Part 13

"Hubby, dear," and Katherine's tone was commanding. "I won't let you abuse yourself like that. In the first place you are working just as hard as I am, with your painting and keeping things cosy here, and accomplishing just as much. And it's only for a little while. As soon as your picture is done, you'll sell it, and I'll resign and do the housekeeping myself. You know how gladly you would do the same for me; why won't you let me do it for you? Don't you love me well enough to let me help you?"

"Katherine! Katherine!" he cried, "don't say that! Don't question my love for you."

"I don't, dear heart, nor should you question mine for you."

* * * * *

Long after Katherine had gone to bed, he lay on the rug and watched the fire. Outside, cold, gray Michigan beat against the North Shore with the sound of the sea. In these last days of despondency the lake had grown into a companion with seeming sympathy for every mood of his. The vast expanse of water seemed to broaden his horizon. Whenever he looked at it, it suggested a letting-go of all but the vital things. There was only one thing that was vital, and she slept in the little room beyond. Even his art counted for nothing beside her, but she believed in it, and he must make something of it to please her. The shadows deepened until even the gold candlesticks ceased to shine, and he went to the window. Slow, sombre, and restless, old Michigan chafed against the shore. At times those cold arms beckoned him with compelling strength, and it was so to-night. Katherine would go home to her father, and, in time, forget him. He pulled down the shade, shuddering as he did so, and at last fell asleep with a consciousness of utter defeat.

* * * * *

"It's busy I am these days. Misther Carroll, do be afther wantin' to paint me."

"Paint you, Carrot-Top! And thin may the blessed saints injuce him to make the hid of yez, some other colour."

"Ah, go on wid yez! What is the likes of yez to know about art?"

It was Mickey in the yard below, blarneying with the milk boy. The voices awoke Carroll, and he discovered it was very late, indeed, and that Katherine had gone down-town without waking him. There was a line pinned to the cushion: "Good-bye, dearest. K."

Mickey appeared at the back door while he was finishing his breakfast. With unheard-of kindness, she offered to put things right in the studio, and he left her in charge with some misgivings. But the marketing had to be done, and it would be impossible to work rightly without a breath of fresh air.

When he returned every chair was set demurely and properly against the wall and Mickey sat on the floor with his cherished portfolio of Gibson pictures in her lap. He repressed an angry exclamation, and ordered her, somewhat sternly, to put them back.

She complied readily. "It's cross yez are this morning, Misther Carroll. Thim pictures ain't got no paint on 'em, but I'm thinkin' they do be better wans than thim ye're afther makin'!"

Carroll made no reply. It was quite true that the Gibson pictures were better than his, even without paint, but he did not relish her impartial announcement of the fact.

The light was good, and he worked steadily for an hour, at the end of which time Mickey announced the necessity for her immediate departure. In vain he protested and pleaded. The picture was nearly done, and only a few more sittings would be needed. But Mickey was "goin' to the theayter wid a coosin--" and she went.

So he put the house in order and decided he would make a cake for supper. He had never done anything of the kind, and Katherine found him still deep in the problem when she returned. He couldn't find the cook-book, he said, so he just threw a few things in, the way she did when she made cake. It was going to be light too, for he had put in half a cupful of baking powder. Katherine laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks. It was a mean woman, Robert said, who would go down-town and leave her husband with no cook-book! She pointed it out to him on the corner of the shelf, and he twisted his mustache thoughtfully, forgetting the flour with which his hand was covered. It took them both to make him presentable again, and then Katherine threw the cake away, and in a very few minutes made the lightest, most wonderful biscuit that ever gave a man the dyspepsia.

Mickey was faithful during the following week, and the "Aurora" was finished almost to his satisfaction. It was placed on sale in a Wabash Avenue gallery, and they anxiously watched the newspapers for notices. None came, however, and Robert became despondent. An idea came to Katherine, and she went with fear and trembling to the art critic of the _Express_, whose judgment was accepted as law and gospel.

Unlike most women she came to the point at once: "Mr. Lester," she said, "my husband has a picture on exhibition at Stanley & Brown's, and a favourable notice would mean much to us both. None of the papers have spoken of it, and I have been wondering if you could not help us a little."

Philosophers have not yet determined why a woman feels free to ask anything of a rejected lover, nor why men so willingly grant favours to women whom they have loved in vain.

"Mrs. Carroll," Lester replied, "I should be only too glad to be of service to either you or your husband, but I have seen the picture, and I cannot conscientiously speak favourably of it. In fact, I had written a roast, and out of consideration to you burned it up."

Katherine's face fell and her eyes filled. He was afraid she was going to cry, and he went on--"But I'll tell you what I will do. I am called out of the city to-morrow, and it is the day for my notes; I'll ask Carleton to let you do my work. You can write what you please."

She clutched the friendly straw gladly. "You are very, very good. But please tell me what is the matter with the picture."

"Only one thing, Mrs. Carroll; it lacks humanity. Pictures must be painted from a human standpoint. No doubt you will see what I mean if you will look at it critically. I haven't time to stop any longer now, but I'll tell Carleton."

An hour later, Katherine was summoned to the office of the managing editor. "Mrs. Carroll," he said, "Lester tells me he is called out of the city and suggests you as the proper person to do his work. I believe it is a little out of your line, but you can try. Miss Scott will do your department to-day, and you can take this afternoon to look around."

So the newly fledged art critic went out to find her copy. There were several pictures to be noted and she spoke as kindly as she could of all, trying to mingle helpful criticism with discerning praise. None were condemned, for she knew what a picture might mean to the artist, and to the woman who loved him.

Unconsciously, she imitated Lester's style; his full, well-rounded periods, and sharp, incisive sentences. Very different it was from the chatty, gossipy way in which she filled the "Woman's Kingdom," on the back page of the _Express_.

She was afraid to say too much of Robert's work, and toned down her enthusiasm three successive times. The last note satisfied her and she sent it up-stairs with the rest.

When the paper came in the morning, he turned feverishly to the page which contained the "Art of the Week." His shout of joy woke Katherine and together they laughed and cried over the "good notice."

She felt wicked, but his pleasure was full compensation for her pangs of conscience. "Lester's approval is worth a thousand dollars," he said. "I can go to work in earnest now."

Her face changed mysteriously. An overwhelming sense of the wrong she had done, came upon her, and he looked at her steadily. There was a queer note in his voice when he spoke: "Katherine Carroll, I believe you wrote that notice."

It was useless to dissemble longer and she told the whole story. He was deeply touched by this proof of her devotion, but he shook his head sadly over Lester's own comment.

"It won't help any, little girl; you can't make fame for me in that way. My work must stand or fall on its own merits--and--it seems likely to fall."

She tried to comfort him, but he put her away. "No, it's all wrong. I'm going to give it up, and try something else."

After she had gone, he put his easel and paints away, and set the house in order. Then he went into the city, as so many have done before, to find work, which seems little enough to ask in so great a world. At five he returned, utterly tired and cast down. He had tramped the streets for hours and had found absolutely nothing to do.

Half unconsciously, he turned to the window--to the vision of the lake which had meant strength before, but it brought only weakness now. "Come,--come--come--" the waves seemed to say--instead of being cold and cruel, they were promising infinite rest. And it meant a luxurious home for Katherine.

His decision was quickly made, and he wrote a tender note to leave for her. He sobbed over that--for it wasn't like painting--he was putting his heart into it. Then down to the inland sea he went, those impatient arms beckoning him still.

But Katherine had felt in the office that something was wrong with Robert. A pang of sudden fear made it impossible for her to work any longer, and she hurried home. She found the note at once, and seeing only the "good-bye" at the end she hastened to the door.

"Robert, Robert!" she called, but he was too far away to hear her. And Katherine ran, crying as she went, "Dear God, make me in time!"

He stood at the end of the pier, old and decayed as it was, and looked at the sea and sky for the last time. The sunset gates behind him, royally beautiful with purple and gold, seemed a glimpse of the heaven he hardly hoped to reach, for though he knew that God was infinitely merciful, he knew that He was also infinitely just. He took off his coat and laid it on the pier, just as Katherine, breathless, excited, her face tense with appeal, appeared beside him.

His eyes lighted for a moment at the sight of her, then returned to their dull, hopeless look. "It's no use, Katherine," he said unsteadily, "go back, darling."

"Not alone, dearest."

"Yes, Katherine," he kissed her sadly.

For minutes which seemed like hours, she stood there arguing, pleading, begging in vain. It was best for her--that was his one thought. He was a dull, dead weight upon her; it was right to make her free. And the blue arms beckoned still.

Suddenly she drew his face down to hers and whispered to him. What she said seemed to rouse him from himself.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Can you leave me now?"

Something more than the glory of the sunset shone in Katherine's face as she stood between him and the water. She was subtly beautiful, with the infinite motherhood, which lives in every woman's heart, and as he looked at her, the shackles of his dead cowardly self fell away. A great resolve within him slowly swelled into a controlling power--he would be worthy of her who stood beside him, cost what it might. His voice was tender and caressing when he spoke again.

"Leave you? No, Katherine, no."

They walked home together and spoke of other things. There was a stronger bond between them, and the water seemed cold and bitter now--very different from the eerie, half-human thing that had tempted him an hour ago.

He tossed restlessly through the night, thinking of what Lester had said about painting from a human standpoint. Perhaps he meant that he should paint men and women, instead of goddesses.

The vision of Katherine came into his mind as she stood with the blue water behind her and the sunset upon her face and hair; her eyes full of earthly longing, and more than earthly appeal. He would paint her like that, and he roused from his cowardly lethargy into high resolve.

Her salary was raised and she worked happily at the office, while Robert painted at home. In the evening she sat and sewed on tiny garments for the human secret, which spring was to reveal. He sat and looked at her, seldom speaking, content to watch the holy joy in her face, and either that or his coming fatherhood, sometimes thrilled him with a tenderness so great that his love was almost joy.

The "Aurora" had been sold, not for a large sum, it is true, but for enough to take care of them both until the new picture should be finished. It was done at last and placed on sale. Painted from a human standpoint it undoubtedly was, and it drew many admirers but no purchaser. For four weeks it had been at the gallery and Robert began to grow despondent again.

A fall morning dawned, gray and dull, and the lake seemed to tremble with portent of coming disaster. At night the wind rose and lashed the water into seething foam. The sound of the storm made Katherine afraid, but she sank into a fitful slumber at last, while Robert kept a light in the window, hoping none were at sea.

But at half-past eleven there was a terrific rap at the door. It was Mickey, disheveled and breathless.

"There do be a wreck, Misther Carroll," she cried, "there's sky-rockets goin' off and the life crew be ordered out, and I thought ye'd be afther wantin' to see it."

The thing was evidently a circus for Mickey; we hold life so lightly at the age of sixteen.

Katherine, trembling and afraid, was already at the door. She wrung her hands, crying piteously, "Oh, Robert! Robert! don't go."

"I must go, sweetheart, they may need me."

"Then I am going too." And she began to hurry into her clothes.

"Dress warmly, dear," he called.

"Yes, I will, and we must take some blankets with us."

Once outside they had no difficulty in locating the wreck. The northern sky was aflame with rockets, and people from all directions were hurrying northward.

The Northwestern University life crew was already on the beach trying to shoot a line to the sinking ship, half a mile from the shore. The boat had been ordered back, for it was certain death in such a sea. The fourth attempt was successful and a shout of joy went up, dimly heard above the storm.

Mickey danced about excitedly as they tied rope after rope of greater strength to the slender cord, that had been shot to the upper deck, but Katherine felt faint, even with her husband's arm around her, when they made preparations to pull the ship's life-boat ashore.

It required almost superhuman strength, but the rush of water westward aided them materially. Katherine never forgot that time of waiting--human lives on shore struggling to save the human lives at sea, and the tense cruel crash of the cold waves.

Lifted high upon an angry crest, the boat was dashed heavily upon the beach. The captain of the stranded vessel, eight seamen and one passenger, were helped out with eager hands.

The passenger was a middle-aged man, who appeared dignified and prosperous, in spite of his damp and disheveled condition. His first remark was in the nature of a recapitulation.

"Well, of all the excitin' trips!"

Robert and Katherine laughed in spite of themselves, and hastened to extend to the stranger the hospitality of their little home for the remainder of the night. It was barely one o'clock, and the Honourable Mr. Marchand accepted gladly, if not gratefully.

He trudged sturdily along in the blankets they had wrapped around him, disdaining Robert's proffered assistance, but once stretched out upon their couch before a blazing fire, he became much more tractable. He called for a glass of whiskey complaining that what he had been through would be enough to kill him if he didn't at once supply this long-felt want of the inner man. A telephone message to the nearest drug store brought the quart of stimulant he thought he needed for the night, and when he was comfortably filled with his favourite beverage, life began to assume a more pleasant aspect. He graphically told the story of the wreck to his interested listeners and then imbibed a little more liquid nourishment. After a while he remarked sagely--"It's a lucky thing I didn't go down, some folks would have lost millions."

"Is that so?" asked Katherine pleasantly.

"Yes, _millions_! Look here, young woman, did you ever hear of a syndicate?"

Katherine thought she had heard the word somewhere.

"Well, I'm one of 'em!"

The whiskey was evidently getting in its work in the way of lubricating the tongue of the shipwrecked capitalist, and after waiting a moment, he continued:

"I'm on my way to Chicago to perfect a combine in--" and he astounded Katherine by unfolding the inside history of a daring and infamous combination--a gigantic steal, which if consummated, would change the ownership of millions. He named the leading conspirators, explained the vulnerable points in the scheme, and gleefully boasted of his own skill and diplomacy.

He finally fell asleep, but not until Katherine had got all the necessary points concerning the outrageous robbery which had been so adroitly planned.

Robert met her at the door. "Got a scoop?"

"Well, I should say so. A big one too!"

"How do you know it is true?"

"_In vino veritas_," whispered Katherine. "Besides, Carleton told one of our night men the other day, that promotion was in store for the fellow who 'got on to' any of the schemes of this new syndicate." She had heard so much newspaper slang that her lapse from the grammatical standard was perhaps pardonable.

Until nearly three o'clock she wrote hurriedly a description of the wreck, and also of the new "combine," Robert dozing in an easy chair meanwhile. She woke him up to give him her manuscript. "To the telegraph office, quick! It'll be in time for the city edition."

The Honourable Mr. Marchand slept late the next morning, and Katharine sent word to the office that she could not come until the next day. About noon, however, their guest took his departure, apparently but little the worse for his vivid night's experience. At a corner he bought a copy of the morning's _Express_ and shortly thereafter leaned up against a wall for support. "Gee whiz!" The Honourable Mr. Marchand mopped his brow and read the startling headlines again. "Might as well go back to Cincinnati and Cleveland and Toronto, and all them towns I've just come from! Wonder how in thunder the thing ever got out!"

He strolled down Wabash Avenue to collect his scattered thoughts, and stopped half mechanically, to look into Stanley & Brown's window. Carroll's painting stared him full in the face, and a great light broke in upon him.

"That's her! That's the girl what done it! Blamed if I don't like her for it!"

That afternoon a messenger boy rapped at the studio door with a letter from the _Express_ office for Katherine.

"Dear Mrs. Carroll," it ran, "we think you deserve a two weeks' vacation at full salary which is now double the former sum, and we beg you to accept the enclosed check as a slight testimonial of our gratitude for the biggest scoop of the year. Please report for duty on the eighteenth, and be ready to take the exchange editor's desk."

She was dazed. "Two weeks' vacation, double salary, promotion, and----"

Robert picked it up, it was a check for two hundred dollars.

During the jubilation which followed, a telegraph boy pounded vigorously at the door, but he might as well have kept still, since his efforts were unheard. Finally he opened it, and utterly unabashed by the spectacle of a gentleman kissing a lady, and the lady seeming to enjoy it, he fairly shrieked: "TELEGRAM."

Katherine vanished instantly, and Carroll read the despatch.

"Picture sold for highest price. Purchaser unknown.

"STANLEY & BROWN."

The mythical "quail on toast" became a reality that night, and the house seemed far too small to hold so much exuberant joy. In the morning, they went together to Stanley & Brown's to collect the picture money, and start a "really truly bank account," as Katherine said.

The firm was quite at a loss to know who the purchaser was, as he took the picture away with him in a carriage, and paid cash instead of by check, but the man who helped him put it on the back seat of the carriage reported that he had muttered to himself, as he was climbing in: "That's her! That's the girl what done it!" This may have given Mr. and Mrs. Carroll some clue to the identity of the unknown benefactor.

MYRTLE REED'S NOVELS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list

_LAVENDER AND OLD LACE._

A charming story of a quaint corner of New England where bygone romance finds a modern parallel. The story centers round the coming of love to the young people on the staff of a newspaper--and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity.

_A SPINNER IN THE SUN._

Miss Myrtle Reed may always be depended upon to write a story in which poetry, charm, tenderness and humor are combined into a clever and entertaining book. Her characters are delightful and she always displays a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it the glamour of romance.

_THE MASTER'S VIOLIN._

A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give--and his soul awakes.

Founded on a fact that all artists realize.

_Ask for a complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_

GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26TH ST., NEW YORK

ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

_THE LAMP IN THE DESERT_

The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through all sorts of tribulations to final happiness.

_GREATHEART_

The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals a noble soul.

_THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE_

A hero who worked to win even when there was only "a hundredth chance."

_THE SWINDLER_

The story of a "bad man's" soul revealed by a woman's faith.

_THE TIDAL WAVE_

Tales of love and of women who learned to know the true from the false.

_THE SAFETY CURTAIN_

A very vivid love story of India. The volume also contains four other long stories of equal interest.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

The Master's Violin

By MYRTLE REED

A Love Story with a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine Cremona. He consents to take as his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of the artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American, and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the longing, the passion and the tragedies of life and its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his existence, a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home; and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give--and his soul awakens.