death to live primitively, in a strange land.”

“I'm willing to live in a strange country, Stefan,” she almost cried to him.

“Don't, Mary--I'm still trying to understand. I'm not my father's son, I'm my mother's. I don't know what she was, but she was beautiful and passionate--she came of a mixed race, she may have had gipsy blood--I don't know--but I do know she had genius. She loved only color and movement. Mary--” he looked straight at her for the first time, his eyes were tortured--“I loved you because you were beautiful and free. When your child bound you, and you began to collect so many things and people about you, I loved you less. I met some one else who had the beauty of color and movement, and I almost loved her. She told me the name Berber wasn't her own, that she had taken it because it belonged to a tribe of wanderers--Arabs. I almost loved her for that alone. But, Mary, you still held me. I was faithful to you because of your beauty and the love that had been between us. Then you rose from your petty little surroundings”--he cast a look of contempt at the pretty furnishings of the room--“I saw you like a storm-spirit, I saw you moving among other women like a goddess, adored of men. I felt your beautiful body yield to me in the joy of wild movement, in the rhythm of the dance. You were my bride, alive, gloriously free--once more, you were the Desired. I loved you, Mary.” He rose and put his hands on her shoulders. Her face was as white as his now. His hands dropped, he almost leapt away from her, the muscles of his face writhed. “My God, Mary, I've never wanted to _think_ about you, only to feel and see you! Now I must think. This--this existence that you have described! Is that all you ask of life? Are you sure?”

“What more could one ask!” she uttered, dazed.

“What _more?_” he cried out, throwing up his arms. “What _more,_ Mary! Why, it isn't life at all, this deadly, petty intricate day by day, surrounded by things, and more things. The hopeless, unalterable tameness of it!” He began to pace the room.

“But, my dear, I don't understand you. We have love, and work, and if some part of our life is petty, why, every one's always has been, hasn't it?”

She was deeply moved by his distress, afraid again for their happiness, longing to comfort him. Yet, under and apart from all these emotions, some cool little faculty of criticism wondered if he was not making rather a theatrical scene. “Daily life must be a little monotonous, mustn't it?” she urged again, trying to help him.

“No!” he almost shouted, with a gesture of fierce repudiation. “Was Angelo's life petty? Was da Vinci's? Did Columbus live monotonously, did Scott or Peary? Does any explorer or traveler? Did Thoreau surround himself with _things_--to hamper--did George Borrow, or Whitman, or Stevenson? Do you suppose Rodin, or de Musset, or Rousseau, or Millet, or any one else who has ever _lived_, cared whether they had a position, a house, horses, old furniture? All the world's wanderers, from Ulysses down to the last tramp who knocked at this door, have known more of life than all your generations of staid conventional county families! Oh, Mary”--he leant across the table toward her, and his voice pleaded--“think of what life _should_ be. Think of the peasants in France treading out the wine. Think of ships, and rivers, and all the beauty of the forests. Think of dancing, of music, of that old viking who first found America. Think of those tribes who wander with their tents over the desert and pitch them under stars as big as lamps--all the things we've never seen, Mary, the songs we've never heard. The colors, the scents, and the cruel tang of life! All these I want to see and feel, and translate into pictures. I want you with me, Mary--beautiful and free--I want us to drink life eagerly together, as if it were heady wine.” He took her hand across the table. “You'll come, Beloved, you'll give all the little things up, and come?”

She rose, her face pitifully white. They stood with hands clasped, the table between them.

“The boy, Stefan?”

He laughed, thinking he had won her. “Bring him, too, as the Arab women carry theirs, in a shawl. We'll leave him here and there, and have him with us whenever we stay long in one place.”

She pulled her hand away, her eyes filled with tears. “I love you, Stefan, but I can't bring my child up like a gipsy. I'll live in France, or anywhere you say, but I must have a home--I can't be a wanderer.”

“You shall have a home, sweetheart, to keep coming back to.” His face was brightening to eagerness.

“Oh, you don't understand. I can't leave my child; I can't be with him only sometimes. I want him always. And it isn't only him. Oh, Stefan, dear”--her voice in its turn was pleading--“I don't believe I can come to France just now. I think, I'm almost sure, we're going to have another baby.”

He straightened, they faced each other in silence. After a moment she spoke again, looking down, her hands tremblingly picking at her handkerchief.

“I was so happy about it. It was the sign of your renewed love. I thought we could build a little wing on the cottage, and have a nurse.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “I thought it might be a little girl, and that you would love her better than the boy. I'll come later, dear, if you say so, but I can't come now.” She sank into her chair, her head drooping. He, too, sat down, too dazed by this new development to find his way for a minute through its implications.

“I'm sorry, Mary,” he said at last, dully. “I don't want a little girl. If she could be put away somewhere till she were grown, I should not mind. But to live like this all through one's youth, with a house, and servants, and people calling, and the place cluttered up with babies--I don't think I can do that, possibly.”

She was frankly crying now. “But, dear one, can't we compromise? After this baby is born, I'll give up the house. We'll live in France--I'll travel with you a little. That will help, won't it?”

He sighed. “I suppose so. We shall have to think out some scheme. But the ghastly part is that we shall both have to be content with half measures. You want one thing of life, Mary, I another. No amount of self-sacrifice on either side alters that fact. We married, strangers, and it's taken us a year and a half to find it out. My fault, of course. I wanted love and beauty, and I got it--I didn't think of the cost, and I didn't think of _you_. I was just a damned egotistical male, I suppose.” He laughed bitterly. “My father wanted a wife, and he got the burning heart of a rose. I--I never wanted a wife, I see that now, I wanted to snare the very spirit of life and make it my own--you looked a vessel fit to carry it. But you were just a woman like the rest. We've failed each other, that's all.”

“Oh, Stefan,” she cried through her tears, “I've tried so hard. But I was always the same--just a woman. Only--” her tears broke out afresh--“when you married me, I thought you loved me as I was.”

He looked at her, transfixed. “My God,” he whispered, “that's what I heard my mother say more than twenty years ago. What a mockery--each generation a scorn and plaything for the high Gods! Well, we'll do the best we can, Mary. I'm utterly a pagan, so I'm not quite the inhuman granite my Christian father was. Don't cry, dear.” He stooped and kissed her, and she heard his light, wild steps pass through the room and out into the night. She sat silent, amid the ruins of her nest.

IX

For a month Stefan brooded. He hung about the house, dabbled at a little work, and returned, all without signs of life or interest. He was kind to Mary, more considerate than he used to be, but she would have given all his inanimate, painstaking politeness for an hour of his old, gay thoughtlessness. They had reached the stage of marriage in which, all being explained and understood, there seems nothing to hope for. Alone together they were silent, for there was nothing to say. Each condoned but could not comfort the other. Stefan felt that his marriage had been a mistake, that he, a living thing, had tied about his neck a dead mass of institutions, customs and obligations which would slowly crush his life out. “I am twenty-seven,” he said to himself, “and my life is over.” He did not blame Mary, but himself.

She, on the other hand, felt she had married a man outside the pale of ordinary humanity, and that though she still loved him, she could no longer expect happiness through him. “I am twenty-five,” she thought, “and my personal life is over. I can be happy now only in my children.” As those were assured her, she never thought of regretting her marriage, but only deplored the loss of her dream. Nor did she judge Stefan. She understood the wild risk she had run in marrying a man of whom she knew nothing. “He is as he is,” she thought; “neither of us is to blame.” Lonely and grieved, she turned for companionship to her writing, and began a series of fairy tales which she had long planned for very young children. The first instalment of her serial was out, charmingly illustrated; she had felt rather proud on seeing her name, for the first time, on the cover of a magazine. She engaged a young girl from the village to take Elliston for his daily outings, and settled down to a routine of work, small social relaxations, and morning and evening care of the baby. The daily facts of life were pleasant to Mary; if some hurt or disappointed, her balanced nature swung readily to assuage itself with others. She honestly believed she felt more deeply than her husband, and perhaps she did, but she was not of the kind whom life can break. Stefan might dash himself to exhaustion against a rock round which Mary would find a smooth channel.

While her work progressed, Stefan's remained at a standstill. Disillusioned with his marriage and with his whole way of life he fretted himself from his old sure confidence to a mood of despair. Their friends bored him, his studio like his house became a cage. New York appeared in her old guise of mammoth materialist, but now he had no heart to satirize her dishonor. He wanted only to be gone, but told himself that in common decency he must remain with Mary till her child was born. He longed for even the superficial thrill of Felicity's presence, but she still lingered in the South. So fretting, he tossed himself against the bars through the long snows of an unusually severe March, until April broke the frost, and the road to the Byrdsnest became a morass of running mud.

In the last two weeks Stefan had begun a portrait of Constance, but without enthusiasm. She was a fidgety sitter, and was moreover so busy with her suffrage work that she could never be relied on for more than an hour at a time. After a few of these fragmentary sittings his ragged nerves gave out completely.

“It's utterly useless, Constance!” he exclaimed, throwing down his pallette and brushes, as the telephone interrupted them for the third time in less than an hour. “I can't paint in a suffrage office. This is a studio, not the Club's headquarters. If you can't shut these people off and sit rationally, please don't trouble to come again.”

“I know, my dear boy, it's abominable, but what can I do? Our bill has passed the Legislature; until it is submitted next year I can't be my own or Theodore's, much less yours. As for you, you look a rag. This winter has about made me hate my country. I don't wonder you long for France.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, she dangled her beads reflectively, and perched on the throne again without attempting to resume her pose. “My dear boy,” she said suddenly, “why stay here and be eaten by devils--why not fly from them?”

“I wish to God I could,” he groaned.

“You can. Mary was in to see our shop yesterday; she looked dragged. You are both nervous. Do what I have always done--take a holiday from each other. There's nothing like it as a tonic for love.”

“Do you really think she wouldn't mind?” he exclaimed eagerly. “You know she--she isn't very well.”

“Chtt,” shrugged Constance, “_that's_ only being more than usually well. You don't think Mary needs coddling, do you? She's worried because you are bored. If you aren't there, she won't worry. I shall take your advice--I shan't come here again--” and she settled her hat briskly--“and you take mine. Go away--” Constance threw on her coat--“go anywhere you like, my dear Stefan--” she was at the door--“except south,” she added with a mischievous twinkle, closing it.

Stefan, grinning appreciatively at this parting shot, unscrewed his sketch of Constance from the easel, set it face to the wall in a corner, cleaned his brushes, with the meticulous care he always gave to his tools, and ran for the elevated, just in time to catch the next train for Crab's Bay. At the station he jumped into a hack, and, splashing home as quickly as the liquid road bed would allow, burst into the house to find Mary still lingering over her lunch.

“What has happened, Stefan?” she exclaimed, startled at his excited face.

“Nothing. I've got an idea, that's all. Let me have something to eat and I'll tell you about it.”

She rang for Lily, and he made a hasty meal, asking her unwonted questions meantime about her work, her amusements, whether many of the neighbors were down yet, and if she felt lonely.

“No, I'm not lonely, dear. There are only a few people here, but they are awfully decent to me, and I'm very busy at home.”

“You are sure you are not lonely?” he asked anxiously, drinking his coffee, and lighting a cigarette.

“Yes, quite sure. I'm not exactly gay--” and she smiled a little sadly--“but I'm really never lonely.”

“Then,” he asked nervously, “what would you say if I suggested going off by myself for two or three months, to Paris.” He watched her intently, fearful of the effect of his words. To his unbounded relief, she appeared neither surprised nor hurt, but, after twisting her coffee cup thoughtfully for a minute, looked up with a frank smile.

“I think it would be an awfully good thing, Stefan dear. I've been thinking so for a month, but I didn't like to say anything in case you might feel--after our talk--” her voice faltered for a moment--“that I was trying to--that I didn't care for you so much. It isn't that, dear--” she looked honestly at him--“but I know you're not happy, and it doesn't help me to feel I am holding you back from something you want. I think we shall be happier afterwards if you go now.”

“I do, too,” said he, “but I was so afraid it would seem cruel in me to suggest it. I don't want to grow callous like my father.” He shuddered. “I want to do the decent thing, Mary.” His eyes were pleading.

“I know, dearest, you've been very kind. But for both our sakes, it will be far better if you go for a time.” She rose, and, coming round the table, kissed his rough hair. He caught her hand, and pressed it gratefully. “You are good to me, Mary.”

The matter settled, Stefan's spirit soared. He rang up the French Line and secured one of the few remaining berths for their next sailing, which was in three days. He telephoned an ecstatic cable to Adolph. Then, hurrying to the attic, he brought down his friend's old Gladstone, and his own suitcase, and began to sort out his clothes. Mary, anxious to quell her heartache by action, came up to help him, and vetoed his idea of taking only the barest necessities.

“I know,” she said, “you want to get back to your old Bohemia. But remember you are a well-known artist now--the celebrated Stefan Byrd,” and she courtesied to him. “Suppose you were to meet some charming people whom you wanted to see something of? Do take a dinner-jacket at least.”

He grinned at her. “I shall live in a blouse and sleep in my old attic with Adolph. That's the only thing I could possibly want to do. But I won't be fractious, Mary. If it will please you to have me take dress clothes I'll do it--only you must pack them yourself!”

She nodded smilingly. “All right, I shall love to.” She had failed to make her husband happy in their home, she thought; at least she would succeed in her manner of speeding him from it. It was her tragedy that he should want to go. That once faced, she would not make a second tragedy of his going.

She spent the next morning, while he went to town to buy his ticket, in a thorough overhauling of his clothes. She found linen bags to hold his shoes and a linen folder for his shirts. She pressed his ties and brushed his coats, packed lavender bags in his underwear, and slipped a framed snapshot of herself and Elliston into the bottom of the Gladstone. With it, in a box, she put the ring she had given him, with the winged head, which he had ceased to wear of late. She found some new poems and a novel he had not read, and packed those. She gave him her own soapbox and toothbrush case. She cleaned his two bags with shoe polish. Everything she could think of was done to show that she sent him away willingly, and she worked so hard that she forgot to notice how her heart ached. In the afternoon she met him in town and they had dinner together. He suggested their old hotel, but she shook her head. “No dear, not there,” she said, smiling a little tremulously. They went to a theatre, and got home so late that she was too tired to be wakeful.

“By the by,” she said next morning at breakfast, “don't worry about my being alone after you've gone. I thought it might be triste for the first few days, so I've rung up the Sparrow, and she's coming to occupy your room for a couple of weeks. She's off for her yearly trip abroad at the end of the month. Says she can't abide the Dutch, but means to see what there is to their old Rhine, and come back by way of Tuscany and France.” Mary gurgled. “Can't you see her in Paris, poor dear, 'doing' the Louvre, with her nose in a guidebook. Why! Perhaps you may!”

“The gods forbid,” said Stefan devoutly.

He had brought his paints and brushes home the night before, and after breakfast Mary helped him stow them away in the Gladstone, showing him smilingly how well she had done his packing. While he admired, she remembered to ask him if he had obtained a letter of credit. He burst out laughing.

“Mary, you wonder! I have about fifty dollars in my pocket, and should have entirely forgotten to take more if you hadn't spoken of it. What a bore! Can't I get it to-morrow?”

“You might not have time before sailing. I think you'd better go up to-day, and then you could call on Constance to say good-bye.”

“I don't like to leave you on our last day,” he said uneasily,

“Oh, that will be all right, dear,” she smiled, patting his hand. “I have oceans to do, and I think you ought to see Constance. Get your letter of credit for a thousand dollars, then you'll be sure to have enough.”

“A thousand! Great Scott, Adolph would think I'd robbed a bank if I had all that.”

“You don't need to spend it, silly, but you ought to have it behind you. You never know what might happen.”

“Would there be plenty left for you?”

“Bless me, yes,” she laughed; “we're quite rich.”

While he was gone Mary arranged an impromptu farewell party for him, so that instead of spending a rather depressing evening alone with her, as he had expected, he found himself surrounded by cheerful friends--McEwan, the Farradays, their next neighbors, the Havens, and one or two others. McEwan was the last to leave, at nearly midnight, and pleading fatigue, Mary kissed Stefan good night at the door of her room. She dared not linger with him lest the stifled pain at her heart should clamor for expression too urgently to be denied. But by this time he himself began to feel the impending separation. Ready for bed, he slipped into her room and found her lying wide-eyed in a swathe of moonlight. Without a word he lay down beside her and drew her close. Like children lost in the dark, they slept all night in each other's arms.

Next day Mary saw him off. New York ended at the gangway. Across it, they were in France. French decorations, French faces, French gaiety, the beloved French tongue, were everywhere.

“Listen to it, Mary,” he cried exultingly, and she smiled a cheerful response.

When the warning bell sounded he suddenly became grave.

“Say good-bye again to Elliston for me, dear,” he said, holding her hand close. “I hope he grows up like you.”

Her eyes were swimming now, in spite of herself. “Mary,” he went on, “this separation makes or mars us. I hope, dear, I believe, it will make us. God bless you.” He kissed her, pressed her to him. Suddenly they were both trembling.

“Why are we parting?” he cried, in a revulsion of feeling.

She smiled at him, wiping away her tears. “It's better, dearest,” she whispered; “let me go now.” They kissed again; she turned hurriedly away. He watched her cross the gangway--she waved to him from the dock--then the crowd swallowed her.

For a moment he felt bitterly bereaved. “How ironic life is,” he thought. Then a snatch of French chatter and a gay laugh reached him. The gangway lifted, water widened between the bulwarks and the dock. As the ship swung out he caught the sea breeze--a flight of gulls swept by--he was outbound!

With a deep breath Stefan turned a brilliant smile upon the deck ... Freedom!

Mary, hurrying home with aching heart and throat, let the slow tears run unheeded down her cheeks. From the train she watched the city's outskirts stream by, formless and ugly. She was very desolate. But when, tired out, she entered her house, peace enfolded her. Here were her child, the things she loved, her birds, her pleasant, smiling servant. Here were white walls and gracious calm. Her mate had flown, but the nest remained. Her heart ached still, but it was no longer torn.

X

The day after Stefan sailed Felicity Berber returned from Louisiana. The South had bored her, without curing her weariness of New York. She drove from the Pennsylvania Station to her studio, looked through the books, overhauled the stock, and realized with indifference that her business had suffered heavily through her absence. She listened lazily while her lieutenants, emphasizing this fact, implored her to take up the work again.

“What does it matter,” she murmured through her smoke. “The place still pays. Your salaries are all secure, and I have plenty of money. I may come back, I may not. In any event, I am bored.” She rippled out to her landaulette, and drove home. At her apartment, her Chinese maid was already unpacking her trunks.

“Don't unpack any more, Yo San. I may decide to go away again--abroad perhaps. I am still very bored--give me a white kirtle and telephone Mr. Marchmont to call in an hour.”

With her maid's help she undressed, pinned her hair high, and slipped on a knee-high tunic of heavy chiffon. Barefooted, she entered a large room, walled in white and dull silver--the end opposite the windows filled by a single mirror. Between the windows stood a great tank of gold and silver fish swimming among water lilies.

Two enormous vases of dull glass, stacked with lilies against her homecoming, stood on marble pedestals. The floor was covered with a carpeting of dead black. A divan draped in yellow silk, a single ebony chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a low table in teakwood were the sole furniture. Here, quite alone, Felicity danced away the stiffness of her journey, danced away the drumming of the train from her ears, and its dust from her lungs. Then she bathed, and Yo San dressed her in a loose robe of silver mesh, and fastened her hair with an ivory comb carved and tinted to the model of a water lily. These rites complete, Felicity slowly partook of fruit, coffee and toast. Only then did she re-enter the dance room, where, on his ebony chair, the dangling Marchmont had been uncomfortably waiting for half an hour.

She gave him her hand dreamily, and sank full length on the divan.

“You are more marvelous than ever, Felicity,” said he, with an adoring sigh.

She waved her hand. “For all that I am not in the mood. Tell me the news, my dear Marchmont--plays, pictures, scandals, which of my clients are richer, which are bankrupt, who has gone abroad, and all about my friends.”

Marchmont leant forward, and prepared to light a cigarette, his thin mouth twisted to an eager smile, his loose hair wagging.

“Wait,” she breathed, “I weary of smoke. Give me a lily, Marchmont.” He fetched one of the great Easter lilies from its vase. Placing this on her bosom, she folded her supple hands over it, closed her eyes, and lay still, looking like a Bakst version of the Maid of Astolat. Felicity's hints were usually sufficient for her slaves. Marchmont put away his cigarette, and proceeded with relish to recount the gossip with which, to his long finger-tips, he was charged.

“Well,” said he, after an hour's general survey of New York as they both knew it, “I think that about covers the ground. There is, as I said, no question that Einsbacher is still devoted. My own opinion is he will present you with the Nixie. I suppose you received the clippings I sent about the picture? Constance Elliot has only ordered two gowns from the studio since you left--but you will have seen that by the books. She says she is saving her money for the Cause.” He snickered. “The fact is, she grows dowdy as she grows older. Gunther has gone to Frisco with his group. Polly Thayer tells me his adoration of the beautiful Byrd is pathetic. So much in love he nearly broke her neck showing off his driving for her benefit.” Marchmont snickered again. “As for your friend Mr. Byrd--” he smiled with a touch of sly pleasure--“you won't see him, he sailed for France yesterday, alone. His name is in this morning's list of departures.” And he drew a folded and marked newspaper from his pocket.

A shade of displeasure had crept over the immobile features of Miss Berber. She opened her eyes and regarded the lank Marchmont with distaste. Her finger pressed a button on the divan. Slowly she raised herself to her elbow, while he watched, his pale eyes fixed on her with the expression of a ratting dog waiting its master's thanks after a catch.

“All that you have told me,” said Felicity at last, a slight edge to her zephyr-like voice, “is interesting, but I wish you would remember that while you are free to ridicule my clients, you are not free as regards my friends. Your comment on Connie was in poor taste. I am not in the mood for more conversation this morning. I am fatigued. Good-day, Marchmont.” She sank to her pillows again--her eyes closed.

“Oh, I say, Felicity, is that all the thanks I get?” whined her visitor.

“Good-day, Marchmont,” she breathed again. The door opened, disclosing Yo San. Marchmont's aesthetic veneer cracked.

“Oh, shucks,” he said, “how mean of you!” and trailed out, his cutaway seeming to hang limp like the dejected tail of a dog.

The door closed, Felicity bounded up and, running across the room, invoked her own loveliness in the mirror.

“Alone,” she whispered to herself, “alone.” She danced a few steps, swayingly. “You've never lived, lovely creature, you've never lived yet,” she apostrophized the dancing vision in the glass.

Still swaying and posturing to some inward melody, she fluttered down the passage to her bedroom. “Yo San,” she called, her voice almost full, “we shall go to Europe.” The stolid little maid nodded acquiescence.

For the next three days Felicity Berber, creator of raiment, shut in her pastoral fitting room and surrounded by her chief acolytes, sat at a table opposite Stefan's dancing faun, and designed spring gowns. Felicity the idle, the somnolent, the alluring, gave place to Felicity the inventor, and again to Felicity the woman of business. Scissors clipped, typewriters clicked, colored chalks covered dozens of sheets with drawings.

The staff became first relieved, then enthusiastic. What a spring display they were to have! On the third day hundreds of primrose-yellow envelopes, inscribed in green ink to the studio's clients, poured into the letter-chute. Within them an announcement printed in flowing green script read, under Felicity's letterhead, “I offer twenty-one original designs for spring raiment, created by me under the inspiration of a sojourn in the South. Each will be modified to the wearer's personality, and none will be duplicated. I am about to travel in Europe, there to gain atmosphere for my fall creations.” After her signature, was stamped, by way of seal, a tiny woodcut of Stefan's faun.

The last design was complete by Friday, and on Saturday Felicity sailed on the Mauretania, her suite of three rooms a wilderness of flowers. Marchmont, calling at the apartment to escort her to the boat, found the dance-room swathed in sheeting, its heavy carpet rolled into a corner. Evidently, this was to be no brief “sojourn.” The heavy Einsbacher was at the dock to see her off, together with a small pack of nondescript young men. Constance was not there, and Marchmont guessed that she had not been told of her friend's departure.

Einsbacher had the last word with Felicity. “I hope you will like the vlowers,” he whispered gutturally. “Let me know if I may make you a present of the Nixie,” and he gave a thick smile.

“You know my rule,” she murmured, her lids heavy, a bored droop at the corners of her mouth. “Nothing worth more than five dollars, except flowers. Why should I break it--” her voice hovered--“for you?”--it sank. She turned away, melting into the crowd. Marchmont, with malicious pleasure, watched Einsbacher's discomfited retreat.

In her cabin Felicity collected all the donors' cards from her flowers and, stepping outside, with a faint smile dropped them into the sea.

XI

It was the end of April, and Paris rustled gaily in her spring dress. Stefan and Adolph, clad in disreputable baggy trousers topped in one case by a painter's blouse and in the other by an infinitely aged alpaca jacket, strolled homeward in the early evening from their favorite café.

Adolph was in the highest spirits, as he had been ever since Stefan's arrival three weeks before, but the other's face wore a rather moody frown. He had begun to weary a little of his good friend's ecstatic pleasure in their reunion.

He was in Paris again, in his old attic; it was spring, and his beloved city as beautiful as ever. He had expected a return of his old-time gaiety, but somehow the charm lacked potency. He wanted to paint, but his ideas were turgid and fragmentary. He wanted excitement, but the city only seemed to offer memories. The lapse of a short eighteen months had scattered his friends surprisingly. Adolph remained, but Nanette was married. Louise had left Paris, and Giddens, the English painter, had gone back to London. Perhaps it was the spring, perhaps it was merely the law which decrees that the past can never be recaptured--whatever the cause, Stefan's flight had not wholly assuaged his restlessness. Of adventures in the hackneyed sense he had not thought. He was too fastidious for the vulgar sort, and had hitherto met no women who stirred his imagination. Moreover, he harbored the delusion that the failure of his great romance had killed his capacity for love. “I am done with women,” he said to himself.

Mary seemed very distant. He thought of her with gratitude for her generosity, with regret, but without longing.

“Never marry,” he said to Adolph for the twentieth time, as they turned into the rue des Trois Ermites; “the wings of an artist must remain unbound.”

“Ah, Stefan,” Adolph replied, sighing over his friend's disillusionment, “I am not like you. I should be grateful for a home, and children. I am only a cricket scraping out my little music, not an eagle.”

Stefan snorted. “You are a great violinist, but you won't realize it. Look here, Adolph, chuck your job, and go on a walking tour with me. Let's travel through France and along the Riviera to Italy. I'm sick of cities. There's lots of money for us both, and if we run short, why, bring your fiddle along and play it--why not?”

At their door the concierge handed Adolph some letters.

“My friend,” said he, holding up a couple of bills, “one cannot slip away from life so easily. How should I pay my way when we returned?”

“Hang it,” said Stefan impatiently, “don't you begin to talk obligations. I came to France to get away from all that. Have a little imagination, Adolph. It would be the best thing that could happen to you to get shaken out of that groove at the Opera--be the making of you.”

They had reached the attic, and Adolph lit a lamp.

“We'll talk of it to-morrow, my infant, now I must dress--see, here is a letter for you.”

He handed Stefan a tinted envelope, and began leisurely to don his conventional black. Holding the note under the lamp, Stefan saw with a start that it was from Felicity, and had been left by hand. Excited, he tore it open. It was written in ordinary ink, upon pale pink paper, agreeably scented.

“My dear friend,” he read in French, “I am in Paris, and chancing to remember your old address--(“I swear I never told her the number,” he thought)--send this in search of you. How pleasant it would be to see you, and to have a little converse in the sweet French tongue. You did not know that it was my own, did you? But yes, I have French-Creole blood. One is happy here among one's own kind. This evening I shall be alone. Felicity.”

So, she was a Creole--of the race of Josephine! His pulses beat. Cramming the note into his pocket he whirled excitedly upon his friend.

“Adolph,” he cried, “I'm going out--where are my clothes?” and began hastily to rummage for his Gladstone amidst a pile of their joint belongings. Throwing it open, he dragged out his dress suit--folded still as Mary had packed it--and strewed a table with collars, ties, shirts, and other accessories.

“Hot water, Adolph! Throw some sticks into the stove--I must shave,” he called, and Adolph, amazed at this sudden transformation, hastily obeyed.

“Where do you go?” he asked, as he filled the kettle.

“I'm going to see a very attractive young woman,” Stefan grinned. “Wow, what a mercy I brought some decent clothes, eh?” He was already stripped, and shaking out a handful of silk socks. Something clicked to the floor, but he did not notice it. The dressing proceeded in a whirl, Adolph much impressed by the splendors of his friend's toilet. A fine shirt of tucked linen, immaculate pumps, links of dull gold--his comrade in Bohemia had completely vanished.

“O là, là!” cried he, beaming, “now I see it is true about all your riches!”

“I'm going to take a taxi,” Stefan announced as he slipped into his coat; “can I drop you?”

He stood ready, having overtaken Adolph's sketchy but leisured dressing.

“What speed, my child! One moment!” Adolph shook on his coat, found his glasses, and was crossing to put out the lamp when his foot struck a small object.

“What is this, something of yours?” He stooped and picked up a framed snapshot of a girl playing with a baby. “How beautiful!” he exclaimed, holding it under the lamp.

“Oh, yes,” said Stefan with a slight frown, “that's Mary. I didn't know I had it with me. Come on, Adolph,” and he tossed the picture back into the open Gladstone.

While Adolph found a taxi, Stefan paused a moment to question the concierge. Yes, monsieur's note had been left that afternoon, Madame remembered, by une petite Chinoise, bien chic, who had asked if Monsieur lived here. Madame's aged eyes snapped with Gallic appreciation of a possible intrigue.

Stefan was glad when he had dropped Adolph. He stretched at ease along the cushions of his open taxi, breathing in the warm, audacious air of spring, and watched the faces of the crowds as they emerged under the lights to be lost again mysteriously in the dusk.

Paris, her day's work done, was turning lightly, with her entrancing smile, to the pursuit of friendship, adventure, and love. All through the scented streets eyes sought eyes, voices rose in happy laughter or drooped to soft allurement. Stefan thrilled to the magic in the air. He, too, was seeking his adventure.

The taxi drew up in the courtyard of an apartment house. Giving his name, Stefan entered a lift and was carried up one floor. A white door opened, and the small Yo San, with a salutation, took his hat, and lifted a curtain. He was in a long, low room, yellow with candlelight. Facing him, open French windows giving upon a balcony showed the purpling dusk above the river and the black shapes of trees. Lights trickled their reflection in the water, the first stars shone, the scent of flowers was heavy in the air.

All this he saw; then a curtain moved, and a slim form appeared from the balcony as silently as a moth fluttering to the light.

“Ah, Stefan, welcome,” a voice murmured.

The setting was perfect. As Felicity moved toward him--her gown fluttering and swaying in folds of golden pink as delicately tinted as the petals of a rose--Stefan realized he had never seen her so alluring. Her strange eyes shone, her lips curved soft and inviting, her cheeks and throat were like warm, white velvet.

He took her outstretched hand--of the texture of a camelia--and it pulsed as if a heart beat in it.

“Felicity,” he half whispered, holding her hand, “how wonderful you are!”

“Am I?” she breathed, sighingly. “I have been asleep so long, Stefan. perhaps I am awake a little now.”

Her eyes, wide and gleaming as he had never seen them, held him. A mysterious perfume, subtle and poignant, hung about her. Her gauzy dress fluttered as she breathed; she seemed barely poised on her slim feet. He put out his arm as if to stay her from mothlike flight, and it fell about her waist. He pressed her to him. Her lips met his--they were incredibly soft and warm--they seemed to blossom under his kisses.

* * * * *

Adolph, returning from the opera at midnight, donned his old jacket and a pair of slippers and, lighting his pipe, settled himself with a paper to await Stefan's coming. Presently first the paper, then the burnt-out pipe, fell from his hands--he dozed, started awake, and dozed again.

At last he roused himself and stretched stiffly. The lamp was burning low--he looked at his watch--it was four o'clock. Stefan's Gladstone bag still yawned on a chair beside the table. In it, the dull glow of the lamp was reflected from a small silver object lying among a litter of ties and socks. Adolph picked it up, and looked for some moments at the face of Mary, smiling above her little son. He shook his head.

“Tch, tch! Quel dommage-what a pity!” he sighed, and putting down the picture undressed slowly, blew out the lamp, and went to bed.

XII

On a Saturday morning at the end of June, Mary stood by the gate of the Byrdsnest, looking down the lane. McEwan, who was taking a whole holiday from the office, had offered to fetch her mail from the village. Any moment he might be back. It was quite likely, she told herself, that there would be a letter from France this morning--a steamer had docked on Thursday, another yesterday. Surely this time there would be something for her. Mary's eyes, as they strained down the lane, had lost some of their radiant youth. A stranger might have guessed her older than the twenty-six years she had just completed--she seemed grave and matronly--her face had a bleak look. Mary's last letter from France had come more than a month ago, and a face can change much in a month of waiting. She knew that last letter--a mere scrap--by heart.

“Thank you for your sweet letters, dear,” it read. “I am well, and having a wonderful time. Not much painting yet; that is to come. Adolph admires your picture prodigiously. I have found some old friends in Paris, very agreeably. I may move about a bit, so don't expect many letters. Take care of yourself. Stefan.”

No word of love, nothing about Elliston, or the child to come; just a hasty word or two dashed off in answer to the long letters which she had tried so hard to make amusing. Even this note had come after a two weeks' silence. “Don't expect many letters--” she had not, but a month was a long time.

There came Wallace! He had turned the corner--he had waved to her--but it was a quiet wave. Somehow, if there had been a letter from France, Mary thought he would have waved his hat round his head. She had never spoken of her month-long wait, but Wallace always knew things without being told. No, she was sure there was no letter. “It's too hot here in the sun,” she thought, and walked slowly into the house.

“Here we are,” called McEwan cheerily as he entered the sitting room. “It's a light mail to-day. Nothing but 'Kindly remit' for me, and one letter for you--looks like the fist of a Yankee schoolma'am.”

He handed her the letter, holding it with a big thumb over the right-hand corner, so that she recognized Miss Mason's hand before she saw the French stamp.

“Mind if I hang round on the stoop and smoke a pipe?” queried McEwan, pulling a newspaper from his pocket.

“Do,” said Mary, opening her letter. It was a long, newsy sheet written from Paris and filled with the Sparrow's opinions on continental hotels, manners, and morals. She read it listlessly, but at the fourth page suddenly sat upright.

“I thought as long as I was here I'd better see what there is to see,” Miss Mason's pen chatted; “so I've been doing a play or the opera every night, and I can say that not understanding the language don't make the plays seem any less immoral. However, that's what people go abroad to get, so I guess we can't complain. The night before last who was sitting in the orchestra but your husband with that queer Miss Berber? I saw them as plain as daylight, but they couldn't see me away up in the circle. When I was looking for a bus at the end I saw them getting into an elegant electric. I must say she looked cute, all in old rose color with a pearl comb in her hair. I think your husband looked real well too--I suppose they were going to some party together. It's about time that young man was home again with you, it seems to me, and so I should have told him if I could have got anywhere near him in the crowd. All I can say is, _I've_ had enough of Europe. I'm thinking of going through to London for a week, and then sailing.”

At the end of the letter Mary turned the last page back, and slowly read this paragraph again. There was a dull drumming in her ears--a hand seemed to be remorselessly pressing the blood from her heart. She sat staring straight before her, afraid to think lest she should think too much. At last she went to the window.

“Wallace,” she called. He jumped in, paper in hand, and saw her standing dead white by her chair.

“Ye've no had ill news, Mary?” he asked with a burr.

She shook her head. “No, Wallace; no, of course not. But I feel rather rotten this morning. Talk to me a little, will you?”

Obediently he sat down, and shook out the paper. “Hae ye been watching the European news much lately, Mary?” he began.

“I always try to, but it's difficult to find much in the American papers.”

“It's there, if ye know where to look. What would ye think o' this assassination o' the Grand Duke now?” He cocked his head on one side, as if eagerly waiting for her opinion. She began to rally.

“Why, it's awful, of course, but somehow I can't feel much sympathy for the Austrians since they took Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

“What would ye think might come of it?”

“I don't know, Wallace--what would you!”

“Weel,” he said gravely, “I think something's brewing down yonder--there'll be trouble yet.”

“Those poor Balkans, always fighting,” she sighed.

“I'm feered it'll be more than the Balkans this time. Watch the papers, Mary--I dinna' like the looks o' it mesel'.”

They talked on, he expounding his views on the menace of Austria's near-east aspirations as opposed to Russia's friendship for the Slavic races. Mary tried to listen intelligently--the effort brought a little color to her face.

“Wallace,” she said presently, “do you happen to know where Miss Berber is this summer?”

“I do not,” he said, his blue eyes steadily watching her. “But Mrs. Elliot would ken maybe--ye might ask her.”

“Oh, it doesn't matter,” said Mary. “I just wondered.”

When McEwan had gone Mary read Miss Mason's letter for the third time, and again the cold touch of fear assailed her. She took a camp stool and sat by the edge of the bluff for a long time, watching the water. Then she went indoors again to her desk.

“Dear Stefan,” she wrote, “I have only had one note from you in six weeks, and am naturally anxious to know how you are getting on. I am very well, and expect our baby about the tenth of October. Elliston is beautiful; imagine, he is a year old now! I think he will have your eyes. I am sorry you are not getting on well with your work, but perhaps that has changed by now. Dear, I had a letter from Miss Mason this morning, and she writes of having seen you and Miss Berber together at the opera. You didn't tell me she was in Paris, and I can't help feeling it strange that you should not have done so, and should leave me without news for so long. I trust you, dear Stefan, and believe in our love in spite of the difficulties we have had. And I think you did rightly to take a holiday abroad. But you have been gone three months, and I have heard so little. Am I wrong still to believe in our love? Only six months ago we were so happy together. Do you wish our marriage to come to an end? Please write me, dear, and tell me what you really think, for, Stefan, I don't know how I shall bear the suspense much longer. I'm trying to be brave, dear--and I _do_ believe still.

“Your

“Mary.”

Her hand was trembling as she finished writing. She longed to cry out, “For God's sake, come back to me, Stefan”--she longed to write of the wild ache at her heart--but she could not. She could not plead with him. If he did not feel the pain in her halting sentences it would be true that he no longer loved her. She sealed and stamped the letter. “I must still believe,” she kept repeating to herself. There was nothing to do but wait.

In the weeks that followed it seemed to Mary that her friends were more than ever kind to her. Not only did James Farraday continually send his car to take her driving, and Mrs. Farraday appear in the pony carriage, but not a day passed without McEwan, Jamie, the Havens, or other neighbors dropping in for a chat, or planning a walk, a luncheon, or a sail. Constance, too, immersed in work though she was, ran out several times in her car and spent the night. Mary was grateful--it made her waiting so much less hard--while her friends were with her the constant ache at her heart was drugged asleep. Knowing Wallace, she suspected his hand in this widespread activity, nor was she mistaken.

The day after the arrival of Miss Mason's letter McEwan had dropped in upon Constance in the evening, when he knew she would be resting after her strenuous day's work at headquarters. By way of a compliment on her gown he led the conversation round to Felicity Berber, and elicited the information that she was abroad.

“In Paris, perhaps?” he suggested.

“Now you mention it, I think they did say Paris when I was last in the shop.”

“Byrd is in Paris, you know,” said McEwan, meeting her eyes.

“Ah!” said Constance, and she stared at him, her lids narrowing. “I hadn't thought of that possibility.” She fingered her jade beads.

“I wonder if you ever write her?” he asked.

“I never write any one, my dear man, and, besides, what could I say?”

“Well,” said he, “I had a hunch you might need a new rig for the summer Votes campaign, or something. I thought maybe you'd want the very latest Berber styles, and would ask her to send a tip over. Then I thought you'd string her the local gossip, how Mrs. Byrd's baby will be born in October, and you don't think her looking as fit as she might. You want a cute rattle for it from Paris, or something. Get the idea?”

“You think she doesn't know?”

“I think the kid's about as harmless as a short-circuited wire, but I think she's a sport at bottom. My dope is, _if_ there's anything to this proposition, then she doesn't know.” He rose to go.

“Wallace, you are certainly a bright boy,” said Constance, holding out her hand. “The missive shall be despatched.”

“Moreover,” said Mac, turning at the door, “Mary's worried--a little cheering up won't hurt her any.”

“I'll come out,” said Constance'. “What a shame it is--I'm so fond of them both.”

“Yes, it's a mean world--but we have to keep right on smiling. Good night,” said he.

“Good night,” called Constance. “You dear, good soul,” she added to herself.

XIII

Adolph was practising some new Futurist music of Ravel's. Its dissonances fatigued and irritated him, but he was lured by its horrible fascination, and grated away with an enraged persistence. Paris was hot, the attic hotter, for it was July. Adolph wondered as he played how long it would be before he could get away to the sea. He was out of love with the city, and thought longingly of a possible trip to Sweden. His reflections were interrupted by Stefan, who pushed the door open listlessly, and instantly implored him to stop making a din.

“What awful stuff--it's like the Cubist horrors,” said he, petulantly.

“Yes, my friend, yet I play the one, and you go to see the other,” said Adolph, laying down his fiddle and mopping his head and hands.

“Not I,” contradicted Stefan, wandering over to his easel. On it was an unfinished sketch of Felicity dancing--several other impressions of her stood about the room.

“Rotten work,” he said, surveying them moodily. “All I have to show for over three months here. Adolph,” he flung himself into a chair, and rumpled his hair angrily, “I'm sick of my way of life. My marriage was a mistake, but it was better than this. I did better work with Mary than I do with Felicity, and I didn't hate myself.”

“Well, my infant,” said Adolph, with a relieved sigh, “I'm glad to hear you say it. You've told me nothing, but I am sure your marriage was a better thing than you think. As for this little lady--” he shrugged his shoulders--“I make nothing of this affair.”

Stefan's frown was moodier still.

“Felicity is the most alluring woman I have ever known, and I believe she is fond of me. But she is affected, capricious, and a perfect mass of egotism.”

“For egotism you are not the man to blame her,” smiled his friend.

“I know that,” shrugged Stefan. “I've always believed in egotism, but I confess Felicity is a little extreme.”

“Where is she?”

“Oh, she's gone to Biarritz for a week with a party of Americans. I wouldn't go. I loathe mobs of dressed-up spendthrifts. We had planned to go to Brittany, but she said she needed a change of companionship--that her soul must change the color of its raiment, or some such piffle.” He laughed shortly. “Here I am hanging about in the heat, most of my money gone, and not able to do a stroke of work. It's hell, Adolph.”

“My boy,” said his friend, “why don't you go home?”

“I haven't the face, and that's a fact. Besides, hang it, I still want Felicity. Oh, what a mess!” he growled, sinking lower into his chair. Suddenly Adolph jumped up.

“I had forgotten; there is a letter for you,” and he tossed one into his lap. “It's from America.”

Stefan flushed, and Adolph watched him as he opened the letter. The flush increased--he gave an exclamation, and, jumping up, began walking feverishly about the room.

“My God, Adolph, she's heard about Felicity!” Adolph exclaimed in his turn. “She asks me about it--what am I to do?”

“What does she say; can you tell me?” enquired the Swede, distressed.

“Tiens, I'll read it to you,” and Stefan opened the letter and hastily translated it aloud. “She's so generous, poor dear,” he groaned as he finished. Adolph's face had assumed a deeply shocked expression. He was red to the roots of his blonde hair.

“Is your wife then enceinte, Stefan!”

“Yes, of course she is--she cares for nothing but having children.”

“_But_, Stefan!” Adolph's hands waved helplessly--he stammered. “It cannot be--it is impossible, _impossible_ that you desert a beautiful and good wife who expects your child. I cannot believe it.”

“I _haven't_ deserted her,” Stefan retorted angrily. “I only came away for a holiday, and the rest just happened. I should have been home by now if I hadn't met Felicity. Oh, you don't understand,” he groaned, watching his friend's grieved, embarrassed face. “I'm fond of Mary--devoted to her--but you don't know what the monotony of marriage does to a man of my sort.”

“No, I don't understand,” echoed his friend. “But now, Stefan,” and he brought his fist down on the table, “now you will go home, will you not, and try to make her happy?”

“I don't think she will forgive this,” muttered Stefan.

“This!” Adolph almost shouted. “This you will explain away, deny, so that it troubles her no more!”

“Oh, rot, Adolph, I can't lie to Mary,” and Stefan began to pace the room once more.

“For her sake, it seems to me you must,” his friend urged.

“Stop talking, Adolph; I want to think!” Stefan exclaimed. He walked in silence for a minute.

“No,” he said at last, “if my marriage is to go on, it must be on a basis of truth. I can't go back to Mary and act and live a lie. If she will have me back, she must know I've made some sacrifice to come, I'll go, if she says so, because I care for her, but I _can't_ go as a faithful, loving husband--it would be too grotesque.”

“Consider her health, my friend,” implored Adolph, still with his bewildered, shocked air; “it might kill her!”

“Can't! She's as strong as a horse--she can face the truth like a man.”

“Then think of the other woman; you must protect her.”

“Pshaw! she doesn't need protection! You don't know Felicity; she'd be just as likely as not to tell Mary herself.”

“I always thought you so honorable, so generous,” Adolph murmured, dejectedly.

“Oh, cut it, Adolph. I'm being as honorable and generous as I know how. I'll write to Mary now, and offer to come back if she says the word, and never see Felicity again. I can't do more.”

He flung himself down at the desk, and snatched a pen.

“My dearest girl:” he wrote rapidly, “your brave letter has come to me, and I can answer it only with the truth. All that you feared when you heard of F.'s being with me is true. I found her here two months ago, and we have been together most of the time since. It was not planned, Mary; it came to me wholly unexpectedly, when I thought myself cured of love. I care for you, my dear, I believe you the noblest and most beautiful of women, but from F. I have had something which a woman of your kind could never give, and in spite of the pain I feel for your grief, I cannot say with truth that I regret it. There are things--in life and love of which you, my beautiful and clear-eyed Goddess, can know nothing--there is a wild grape, the juice of which you will never drink, but which once tasted, must ever be desired. Because this draught is so different from your own milk and honey, because it leaves my tenderness for you all untouched, because drinking it has assuaged a thirst of which you can have no knowledge, I ask you not to judge it with high Olympian judgment. I ask you to forgive me, Mary, for I love you still--better now than when I left you--and I hold you above all women. The cup is still at my lips, but if you will grant me forgiveness I will drink no more. I agonize over your grief--if you will let me I will return and try to assuage it. Write me, Mary, and if the word is forgive, for your sake I will bid my friend farewell now and forever. I am still your husband if you will have me--there is no woman I would serve but you.

“Stefan.”

He signed his name in a dashing scrawl, blotted and folded the letter without rereading it, addressed and stamped it, and sprang hatless down the stairs to post it.

An enormous weight seemed lifted from him. He had shifted his dilemma to the shoulders of his wife, and had no conception that in so doing he was guilty of an act of moral cowardice. Returning to the studio, he pulled out a clean canvas and began a vigorous drawing of two fauns chasing each other round a tree. Presently, as he drew, he began to hum.

XIV

It was the fourth of August.

Stefan and Felicity sat at premier déjeuner on the balcony of her apartment. About them flowers grew in boxes, a green awning hung over them, their meal of purple fruit, coffee, and hot brioches was served from fantastic green china over which blue dragons sprawled. Felicity's negligée was of the clear green of a wave's concavity--a butterfly of blue enamel pinned her hair. A breeze, cool from the river, fluttered under the awning.

It was an attractive scene, but Felicity's face drooped listlessly, and Stefan, hands deep in the pockets of his white trousers, lay back in his wicker chair with an expression of nervous irritability. It was early, for the night had been too hot for late sleeping, and Yo San had not yet brought in the newspapers and letters. Paris was tense. Germany and Russia had declared war. France was mobilizing. Perhaps already the axe had fallen.

Held by the universal anxiety, Stefan and Felicity had lingered on in Paris after her return from Biarritz, instead of traveling to Brittany as they had planned.

Stefan had another reason for remaining, which he had not imparted to Felicity. He was waiting for Mary's letter. It was already overdue, and now that any hour might bring it he was wretchedly nervous as to the result. He did not yet wish to break with Felicity, but still less did he wish to lose Mary. Without having analyzed it to himself, he would have liked to keep the Byrdsnest and all that it contained as a warm and safe haven to return to after his stormy flights. He neither wished to be anchored nor free; he desired both advantages, and the knowledge that he would be called upon to forego one frayed his nerves. Life was various--why sacrifice its fluid beauty to frozen forms?

“Stefan,” murmured Felicity, from behind her drooping mask, “we have had three golden months, but I think they are now over.”

“What do you mean?” he asked crossly.

“Disharmony”--she waved a white hand--“is in the air. Beauty--the arts--are to give place to barbarity. In a world of war, how can we taste life delicately? We cannot. Already, my friend, the blight has fallen upon you. Your nerves are harsh and jangled. I think”--she folded her hands and sank back on her green cushions--“I shall make a pilgrimage to China.”

“All of which,” said Stefan with a short laugh, “is an elaborate way of saying you are tired of me.”

Her eyebrows raised themselves a fraction.

“You are wonderfully attractive, Stefan; you fascinate me as a panther fascinates by its lithe grace, and your mind has the light and shade of running brooks.”

Stefan looked pleased.

“But,” she went on, her lids still drooping, “I must have harmony. In an atmosphere of discords I cannot live. Of your present discordant mood, my friend, I _am_ tired, and I could not permit myself to continue to feel bored. When I am bored, I change my milieu.”

“You are no more bored than I am, I assure you,” he snapped rudely.

“It is such remarks as those,” breathed Felicity, “which make love impossible.” Her eyes closed.

He pushed back his chair. “Oh, my dear girl, do have some sense of humor,” he said, fumbling for a cigarette.

Yo San entered with a folded newspaper, and a plate of letters for Felicity. She handed one to Stefan. “Monsieur Adolph leave this,” she said.

Disregarding the paper, Felicity glanced through her mail, and abstracted a thick envelope addressed in Constance's sprightly hand. Stefan's letter was from Mary; he moved to the end of the balcony and tore it open. A banker's draft fell from it.

“Good-bye, Stefan,” he read, “I can't forgive you. What you have done shames me to the earth. You have broken our marriage. It was a sacred thing to me--now it is profaned. I ask nothing from you, and enclose you the balance of your own money. I can make my living and care for the children, whom you never wanted.”

The last three words scrawled slantingly down the page; they were in large and heavier writing--they looked like a cry. The letter was unsigned, and smudged. It might have been written by a dying person. The sight of it struck him with unbearable pain. He stood, staring at it stupidly.

Felicity called him three times before he noticed her--the last time she had to raise her voice quite loudly. He turned then, and saw her sitting with unwonted straightness at the table. Her eyes were wide open, and fixed.

“I have a letter from Connie.” She spoke almost crisply. “Why did you not tell me that your wife was enceinte?”

“Why should I tell you?” he asked, staring at her with indifference.

“Had I known it I should not have lived with you. I thought she had let you come here alone through phlegmatic British coldness. If she lost you, it was her affair. This is different. You have not played fair with us.”

“Mary was never cold,” said Stefan dully, ignoring her accusation.

“That makes it worse.” She sat like a ramrod; her face might have been ivory; her hands lay folded across the open letter.

“What do you know--or care--about Mary?” he said heavily; “you never even liked her.”

“Your wife bored me, but I admired her. Women nearly always bore me, but I believe in them far more than men, and wish to uphold them.”

“You chose a funny way of doing so this time,” he said, dropping into his chair with a hopeless sigh.

She looked at him with distaste. “True, I mistook the situation. Conventions are nothing to me. But I have a spiritual code to which I adhere. This affair no longer harmonizes with it. I trust--” Felicity relaxed into her cushions--“you will return to your wife immediately.”

“Thanks,” he said ironically. “But you're too late. Mary knows, and has thrown me over.”

There was silence for several minutes. Then Stefan rose, picked up the draft from the floor, looked at it idly, refolded it into Mary's letter, and put both carefully away in his inside pocket. His face was very pale.

“Adieu, Felicity,” he said quietly. “You are quite right about it.” And he held out his hand.

“Adieu, Stefan,” she answered, waving her hand toward his, but not touching it. “I am sorry about your wife.”

Turning, he went in through the French window.

Felicity waited until she heard the thud of the apartment door, then struck her hands together. Yo San appeared.

“A kirtle, Yo San. I must dance away a wound. Afterwards I will think. Be prepared for packing. We may leave Paris. It is time again for work.”

Stefan, walking listlessly toward his studio, found the streets filled with crowds. Newsboys shrieked; men stood in groups gesticulating; there were cries of “Vive la France!” and “A bas l'Allemagne!” Everywhere was seething but suppressed excitement. As he passed a great hotel he found the street, early as it was, blocked with departing cabs piled high with baggage.

“War is declared,” he thought, but the knowledge conveyed nothing to his senses. He crossed the Seine, and found himself in his own quarter. At the corner of the rue des Trois Ermites a hand-organ, surrounded by a cosmopolitan crowd of students, was shrilly grinding out the Marseillaise. The students sang to it, cheering wildly.

“Who fights for France?” a voice yelled hoarsely, and among cheers a score of hands went up.

“Who fights for France?” Stefan stood stock still, then hurried past the crowd, and up the stairs to his attic.

There, in the midst of gaping drawers and fast emptying shelves, stood Adolph in his shirt sleeves, methodically packing his possessions into a hair trunk. He looked up as his friend entered; his mild face was alight; tears of excitement stood in his eyes.

“Ah, my infant,” he exclaimed, “it has arrived! The Germans are across the frontier. I go to fight for France.”

“Adolph!” cried Stefan, seizing and wringing his friend's hand. “Thank God there's something great to be done in the world after all! I go with you.”

“But your wife, Stefan?”

Stefan drew out Mary's letter. For the first time his eyes were wet.

“Listen,” he said, and translated the brief words.

Hearing them, the good Adolph sat down on his trunk, and quite frankly cried. “Ah, quel dommage! quel dommage!” he exclaimed, over and over.

“So you see, mon cher, we go together,” said Stefan, and lifted his Gladstone bag to a chair. As he fumbled among its forgotten contents, a tiny box met his hand. He drew out the signet ring Mary had given him, with the winged head.

“Ah, Mary,” he whispered with a half sob, “after all, you gave me wings!” and he put the ring on. He was only twenty-seven.

* * * * *

Later in the day Stefan went to the bank and had Mary's draft endorsed back to New York. He enclosed it in a letter to James Farraday, in which he asked him to give it to his wife, with his love and blessing, and to tell her that he was enlisting with Adolph Jensen in the Foreign Legion.

That night they both went to a vaudeville theatre. It was packed to the doors--an opera star was to sing the Marseillaise. Stefan and Adolph stood at the back. No one regarded the performance at all till the singer appeared, clad in white, the French liberty cap upon her head, a great tricolor draped in her arms. Then the house rose in a storm of applause; every one in the vast audience was on his feet.

“'_Allons, enfants de la patrie_,'” began the singer in a magnificent contralto, her eyes flashing. The house hung breathless.

“'_Aux armes, citoyens!_'” Her hands swept the audience. “'_Marchons! Marchons!_'” She pointed at the crowd. Each man felt her fiery glance pierce to him--France called--she was holding out her arms to her sons to die for her--

“'_Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!_'”

The singer gathered the great flag to her heart. The tears rolled down her cheeks; she kissed it with the passion of a mistress. The house broke into wild cheers. Men fell upon each other's shoulders; women sobbed. The singer was dumb, but the drums rolled on--they were calling, calling. The folds of the flag dazzled Stefan's eyes. He burst into tears.

* * * * *

The next morning Stefan Byrd and Adolph Jensen were enrolled in the Foreign Legion of France.