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Title: The swing of the pendulum

Author: Adriana Spadoni

Release date: November 20, 2024 [eBook #74768]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Boni and Liveright, Inc

Credits: Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM ***





                       THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM

                          By ADRIANA SPADONI


                          BONI AND LIVERIGHT
                              PUBLISHERS
                               NEW YORK

                           COPYRIGHT, 1919,
                        BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.

                         _All Rights Reserved_

                   _First printing, December, 1919_
                   _Second printing, February, 1920_
                     _Third printing, April, 1920_
                    _Fourth printing, August, 1920_
                   _Fifth printing, February, 1921_

               _Printed in the United States of America_




                                PART I




                              CHAPTER ONE


Jean Norris came slowly down the Library steps, passed the Chemistry
Building, and took the worn path across the campus to the brush-lined
creek. The hot stubble burned through her white canvas shoes and fine,
gray dust powdered the mortarboard and black graduating gown she
carried over her arm. With one stride she crossed the trickle of water
and scrambled up the opposite bank.

"Lord!" She drew a deep breath of the shaded coolness and, taking off
the mortarboard, ran the tips of her fingers under the heavy plait of
pale brown hair. "Thank God this day is nearly over." She dropped to
the carpet of dead leaves under the scrub oak and, with her knees drawn
up to her chin and her arms clasped about them, looked out through the
lattice of green. With definite appraisal her gray eyes went slowly
from one building to another, out across the parched campus, past the
grateful green of the entrance oaks, to the strip of town beyond and
the Bay, glittering in the hot May sun. A tolerant smile flicked the
corners of her mouth.

It was over at last. The four long, interminable years had culminated
in a series of fitting ceremonies. All day streams of students had
flowed through the buildings, swept the campus, overflowed into the
town. Well dressed parents from San Francisco and country parents,
uncomfortable in their unusual clothes, had rushed helplessly about,
harassed by the necessity of remembering many directions, of being in
certain spots at certain moments, of not asking foolish questions and
so disgracing their children. Flustered and important, the graduating
class had appropriated the earth.

Through the throng, instructors and assistant professors had moved with
weary, anxious faces as if, in the graduating of each class, they heard
another hour strike in the clock of their lives. Committees, distinct
with colored badges, exhausted with importance, had misread hours and
locations, given directions in college vernacular so explicit that no
stranger could understand them, overlapped, performed one another's
duties, apologized, pretended it was all going smoothly. Everywhere
well-bred, managed confusion had exuded like a fog.

Exactly at twelve, in a silence so intense that even the sun hung
waiting in the zenith, the graduating class had wound its last solemn
pilgrimage across the campus. First the aged president, bent, as if in
scholastic humility, beneath the great weight of his Doctor's scarlet
hood. Then the guests of honor, sleek and prosperous men, followed by
the professors in order of their rank and departments, and finally
five hundred students, two by two, awed by the seriousness of what lay
before them.

To Jean it had seemed hours while the aged president piped of Life's
ideals, the security of college, the pitfalls of the world. Each May,
for twenty years, he had stood so, each year a little more bent, and
piped of the world beyond. Parents had furtively wiped their eyes and
students made heroic resolves.

Then, with a trembling gesture of his strengthless hands, he had
offered the graduating class to Life. One by one they had filed
up, received their diplomas and hurried back to their places under
scattered puffs of applause from relatives. It had seemed to Jean that
it would never end, but forever black gowned figures would be going
forward to get slender rolls of white paper.

In the general confusion of congratulations that followed, Jean had
caught sight of her mother, slipping unobtrusively away. She had not
expected her mother to seek her out, but there was something so small,
so self-effacing in the figure hurrying to take up again the endless
round of duties which the graduation had momentarily interrupted,
that Jean's eyes had filled with tears and she had escaped from the
chattering crowds as quickly as possible.

Now it was all over. The deserted campus lay silent in the late
afternoon sun, and the empty buildings rested from the ceaseless
chatter. So alive was the Future, waiting for the signal to start, that
when the clock, hidden in the woodbine of the Library tower, struck
four, Jean jumped to her feet, shook her shoulders as if freeing them
from the clutch of the years behind, and turned away.

"It may be peaceful--I suppose it is. But so's the grave."

As she came into the cool dimness of the Girls' Rest Hall, Patricia
Farnsworth rose from a hammock.

"Well, for the love of Mike, where have you been? I looked everywhere,
until I couldn't stand another minute."

"If you looked as violently as you appear to be doing this instant,
I don't wonder you didn't find me. Library--off the main line of
travel--only safe place to-day."

"Never thought of it. Gee, but I'm all in. I wouldn't graduate twice
for a thousand dollars."

Jean threw her cap and gown on a couch and stretched beside them.

"Well, twice wouldn't be so bad, if you did it just for yourself. But
when you insist on doing it for the whole class, Pat, of course----"

"Oh, shut up. Somebody's got to do the dirty work. Fond parents loose
their moorings and drift worse than sheep."

"'Moored sheep drifting!' Patsy, how on earth did you ever make Hoppy's
English?"

Pat giggled down to the depths of her stocky body. "'Moored sheep,'
is going some, but honestly they were worse. I told one bewildered
old party a dozen times if I told him once, that all exercises were
scheduled for out of doors and nothing was taking place in the
coal-cellar of North Hall. He had a perfect obsession on the cellar.
Wandered into it every time I turned my back."

"Well? How was he to know that everything was being managed--'with an
executive precision never before equaled in the handling of so large a
class'?"

"Get out. It's all right for you to talk when you wouldn't be on a
committee to oblige the President of the United States."

"I _would_ not. Of all the piffling rubbish! If you all feel as badly
as you pretend to do at getting out of the cage, why don't you just go
and get your diplomas and sneak away to weep in private? And if you're
not sorry to get out, and feel like this--this mess of jubilation, why
don't you say so? Conventional sentimentality! It makes my tummy turn
over."

"You ought to be all turned over and spanked, Jean. Some day you're
going to be found frozen stiff in your own logic."

"Pat Farnsworth, I wouldn't mind beginning instanter. I never was so
hot in my life. Me for tea. On a day like this my English grandparent
bellows for his tea."

"Bellow on, George III. I'll get it. I've been cooling off for an
hour." Pat started for the kitchen with the same vigorous efficiency
that ran her many committees, paused, and with an almost shy smile at
Jean, crossed to the front door and locked it. "We don't want any one
butting in, do we?"

Jean had risen and now she put her arm about Pat's shoulder.

"Oh, Patsy," she whispered, "when you're gone----"

"Don't Jean. Don't. Something will turn up. It must."

Jean's lips trembled. "When you say it like that I feel sure myself for
a minute. But----"

"Are Tom and Elsie going to stay _all_ summer?"

"Yes. This is the supreme chance of mummy's life to make herself
uncomfortable, and she won't lose it."

"Don't, Jeany. I hate you when you're bitter like that."

"I can't help whether you do or not. It's true."

Jean's arm dropped from Pat's shoulder and she stood frowning. "I have
never been able to make you understand, but nobody who hasn't lived
and breathed and petrified in Christian Duty for years could. It's the
wickedest, most hellish misconception the brain of man ever conceived
to make this rotten scheme of things rottener. It's done more harm in
the world than the Seven Deadly Sins put together. It----"

"Don't, Jean."

"You were brought up where religion was a kind of entrée, but with
mummy it's the whole meal from soup to fingerbowls. God lives right in
the house with us, and interferes in everything we do. Think of it,
Patsy. For thirty years, mummy hasn't eaten a meal she didn't cook
herself. That translation I'm going to do for Renshaw would give us a
couple of weeks somewhere. And are we going? No. Because Tom Morton,
who was some distant relative of father's, who's been dead for eighteen
years and whom mummy didn't love when he was alive, chooses to appear
from nowhere and dump himself and his fool wife and disgusting baby on
us, mummy conceives it her duty to stay all summer cooking for them,
and waiting on that idiot Elsie because she's going to have another. It
makes my soul shiver, it makes me so mad. And I know what will happen.
You talk about my logic. It's mummy who has all the logic in our
family. Because she's saddled with these she'll say she might just as
well have others, and we'll have every slab-chested old maid who comes
to summer-school and wants to get the best food in town for nothing.
Mummy will roast all July and August and say they were very nice people
as long as they don't turn her out of her own house."

"Can't you make her see that----"

"Make her see! What chance have I against God Almighty? You don't
understand the basis of the whole business. 'Whom the Lord loveth, He
chasteneth.' When He stops loving He stops chastening. So it's up to
the believers to get all the chastening there is."

"Don't, Jean. There must be more in it than that." Jean dabbed at her
eyes and crossing to the sink filled the kettle for tea.

"Well, maybe there is. But when you live with it you're too near to see
it. It's either that, all summer long, waiting for something to turn up
out of the blue, or going away to teach. Sometimes I don't know which
is worse."

"Now, Jean, we've hashed that over and settled it a million times. It's
ridiculous. After all you _are_ rather like mummy, you know. There are
millions of things to do when you've got ordinary intelligence, but
just because you loathe teaching you've picked it out as the one thing
that'll come your way. How about that translation? How do you know it
won't lead to something else?"

"Because I want it to so terribly hard, Patsy. I know, Pat, I suppose
I do rant, but I guess I've got what Dr. Harper calls 'The Imagination
for Pain.' I do want things so hard that I just can't imagine getting
them."

"Doesn't say much for your imagination, no matter what Harper calls
it. But it isn't that. It's just conceit, not another thing. You're so
proud of that analytic brain of yours that you work it on everything.
The minute you get a glimpse of some happiness you drag it into that
mental laboratory and tear off its flesh, and you never stop until
you've busted the poor old skeleton to bits. Why can't you let things
go about with their clothes on?"

"I do."

"No, you don't. And when you do get it stripped it isn't any more of a
truth than it was with its clothes on."

Pat's color deepened and she looked away in genuine embarrassment, for
in the emotional reticence of their friendship they were oddly like two
men. At long intervals Pat's love and admiration forced her to try and
make Jean see things simply and clearly as she saw them herself.

"And it's such a lonely job, sitting there by yourself prying the
barnacles off every old oyster that's been struggling to hold its
clothes on ever since the world began."

The mixture of figures was too much for even Jean's very genuine mood.

"Oh, Patsy, you are the joy of my life. But I can't help it if I prefer
my oysters without their clothes on."

"Yes, you can. And I hate to think of you not getting every scrap of
joy there is in life. Sometimes it seems to me you just won't take
things when they're right under your nose. Sometimes, you make me feel
like a demented ant running about in a circle, and then again I know
I'm right. While you sit round waiting for Life, it's being lived all
round you. And yet, when you talk that way you make me feel as if you
were sitting away off on a cloud somewhere, playing on a golden flute,
while I'm down below leading a circus parade--beating a drum in a cloud
of dust."

Jean sputtered into her cup and put it down for safety.

Pat grinned. "Well, the figure may be mixed, but that is precisely the
way I feel. And I don't want you to sit up there always."

"But I will do things as soon as I get them to do. I can't pretend a
doll's alive when I know it isn't."

"But they'll always be dolls if you go at them like that."

"No, they won't, Patsy. There must be some real live things in the
world. And I'm going to get them. Even if I have to fall off my cloud
and break my golden flute."

Jean bent and for a moment Pat's arms clasped her. Then they stood
apart, smiling.

"All right. Go to it, old girl. Only yell in time so that I can get out
from under. I never expect to have more than one drum in my life and I
don't want it busted. You're no fairy."

When the dishes were finished they locked up, hung the key on its nail
outside among the wistaria, and went. At the corner of the street, Pat
turned toward the town, while Jean continued straight on toward the
foot of the hills.

From his comfortable rocker on the porch, Tom Morton looked up from the
evening paper.

"A great day, wasn't it?" His broad face beamed with unintelligent
good humor as he put down the paper preparatory to a chat. "You look
terribly important in that rig, Jean. Makes me feel like I don't know
how to write my name."

"Well, you won't feel like that much longer. It's the hottest rig ever
invented."

"You all did look kind of red round the gills. I say, Jean, who was
that girl that got the gold medal? Didn't look to me like she was
terrible smart."

"She stood higher than anybody else."

"Wasn't you due for something extra? Seems to me a girl that gets a job
helping a professor at his own work must be some bright."

"It's not really much of a job, just a few weeks."

"Graft, them medals, I guess, like everything else. There isn't a field
in this country to-day----"

But Jean had disappeared.

In the hall she almost collided with Elsie, trailing wearily from the
kitchen with a great bowl of salad. Elsie put down the bowl and caught
at her.

"Oh, Jeany! It was too wonderful. I never was so thrilled in my life!
I don't believe I _ever_ realized what college could mean before. If
I only had had the chance! When I heard that darling old man talking
about life--oh, Tommykins has just got to go when he grows up, if we
_starve_ to put him through."

"Can't be done without food, Elsie." By a supreme effort Jean succeeded
in speaking lightly, but when Elsie showed signs of being about to kiss
her, Jean escaped to the kitchen.

As she entered, Martha Norris emptied the creamed celery into a blue
willow dish, and wiped her damp forehead with her apron. Her mouth
drooped with fatigue but she smiled. Jean crossed the room quickly and
took her mother in her arms.

"Mummy, you're not going to have a bad headache?" She framed the small
face in both hands and looked down into her mother's faded eyes.

"Why, no, dear. It's just the heat and the excitement. It's been a big
day for me, Jean. Then I got a little late and that always flurries
me."

Jean drew her mother closer. "I'm not going to let you work like this
any more. You're going to take things easier now I'm through, whether
you want to or not."

"Now, Jeany, you know I'd be perfectly miserable idle."

"There's a lot of difference between idleness and this." Jean's hand
swept the hot kitchen and the stove covered with pans. "You slave and
what for? They don't even thank you."

Martha Norris laid her work-scarred hand on Jean's arm.

"You forget, dear--'Whatever ye do, do it all to the glory of God.' And
it means _everything_, just as it says, even washing pots and pans."

Jean's arms dropped and it seemed to her that the rigid little body
within stepped back almost with a sense of release. It was as if her
mother had stood so long alone, that any other expression must always
be a slight strain.

"Shall I serve the beef, mummy?" Jean picked up an oven cloth and moved
to the stove.

"No, dear. It'll spatter and your dress is as clean as when you put it
on. If you'll just cube up the cheese--I _am_ getting behind and it's
almost six now."




                              CHAPTER TWO


As Jean had predicted, the summer was a hard one. Martha Norris
insisted on taking summer students to board, closing every argument
against it with gentle insistence on her own preference.

"If you really want me to be happy, Jean, let me manage the house as
long as I can."

That she might some day be physically dependent on others was the one
fear that her deepest prayers had not been able to out-root. So Jean
yielded.

All summer the house was crowded. The long, hot days were followed by
long, monotonous evenings, filled with the complacent mediocrity of
the fat Tom, the whinings of the ill-trained Tommykins, the nagging of
Elsie.

The boarders ate hurriedly and had no topics of conversation except
the schools from which they came and the courses they were taking. For
the most part they were women past middle age, all driven by necessity
of one kind or another, always striving to get as much for as little
as possible. They seemed to Jean to have been cheated of something
and to be resentful, some fiercely and some in a timid way that was
pitiful. Most of them thoroughly hated their work, which they defended
in high-sounding phrases against the attacks of outsiders, and tore to
pieces among themselves.

When Jean hoped she would never have to teach, they looked at her
venomously and said it was a wonderful work for which few were
naturally fitted. They were like wax-works, most of them, rather
scarred and worn, wound up and kept going by the fear of a younger
generation, a newer output from the educational factories, who might
usurp their places.

The only bright spot was the translation with Professor Renshaw. Jean
buried herself for hours in the library and even succeeded sometimes in
escaping dinner on the ground that it was too far to go home and back
again in the evening.

But as the weeks passed and the work neared completion, she found it
difficult to keep the hope that every letter from Pat held out:

"Something will happen. It must. You see, Horace will rescue you yet."

"Tell him to hurry," Jean wrote back toward the end of August. "I feel
the walls of an ungraded country school closing about me."

With her mother, Jean never discussed the subject, for she knew that
every night, to the long list of blessings Martha enumerated and the
few favors she asked of Heaven, was added a petition that "a way would
be opened up to Jean." It made Jean furious to be prayed over and
sometimes she felt that having to teach would be almost compensated by
proving the inefficacy of prayer.

But when the release came, Jean forgot her anger, swooped down upon
Martha in the kitchen, took the paring knife from her hands, and
waltzed her mother about the room.

"Now, mummy, you've simply _got_ to stop. I _cannot_ divulge the
greatest news of the age while you pick worms out of an apple."

"There aren't any worms in these. I made Joe take those others back and
change them. It was robbery. Well, dear, what is it?"

"Mummy, you've got to promise to be excited. I'm just about ready to go
up in smoke."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. I'd tell the person I wanted to
excite what it was about. Did Dr. Renshaw double the check?"

"Better. Heaps."

"He's got more translation. I knew----"

"Oceans better than that."

"Well, I'm sure----" The clock struck five. Martha removed Jean's arms
gently but firmly from her shoulders and turned back to the table.

Jean laughed. "I suppose I shall have to let you enjoy it in your
own way. Go on and finish. Then wash your hands and sit down on the
hardest, most uncomfortable chair and I'll tell you."

"Don't be silly, dear. It doesn't matter what it is, I shall have to
have dinner on time to-night, won't I?"

"Yes, I suppose the animals would have to be fed even if the ark was
sinking."

Jean sat on the edge of the table and watched her mother trim the pie
edges, with sure, quick strokes and her whole attention. When Martha
closed the oven door, she glanced at the clock to be sure of the
moment. Before the astonishing news that Jean was about to divulge, the
pies might be forgotten. Jean laughed aloud.

"Now." Martha smiled as she took the chair Jean indicated. "The court
is in session."

"Well," began Jean, "I took that last lot up and he looked it through
in that dead-fish fashion of his without a word. He always does, sits
there and goggles as if he were just going to pounce on a mistake, and
all the time I know it's all right. I didn't expect him to say anything
nice, but I thought he might give me an opening and I had my little
speech all ready. 'If this has been satisfactory,' et cetera, but I
knew if he didn't say anything at all I could never get started. He
freezes me clear through."

"The world wasn't made in a day, Jean."

"I know that. But I never could see why. If I could do a miracle at
all, I'd have done a whopper."

Her mother's eyes filled with tears and Jean jumped down and knelt
beside her.

"I'm sorry, mummy. I didn't mean to hurt you. It was cheap. Only that
was such an endless ten minutes until he took a bundle of letters
out of his pocket. He said he had something he thought I might be
interested in, and then that human fossil actually pawed over those
papers three distinct times and grunted and shook his head and wondered
whether he'd lost it and began all over again while I stood wondering."

"That seems the usual method of announcing news among scholars." A sly
smile twinkled in Martha's eyes.

"But honestly I nearly died. I was trembling like a leaf."

"Jean!"

"Worse. Shaking with ague. Then right out of the bundle he'd looked
through a million times, he drew a letter and handed it over. The
Mercantile Library in San Francisco wants a cataloguer and asks him
if he knows one. The head librarian is a friend of his and he's
recommended me. Do you hear, mummy Norris? I've got a job, got a _job_."

For a moment Martha did not answer. She sat with her head bent and her
tired hands at rest in her lap. Then she looked up and smiled.

"When do you begin?"

"I'm going over to see about it to-morrow."

"You're not absolutely sure?"

"Yes, I am. I'm going to be sure to-night even if I never get it."

"Now, Jean. You----"

"Don't, mummy, please don't. Don't tell me any more about patience and
the right thing coming. I've got to get this or I'll die."

"It takes a lot to kill." Martha spoke quietly, and getting up, went
over to the oven.

Jean felt as if a spring inside her had cracked and wondered why it was
always so when she tried to talk to her mother. Outwardly Martha Norris
was the least emotional person in the world but she managed to extract
a lot of it from those near her. The most casual conversation usually
ended in a tensity out of all proportion to its importance and left
Jean with a sense of the futility of trying to make things different.

It was with a distinct effort that Jean put her arms again about her
mother.

"Now, mummy, I am going to get it. What's more, I'm going to move you
over to the city, into a place that won't be big enough for you to have
any duty to any relative of anybody's. So there. Now kiss me, like a
nice, obedient mother should."

Martha smiled, and standing on her tiptoes kissed her big daughter.
Jean went whistling from the room.

When she had gone Martha Norris closed her eyes for a moment and
a look of perfect faith and devotion flooded her. In such moments
she was beautiful, like some frail saint, glowing with the fire of
self-surrender, strengthened beyond the power of human understanding.
But no human being had ever seen Martha alone with her God.

The next morning Jean left the house early. The sun touched the Bay
to millions of glittering points, and beyond it, wrapped in a haze of
smoke and coming heat, the waiting city sprawled on her hills. Jean
could feel it, a magnet drawing her and all these strangers massed
together on the sunny deck.

As the boat neared the dock she went and stood in the stern and looked
back at the little town, a mere spot at the base of the Berkeley hills.
In her very definite sense of escape there was a touch of sadness. She
was like a person who, having escaped from a terrible catastrophe,
looks back from a point of safety and mingles with his sincere
gratitude, a regret for some small souvenir he has been unable to take
with him. She thought of Elsie in her dragging kimono waiting on Tom
at breakfast; of the dead, habitual kiss they would exchange when he
started to look for the job he never found; of Tommykins, bewildered
in his disordered world of alternate slapping and petting. And of her
mother, trotting about in her endless routine. She was sorry for them
all.

Waiting in the outer office of the Chief Librarian, Jean felt the
Future coming towards her, stepping swiftly through the stillness, a
stillness vibrant with accomplished purpose, the secure accomplishment
of many thousands of books. So sharp was the feeling that, when at
last footsteps moved behind the door marked "Private," Jean rose as
if about to face a mysterious force, made suddenly material for her
understanding.

"This is Miss Norris?"

The Chief Librarian stood before her. He was tall and thin and gray,
with long bony hands that looked as if they would always be cold. He
was like a new chisel, straight and narrow and sharp-edged. He waved
Jean back to her seat and took one himself. Then he sat, staring beyond
her, as if his progress through the silent realms of spirit had been
rudely halted by this collision with a corporeal body.

"You've done library work before?" The question came so unexpectedly
that Jean started.

"No." The monosyllable reverberated through the ordered stillness. She
felt as if she had thrown a stone at the Chief Librarian.

"Um." In the mental isolation of his daily life, this misfortune
arrested his pity. "I believe you did some Latin translation for Dr.
Renshaw?"

"Yes, the Odes of Horace."

"Promising--quite. But of course Horace is not library work." The tone
conveyed that this was not Horace's fault, however. "Still, in this
work you will find, Miss Norris, that every scrap of human knowledge is
profitable. I might almost say necessary. It is its wonderful variety,
roots in all fields, that makes our work so interesting."

"It must."

"Exactly. Now the question is, Miss Norris, would you be willing to
begin at the bottom, sorting? Cataloguing comes next, and then----"
But as if fearing that he was being carried away in an excess of
enthusiasm, he qualified. "Of course that is if we find it mutually
satisfactory."

"I should be willing to begin anywhere. And I have done a little
sorting and cataloguing. The library I used for Horace was in something
of a mess, and I had to straighten it out before I could begin."

"Exactly. But you will understand, Miss Norris, that no part of our
library is in a mess." The shadow of a smile touched his lips and was
gone. It was as if a cosmic joke, millions of miles off, had been
softly whispered to him. "And now, as I have a very busy morning, I
will hand you over to my assistant, Miss MacFarland."

He touched an electric button in the wall. With no preliminary sound
the outer door opened.

"Miss MacFarland, this is Miss Norris, recommended by Dr. Renshaw. She
will help at first with the new consignment."

His tone admitted Miss MacFarland to the depths of his official being.
She nodded.

"Will you come with me?"

Without waiting for Jean to answer she began moving noiselessly away on
her broad, rubber-soled shoes. She was very slight and gave an effect
of deep brownness. She wore a brown serge skirt and a brown silk waist
with a brown Scotch pebble pin. She had brown eyes that looked muddy
through the thick, myopic glasses, and a braid of dank, brown hair
framed her narrow face.

Through the big reading room, empty at this hour, Jean followed, down a
rear stairway, along a narrow cemented hall into a storeroom, dim with
a ground-glass window protected by an iron grating. Miss MacFarland
indicated the great number of packing cases by a nod as she wound her
way among them to a farther door. She might have been a guide in the
underworld leading the latest spirit to its appointed task. She opened
a door, and a sudden glare of morning sunshine filled the place.

"This is the room you will use for the present."

There were two large windows open now on a tiny strip of lawn that ran
along this side of the building. A redwood table and bench took up one
end of the room. There was nothing else in it except six huge packing
cases.

"I'll send you down an apron and sleeve protectors and have Timothy
unpack the cases."

She looked about to make sure she had forgotten nothing, and moved
toward the door.

"Is there any special rotation you want the cases opened in?"

Jean asked it to pretend experience more than from any idea of its
mattering. But she saw by the expression behind the thick glasses that
it did make a difference and that Miss MacFarland had forgotten to tell
her.

"I was going to tell Timothy, but perhaps I had better mark them."

From the pocket of her black apron she drew a piece of red chalk.

"The political economies are needed in a hurry and they are in this
crate. Then the histories, natural science, miscellaneous, fiction and
poetry. If you get into difficulties you can telephone up."

When she had gone Jean stood for a moment just where she was.

"Oh Patsy, a corpse has a sense of humor compared to a librarian! But
it's nine a week."




                             CHAPTER THREE


Every morning at eight Jean crossed the Bay and every night at six
she returned. The trains and the boats were always crowded, and very
shortly Jean came to know certain faces and to watch for them. She
liked to speculate as to what these people did, how long they had been
doing it and whether they liked it. When she had made up her mind
about a man or woman it always disappointed her to have to readjust
her deductions by catching scraps of conversation that upset her
theories. She often had to do this, however, because she was always
making sweeping generalizations based on tenuous details. There were
certain groups that came and went together, and although they seemed
to have no connection beyond this short trip twice a day, they always
looked eagerly for each other as if in dread of having to make the
journey alone. They resented ever having to sit anywhere except in
their usual places, and each group surrounded itself with a barrier of
self-centered interest that separated it from every other self-centered
group.

At first Jean ate lunch with Miss MacFarland and two other women
workers, but, as she wrote to Pat, it made her feel "like a mouse
nibbling at the edges of a book," and as soon as she could, broke the
arrangement, and took her lunch to a nearby park. Here in the seclusion
of a thick hedge, little birds came for crumbs and beyond the hedge,
unseen people crunched the gravel and Jean caught scraps of their talk,
unconnected bits, like scraps of patchwork.

She liked to tell Miss MacFarland about these unseen people, draw
pictures of the comedies and tragedies beyond the hedge, because Miss
MacFarland always listened so politely and looked so puzzled. Her thick
brown eyes searched vaguely for the point of the story, and Jean knew
it was only because the cataloguing was well done, that Miss MacFarland
did not consider her a lunatic.

But as the weeks passed and the newness of the work dulled to a routine
of writing the names of books on cards and putting numbers after them,
Jean began to wonder whether in time, she, too, might not come to look
vaguely for the point of a story, and prefer to drink strong tea in a
stuffy room. At first the idea amused her and she elaborated it in a
whimsical letter to Pat, but with the coming of the winter rains, the
whimsy died, and the vision of herself in broad-toed shoes and black
silesia sleeve protectors, began to follow her home every night. Now
the crowds on the boat were damp and peevish and, when the boat docked,
each scuttled for his own shelter, indifferent to the others.

But it was on wet Sundays that Miss MacFarland persisted beyond Jean's
power to dislodge. Then Tom lounged all day in smoking jacket and
slippers, dropping into brief slumber in his chair, while Tommykins
cut up the colored supplement of the day's paper on the floor. Martha
prepared elaborate meals and went to St. Jude's in the early morning,
at four in the afternoon and eight at night. Between cooking and
church, she read the lives of Anglican saints, alone in her room.

With the lighting of the street lamps on these wet Sunday nights, the
town sank into the stillness of death. Only once, during the evening,
did the silence ever part, to let the worshipers from evening service
slip through. With soft padding of rubbered feet, a few figures slipped
by the window, stealthily, as if afraid of desecrating the holiness of
the Sabbath by any motion of their bodies.

At exactly five minutes before ten, Martha came cool-skinned from the
dampness. If Jean was in bed, Martha always sat for a few moments on
the edge. They never had anything particular to talk about, because
nothing ever happened in the interim of her absence. But in these
visits, Martha would strip bits of the sermon from their religious
setting and offer them off-hand to Jean's intelligence. She never urged
Jean to go to service, but Jean knew that in this simulated comradeship
on the bed, her mother was trying to keep her in touch with "holy
things," to counteract in a small part the godlessness of her days.
And sometimes it made her want to cry; the little figure, carefully
stripping away the phrases that annoyed, and trying to link up some
old, dead form with the rush of life, was so alone in all that meant
most to it. Alone with God and unaware of loneliness. So content with
nothing.

It was after a particularly depressing Sunday in January that Jean came
back to work on Monday morning with so fixed a certainty of becoming in
the end like Miss MacFarland, that not even the relief of an unexpected
blue sky after days of rain, and respite of lunch in the park had
been able to dispel it. Now, in mid-afternoon, she stood by the open
window, waiting for Timothy with a fresh supply of books. It was one of
those perfect days between rains when sunshine filters clean air, and
cool little breezes lurk in the shade. The narrow strip of lawn below
the window sent up a spicy sweetness that made Jean resent the walls
about her, three more hours of cataloguing and all the restrictions
that hemmed one in against one's will. The air had a livingness in
it that mocked any gratitude for these few moments she was free to
enjoy it. Looking up at the fleecy tufts of white clouds drifting in
the blue, Jean felt as a very poor person feels watching the wasteful
extravagance of the rich. Something in her called to the perfect
freedom of the little clouds, the inexhaustible blueness in the sky,
the tingle in the air. She felt stifled, held by something she could
not see, kept from something she had never had.

Jean was decidedly cross. She wondered whether, if she told Miss
MacFarland she was ill and wanted to leave earlier, because it was
such a lovely day, the thick brown eyes would bore into the truth, and
what would happen if they did? Would Miss MacFarland ever forgive an
assistant who wanted to stop working because there were little white
clouds in the sky?

"Oh Lord!" Jean leaned out the window, drawing deep sniffs of the damp
earth.

"Miss Norris."

Jean jerked back quickly and the blood flooded under her fair skin at
the sight of the Chief Librarian standing beside her.

"Miss Norris, this is Mr. Herrick. Franklin Herrick of the Sunday
_Times_."

He beckoned to some one still in the shadow of the storeroom and the
next moment a tall man with a young face and thick fair hair stood
looking at Jean. Jean never knew afterwards whether it was her own
embarrassment or not, but in that first glance at Franklin Herrick
she had a strange impression of receiving a very distinct picture of
something naturally indistinct. He gave a feeling of great physical
strength and yet looked as if he would always be too lazy to use it.
His eyes were clear, deep blue and far apart, as if he went through
life seeing very clearly. But the lower part of his face was heavy and
his mouth contradicted his eyes. It was soft and full and not at all
hidden under a small, close-cropped mustache. There was something large
and curved and whitish about this tall man standing before her, with
the faintest touch of amusement in his eyes, that made Jean think of
the big gulls that circled over the ferryboat night and morning. She
bowed slightly and wished she could stop blushing.

"Mr. Herrick is doing some special work and will need Division Z 21,
which I understand is not yet catalogued. If you have no objection he
might work down here, as Miss MacFarland tells me you are on Z 21 now
and it would save him time."

The Chief Librarian spoke in a dry, thirsty tone and with fixed pauses,
so that one got the impression of hearing the punctuation. And although
he asked permission, his tone conveyed that Franklin Herrick would work
in the basement whether it were convenient to Jean or not.

"That will be all right. I began Z 21 Saturday." Jean felt compelled
to say something and at the same time the uselessness of saying it.
"There's a small table in the storeroom. I'll have Timothy bring it in."

"Oh, no, please don't do that. It's not necessary--unless you prefer
it."

Franklin Herrick spoke rapidly in a high, thin voice. It caught and
held Jean's attention as the tinkle of a small bell would have done,
if unconsciously she had been expecting a gong. She raised her eyes
and looked at him, her own embarrassment gone. Herrick understood.
Extraordinarily sensitive to the impression he made, especially on
women, he knew that the thin quality of his voice had destroyed his
first impression of strength. The feminine timbre of his voice was a
trial to Herrick and always made him feel at the mercy of the person
who noticed it. He had tried for years to deepen the tone and usually
made a conscious effort at a first meeting. But for some reason,
coming on this big, fair woman sniffing the air, had made him feel as
though he knew her, linked them in mutual understanding against the
Chief Librarian and made them seem like old acquaintances. The little
incident annoyed him intensely.

He crossed to the table and appropriated one end by pushing back the
books in a business-like fashion.

"I do not need much space and this will do. I shall probably be through
in a day or two."

At the same instant Timothy appeared whistling, with a truckload of
books. At sight of the Chief Librarian he checked the whistle, just as
Jean had stopped sniffing, so suddenly that even the Chief Librarian
turned and looked curiously.

Jean's eyes met Herrick's, and they smiled. When Herrick smiled at a
woman he seemed to include her in something very intimate, something
fine and delicate, a little beyond words. In some way it shamed Jean
for the surprise she had felt at the quality of his voice. It was as if
she had shown surprise at some physical defect.

"If there is anything that Miss Norris cannot do for you, if you will
just ring that bell." The Chief Librarian looked vaguely about, lost in
a world not his own, and went.

Separated by the length of the table, Jean and Herrick stood looking
after him. Then, simultaneously, they looked at each other.

Jean laughed.

"He made me feel as if I were doing something disgraceful."

"Worse. Something not quite nice." Franklin Herrick chuckled. When
Herrick laughed his voice was higher and thinner than when he spoke,
but when he chuckled there was something warm and young about it.
Herrick had discovered this very early in life and rarely laughed
aloud. When women first heard Franklin Herrick chuckle they usually had
an impulse to touch him, which impulse they called maternal or were
afraid of according to their past experience. Jean, however, had no
impulse to touch him, but she noticed the chuckle and liked it.

As she took her place at the table and watched Herrick cross the room
for a chair, she felt that the set of his shoulders, the texture of
his clothes, the very motions of his body as he lifted the chair, were
not external, but expressed something within the man, just as the
deft motions of Martha's hands expressed her indefatigable obedience
to the drudgery of small things. And Jean liked the thing they
expressed. Without defining it in words, she felt that it was something
indestructibly young and buoyant and clean. It belonged with his eyes
and not at all with the rather heavy lines of his chin and throat.

With a smile, Herrick drew forward a pile of books, and in a moment was
hard at work. But only the surface of his brain was concerned with his
notes. He knew that, from time to time, Jean glanced at him, and that,
for some reason, she had changed her first estimate of him. Vibrant to
any criticism, Herrick resented the implication that there had been a
readjustment, and yet delighted in the result. For Jean looked as if
she usually made up her mind instantly from trifles and seldom changed.
She looked stronger and spiritually simpler than any woman he had ever
met, as if she had been born and raised in wide spaces and carried the
standards of the mountains with her. He could not picture her large,
white hands ever trembling, nor her clear, gray eyes clouding with
indecision, but he was sure that if he let the least hint of this
sureness into his eyes, her fair skin would flush.

It was almost five when Herrick slipped the notes into his pocket and
pushed back his chair.

"Through?" The brusqueness of Jean's tone annoyed him, for he had
decided to stay and talk for a few moments, and the indifference in her
question made him feel that Jean had shut a door he was about to push
a little open.

"Yes. For the present. But I shall have to put in some licks to-night."
He picked up a volume and looked inquiringly at her. "I don't suppose
there would be any objection to taking this out, even if it isn't ready
for circulation yet?"

"I don't know. It is against the rules."

"Perfectly good reason for taking it then."

"Just let me have it a moment. I'll make out a slip and number it."

He returned it with the look of one submitting to a foolish respect
for childish rules and Jean felt like Miss MacFarland as she wrote
Herrick's name and the name of the book on a pink slip. Herrick put it
into his pocket.

"Thanks. It will help a lot having this. You can picture me digging my
way through it in the small, wee hours, Miss Norris," he added as he
took his hat and this time turned to the door.

The assumption that she would think of him at all annoyed her, and kept
him in her memory almost constantly for the next two days. Jean laid
this to the interruption of the usual routine. Having the mechanical
intervals of Timothy's appearance broken by the unexpected advent of
a newspaper man, who turned the rules of the library about, gave her
several contradictory impressions of himself and ended by making her
feel like a child, naturally stood out sharply in her day's work. So
for two days Jean continued to think about Herrick and to be annoyed
because she did.

On Thursday Herrick appeared suddenly about noon. He was in a great
hurry. He returned the book, and took another, which he handed to
Jean to note as she had done before. He seemed preoccupied and made
no effort at conversation. It was evidently an afterthought that he
turned on the threshold and called back:

"Paper goes to press to-day. Haven't time to breathe."

Jean had wondered at his altered manner, but his explanation seemed to
accuse her of having shown it. She gave the slightest possible nod to
acknowledge that she had heard him and went on with her work.

On Friday Herrick did not come. Jean wondered whether he was through
with his work now that the paper had gone to press, and just what
special duties going to press involved. It sounded interesting and
much more vital than anything connected with a library. An incongruous
picture of the Chief Librarian rushing something to press tickled her
fancy.

On Saturday, Herrick appeared directly after lunch.

"Well, back again." Something in the tone, the look that accompanied
them, showed that he had missed coming, and now entered again into a
congenial atmosphere. It seemed to throw them a long way forward in
mutual understanding.

"Going to press must be a ferocious business." Jean smiled across the
table and made no effort to pretend work. When Jean smiled, something
cold in her face melted.

"It is. I always feel as if I had been caught in a cyclone, carried
violently round in a circle and deposited in the spot I started from.
You see there's the same pother every week, and we're always caught in
the same rush. Newspaper work's a rotten grind, anyhow."

"To outsiders it always sounds nerve-racking excitement. What on earth
would you do if you had to catalogue books all day?"

"That is pretty bad." Herrick's eyes softened as they always did when
he was making a woman understand his understanding.

Jean felt that without meaning to she had told this stranger a great
deal about herself. Almost as if she had told him of her mother, of
Tom and Elsie and Tommykins and the long, interminable Sundays. She
flushed. Instantly the understanding vanished from Herrick's eyes and
he shrugged indifferently.

"I suppose anything we have to stick at feels the same way."

"Did you get your work done the other night?" Jean asked it after a
pause in which she wondered what she could say that wouldn't sound as
if she had been thinking about him.

"Oh yes, indeed. But it was a hard pull. If you knew me better, Miss
Norris, you would congratulate me on that achievement." He looked like
a mischievous boy expecting to be punished.

Jean smiled in sympathy. "What on? Sticking to a disagreeable job till
it's done?"

"Well, put that way, it does sound rather bald. But you see The Bunch
was having a blow-out and little Franklin had to stay in his attic and
work. Maybe if you knew what The Bunch can do in the way of highjinks,
even you'd be sorry for me."

"Maybe I would. Are they such terribly enticing affairs?"

"Oh, sometimes we get a bit rowdy, but usually we're perfectly
harmless--just conversation and music and food and meeting each other.
We're congenial and interested in the same things, and keep each other
from getting into a rut. Sometimes when one of us goes away or comes
back, or sells a picture or an article, we have an extra celebration.
That's all."

"It sounds--awfully interesting."

Herrick leaned across the table and said in a boyish, hesitating
fashion:

"We do have some pretty good times. If you think you'd care for it, I'd
like immensely to bring you round some evening."

"I'd love to." Jean was a trifle breathless.

"Some of us have made good and some of us are--popularly nobodies.
There's Matthews and Harcourt, landscape, and Fletcher has done some
fine things in bronze. Tolletson's in drama production and Freeman,
Gerald Freeman, is going to be heard of with short stories. Maybe you
know his stuff. He had a story in _Scribner's_ last month. Then there
are the girls, none of them are exactly famous yet; and the rest of us
just jog along."

But Jean had stopped listening at Gerald Freeman's name. She had read
the story and sent it to Pat. Its delicate subtlety had haunted her
for days. And now she was being asked to meet him and others like him.
She was being asked as if it were a favor to the big man with the kind
eyes, sitting across the table. Jean tried to keep the excitement out
of her voice as she answered.

"Yes, I read that story. It was so very--perfect."

"Yes. His things are that, those half elusive, dream things. They
always make me think of small, finely carved ivories."

"I should like to meet him very much."

"Well, Freeman himself isn't here now. He's getting too famous to stay
long in one spot, but--there's the rest of us."

Jean felt that she had been rude in her special interest and added
quickly: "I'd be just as pleased meeting 'the rest of us.'"

"Then we'll settle it right now. Saturday's the best night. The
unfortunates don't have to get up early, and we generally have more
hilarity than just the usual nightly dinner. Could you come to-night?"

"I'm afraid I can't to-night."

Jean had never wanted to do anything so much in her life, but she could
not picture herself ringing up her mother and saying that she would not
be home to dinner.

"It is rather short notice. How about next Saturday? Have you that
free?" Herrick saw that she wanted to come and wondered why she
couldn't.

Under her pleasure that the invitation had not been postponed
indefinitely, Jean had an almost irresistible desire to laugh at the
idea of her having any night that was not free.

"Yes. Next Saturday's all right."

"Then I'll call for you about seven?"

"I don't live on this side."

The difficulties of meeting some one at seven, when she would be
through by half past five, occurred to her, and she wondered where
girls met men and how she could pretend this was not as new and
exciting a situation as it was.

"Great. You get through about five, don't you? I'll call here and we'll
find some way to kill the time between."

"Fine." Jean made the monosyllable as comradely as she could, and
flattered herself that she had carried it off very well.

Herrick turned to the books and in a few moments was hard at work.

Jean's confusion had delighted him, and destroyed the slight annoyance
he had felt at being carried away by such a foolish impulse as to
ask her at all. It would be delicious to watch the reactions of this
shy woman in the sophisticated world of The Bunch. He decided to say
nothing about her beforehand, and enjoy to the full their surprise
when he appeared,--a little late, he would see to that--with Jean in
tow.

"She'll hit them like a blast of north wind. I shouldn't wonder if
Kitten doesn't actually shiver."

The prospect of watching The Kitten shiver pleased Herrick immensely.




                             CHAPTER FOUR


Exactly at half past five Herrick came. The thick hair had been freshly
cut, and he wore a suit that Jean had not seen before. He looked young
and very happy and full of joy in life. As they came down the library
steps and joined the after-matinée crowds, it seemed to Jean that
Herrick stood out from other men, bigger, cleaner, stronger. There was
something in him, burning below the flesh, that whitened and sharpened
him, so that the lines which were sometimes dull and heavy when he
bent intently over the books across the table, were now finely cut. He
walked beside her as if he were walking lightly on springy ground, and
the memory came back to Jean how, the first time she had seen him, she
had thought of a gull, a strong, white gull, poised in flight. It was
impossible to believe that it was only two weeks ago, and that she had
seen him, in all, not more than seven or eight times.

Herrick made no effort at conversation as they threaded their way
through the crowds. He was not at all sure of his ground with Jean,
for his first interest had deepened in the two weeks to an intensity
that surprised him. To be interested in a woman who was not obviously
pretty, whose life lay well within the circle that The Bunch called the
Outland, who made no effort to attract him, who never, by the slightest
feminine trick, tried to rouse his interest, a woman who had been
through college and was earning her own living and yet had something
cloistered about her. She piqued Herrick's curiosity. One by one he
had seen his small efforts drop like spent arrows against the wall of
her sincere but unemotional interest.

"She's either the most subtle thing that God ever made, or else----"
Herrick did not know what else. But he would find out.

When they had left the more crowded streets behind, Herrick stopped and
looked at his watch.

"It's only six, and it's not much good getting to Giuseppe's before
seven. What shall we do? Go round to Chinatown and have tea, or would
you like to go up to Flop's studio? He's the father of The Bunch, you
know, and maybe you'd feel as if you knew him better if you saw some of
his stuff first."

He stood looking down at her with a smile that consulted only her
preference, and showed none of his own eagerness that she should choose
the latter. When Franklin Herrick was trying to break through the
reserves of a woman, he looked like Sir Galahad going to battle. It
always filled the woman with a rush of tenderness, and a longing to
stand for something fine and real in his life.

"Besides, I'd like to show you some of Flop's stuff for its own sake,
and we won't get a chance after dinner, when the whole Bunch is there.
We are a noisy lot, Miss Norris. You must be prepared for anything."

"Oh, I can make a lot of noise myself. And I'd like awfully to see the
pictures."

"This way, then. We'll go down through The Coast, if you don't mind.
It's quicker."

His tone apologized for the street into which he turned, in a way that
made Jean want to laugh at the idea of her needing protection, and at
the same time delighted her. She had never been in this part of the
city before, and she looked about her with interest.

Skirting the edge of Chinatown, beyond the boundaries of the big
bazaars, they touched the poorer fringe of the Latin quarter, where
dirty black-eyed babies tumbled in dark doorways, and tired women
with bundles of food under their shawls hurried by, dragging hungry,
screaming children by the hand. Here the narrow streets struggled up
steep hillsides, as if in a forlorn hope of reaching quiet above.
Everywhere was dust and noise and the harsh voices of men screaming at
each other in the rough Sicilian dialect.

Then down through the sordid section that lies between the White World
and the Yellow, where mean, gray houses cling hopelessly together, like
the poor for comfort and outcasts for respectability. Where the tides
of Barbary Coast wash the world beyond, Herrick paused. Then he plunged
in.

It was early and The Coast had not yet come to life, but to Jean it
was filled with the rumblings of the swelling tide. A drunken sailor
lurched from a dance-hall. A mechanical piano ground out a popular rag.
A painted woman with sodden, indifferent eyes looked from a window and
laughed shrilly. Other women, powdered to a deathly whiteness, turned
to stare after Jean and Herrick. Their eyes were sometimes scornful,
sometimes curious. When they brushed close to Jean she felt herself
turn a little cold and sick.

Once when she was a small child, while playing in the garden Jean had
accidentally plunged her foot through the planking of an unused well
and had felt the cold blackness sucking up. For months after she had
had a terror of that end of the garden, and could feel the bottomless
blackness drawing her. Now the same feeling reached out from these
painted women, and Jean drew a little closer to Herrick. There was
something horrible and black and hidden, the same black oozing mud
that lay at the bottom of the old well. These men and women who moved
and talked like herself and Herrick were down there, crawling about.
She drew nearer still to Herrick. For the first time he touched her,
slipping his hand under her elbow.

"We'll soon be out of it."

Then he began to talk of his work at the library. He had another week
of it before he would be through.

"And I'll be glad of it in many ways. If I had to go on much longer
digging that dry rot out of books I'd quit my job."

"But in a way you put life in it, rearrange it, make it your own."

Herrick laughed. Like the echo of a memory Jean's repugnance to that
high, thin laugh returned. But it seemed trivial now that she really
knew him.

"There's nothing to make one's own in the whole business. It hasn't any
permanence. Not a scrap of reality. It is not _my_ work."

Herrick had said this so often that he believed it, and his voice was
bitter with reproach. "You see it's not so bad so long as you don't
want with your whole soul to do something else. It's the knowing and
not being able to get at it that's hell."

Jean remembered her hatred of teaching and the misery of that last
college year. And she had only known what she hated and not at all what
she wanted. What was it that this man wanted so much that the thought
of it changed his voice and made him seem suddenly older? She longed to
ask, but felt that he had expected her to understand and she did not
want to fail him. The next moment he answered it himself.

"Several years ago I mapped out a novel and I've never had time to
start it. I can't work sneaking moments. I'd have to have a straight
sweep--and so I don't start it. But it gnaws there just the same."

"'Gnaws.' That's exactly what things do when they have no outlet."

He turned quickly. "Do you write, too?"

"No."

"But there's something you want to do. You couldn't understand if there
weren't."

Jean shook her head. "It's mostly concerned with not wanting to do
things. I have no special talent."

"How do you know? Have you tried anything?"

The irritation at her modesty was flattering. Jean flushed.

"No. But I have no faith in hidden genius. I'm twenty-four, you know,
and it would have showed before this."

Herrick felt that she would have confessed to thirty-four just as
readily. Her frankness repelled him.

"I don't know about that. I don't believe that we all instinctively
know what we want to do. Most of us have to live some time and be hurt
a lot before we find out very much about ourselves."

"I suppose we do," she said humbly.

Herrick thrilled at the note in Jean's voice. But he went on in the
same serious way as if he were being forced almost against his judgment
to let Jean into his confidence.

"For years the longing to get things down on paper haunted me, but I
only knew that I was miserable and felt stifled. It wasn't till I came
to the city, here, that the puzzle suddenly fitted into place." He
stopped and made a quick sweeping gesture with both hands. "Wouldn't it
be great to get all this, all the heat and noise and mud and life, to
get the whole hot, seething pain on paper! God, what a picture!"

Something came into Jean's throat and hurt.

"It would be glorious." She felt that Herrick had been granted a
fineness of spiritual vision she could never hope for. It coarsened her
that she had seen only the dirt and squalor of the vice, while the man
beside her had grasped something beneath that linked it up with reality
even as they both knew it, a kind of cosmic unity too finely toned for
her ears.

"You must do it. You _must_. Don't let an impulse like that die. It's
worth any sacrifice, anything. Can't you really get at it?"

Herrick looked quickly away. "Perhaps," he said shortly, "some day, if
the conditions are right, I may."

He did not take Jean's arm again and in a few moments they came to an
old loft building with a dark, yawning entry.

"Here we are." They turned into the blackness, and Jean felt it close
about them.

"It's a rickety old hole, but Flop would suffocate any place else.
Perhaps I'd better take your hand. The stairs aren't all they might be
and you don't know where the broken places are."

Jean gave him her hand and they went up through the blackness together.
At the bottom of the last short flight they stopped.

"Flop usually lights the lantern. He must have forgotten. Just wait
a moment." He left her and ran lightly up ahead. Jean could not see
him, but she could feel him looming above her on the landing, and hear
the low rustle of his clothes as he felt hurriedly through them for a
match. She had never before been so alone with a man.

"Oh, shucks!"

The word dropped on the tensity of Jean's mood like a drop of ice
water. She wished he had said "damn." It was like hearing a lion say
"Tut!"

"I guess I'll have to lead you. I haven't a match and there are none on
the ledge. Flop must be out."

They went up the few remaining steps, along a narrow hall to a door at
the end of a passage. Herrick turned the handle and stepped back to let
Jean enter. But Jean did not move.

"Oh," she cried softly. And again: "Oh."

"I'm glad you like it," he whispered after a moment, and drew her
gently across the threshold and closed the door.

Every cent that Flop had made for the last three years, and much that
he had borrowed, had gone to the fitting of this room. The walls were
of gray, satin-smooth eucalyptus. Soft, worn rugs lay before great
couches piled with pillows. Along the west wall, wide windows ran the
length of the room, from the rough stone fireplace to the glass door
that opened on a tiny iron balcony. All the windows were shaded now
with heavy green curtains run on silken ropes. The afterglow of a
scarlet sunset came in rose and pale gold through the curtain openings,
and lay in pools of light on the dull rugs.

Herrick's hand took Jean's without pressure, so that it seemed part
of the quiet beauty of the room, and they crossed to the window. The
hills beyond the Bay etched themselves in faint purple and amethyst on
the paling sky. They stood silent, looking out across the low roofs,
to the Bay, with its wall of hills and the white ferryboats moving
majestically in the dignity of distance.

At last Jean turned back to the room.

"One could do great things here," she said slowly as if thinking aloud,
unconscious of Herrick's presence.

"Yes. One could do great things, _if_ one were happy."

The emphasis drew her attention and she looked at him.

"Isn't he happy? It doesn't seem possible, quite, to live in a room
like this and not be happy."

"Flop? I don't know. As happy or unhappy as every one else, I suppose."

Herrick's eyes sought the Bay again. She was impossible as a grown
woman. She was more like a boy, with her annoying way of looking
straight into his eyes, and her silly, impersonal interpretations.
No doubt she thought that all Flop needed was a room like this, and
twenty-four hours a day, to paint masterpieces. And Herrick thought of
all the love and hate, the reckless joy and pain that had been born and
killed among the soft rugs and old tapestries and small, pure marbles.

"I don't know that it matters so much, after all, whether we are happy
or not, as long as we are _alive_."

Jean spoke with difficulty, for Herrick's sudden turning away made her
feel that she had really known him only two weeks, and knew nothing
whatever of his life. In the shadow of the green curtains, his face
looked whiter and the soft curve of his lips hard, as if he were
remembering something that hurt very much. A tremendous necessity
to comfort him swept Jean into speech, to make him see that nothing
mattered except being alive as he must be, not hampered and swaddled
with the crowding of uncongenial personalities. She contrasted Herrick
with his ability and definite ambition and friends, with the long, dead
evenings and the killing Sundays with Tom and Elsie and her mother.

"'To see Life clearly and see it whole,'" quoted Jean, and her voice
shook slightly with the force of her own conviction.

The blood rushed into Franklin Herrick's eyes, and he shook his head
as if to clear them from the mist. Again he felt that Jean was eluding
him, slipping away from the niche in which he had just placed her. But
this time she was flitting ahead of him, tantalizing in her promised
capacity to feel. He wanted to put his hands on her strong shoulders
and force something into those clear gray eyes, filled now with
confusion at her own unusual enthusiasm.

"We'll straighten out all the philosophy of the world some other
night," he said abruptly. "But now I want to show you Flop's latest.
And, whether he's happy or not, it's great stuff."

Herrick brought the canvas from the easel, propped it on a table and
lit a small bronze sconce, which he held so that the light fell on the
picture and on Jean's head.

From the shadow of a dusky, smudged wood, the nude figure of a woman
stood out with startling whiteness. At her feet a little brook ran over
white pebbles. There was a feeling of moonlight among the trees, as if
somewhere a full moon were shining in the warm night. But the little
brook, deep in the heart of the wood, was cold, and the woman longed
and at the same time dreaded to enter it. The warm blackness of the
trees held her, like the embrace of an unseen lover. But the cool voice
of the brook called steadily and one felt sure that in the end she
would go. She was bent a little forward as if listening to the brook,
so that the curves of her slim body, the small, white breasts, partly
veiled in the red-gold hair that fell about her shoulders, leaned into
the darkness.

"She's alive," Herrick whispered, and going to the canvas passed his
hand lightly from the red-gold hair to the small, white feet deep in
the damp grass.

The blood flooded Jean's face. Instantly Herrick was angry with
himself, but the call had been too strong. He covered his anger with
surprise as he looked quietly at Jean.

"Come. I want to show you the rest of the things, too."

Holding the sconce high, he moved about the room, pointing out his
favorites among Flop's work.

Jean followed, making flat comments on the things he showed her. She
wanted desperately to go back to the first picture, and discuss it in
a rational manner, for there was nothing in it to shock or repel. It
was too perfect for that. Again she felt that she had been crude and
childish, just as she had been about the painted women and the sordid
ugliness of The Coast, and that she had fallen short of Herrick's
estimate and disappointed him. She wanted to say something, but did
not know in what words to open the subject nor how to make Herrick
understand without. Slowly they made the rounds of the studio and came
again to the glass door opening on the balcony. Herrick put out the
light.

"It's only a quarter to and it won't take five minutes to get there.
Shall we stay here or go and wait for the rest in the restaurant?"

"I'd rather wait here."

Jean hoped that some opportunity would offer to correct what must be
Herrick's impression of her, but none came. Herrick sat silent.

As she rested against the pile of cushions Herrick had arranged, and
watched the quick western twilight blot the world to night, Jean felt
as if for the twenty-four years of her life she must have been fast
asleep. All about her men and women had been loving and hating and
misunderstanding and hurting each other, and she had been studying
books like a child. She had used up much energy and bitterness longing
for the moment when she would get out into life and earn her own
living, make one of the army that fought its way back and forth each
morning and night on the boats. And all the time the real thing was
not that at all. The real thing was human relationship, the relations
between men, and between women, and between women and men. There
were thousands of sensations and cross currents and impressions.
There was ambition, not vague ambition like hers, but a focused force
like Freeman's and Harcourt's and Herrick's. There was struggle and
disappointment and the pain that so evidently Herrick had known, and
Flop too, not the petty annoyance of Elsie's whining, but sweeping
pain that left one bigger. There was loneliness even in a glorious room
like this and pleasant interludes of chance meetings with kindred souls.

The wonderful romance of friendship gripped Jean. From the ends of the
earth two people, of different tradition, it might be of different
race, met accidentally and their lives forever after were different.
From the silent dark streets below, all the personalities of all the
thousands she had never seen, came close and touched her, so that she
felt that in some hidden way she was being influenced by every one of
them. There was nothing in life insignificant, nothing unimportant,
nothing unrelated to the whole.

Every one was bound to every one else by achievement and encouragement
and understanding. Each of these was a definite thing, like a thread,
made up of millions of minute strands, passing glances, chance
handclasps, too fine to be caught and held in words and yet each so
strong that it could bear the weight of many disappointments.

And there was the web of the whole with its radiating threads of the
bigger social relationships, made from these fine, thin filaments of
everyday occurrences.

She thought of herself and of Pat, of Tom and Elsie and her mother,
each weaving his own pattern. Pat wove carelessly with whatever thread
came to hand, singing as she wove, while Tom and Elsie fought over the
threads that broke under their ceaseless nagging and left the pattern
torn and frayed. And Martha, so sharply did the figure of a weaver
present itself to Jean, that she saw as clearly as if her mother had
been there, the patient figure sitting before its loom, weaving only
the dark gray threads, gently thrusting aside with small, tired hands
the golds and reds. And so vital did the need come to Jean of choosing
the best threads, weaving the most glorious pattern she could, that
she clenched her hands and whispered aloud:

"I will do it. I will."

"Do what?" Herrick bent to her and took both hands in his.

Jean laughed. "Did I really say it aloud?"

"You certainly did, whatever it was that you _will_. What is it?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't put it into words. It was just the feel of being
up here above all those dark streets and--and----"

"'And all about with wings the darkness stirred.' Was that it?"

"I expect it was."

Herrick jumped to his feet and swung her to the floor beside him.

"My, but you're strong!"

They stood smiling for a moment. Then he moved to the door.

"We'll be late after all. But I guess I was dreaming too."




                             CHAPTER FIVE


Through the crowd waiting for tables, Herrick pushed his way and Jean
followed closely. Greasy waiters rushed about with great platters of
spaghetti, increasing the noise and confusion by their violent gestures
and frantic efforts to serve every one at once. As Jean and Herrick
made their way among the small tables that took up three-quarters of
the long room, people looked at them and made comments which came
to Jean in broken sentences of no meaning. Suddenly the air of the
Marseillaise rose above the din. Instantly the crowd waiting about the
door pushed forward, and those already seated got on chairs and craned
their necks toward the end of the room.

Herrick bent to Jean. "Don't be frightened. We're really not a bit
dangerous."

Jean did not have time to answer before they passed through the outer
rim of the crowd and came into a cleared space before a long table,
from which the deafening din arose. Mounted on a chair, a fat man, in a
khaki hunting suit and an enormous Windsor tie of peacock blue satin,
was bellowing a song set to the tune of the Marseillaise. The burden of
the song was, "Bring on the Food! Bring on the Food!" A girl in a dull
green crêpe dress that hung from the shoulders like a kimono, stood in
the center of the table and carried the air high above the rest in a
shrill soprano. The men and women about the table beat time with forks
and spoons.

As Herrick and Jean came forward the man in khaki saw them, stopped,
appraised Jean in a glance, and silenced his chorus with a wave of his
fat hand.

"I hereby fine him, Franklin Herrick, twenty-five cents for tardiness,
said fine to be paid in United States silver coin, not later than ten
o'clock this evening, and to be used for the sole purpose of aiding the
complete debauch of The Bunch."

He jumped down and came forward with both hands outstretched in
generous welcome. He appropriated Jean, separated her from Herrick and
swept her into the empty chair between a pudgy woman in a black skirt
and soiled white waist, and a heavy-browed young man who did not move
or glance at Jean as she took the place. With a wave that included the
entire table, Flop announced:

"Jean, Jean Norris, and on with the dance!" He seemed to find this
funny, and laughed immoderately. A tall, very thin man next to the
pudgy woman bent forward, leered at Jean for a second in maudlin
earnestness, and then yelled:

"We want Jean! We want Jean!"

The table took it up, and all down the length, glasses were raised and
they drank to Jean in the sour, red wine. Across the table, from what
was evidently his accustomed place next to the girl in the green crêpe,
Herrick smiled reassuringly. The girl had come down from the table
at Flop's introduction of Jean and sat with her elbows on the cloth
and her chin in her palms, staring at Jean, with no acknowledgment
of the latter's existence in her eyes. Now that she looked at her
more closely, Jean saw that the woman was not really young, only
her smallness made her seem so. Her blue eyes were netted with fine
wrinkles and the skin of her hands was faintly withered. The youngest
thing about her was her neck, beautifully modeled, and her black hair
which was thin but wavy. Jean was just wondering whether the woman was
expressing a genuine mood, or resenting a stranger, when the pudgy
woman said in a reassuring tone:

"You mustn't be afraid of us. We say and do anything that pleases us,
but really we're not the least bit dangerous."

"But I'm not. Not the least bit. Do I look so--so green, that I need
protection?" Jean smiled, but this insistence that there was nothing to
fear, annoyed her.

The woman thrust her face close to Jean's and scrutinized her
carefully. "An azalea! That's it, an azalea! Listen, listen, all ye
present, I've got it. Azalea, that's her Bunch name."

"Azalea! Azalea!" Above the noise, Flop's bass bellowed and he beat the
table in a frenzy of approval, as if he could not have endured another
moment without knowing the right name for Jean. Through the uproar,
Herrick's smile reached like a cool touch. They drank Jean's baptism
in the sour, red wine and the next moment the interrupted arguments
were going on more violently than before. The name was adopted with
voracious enthusiasm and complete indifference.

Rather exhausted by the suddenness of the proceeding, Jean drew back
and tried to separate the mass before her into its elements. She
wondered which were Harcourt and Tolletson and whether they had been
"baptized" in wine. She scanned the faces along the opposite side,
where Herrick was now listening with a frown to the girl in green; and
then, as no one claimed her attention, leaned a little forward. There
was a heavy-set young man with a swarthy skin, who talked with an
Oxford accent and made Jewish gestures: a middle-aged man, with sleek
hair and a Van Dyke, which he was continually stroking with a very
white hand. He seemed to carry on his side of the argument with the
swarthy person, in a series of grunts and inner explosions, as if his
opinions were so violent that they erupted before he could bind them
in words. There was also a woman with gray hair framing a young face
and sad, kind brown eyes. She seemed interested, but said little, and
Jean liked her. And there was a pale, tall girl, with black eyes and
hair, who smoked cigarettes faster than the two men beside her could
roll them, and who stared in smoldering hate at these men when she had
to wait, as if they had mortally injured her. Jean laughed quietly to
herself, but instantly the woman beside her turned.

"I'm not so sure 'Azalea' was right. You sound exactly like a dove when
you do that, a deep-breasted, soft, blue dove--Paloma. I believe that's
it! I say----"

"Oh, no, please don't. I like the other one better. But I do want to
know something. Which is Mr. Harcourt and which is Mr. Tolletson?"

"Harcourt and Tolletson? My dear, they never come, that is, hardly
ever. Harcourt lives in London and Tolletson spends most of his time
in Paris. Mathews lives in bourgeoise respectability in the country
with a legal wife and baby. They were Bunchers somewhere in the Dark
Ages. Some of us wouldn't know them if we met them on the street, only
down underneath, you know, we're kind of proud of them, and keep their
names alive. Then, they have been known to come within the memory of
man. Makes 'em feel more successful to measure the distance they've got
away, I suppose."

"Oh!" Jean felt as if the woman had stripped something from her rudely,
but that she must cover this rudeness from some deeper need to herself.
After all, Herrick had not promised that these men would be there. She
had jumped to that conclusion herself.

"But the rest of us do something every now and then, in a small way,"
the other went on, with an understanding glint in her eyes that made
Jean flush. "Oh, never mind, it wasn't rude, not a bit. Most every one
who comes first, expects to see them, and it's rather funny watching
the efforts not to ask point blank. Not many are as frank as you. Do
you see that black and white thing, smoking like a chimney, and looking
as lively as a mummy? That's The Tiger--mad about Flop for the last six
weeks, frightful length of time for either of them. He's disciplining
her with Magnolia, that big, sleepy porpoise he's kissing. The Tiger
and Magnolia write poetry, damned good, too, some of it, but they never
bother printing it. Magnolia'd like to, but it's the only trick The
Tiger's got--pretending she doesn't care for money or fame, and 'Nolia
has to live up to the standard. The human skeleton next to me's Vicky
Sergeant; he has no Bunch name because we couldn't find a fruit or
animal he looked like. That girl in green next to Franklin is Vicky's
wife. We call her The Kitten--for various reasons. And of course you
know Franklin's Boy Blue."

"Why Boy Blue?"

The woman laughed. "Don't ask me. Ask The Kitten. She named him long
ago. I think it has something to do with always losing sheep."

At this moment, the now almost drunken Vicky claimed her and Jean
looked up, to find The Kitten's eyes just turning away, and a scowl of
anger on Herrick's face. The fingers crumbling his bread tightened and
then he said something to The Kitten that made her drop the match, with
which she was about to light her cigarette, and stare at him. After a
moment she began to laugh as if the full force of the thing had come to
her gradually. With a shrug, Herrick left his place and wedged a chair
between Jean and the dumpy woman.

"I'm afraid we didn't get a very good night. They're all rather keyed
up. They are sometimes."

The impersonal criticism in his voice linked him with the charter
members who never came, separated him from The Kitten and the noisy
enthusiasm that glittered like veneer over what Jean instinctively felt
was real boredom and disillusion. It drew her to him and she said in a
low tone:

"Who's The Kitten?"

He hesitated, and then answered in the same low tone:

"An unhappy woman with claws that tear herself and every one else who
gets too near, and she's in the devil of a mood to-night. Poor Kitten,
she will never learn."

Jean looked across the table with more pity in her eyes than she
realized, until The Kitten's laughter ceased suddenly, and leaning to
Jean, she said:

"Don't be too sweet to Boy Blue, Azalea. He can't stand azaleas. I saw
him get disgustingly drunk once, just because the room was hot and
there was a big bunch of azaleas in it. Don't you remember, Boy?"

"I can't say that I do, Kitten," Franklin answered quietly. "But you
remember such a lot of things."

"Dozens, Boy, dozens."

Herrick refused to continue the conversation and, with a remark that
included Jean, entered the discussion going on at the end of the
table. While she tried to catch the drift of the talk, Jean felt The
Kitten's eyes on her and knew that the woman saw her effort to pretend
unconsciousness of them. This lasted only a few moments, for, with an
elaborate yawn, The Kitten left the table. No one made any comment on
her going and Vicky was lost in assumed jealousy of the dumpy woman who
was flirting clumsily with Flop.

The argument was a technical one and soon beyond Jean's depth, for
she knew nothing at all of painting or artists. But from time to time
Herrick appealed to her on a point about which the rankest layman would
have an opinion, so that Jean felt in him a keener social sense and
greater natural kindliness than any of the others seemed to possess.

When the argument became too intricate for even Herrick to include her,
she leaned back, now much more at ease, and sensing a faint, possible
charm, which had at first been quite lost under the gaucherie of manner.

The Outlanders, as The Bunch called the rest of the world, had thinned
a little, but there were still many tables filled with starers toward
the big table in the center. It was evidently the attraction of this
rather dirty restaurant, and Jean judged that the proprietor would
rather feed The Bunch for nothing than have them transfer their
patronage. And for this freedom, this effortful emancipation from the
social code that passed as originality and genius, he charged The
Outlanders high. This too they appreciated. It gave value to the thing
they bought.

"After all," Jean decided, "I suppose I do look like a baby let out
alone without its nurse. I've never met any people worth while knowing
in my life, or any one out of the beaten track. And because these tie
their neckties across instead of down and make a lot of noise, I feel
superior. I've certainly never painted a picture or written a poem and
I didn't know there was anything the matter with Maeterlinck at all.
Jean Norris, you're a cocky fool."

She was recalled from this philosophizing by Herrick's touch upon her
shoulder.

"Dreaming again?" His voice was wistful, not this time as if he wished
to share her dreams, but as if he envied her the power to dream. Jean
thought that his eyes were very tired and his face rather pale, as she
looked up. "Well?" he smiled down at her. "Were you really so far away?
Come back, won't you, please?"

It was a sincere request, and as Jean followed to the street, she felt
that Herrick was often alone among these people and she thought she
understood now why he had not tried to do the novel.

On the sidewalk Flop stood in the center of the group debating what
to do with the rest of the night. When Herrick and Jean joined,
Flop turned to her with his manner of having just been struck by an
illuminating thought.

"We'll leave it to Azalea. Which would you rather do, go down to
Ramon's and drink mescal, he's just got some from Mexico, or do the
Coast? There's a dancer at Frank's worth seeing."

"I'm afraid I can't do either. The next boat won't get me home till
after one, as it is."

"Nonsense. Nobody ever goes home while there's anything else to do. 'We
won't go home till morning!'"

The others took it up, and the silence of the empty street echoed to
the old song. Jean wondered whether Flop was always singing his wants
like this, and glanced at Herrick.

"Let's beat it, if you really want to," he whispered, and almost before
she knew it, they had turned down a side street. For a block the voices
of The Bunch followed. They did not know that Jean and Herrick had
slipped away.

"If there's anything more dull than drinking mescal, it's going to
Frank's. I don't see what on earth Flop finds in it."

Jean liked his annoyance. Again she felt that they were linked in
understanding against the others. She had meant to ask him about
Harcourt and Mathews, but now it seemed unnecessary.

They walked in almost total silence through the dark streets lined with
closed warehouses that sent out a mingled odor of fruits and vegetables
exotic to Jean in its newness. Often the black bulk of empty crates
forced them into the cobble paved road-bed, thick with dust and fruit
rinds and withered greens. Once, in common consent they stopped to
listen to hundreds of crated pigeons, cooing softly behind closed doors.

"You _are_ like a dove. She was right for once. A big, calm dove," he
said, and they went on silent as before.

On the boat they chose the forward deck and watched the dark hills come
closer. The great paddle-wheel churned a rhythm to Jean's thoughts,
pictures of the day, from the time she had met Herrick and had walked
through the crowded streets, to the present cool emptiness of the upper
deck with the night wind touching her face and thousands of stars
above. To Jean it had been the fullest day she had ever lived.

Gently Herrick's hand claimed hers and she did not withdraw it. The
contact seemed only a finer communication, a surer speech than the
clumsiness of words.




                              CHAPTER SIX


Soon after the first dinner with The Bunch, Herrick finished the series
of articles and no longer came to the library. But often Jean found him
waiting at the closing hour and they walked to the Ferry. Several times
they had lunch in a little Mexican restaurant with a sanded floor and
strings of red peppers hanging like stalactites from the ceiling. Jean
always came from this place with the feeling of having been to another
world and touched another life. And there was always the feeling of
having shared this happy strangeness with Herrick.

On Sundays, sometimes Herrick called at the house for her, and
sometimes she met him at the Ferry, and they went to Flop's. Martha
made no comment, but Jean knew that after she had left the house, her
mother cried, and because she never mentioned Herrick, Jean knew that
Martha disliked him. In the studio Jean made a great effort to enter
the spirit, for although she felt more and more strongly that Herrick,
too, was bored, she clung to the belief that there must be some charm
her own narrow training could not discover.

There was always the same enthusiasm about the same things. Whenever
interest flagged they wound it up with the thin, red wine and with
more and more cigarettes which they threw away partially smoked. Men
and women made open love to each other and there was much kissing and
imitation jealousy. Their insatiable need to be different had become
a scourge, which drove them along the road of personal eccentricity.
In the more or less worthy rebellion of their youth they had adopted
Windsor ties and become Bohemians for life.

Through the remaining winter and early spring, Jean and Herrick
continued to go less and less often, and in April stopped altogether.
Now, on Sundays, they took long walks over the hills. They built
driftwood fires in lonely coves and raced like children across the
dunes. And always, Jean led the talk to Herrick's novel and the things
he would write, so that these vague dreams took form between them. It
was as if Jean, reaching down among the qualities he believed he had
thrown away, found a small, discarded jewel. Together they polished it.

Jean's attitude hurt and flattered Herrick and the combination was fast
binding him against his will. Remembering the hours he was alone with
Jean on empty beaches and among silent trees, the knowledge that he had
never kissed her made him hot with shame. Away from her, he marveled at
his own control. But with her, a genuine peace for the most part held
him, so that the control was not so great as it afterward appeared. In
some strange way she herself stilled the storm she raised.

It was June, but a high fog had covered the sky all day. They had been
walking since morning and now, in the late afternoon, came out through
the trail that wound between the hills to the cliffs that edged the
sea. Up from below long white arms tore at the cliffs, dropped, reached
higher in new effort. While, farther out, the inexhaustible army of
waves rushed in, line after line, flung themselves on the cliffs, sank
back, rushed in again. Over it all the gray sky shut as if to keep
the din from the ears of God. The world was strangely alone, shut in
by itself, like a madman locked in his cell. Driven from infinity,
rushing on to infinity, the wind tore by them on its ceaseless quest.

Herrick took her hand and they began to run to a little beach wedged
between the cliffs. As they ran Jean was filled with a deep sureness,
as if she could run so forever, swifter and swifter, never halting or
stumbling, borne up by a strength within; a strength that was beating
out against the whole surface of her body, in an effort to join the
main current of all life, that touched her on every side.

At the foot of the bluff, Jean dropped to the floor of the cove, and
for a moment Herrick stood above her. Deliberately he enjoyed the
feeling of physical power it gave him to stand so, to feel his greater
strength, to know that in spite of her superb body he could bend, lift
and throw this woman into the sea. He could see her breast rise and
fall under the thin waist, and the base of her throat throb with the
breath that still came quickly after their swift run. For a moment, all
the artist in Herrick rose in appreciation of the picture, the unity
that bound Jean's body, the silent power of the gray cliffs yielding
so little to the centuries of rage tearing at them, to the eternal,
ever-changing sameness of the sea. There was much of them in Jean, so
that, as he looked, he felt tired and worn. He went and sat down a
little behind her, and drawing his knees to his chin, circled them with
his arms.

It was almost eighteen months since he had first brought The Kitten
here. They had raced down the hill too, but at the foot he had swung
her to the circle of his arms and kissed her madly. She had returned
his kisses, until, both a little exhausted, they lay on the sand, his
head in her lap, and her fingers had wandered in his hair, coming,
every few minutes, to rest hotly on his lips.

Herrick looked at Jean and wondered. She had never kissed a man as
The Kitten had kissed him. Would she ever? What was she thinking of,
smiling out over the gray sea? In that passionate, throbbing emptiness
she seemed as unconscious of him as if he were one of the gray cliffs.
She was as far away and impersonal as the wind sweeping indifferently
over the friendly little grasses.

In obedience to his unspoken wish, Jean turned.

"It's the sounds," she said, as if Herrick must have been following
her thoughts. "If there weren't any sounds in Nature, pagans would
never have invented a God. It's so impossible to imagine a silent Force
creating a world where the wind shrieks and the sea roars and you can
almost hear the earth breathe. It seems as if there must be a personal
god somewhere, a huge, powerful man who needs these voices to talk
with."

She had been thinking about God!

Herrick, without answering, drew farther back into the cove. He turned
from Jean to the open grayness, and a terror of its immensity forced
through every effort to keep it out. In the whole world there was
nothing but loneliness, an actual, positive, palpable loneliness, as
gray and chill as the sea, as all pervading as the boom of the surf far
out on the rocky bar.

    "'And who knows but that God, beyond our guess,
    Sits weaving worlds out of loneliness.'"

"Did you write that?"

For a moment Herrick stared and then he laughed. She would always do
it, make him feel old and spotted, and then whirl him up to the heights
by a belief in his power.

"It's absolutely perfect. God,--weaving worlds because He is lonely."

"No. It's not mine, I'd give a good deal to be able to claim it, but
it belongs to one Arthur Symons. Do you know his stuff?"

"No. Is it all like that?--'Weaving worlds out of loneliness.'"

"Not all. But he saw rather far into the heart of things." Without
further comment Herrick began to quote--whole poems, fragments, single
lines. It was all sad and beautiful and sensuous, filled with the
hunger of soul and body.

His voice took on a depth it did not have in usual speech. It fitted
perfectly with the sad booming of the surf and the whimper of the
little waves that ran in terror among the rocks. For the first time in
her life Jean felt the ache of physical beauty. She wanted to cry.

Toward sundown the wind died, the high fog parted and the sun sank in a
wine-red sea. Out on the ledge Jean and Herrick watched it dip over the
edge of the world.

When the coming night had stolen the last thread of color from the sky
they went back to the cove. Herrick piled brush and covered it with
great logs of driftwood. At the touch of a match, crackling flames ran
out and instantly the savage loneliness of the sea was shut away and
the cove became a home.

While they ate the sandwiches they had brought from the ranch-house
where they had stopped for dinner, they talked of everything and of
nothing. From time to time Herrick went after another log and Jean was
left alone, conscious of his absence, of the blackness beyond the fire
and the warm security of the rock walls, lit by the firelight. Each
time he returned Jean felt that she knew him better.

Stretched on the sand, his head on Jean's spread skirt, Herrick told
her of his boyhood and his passionate longing, even as a little child,
for the warmth and beauty he had no reason to believe existed.

"We had one of the poorest farms in Connecticut, and if you don't know
Connecticut you can't know what that means. There were just a few bleak
fields, enclosed by fences of stones that my father had picked from
the earth. We grew a little corn and some potatoes, but whenever the
crop was good there was no demand, and when prices were high something
always killed the crops. We had a few lean cows which I could never
believe had been calves. I could never imagine that anything on the
place had ever been young. Even my father and my mother. It seemed to
me as if they must have always been old and lived in the rickety house,
in the bare fields, with the lean cows and the failing crops.

"On each side of us the farms had been deserted before I was born.
Sometimes I used to wish there were other boys in them to play with,
but for the most part I accepted it just as I accepted the whining
complaints of mother, dad's stooped shoulders and the feeling of never
having all that I could possibly eat at one time.

"But one day a strange man drove up. He was fat, with a red face and a
gold watch-chain. He came in and clapped father on the back, and began
to talk faster and laugh more than any one I had ever heard. Even dad
and mother smiled as they listened. When mother told me he was going to
stay all night I went out in the barn and cried."

Herrick stopped and looked into the fire. He forgot Jean, everything
but the memories called to life by his own words. His face was hard
with hatred against that starved childhood and against his parents, for
always Herrick's hatred was deep against the thing that hurt him. There
were shadows about his lips, and his hands clenched until the cords
rose on his wrist.

"You poor, lonely, little boy," Jean whispered.

"I was. For you see, until that night, when Ed Pierce came back, I
didn't know there was anything else. I used to feel those stone fences
closing in like a grave. I didn't know but that the whole world was
flat and bare and stony. I thought that the Pierces and Thompsons had
just died under the strain, and that some day father and mother would
die too, and then I would be left alone.

"After dinner we sat round the fire. They had done all the gossiping
and Ed Pierce began to tell of the Far West. You must say it just like
that--The Far West!

"I can't tell you what it meant to me. It was a mixture of Heaven and
pirate expeditions in tropic seas and gold mines. But the thing that
stunned me was that we could go. It was on this earth and we could
get there! We could have it all, if father would only go and take it.
I can hear Pierce's big voice now: 'Take a chance, Bill. Don't be
scared. You're young enough yet. You'll make good with a quarter of the
strength you'll waste on this hole.'

"And my father sat there with his head sunk and his shoulders bent,
shaking his head!

"I crawled over to his chair and got hold of his knees. I begged him to
go. I believe I screamed. Father loosened my hands and told me to shut
up. But Pierce said:

"'Listen to him, Bill, the kid's got more sense than you. You've stuck
here so long you're plumb scared to move.'

"I got hold of his knees again and begged him not to be scared. At last
he took me by the arm and dragged me to the door and locked me into the
cold hall. I never forgave him. In the morning Ed Pierce was gone. For
a few days they mentioned him. Then they stopped talking about him.
There was nothing left but the stones and the hope of The Far West. And
all the weary years till I could get there."

"And you got here."

"Yes. I got here." There was no triumph in Herrick's tone.

Jean held out her hands to him suddenly. "You see, you _can_ do what
you want."

It was the first physical response Jean had ever offered. Herrick took
both hands in his and laid his cheek on them. Then, without a word, he
got to his feet and helped Jean up.

From the top of the hill they looked back. The fire glowed a deep red
hummock on the black beach. The white crescent of a new moon hung in
a rift of cloud and touched to silver the crests of the long swells.
Herrick walked ahead along the narrow trail and they scarcely spoke.

But at the gate, under shadow of the acacia that drooped its long
yellow blooms close to them, Herrick put his arms about Jean, pressed
his lips fiercely to hers, and hurried away.

Jean lay awake a long time, feeling the hot pressure of Herrick's soft
mouth and wishing that he had not kissed her.




                             CHAPTER SEVEN


Herrick was happier than he had been for a long time as he sat
bareheaded on the upper deck and thought back over the day with Jean
and of how she had looked as he kissed her. It excited him and made him
tender to remember the look in her eyes, and the faint smile deepened
as he wondered what she was thinking now. Her lips had not responded
in the least, but she had seemed neither angry nor frightened. She had
accepted it as she would have accepted a leaf falling from the acacia
above. And yet he was sure that she had not often, if ever, been kissed
by a man. In some ways she was strangely primitive and in others she
seemed to have lived through and left behind in ages past the ordinary
emotional reactions. Herrick's brain was on fire with expectation and
curiosity. The memory of the kiss quickened his mind more than his
body, and his own reaction thrilled him with a new sensation.

He was happy. So happy that he could not go quietly to bed. Nor could
he walk alone in the empty streets. His nerves wanted the relaxation of
companionship. The perfect day wanted a touch of contrast to finish its
perfection. He needed to frame the memory of Jean's cool lips, possess
it alone in another setting.

A few moments later he crossed the studio amid the shrieks and catcalls
of The Bunch, straight to the couch where The Kitten was curled alone.

"So you thought you'd come and see whether we were alive. It's awfully
good of you! But you know we're hard to kill. Skin's so thick the
little stings and arrows don't get through, somehow."

The Kitten drawled between puffs of her cigarette and did not move to
make room for Herrick.

He lifted her, deposited her farther back among the cushions and tried
to take her hand. She was so furious and making such a ridiculous
pretense, just as she used to, that Herrick's feel of youth and
well-being increased. It was as if the memory of these old tricks, now
powerless to hurt, gave him back three years of time. At thirty-three,
Herrick wanted the past.

"But claws do, Kittycat."

"If we'd known you were going to honor us," persisted The Kitten, "we'd
have ordered champagne. As it is, we only had the same old ink, and
that's gone."

"A cigarette, a jug of ink and thou!"

"You--you----" Then, fearing she was going to cry, she stopped.

Across the room a tall girl with flat, red hair and small red-rimmed
eyes like glowing embers in the white ash of her face, broke off a
sentence in the middle.

"Who's that man over there, just come in, with The Kitten?"

Flop glared at this interest on the part of his newest inspiration.

"Franklin Herrick, alias Boy Blue. He used to be the real thing, but he
hasn't been round for ages."

The girl still stared. "I'd like to model him," she said slowly. "He
walks like a panther, has the forehead of a saint and the mouth of a
gutter rat."

"Great! Why don't you tell him? He'd be furious inside and look as if
he were going to kiss you."

"Maybe I will--if I get a chance."

"You won't. The Kitten's been sharpening her claws for months."

On the couch Herrick was holding The Kitten's hands, stroking them
softly.

"Who's the other woman?"

Flop's laugh bellowed above the noise. "You female Conan Doyle." His
voice dropped. "A serious impossibility--bromide to the limit--but she
has a good skin."

"Brains?"

"Oh, don't ask me."

"What's he see in her?"

"What are you so interested for? How do I know what any man sees in a
woman? You're all alike. I suppose when Herrick tries to kiss her she
screams, and that'd be enough to interest him."

The girl smiled. When she smiled the corners of her lips turned up over
small, uneven teeth. With a shrug of indifference she slipped her hand
into Flop's and they turned toward an excited group at the other end.
Here a slight man in a brown flannel shirt and red tie, with gestures
preserved from his student days in Paris, was arguing a technical point
in Verlaine. But as none of his listeners understood French, he was
finding it hard to maintain the requisite heat. When he caught sight
of the girl he appealed to her excitedly in a French whose studied
correctness made her laugh. She answered in a flood of rapid patois
incomprehensible to him. A smile ran round the group. Instantly the
girl's mood changed.

"Listen. It is impossible to translate. But listen. You will hear his
heart beating, throb, throb, in the French."

Her arms dropped to her sides. The heavy white lids lowered over the
red eyes. For a moment she stood so, artificial and decadent. Then she
began in a low, sweet voice that seemed to have nothing to do with her
body.

Her voice flowed in waves across the great room and melted into the
shadows. Flop listened with his hands before his face. The strutting of
the man in the brown shirt ceased. The Kitten hid her face on Herrick's
shoulder and his arms closed about her.

The girl went on, poem after poem. Herrick's eyes filled with tears
and his hold tightened on The Kitten. She shivered, pressed her lips
deeper into his neck, and kissed him with sudden, sharp kisses that
bit like hot coals. For half an hour the voice continued. It burned
away the memory of the day behind, of the sea, of the exacting faith in
Jean's gray eyes. This was the reality, this passion that throbbed in
the poet's words, the girl's voice, the scorching kisses of the small,
quivering figure in his arms. To feel and feel and feel.

The voice stopped as suddenly as it had begun. With the shudder of
a medium coming from a trance, the girl opened her eyes. Instantly
the purity of the listening silence was spotted with exaggerated
exclamations of delight. They crowded about her. Flop brought a glass
of wine, and sitting on his knee she sipped it, while her eyes wandered
to the corner where Herrick had sat and stroked The Kitten's hands. The
corner was empty. She grinned, and at Flop's request kissed him lightly
on the lips.

As they walked along, choosing the darker streets, neither The Kitten
nor Herrick spoke. Her fingers locked tight on his and Herrick walked
as if in a dream toward a fixed point. At the corner of the street
where Vicky and The Kitten had a small flat, Herrick stopped.

"Is Vicky home?"

"No. He went to Tulare a month ago."

The room was dark except for a long, white bar across the floor from a
street lamp outside. Beside the Morris chair Herrick knelt and put his
arms about The Kitten.

All the miniature independence was gone. She clung to him sobbing:

"I can't stand it any more. I love you and you're cruel, terribly
cruel."

There was all the old abandon, the absolute surrender in the figure
trembling at his touch. Of all the women he had known The Kitten had
loved most passionately, most recklessly, finding no flaw, asking no
change, holding him to no path. She loved him absolutely, utterly, as
he was. And it had bored him.

"I know, Boy, you only did it to hurt me. You don't love her. You know
you don't. You can't. Boy Blue," she whispered, her lips against his
cheek, "promise your Kittycat you'll never see her again. Then I'll
forget all the hurt--every single teeny bit."

With his arms about her, Herrick looked into the dark and saw Jean as
he had left her, only a short time before, under the acacia, part of
the clean night. In the gray fog by the sea, made more vital by the
immense sadness and beauty of it. The generous giving of her hands
to the lonely little boy, such a small, pitiful and generous gift.
Jean with her unshakable faith, her courage and her coldness. He felt
suddenly old, and afraid of his own fear.

"Are you satisfied now, Boy Blue? You've hurt me enough--till I've made
a fool of myself. But I don't care. Silly, silly Boy, he ran away, and
then he came back. He will always come back, always."

Sure of him, she laughed while she held his shoulders and made pretense
of shaking him.

"But it was funny sometimes, only very few sometimes, it was like a
baby going out with a little spade against a granite cliff. That's what
she's like, Boy, a cold, hard, granite cliff. Maybe he bruised his head
a little bit against the nasty, bad cliff. Well, never mind, mummy will
make it well."

The Kitten drew his head against her breast. "There, there. Now it's
all better. Nobody could beat down the cliff, so he mustn't feel bad,
but just come----"

The Kitten bent forward from the shadows and, full in the bar of
light, smiled at him. The last four months had made deep lines about
her scarlet mouth. In the bar of white light she was ugly, with the
ugliness of the small and withering. Herrick stepped back.

"You're ranting, Kitten. You don't know what you're talking about."

She blinked stupidly. She was almost hideous in her hungry fear.

"You don't understand. You can't understand women like Jean."

The Kitten got slowly to her feet.

"But she doesn't love you. _You_ couldn't make a woman like that
_care_."

Herrick's face reddened.

"Love! Why, Kitten, you don't know what the word means. When women
like that love, it's like a prairie fire. A white fire that sweeps
everything clean."

"'A white fire that sweeps everything clean!' A white prairie fire,"
muttered The Kitten. "You fool! You poor, blind fool. Do you think I'm
going to stand by and never say a word? Do you think 'the white prairie
fire'--oh, Lord, what a figure!--would love you if she knew? Why, she
wouldn't even kiss you if she thought you'd held another woman in your
arms--the great pink-and-yellow baby! And Vicky knows. He has always
known. They all know. Vicky will let me go. I am willing. I am not
ashamed. I----" She felt blindly before her as if she were picking the
words from air.

Herrick moved beyond reach. "Listen to me. There is no question of
whether people know or don't know. You're talking like a lunatic. There
never was a question of whether Vicky would free you or not. We loved
each other once and now it's over. That's all there is to it."

Herrick was thankful for the fine wrinkles, for all the small dried
ugliness that made it easy.

The Kitten swayed, steadied herself, and said quietly:

"You will have to marry her." She stated it as a simple fact that
Herrick might have forgotten. The inference of its judgment infuriated
him.

"From women like Jean one does not ask, does not want, anything less."

Long afterwards he envied The Kitten her moment's strength.

"Will you go?" she said.




                             CHAPTER EIGHT


The next day The Kitten joined Vicky in the country.

Twice in the next three Herrick went to the phone to call Jean, and
hung up in the very act of asking for the number.

"You can never make her care...." The Kitten knew him as no woman had
ever known him, and he hated her for this knowledge.

He went nowhere and saw no one. Through the lonely dinners, and long
evenings in the studio, Herrick worked himself into a fury that urged
him on and held him back. His anger spread from The Kitten to Jean, to
all women. He was sick of them, weary of the power they had always had
over him. He loathed the women who had yielded to him and the women
who had not. He hated his own inability to live his life independent
of them. If no woman had ever crossed his life, interfering in its
plan, destroying the dreams he had dreamed in those last years of
the Connecticut farm, he would long ago have written something worth
while. He would have succeeded as Freeman and Harcourt and the others
had done. He would be free of The Bunch in their hectic fight for
forgetfulness. His life would be ordered with calm poise. He had it in
him. Jean felt it. Could she even yet make him what he might have been?
Like an intermittent fever the conflict raged. Then, through sheer
exhaustion, it dropped away. Herrick wondered what it had all been
about and went again to call for Jean at the closing hour. She was not
there. Two weeks before Jean had lost her place.

The next day they walked again in the hills. Jean was whiter and
quieter than he had ever seen her. The two weeks had tried her nerves
almost beyond control. The last to come on the library staff, a reduced
appropriation demanded that Jean be the first to go. And, although
she had taken no joy in the work itself, she had been happy in the
security of having work to do. Now, after two weeks of following
every advertisement to its end, only to discover she had none of the
experience they all demanded, the old horror of teaching had come back,
and Jean was almost ill. The new baby cried incessantly and the house
was more cluttered than ever. Tom had at last been forced into a job
at a ridiculous salary and from morning till night Elsie predicted
starvation for herself and her "two helpless little ones." Through it
all Martha Norris moved, armored by prayer to gentle acceptance of
these petty annoyances that Jean felt closing about her forever.

Her independence weakened by fear for the future, Jean was another
person and Herrick thrilled at the new Jean, this unsure, rather
desperate Jean. She felt his strength and experience, so much greater
than her own, and his understanding and sympathy seemed to relieve her
from the necessity of maintaining the silence she had mapped out as a
shield against the atmosphere of her home. For the first time she told
him something of that atmosphere, of her childhood, not as poor and
bare as his, but filled with the same rebellion for something whose
name she did not know. Much of what Jean sketched in bare outline,
Herrick could fill in. It told him much that had puzzled him. He knew
her better than she knew herself.

As Jean sat, throwing pebbles into the almost dry creek at their feet,
he knew her eyes were full of tears. He took her hands in his and
forced her to look up.

"Don't, Jean. It hurts me terribly to see you unhappy. Something will
turn up. It always does. I've been there too, you know."

Jean smiled through her tears. "I know I'm an idiot. But I do loathe
the idea of teaching and yet it's the only thing I suppose I'm fitted
for. I mean I have a diploma, an actual proof on paper, that I've been
through the preparatory mill and I can wave it in their faces. I shall
kill the next person who asks me if I've had experience."

"Well, don't begin with me, please. You're positively glaring."

Jean answered his laugh and felt better.

"Because if you do you'll eliminate my valuable assistance, and I think
maybe I see light. How would you like to go on a paper?"

"What!"

"Oh, I'm not suggesting that you edit one, but there are several things
of lesser importance, things that don't need more than an ability to
write good English. If you have a sense of color, so much the better. I
think perhaps you have. You'd rather like it in some ways, especially
at first, but I don't think you'd ever be a howling success. You're not
what they call 'a born newspaper woman.'"

"I don't believe I'm a born anything." Jean made no effort to still the
quavering of her voice. She felt as if she had been struggling along
a hard road by herself and some one had suddenly picked her up and
carried her to a safe spot.

"Nonsense. Of course you are. Only it takes some of us a long time to
find out. Would you really like to try it?"

"I should like it more than anything I can think of. How do I go about
it? Just walk in and say: 'I'm not a born newspaper woman, but please
give me a job'?"

"Hardly, though it might not be such a bad way. Anything that startles
an editor looks like ability to him. But we'll be less original than
that. Thompson of the _Chronicle_ is going to start a new Sunday
section and he's looking for some one. He wants some one with 'a new
angle,' 'fresh viewpoint,' 'punch,' etc. These things to a real editor
are like the golden calf to the ancient peoples. He grovels before
them. His life is spent in a mad search for them."

"But I have no newspaper angle and no viewpoint at all."

"Patience, neophyte. That's only another name for a perfect greenhorn,
with intelligence and an ability to manufacture, enthusiasm for the
editor's pet schemes. Do you think you can do that, Jean?"

"I could drown in enthusiasm, genuine, hysterical enthusiasm over
anything that would save me from school teaching. If it gave me enough
salary to move mummy to the city and make it an eternal impossibility
for her ever to ask Tom and Elsie to stay five minutes, I'd drop dead
of sheer exuberance."

"Under that condition I may not speak to Thompson. But if you promise
to continue in this life I'll see him the first thing in the morning
and let you know by afternoon. I'm not sure what it is. You may have to
do Household Hints or Beauty articles or Society notes. You may develop
into the greatest Lady Teazle of the United States and have the New
York papers sending for you."

"Then, when my biography is written you'll be mentioned as having given
me my 'first chance.'"

"Is that the only capacity in which I figure in your life?" Under the
banter Herrick's eyes looked deep into hers. Jean blushed.

Again, when he left her, Herrick kissed her. This time her repulsion
was less. Jean was poignantly ashamed that it was there at all. To
the dead black and white of Jean's logic there was something wrong in
feeling as near as she felt to Herrick, and at the same time sensing
that slight inner revulsion at the touch of his lips on hers.




                             CHAPTER NINE


Thompson of the _Chronicle_ was a large, fat man who had cultivated
what he considered the proper editorial manner so that even in ordinary
conversation he snapped out his sentences as if he were ordering a
cub reporter to a fire. He prided himself on being able to do a dozen
things at once and his fetish was concentration. One gathered that he
could write a better article in a power house than in a library. When
Jean entered he was scanning the proofs of the week's edition, making
notes on a pad, smoking, and calling three numbers on the telephone.
Jean's nerves had worn her almost to the point of interrupting the
great man, before he glanced at her.

"I'm going to run a new feature. I want a series of interviews with
leading people who are doing things. I don't give a whoop what they do
so long as it's for the general good, 'our city,' 'civic betterment,'
etc. But I don't want slush. No sob-sister rot. Civic pride and that
dope. Herrick says you can do it. The first will be with Dr. Mary Mac
Lean. We've run her regularly about every six months since Settlements
got popular. You're to get a new angle. When you get the hang of it,
you'll have to find your own interviews."

He almost snarled the last word, glared at Jean as if she had taken
his time on a personal matter, and attacked his cigar as if he hadn't
had one for fifty years. Jean had never heard of Dr. Mary Mac Lean and
had no very clear idea of what a Settlement was, but she did not ask.
When she had gone, the Managing Editor made a hieroglyphic in his
memorandum, favorable to Jean.

As she sat waiting for Dr. Mary, Jean's courage came back. At the worst
the doctor could only refuse to talk to her, in which case she would
have to do the best she could.

"And an interview where the interviewed refuses to say anything doesn't
leave much room for slush."

Steps sounded in the hall and a stocky woman, in a walking skirt that
made her appear even shorter, with quantities of fluffy white hair
piled on a large head, stood in the doorway, peering nearsightedly
through gold pince-nez. She looked like a large, good-natured and
freshly washed puppy picking up a scent. Jean went forward.

"Dr. Mary Mac Lean? I am Jean Norris. I 'phoned you about an interview."

The pince-nez flew off as if Dr. Mary had pressed a button somewhere
about her plump person, and Jean smiled. Dr. Mary returned the smile.
Without the thick lenses of the glasses her eyes were small but very
bright. They were like two little searchlights, ready to be turned on
any fact. When she smiled, the corners crinkled into wrinkles.

"Well, go right on. I suppose you're primed to the hilt." Dr. Mary
took a deep chair and motioned Jean to another. "What's it going to be
this time? Poverty, sin, crime, religion, the Social Evil, the plague,
red or white, suffrage, minimum wage, I.W.W.-ism, organized labor,
inefficiency of the workingman, college education, or How I Went Into
the Work?"

"I don't know. You see," Jean answered in a sudden resolve to take
the doctor into her confidence, "I'm very specially at sea. I don't
know a thing about any of those things, not even enough to ask for
enlightenment. I never heard of you up till an hour ago and would hate
to be put on a stand to tell what a Settlement was. I know you do
wonderful things with the poor, but I don't know whether you pay their
rent, or make them send their children to school. It's because I don't
know anything about you that they sent me. They want something new that
won't drivel."

Dr. Mary laughed till the tears stood in her twinkling blue eyes.

"My dear, that's the most adequate explanation I ever got from an
interviewer, and the Lord knows I've sampled them all. So they're after
something new that won't drivel." She bent forward with exaggerated
caution. "Do you know, Miss Norris, I have imperiled my immortal soul
and ruined my vocabulary, reading those interviews with myself. They've
called me everything from Feminine Tolstoy to All Womanhood's Sister.
Now, would you like to be called All Womanhood's Sister because you
installed three washtubs in an outhouse for some poor women?"

"I should loathe being called All Womanhood's Sister for any reason.
But is there anything they haven't asked you?"

Dr. Mary cocked her head to one side like a badly proportioned bird and
nodded:

"Yes. Nobody has ever had sense enough yet to ask me if there isn't
something I want to tell them. They always come with their ammunition
ready and it amuses me to watch them shoot wild."

"Then I qualify for 'the new angle,' for I haven't a bullet with me.
Will you tell me, Dr. Mac Lean, if there's anything you want to say?"

Dr. Mary's face sobered. "Perhaps I can better show you. Come."

The next was a wonderful hour to Jean. She felt as if the doctor were
going before her, tearing down walls, opening worlds she had never
glimpsed. At the door of the last room, Dr. Mary paused.

"I want you to meet one of our girls. In some ways she combines all
the problems we have--economic, social, educational. And there are many
like her."

The doctor turned the handle and they entered a large, well-lighted
room, fitted with sewing machines. A dozen dark women were busy sewing,
and their laughter mingled with the whir of the machines. They all
smiled and gave greetings in strange broken phrases of English, as Dr.
Mary, followed by Jean, crossed to the farthest corner where a girl of
nineteen was sewing furiously. She stopped and looked up, smiling.

"Well, Carmen, how's Jaime to-day?"

"Oh, so well! He get fat." The soft voice blurred the words to a single
low note as the girl reached over to the wicker basket on the chair
beside her. She lifted the baby and turned with radiant face to the
doctor.

"See. Hees legs--so fat."

She turned back the coarse little dress and showed with pride the small
shriveled legs. The doctor bent over the baby, so fragile and withered
that it seemed something not new-born but something older than time,
and gave a few directions in Spanish. The girl nodded and, as the baby
began to whimper, buried her face in the wrinkled neck and crooned to
him. Over her bowed head, the doctor's lips motioned to Jean: "Blind,
but she doesn't know it yet."

Jean's throat tightened and she felt sick with the sadness of it; the
girl-mother and the baby, so old, so weak, so resigned, as if it had
accepted its burden far back down the ages. The girl put the baby,
quieted now, into its basket. It lay for a moment staring with its
great, empty black eyes, and then closed them wearily. The girl covered
him with a bit of mosquito netting and sat down to her work again.
Before they were out of the room, she was sewing furiously again.

Jean looked at the doctor.

"Carmen Gonsalez, but I call her to myself, Mater Dolorosa. She
has never been to school, although she was born right here in San
Francisco and has wanted all her life to read. She is just turned
nineteen. Before she was fourteen she went to work in a tamale factory
and learned first hand the existence of all the evil she did not
already know from her own home. At sixteen she left the tamale factory
because the foreman gave her no peace, and went to work in an American
overall factory. She thought American men 'were different.'

"They _are_ different. A Mexican of the same caliber makes no bones
about his desires, but Mr. George Farrel crept to his goal like a
snake. She loves him yet. She believes he will come back, although
she has not heard of him for months. Only once have I ever seen her
angry--I never want to see it again. It was like the crushing force
of a glacier. She was whiter than paper and so still. Some one had
told her that George had married a Gringo. It is true. Once I thought
I might tell her after the baby was born. But it was born blind. 'The
sins of the fathers upon the children, yea, even to the third and
fourth generation.'"

"I should think," Jean cried passionately, "that you would hate the
whole human race."

"No. You see, I have been very many years in this work and that
first rage has worn off. We all have it. Sometimes I think it is
what brings us unto it at all. We see the crime and sin and sorrow
and we are filled with a blind passion to straighten it out. It's as
instinctive, at the base, as emotional an act as jumping into a river
to save some one. And then, after a time, long or short according to
one's temperament, you learn what I sometimes think is the only thing
in the world worth knowing--The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady are
sisters under their skin. Then you don't get angry any more at social
injustice, or very sad, not unless you happen to have indigestion or
try to burn the candle at both ends. You just go along and believe."

"In what?"

Dr. Mary laughed. "Sometimes I don't know. Often I think believing is
just a general state of being, like feeling well. It's not belief in a
personal God and it's not unshakable faith in man and most surely it's
not a belief in the tremendous importance of one's job. Belief in what?
I think in this--That the Colonel's Lady and Judy go round in cycles,
hand in hand at that, and each cycle is a needed cycle, because in the
end--it's going to make a spiral. At least that's as near as I can word
it, Miss Norris, and I try to believe it most of the time, the spiral
part, I mean."

She walked with Jean to the street door, but stood for a moment before
opening it.

"Now you know what it is I want to say and if you can put it into
words you can do better than I. But that's your business. I want to
make these people happier because I have lived. And I want to be
happier because they have lived. I want to take the blind passion of
the Carmens and hitch it to the aridity of the rich ladies who come
in their limousines to our committees. I want to beat some of the
primitive vengeance of a Sicilian fisherman into the George Farrels.
I want to teach the women not to make the sign of the Evil Eye when
somebody stops them on the street and looks at the baby, and I want the
person who stops them on the street not to have spasms because the baby
is swaddled in a fashion they have never seen. Personally, it makes me
sick to see flies buzzing over a baby, but no sicker than it does to
hear some of the comments of the people who come to visit us. Not half
so sick. Come to think of it, I'd rather have a baby swaddled to death
and eaten by flies than talk ten minutes to the flyspecked souls and
swaddled brains of some of our visitors. And if you can get it through
the heads of the public, Miss Norris, you will be doing a good thing.
In a way, a place like this is public and we don't want to keep people
out. But whenever a review of any kind appears we are always swamped as
if we were a sideshow. It wouldn't be worth while paying any attention
to, except that it does show a serious side of the whole attitude. For
it reflects very really what the Colonel's Lady thinks of Judy O'Grady
and it's bad for them both."

The telephone rang. Dr. Mary held out her hand. "It may sound vague,
but we're in earnest."

"It sounds anything but that. I feel as if you'd turned a white
searchlight on Society for me, and----"

"All right. So long as you don't call the article that. 'Gropings'
would be nearer the mark. But if you're really interested come and
see me sometimes. We're pretty busy all the week, but I usually have
Sunday afternoons to myself. It's the only time I have for my personal
friends. I want you to come."

"I certainly shall, and thank you."

Waiting in a drugstore at the foot of the hill, Herrick saw Jean before
she saw him. She was walking quickly, her head back, her eyes glowing.

"Good Lord, what's happened? She looks like a modern Joan of Arc."

Herrick stepped out and joined her. "I suppose you would have walked
right over me and not known it. You look as if you were just about to
step off the edge of the world into eternal joy. What happened?"

"She's the most wonderful person that ever lived!" Jean's enthusiasm
rayed from her in a physical current. Herrick smiled.

"No wonder the rest of us dry up and grow old. People like you and Dr.
Mary have cornered all the energy and belief in the universe."

"Don't mention me in the same breath. My enthusiasms and beliefs are
like--like specks of dust on a diamond compared to hers. I feel like
a puling infant beside King Solomon. Just think of it--to go on never
giving up, never weakening, always believing. To feel that you mean
something. Not that you just fit in, but that you have a place that
nobody else can take! To do things. To take human beings and make them
into something!"

"Do they have to be poor and dirty and foreign, Jean? Wouldn't just
plain needing be enough?"

The voice was wistful and Jean laughed rather uncertainly. "No, I don't
suppose they would have to be dirty."

"Just so long as they were miserable and weak and dependent enough?"

"Yes. I guess that would do. I suppose all women like to be needed. It
flatters our vanity and makes up for all the big things in the world we
can't get at."

Herrick gave Jean's hand a quick pressure and let it go. "Kind of
indirect action. Well, did this wonderful person come through with an
interview?"

"Yes. I suppose she did, if you call shooting a perfect ignoramus into
a new world, an interview. I felt as if I were out with a little kite
to gather all the electricity in the heavens. Just think of trying
to get that personality into three thousand words and hand it in
to-morrow."

"It'll look more possible after dinner, a large, soggy dinner. Nothing
like it for dragging the soul down within reach."




                              CHAPTER TEN


Whenever Jean looked back on that night she could remember every detail
of the dinner, everything that had been said, almost the order of its
saying. Thrilled by the happiness and vitality of Jean and of the
emotional response Dr. Mary had waked in her, Herrick let himself go
in the delight of answering completely to her mood. Something of the
sensation of flying entered them both, as if they were skimming all
discord, all the petty misunderstanding of ordinary intercourse. Long
after, Jean smiled as she remembered how strongly this feeling had held
her and how sure she had been of it.

It was a gay dinner and they sat on in the little restaurant until
almost nine. Whenever Jean found a good phrase or Herrick had an
illuminating idea on the structure of the article they jotted it down.
When they finished there was quite a sheaf of these notes.

"It's a shame to let them cool off. We ought to whip the thing into
final shape to-night, lock it up forever in typing. Besides, if you're
not used to working in a racket, you may not be able to do it in the
office to-morrow. And if you put it over you've got the job cinched."

"I know. I'll sit up all night, I suppose, and it can't be so bad just
to have to copy it in the office."

"I'll tell you a better scheme than that. We'll go up to my place and
type it now."

Jean had never been to Herrick's rooms and for a moment she hesitated.
Then the absurdity of her convention struck her. She had been alone
in Flop's when she scarcely knew Herrick at all, and for hours in the
hills.

"Fine."

Herrick paid the sleepy waiter and tipped him so generously that he
woke with the suddenness of a marionette. They departed, laughing under
his effusive thanks.

Like Flop's, Herrick's room was the top floor of a dilapidated building
that had once been a place of business but was now filled with cheap
studios. It was large and barely furnished, with a long table, a desk,
a couch and a few chairs. There were no curtains at the windows, and a
tall office building, like a back-drop, cut into the night sky. It had
never occurred to Herrick to think about the bareness of his room until
he saw Jean's look of approval.

"A real workroom, in which we are going to write the hit of the Sunday
edition."

He uncovered his typewriter and pulled the drop-light over the desk.

As Jean laid her things on the couch and took the chair Herrick drew up
for her at the table, she thought: "It's like a large cell. In another
age he might have been a monk."

They worked rapidly and well together. Jean dictated and Herrick typed.
When it was done he read it aloud.

"That's great stuff. I'll see that Thompson stands me a drink for
finding him such a prodigy."

"But it isn't all mine. I could never have done it alone. I should
probably have blurbed all over the place but for your restraining
influence, or become disgusted and given it up."

"You see, it's not easy to do things alone, even when we're very full
of them and want to very much. Is it?"

He looked up suddenly and Jean saw the loneliness that she had
glimpsed so often below Herrick's moods. The loneliness of the small
boy in the bare fields and of the grown man with The Bunch.

"No--I don't suppose it is."

There was a long silence and then Herrick said, as if they had often
spoken of it before:

"Do you know, sometimes I have felt that you think I am weak or that
I don't want to do the novel very much, and it hurts to have you
think that. I suppose if I were a genius, or had the will of I don't
know what, I would sit up here and write and write and write. But I'm
not made that way. To go week after week, month after month, alone,
believing in yourself, fighting through those horrible moods of
depression when all your work seems piffling and insincere, beginning
again--ugh." Herrick shivered as if his own words had opened a window
through which blew a cold blast of memory. "I don't doubt there are
people who could. But I can't."

"I don't think I ever thought you were weak, or that you didn't want to
do it, but I have wished often that you would."

Jean forced her eyes to meet Herrick's. She felt that she owed him
something and that words were not enough. The color ran under her
smooth skin and her eyes were shy. Herrick came nearer but he did not
touch her. The lines of his face were clean and sharply chiseled and
his eyes burned. He spoke simply, making no personal demand, even for
sympathy.

"I do want to do it, Jean, very, very much. More perhaps than I can
make you understand. But if it is ever written, it will be because some
one believes in me."

"You have friends--and they believe."

"Do 'they'? Maybe they do. But I can't imagine Flop, or any of them,
stopping long enough from their own affairs to listen to a single
chapter. Besides I don't believe it's the kind of thing they would
like. It's not 'strong.' I doubt it's even the 'real stuff.'"

Jean held down the unreasoning joy rising in her. Calmly and naturally
Herrick was justifying her faith in him.

"Perhaps you're not quite fair. If you've never tried them you can't
be sure. Sometimes I've thought that The Kitten, in some moods, was
awfully tired of it, the noise and heat and--and----" Jean broke off
in her clumsy effort to be perfectly just, for Herrick was looking at
her in a strange, piercing way and she felt that again she was falling
below the standard of honesty he had set for her. Her eyes dropped.
Herrick laid both hands upon her shoulders and she could feel their
cold grip on her skin.

"If the novel is ever written, Jean, it will be because some one cares
for me and believes because of caring. With a woman like----"

"Don't," Jean whispered.

"It's so lonely, so damned cold and lonely and hideous," Herrick went
on, as if he were not speaking to Jean at all. "We're like a lot of
lost shades, each locked in the isolation of his own personality,
wandering about in a fog. We never really meet or touch, but grope
about blindly, never finding because there's nothing really to find."

"Don't. It's too cruel, and it can't be true. There must be something,
somewhere."

"Where?"

Jean thought of her own groping and of her mother, the tense little
figure praying to her God.

"I don't know."

"There is nothing. Free will? That's only the power to choose between
one dead deed and another."

Jean thought of Dr. Mary.

"It isn't true," she cried eagerly. "We are not locked in alone. We're
bound tight to every other living soul on earth. We're not blind or
lost in a fog. There's nothing so ugly in the whole world that we can't
make beautiful if we want to."

Herrick drew her a little closer. "Can we, Jean? Maybe. But not alone.
I know. I have been alone all my life--until I met you."

His voice vibrated with the passion that was carrying him beyond his
control. He was like a man borne on a swift current past familiar
banks, unable to stop. And on the bank stood all the women he had ever
known, mocking, hating, amused. Plainest of all was The Kitten. Her
eyes were calm, and he heard her say quietly: "You will have to marry
her."

"That's why I have done nothing, Jean, because I have been always
alone. Will you help me, Jean?"

"Yes." Jean spoke gravely. "I will help you as much as I can."

"Will you marry me?" he asked quietly. "I need you so."

"Yes." She said simply. "We will help each other."

Herrick thrilled with her power and for a moment rose to it.

"You wonderful big, white woman! We will love and work together."

The color burned Jean's face. Laughing, Herrick's arms closed about her.

"Kiss me, Jeany."

Jean turned her head and laid her cool lips on his cheek. Herrick's
hold tightened.

"Jean, I believe you're a flirt. That's no kind of a kiss. I want a
real one."

Jean laughed a little tremulously. "That was a real one."

The edge of Herrick's joy dulled. Did she mean it? Was that a kiss to
her?

"All right, dear. It is--if you mean it that way." He tried to smile
but Jean felt that in some way she had hurt him.

Very dimly she sensed depths in the relationship of men and women of
which she knew nothing.




                            CHAPTER ELEVEN


"So you are going to marry him." Martha picked up the toast that had
burned while Jean talked and threw it on the fire.

In the bright sunshine she looked old. Her flesh was pale and flaccid,
like the flesh of overworked people, or of the aged who have gone
without sleep. Her hair was twisted in a tight knot, but stray, gray
wisps escaped. Her throat was stringy and the chin muscles sagged.

Jean tried not to look at the discolored neck and the thin, worn hands.
They stood for all that her mother had missed in life. It roused
something in her sharper than pity, a kind of anger. With an effort she
went round the table.

"Mummy, don't look like that." Jean knelt and put her arms about the
rigid figure.

Martha did not move. It had come so suddenly, before she had found
strength to meet it. She had disliked Franklin Herrick on sight and
even this morning, at early service, had knelt long after the close of
mass and prayed that he might be taken out of Jean's life.

And now Jean was going to marry him. To take him for richer, for
poorer, in sickness and in health, till death parted them. She heard
herself saying the words that had bound her for life to Jean's father.
She had tried to do her duty, but death had come as a great release.
She had done her best and had had the sacraments of the Church and
prayer to help her. Jean had nothing. She was plunging blindly into
this state, the greatest personal martyrdom ordained by God. And with
Franklin Herrick. Martha could see no plan, no purpose in this thing
and battled to hold firm her faith.

"Mummy dear, don't. Please don't look like that, as if something
terrible had happened."

"Something terrible has happened, Jean. You are going to yoke yourself
for life, think of it, for all the years God may demand you live on
this earth, with a man who has no higher conception of life than an
animal."

Jean's arms dropped to her sides and she pressed her lips tightly
together.

"And he will lead you farther and farther away, Jean. He has a power
over you that I would never have believed, never. Ever since you have
known him you have been different. You're ready at his beck and call.
Have you ever refused to go anywhere when he has asked you? Long ago
you gave up church, but, still, you spent the day with some kind of
respect. But now, how do you spend the day that God Himself put aside
for His worship?"

"In the hills that He made." Jean almost prayed for strength to be
patient.

"And your friends? Infidels and wasters and adulterers, by your own
story. Oh, Jeany, Jeany, my baby."

Martha laid her head on the table and sobbed.

Jean rose. In spite of all her effort to do otherwise she could not
help it. She felt a physical nausea at the sight of her mother's
emotion. She tried to go nearer and could not. She could not comfort or
touch that quivering figure.

"Let's not talk any more about it, mother. It will only make us both
unhappy."

Martha struggled with her feeling as with an enemy and conquered. She
rose, too, and for a moment they stood facing each other.

"There is some good purpose in it all, there must be and He will show
me. Perhaps I have loved you too much and He has chosen this instead of
death. You must have patience with me, Jean. He will show me. Till then
I can only say blindly--Thy will be done."

Before the tremendous egotism of her mother's humility, Jean went
slowly back to the table and sat down.

"When are you going to be married?" Martha dried her eyes and, crossing
to the stove, brought the hot coffee and filled both their cups.

"Very soon," Jean answered wearily. "There's no reason to wait, and
Franklin wants to get settled at some work."

Martha winced at the name.

The next moment the door opened and Tom and Elsie and Tommykins came
in. Tom was even fatter and redder than usual and more offensively
good-natured. He insisted on guessing what had happened, until Jean
stopped the flow of his ridiculous suppositions with a brief:

"I am going to be married."

Elsie hugged her, and Jean gathered from the cataract of
congratulations that Elsie had never expected her to marry, that
marriage was the only thing in a woman's life, that it was one long
martyrdom. You were to be pitied if you did and pitied if you didn't.
Then Elsie dabbed at her eyes and they all sat down to the late Sunday
morning breakfast.

Tom made broad jokes about some people's luck and "turning new leaves."
He kept appealing for corroboration to Tommykins and going into spasms
of laughter at his son's stare. He wanted to know whether Jean would be
able to stand the family now that she was going to marry a highbrow
and whether she and Herrick talked in prose or blank verse. He tried
with genuine kindness and unfathomable stupidity to fill the silences
that settled more and more heavily as breakfast drew to a close.

As soon as it was over and the things cleared away, Martha went
upstairs for her Sunday rest. With all her heart Jean wished that she
had not told Herrick not to come. She had meant to give this Sunday
entirely to her mother, even to go to afternoon service with her. She
had known that her marriage would be a blow and had sincerely wanted
to ease it as much as possible. But Martha's reception of the news
had frozen the suggestion on her lips. Now Jean faced a hot afternoon
alone. Upstairs Elsie scolded at Tommykins who refused to be dressed
in his Sunday clothes and the new baby helped her brother's efforts
by wailing at the top of her lungs. From the hammock under the pine,
where he was trying to read the papers, Tom called rough directions for
managing the children and finally banged into the house to see that
they were executed.

Jean put on her hat, took some paper on which to write to Pat and left
the house. In the canyon back of the college grounds it was cool, and
Jean lay on her back in a tangle of green, her hands clasped under her
head, and wondered just where she would begin. She had so much to say,
and yet when she focused it all, it came simply to this:

"I am going to marry Franklin Herrick whom I mentioned to you once. I
have known him less than six months and will be married in three weeks."

Put that way, it sounded unreal, and she could hardly believe it
herself. She said it aloud and still it seemed strange, as if she were
speaking of some one else, not of herself. She wondered whether all
women felt that way, and whether her mother had felt like that when
she had married her father. What had her mother felt? Looking back,
Jean wondered.

What had been the relationship between her father and mother? Certainly
there had been no feeling of nearness between them, none of that
spiritual contact so strong between herself and Herrick; that thing
that made long hours of silence closer than words; that sense of
knowing what he felt.

Jean thought of the first time Herrick had kissed her in the spicy
darkness of the acacia and of the physical repulsion that had
frightened her. And of the other night, when he had pleaded, "A real
one, Jeany," and she had wondered what he meant.

How had her mother felt the first time her father had kissed her? Had
she known what a "real kiss" was? When she thought about it directly,
as she was doing now, she had no memories of her father's kissing
her mother, or of their ever sitting hand in hand as she and Herrick
sat often, watching the sun drop into the sea. She seemed to have no
special memories of them together at all.

Suddenly Jean sat up. She had one. It came to her with the clarity of
a photograph. She could see the streak of sunlight across the bare,
scrubbed floor, the brightly polished stove, the box of geraniums in
the window. She could smell the clean smell of the place and feel again
the stillness.

It had been a Sunday, a warm, blue day, like to-day. All afternoon she
had been in the garden trying to amuse herself and not succeeding. She
could recall, so sharply that it made her smile, the desperate effort,
and her final relinquishment of it. It was so useless to battle against
Sunday. Besides the monotony of her own home, Jean had always felt the
burden of the whole world, locked into the petrifying inaction of the
Blessed Sabbath, and struggling to rest and enjoy it therein. This
particular Sunday had been almost paralyzing in its peace, and Jean
could see herself, a small figure in a checked dress and pebble-goat
shoes, come shuffling along the gravel walk, scuffing her toes because
she had always been told not to. But the unusual sound, at that hour
in the afternoon, of her father's voice in the kitchen, stopped her at
the door, and she stood peering through the wire screening. She saw her
father come slowly across to her mother, who stood shrinking between
the table and the sink. For months after that, Jean had smelled the
dust in the screen and felt the rusty wire pressing the tip of her
nose, whenever she thought of it. Her father had come close to her
mother and stopped. His face was white and his lips trembled and Jean
had been afraid he was going to cry.

"Marty, can't you forgive? Aren't you human at all?"

The words had bitten into Jean's memory because it was her father who
was saying them in a queer voice and with a strange white face. Then he
had come closer and tried to put his arms about her mother, but she had
shrunk back with a sob that brought Jean at a bound into the kitchen.
Her father's arms had dropped to his sides. The blood rushed into his
face and for a moment he had stood with his mouth open. Then with a
shrug he turned away and said in his natural voice:

"You'd better ask that God of yours for a little common sense."

At that Martha had unclasped Jean's protecting arms and gone quietly
out of the room. A few moments later Jean heard the front door slam.
For the first time in her life her father did not come back to supper.
But, mixed with the tragedy of her mother's red eyelids and the silent
supper, was a tingling excitement that something had happened on
Sunday. It gave an elasticity to the rigid Sunday routine that for
months had filled Jean with a pleasant sense of possibility.

Shortly after that her father had died. Strange relatives had appeared
with an extraordinary attitude toward her mother, as if Martha had
suddenly become unable to think for herself. They had bustled about
whispering, and had tried to take direction of the funeral. But
their efforts fell useless before Martha's quiet determination. A
step-brother of the dead man's had become rather violent in his
objection to a church-service. But the long brown coffin had been
carried into the church nevertheless, and the priest had intoned the
mass and incensed the coffin in spicy smoke that had made Jean cough.
And afterwards, she and her mother had stood at the open grave, and
when the priest said, "Dust to dust," and all the relatives Jean had
never before seen sniveled or sobbed openly, Martha had held her hand
tightly and Jean had heard her whisper, "Father, forgive."

For a year Jean and her mother had gone early every Sunday morning to
church and Jean had prayed fervently that her father be forgiven. For
what, exactly, she did not know, but she remembered now that she had
linked it up to the Sunday that her mother had cried and her father had
not come home to supper; and that she had not felt quite honest praying
for her father to be forgiven. Living, he had never said a prayer nor
gone to church with them. But dead, they had him at their mercy.

What had he done? Why had they prayed so earnestly that he be forgiven?
Why did these two memories alone frame her father, when she tried to
think what life had been to him and to her mother? What difference
would it have made in her own life if there had been other memories?

In the quiet warmth of the brush, Jean shivered. It was wrong, wicked
to bring children up like that. What did it matter that she had
always had enough to eat and to wear and had gone to school, when the
deepest memory she had of her parents was her mother shrinking from her
father's touch, and the long brown coffin in the church to which her
father had never gone of his own will. It seemed to Jean that she had
been cheated and deprived of something that could never now be hers.

She pushed the hair back from her eyes.

"If I ever have children----"

Jean stopped. She could feel the blood creep up from her toes,
scorching her. If she had a child it would be Herrick's. It might have
Herrick's changing eyes and soft, full lips and the high, thin laugh.
Jean had not thought of Herrick's thin voice for months.

She jumped up. She did not want children. She wanted to do her work
in the world, and to help Herrick do his. There were too many people
in the world already. She thought of Dr. Mary and the problems she
struggled with, of Carmen and the puny, blind baby.

As Jean came into the kitchen Martha was getting supper. She looked
rested and Jean knew that she had been praying. Jean's anger of the
morning was gone, and as she looked at the small figure moving quickly
about, rather envied her. Had there ever been an emotional crisis in
her mother's life that had not been eased by preparing food for some
one?

"Mummy," she asked suddenly, "do you remember once my coming into the
kitchen, when we lived in the old Webster Street house, one Sunday and
finding father trying to put his arms round you and--you wouldn't let
him?"

As Jean asked it, she turned to take an apron from its peg and stood
so, for her mother had stopped in the act of lighting the gas stove,
let the match burn to her fingertips, scorch them, and go out.

"Yes--I remember," Martha answered after a long pause.

Jean waited.

"I think, dear, I'll warm the cold meat with a brown gravy. It makes it
go farther."

And Martha Norris lit another match.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three weeks later Jean and Herrick were married. They were married
in church to please Martha and for the same reason made a pretense
of eating afterwards the elaborate meal she had prepared. Tom was
heavier and cruder than ever and Elsie more vapid. The new baby cried
incessantly and Tommykins took occasion to outdo himself as a general
nuisance. Jean was thoroughly glad that Pat had not been able to come,
and always remembered her wedding dinner as the worst meal through
which she had ever sat.




                            CHAPTER TWELVE


From the chaos of chance emotions, pleasure snatched at random, Herrick
settled down into the calm order of a life directed by a fixed purpose.
He was going to write the novel. It was all mapped out. He and Jean had
settled it through the long, peaceful afternoons of their two-weeks'
honeymoon at the Portuguese ranch in the Marin Hills. Spurred by Jean's
interest, Herrick had seen the thing clearly and they had worked up an
excitement about it that had given Herrick an exquisite sense of power,
youth, achievement. Her belief filled him with the conviction that it
was all he had ever needed.

The cool little kiss that had so disappointed Herrick on the night
he had asked Jean to marry him, delighted him now that he realized
the almost incredible depths of Jean's shy purity and ignorance. She
was like no woman he had ever known. Herrick was surprised at himself
and grateful to Jean for this surprise. The most precious thing, in
Herrick's scheme of life, was a new sensation and that he now had.

For the present he was content to have Jean's eyes light as he worked
out some intricate detail of his hero's life, or spoke with firm
purpose of the thing he meant to do next, as soon as this one "that had
haunted him for years" was out of the way. The breathless way she would
say: "That's great. Now go and get it down before you forget it," made
him want to take her in his arms and crush her until he hurt even her
strong body. But deeper than the delight of doing it, was the sensuous
delight in his own restraint. He asked none of the passionate response
of other women. This almost frightened surrender was enough. The other
would come, and of its own accord. The light in Jean's eyes and the
quick catch that came into her voice when they talked of the full years
ahead, was a promise. No fire could burn on the surface like that.
Secure in his untried strength, Herrick was very gentle and tender. He
was going to write many fine books and he was going to tend that spark
in the calm gray eyes of his wife until it blazed at his will.

Watching him, Jean was happy too. She had justified her own faith.
Looking back after almost two months of marriage, Jean saw what a
blind faith it had been. She had known nothing whatever of him. She
had found him among people she despised. Her mother had mistrusted.
She remembered the Sunday she had sat under the scrub oak and recalled
her mother shrinking from her father's touch, and farther back than
that the hot shame that had held her at the hungry groping of Herrick's
first kiss. There was nothing of that in his touch now. He liked to
draw her to the arm of his chair as she passed and rub his cheek softly
against her shoulder, and when he kissed her Jean always felt that it
was somehow a little rite that something very pure and deep in him was
offering to her.

Jean had not given up her work on the paper, because she did not
wish to be a dead weight on Herrick and had definite ideas about the
economic independence of women, and because she knew that housekeeping,
as she and Herrick were content to live, would take up very little of
her time. They had made few changes in the studio except to transform a
rubbish closet into a kitchenette and to make an extra bedroom of the
storeroom at the end. Otherwise it was as bare and "monk-like" as in
the days when Herrick had lived alone. Shortly after they were married,
Jean had told him how like a monk's cell she had thought it, the night
they wrote her first interview. Herrick had laughed, but suddenly his
eyes had misted and he had drawn Jean close and held her so for a
moment.

Martha Norris disliked the studio almost as much as she did the
haphazard order of their lives, and for this she blamed Jean. Deep in
her heart she liked Herrick no better than she ever had, nor could she
yet see the Divine purpose in making him Jean's husband. But, since
he was her husband, it was Jean's duty to weave about him those iron
bands that Martha called "making a home." Instead, more than half the
time they ate in restaurants. Jean called at the office for Herrick, or
they met somewhere and ate strange food in not overclean places. Once
in a while they brought chops or steaks in with them and fried these
over the gas. Martha made many indirect inquiries, but she never heard
of a meal that took more than fifteen minutes to cook. To buy cheap
underclothes and throw them away when they wore out, as Jean now did,
as well as Herrick, savored to Martha of license. It reached beyond
economics and touched morality. It was not far removed from their
decision not to have children. On this subject Martha and Jean had
talked only once, but Martha had prayed half the night about it.

The whole manner of this life was hectic and a little illicit, but she
made no comment. In the hours of lonely agony that she had spent on
Jean's wedding day, she had laid out her plan, and even finding that
it was the worst possible would not have swerved her a hair's breadth
from it. Nothing should ever come between her and Jean. She would
accept Herrick and try to like him, and this she did to the best of
her ability. She listened with interest when Jean told her of the work
Herrick was planning to do, and cooked all day Saturday getting the
dinners she served with so little apparent effort every fourth Sunday.
Jean understood and was filled with a softer love and truer sympathy
for her mother than the other guessed.

Martha only knew that, as weeks slipped by, this marriage of Jean's
was not weaning her big daughter away as she had expected and feared
so terribly. On the contrary, it seemed to draw them more closely
together in many ways. Jean often stole an hour from work and dropped
in unexpectedly. Then they had tea, and if there were any of the little
tea cakes that Jean loved, she always took some home for Herrick.

As for The Bunch, they seemed to have passed quite out of Jean's life.
Sometimes she met one of them by accident, and twice she and Herrick
had gone, at Flop's insistence, to an extra "blow-out." But Herrick had
been as bored as she, and they had not gone again.

When they had been married a little over three months, Herrick began
the novel. It was to be the life story of a man who had beaten his way
up from just such beginnings as Herrick's, and who finally achieved
fame and fortune as a great engineer. The man's name was Robert, and
Jean and Herrick spoke of him as of some one who lived with them.

Every night they hurried back from dinner to "keep the appointment with
Robert." From eight until ten Herrick wrote. He insisted that he could
not write a line unless Jean was curled up in her favorite place on
the couch. From time to time he would stop, and as soon as she became
conscious that the machine was no longer clicking, Jean would look up
and smile. Herrick liked to make Jean look up and smile.

Watching Herrick at work evening after evening, Jean felt that life was
a very simple matter if one used one's common sense and went straight
ahead doing the thing that was best and right. If people spoiled their
lives and got less than they might have had, it was because they were
either like The Bunch, grabbing feverishly at every passing illusion,
afraid that they might miss something; or else they were like Martha,
refusing and denying, which, after all, was only another kind of
fear. In these days of greater nearness to her mother, Jean sometimes
wondered whether Martha had not really wanted happiness so much that
she had been afraid to take it.

Jean spent many happy hours listening to the click of Herrick's machine
and laying down the laws of life. Fear was the thing to be afraid of.
She was very clear and definite in her own mind about this. Fear was
the great paralysis. But there was no need for any one to be paralyzed
unless he wanted to be. Of these speculations and certainties she wrote
to Pat, and Pat wrote back asking the color of Herrick's eyes and
saying she was too busy to philosophize about fear or anything else and
would "save all that" until she saw Jean, if that happy day ever came,
now that Jean was so busy leading her double life. Pat always insisted
on referring to Jean's newspaper work as one life and her "man job" as
another life.

Herrick liked this and used to stop work sometimes to come and sit
close to Jean on the couch and demand:

"Am I your 'man job,' Jean?"

When Jean said he was, Herrick insisted that she put the stamp of her
workmanship on it, which meant that Jean was to kiss him. When she had
kissed him he would go back to the machine and work steadily. He was
always making up little games like that, and after Jean had gotten over
the first sense of foolishness, she had come to like them.

Jean was quite honest with herself and with Herrick when she said that
he was her real work. She had no delusions about the newspaper. It was
much better than the library and infinitely better than teaching, but
she was not a born newspaper woman. She had not again found a Dr. Mary
or any one who approached her. It was only because her personal life
was full in those first months that some of the interest overflowed
into her routine, and Jean was able to interview dull people and whip
their mediocre purpose into some kind of life. The atmosphere of the
office she loathed, with its terrific rush and confusion, and was never
able to work up a proper respect for the wonderful concentration of Mr.
Thompson.

She often thought of Dr. Mary and her promise to go to the Hill House.
Twice she asked Herrick to go with her on a Sunday afternoon, but
Herrick had begged off.

"We work hard all the week, Jeany, and taking tea and settling the
affairs of nations strikes me as too strenuous for our one day of rest.
And, besides, I want you all to myself."

Jean was disappointed but said nothing. She decided to go and see the
little doctor the first chance she had. But, somehow, the chance did
not come, and finally, when six months had gone by, she was ashamed to
go.




                           CHAPTER THIRTEEN


In the middle of November, Herrick struck a snag in his work. The first
five chapters had gone well. He had brought Robert up from the farm,
taken him through college and plunged him into a big mining scheme in
South America. He had drawn well the narrowness of Robert's home and
the longing for opportunity.

But now Robert balked. He sat down in the Brazilian jungle to which
Herrick had led him and refused to move. Hour after hour Herrick
struggled and honestly tried to wake him from the permanent sleep
into which he had fallen without warning. But Robert would not wake.
Herrick's nerves tightened. He wanted and did not want to consult Jean.
He had never asked her advice about the psychology of his people, only
about the arrangement of incidents, or the vividness with which he had
succeeded in portraying them. To ask help in this was a confession of
his inability and Herrick's vanity refused.

And deep in Herrick's consciousness, beyond the point of
self-acknowledgment, was the fear that Robert was not asleep. Robert
was dead, dead beyond the power of revivifying. Until now Robert's
reactions had been Herrick's own. But from now on Robert must be
himself, and Herrick could not flesh the skeleton of this strenuous
young engineer, toiling away alone in his jungle, with no nearer
stimulus than a board of directors fifteen thousand miles away.

Evening after evening Herrick sat at the machine and covered pages with
useless words. His fingers moved mechanically, although he tried to
focus his attention on Robert. But the thoughts running at the back
of his brain pushed Robert further and further beyond the border of
his interest, and, finally, one evening in the middle of November,
Robert dropped over the horizon altogether and Herrick knew that he
had finished with him forever. His fingers lay idle on the keys and he
stared into space.

In the dressing-room Jean was changing into a house-dress. Herrick did
not like her to curl up on the couch in her working clothes and she
always changed to please him. In a few moments she would come through
the door quietly, take a book and make herself comfortable among the
pillows. She had done this for four months now. Every evening they had
sat so, Jean beyond touch across the room, but where he could look up
and see her. Every evening for four months he had sat almost the whole
distance of the room away from this big, calm, gray-eyed woman. Herrick
smiled. Soon the real winter would set in. The rain would beat on the
attic roof and the wood-fire crackle in the grate. There would be long
Sundays impossible out of doors. Would Jean expect him to sit through
these too, driving that mummy forward in his senseless progress?
Herrick's smile deepened.

Coming through the door, Jean caught the smile, and answered it. Then,
passing the work-table without speaking, she took a book and dropped
among the pillows. It was Hunter's "Poverty." She did not open it
immediately, but lay back against the cushions and closed her eyes,
stretching her arms above her head in a way she had when she was tired.
Completely relaxed she lay there, her throat and bare arms white on the
dark blue background of the cushions. The smile withered on Herrick's
face, and his fingers closed tightly, but he did not move. At last
Jean drew a long breath that swelled the deep breast, stretched, and
reached for her book. Herrick rose, ripped the paper from the machine,
tore it into fragments and threw them in the waste-basket. Then he
covered the typewriter and came towards the couch. Jean sat up.

"Why, Begee, what's the matter?"

It was the name that they had evolved from one of Herrick's little
games. It stood for a contraction of baby and genius. Jean had hit on
it accidentally and Herrick had insisted on keeping it.

He came over to the couch and sat down. He did not sit very near Jean,
because in a little while Jean was going to move of her own accord. Now
that he had so suddenly murdered his pretense he knew exactly what he
wanted.

"Jean, we're all wrong about Robert. He isn't a man at all. He's a
machine."

Jean laughed. "He is not. He's nothing of the kind. He's not the least
bit mechanical. You've fleshed and blooded him beautifully."

"Maybe I have since I've given him my own. But he's an ass, just the
same."

"He isn't and I won't have you abuse him. He's a real man and a
particular friend of mine."

"Well, I can't say much for your taste, then. I'd like to punch his
head. He'd bore me to death in ten minutes. Maybe, if you're so keen
about him, you'll accompany him on that neat little stunt he's about to
pull off. _I_ have no desire to go to Peru with the creature."

"I'd love to, but you know perfectly well that I can't put a thing
together except the ambitions of ladies who rescue cats. Getting Robert
through the next six months of his life wouldn't bore me. It would
overwhelm me."

"It'll swamp me--if I try."

"Begee!"

"Absolutely. He's behaved pretty well up to now because I understand
him. But I don't understand how it feels to tramp through a jungle with
nobody but natives you can't talk to, and sit all alone in a tent,
through wonderful moonlight nights, smoking pipes and being happy. I
never sat alone in a tent under tropic moonlight and I don't want to,
with nothing but a pipe. I'd go raving mad."

"Nonsense. If you'd wanted to build bridges instead of write novels,
you'd have done just the same."

"But I didn't want to build bridges. What's the good of them anyhow,
messing up a perfectly good jungle? It's a fool point of view, that
everlasting conquering difficulties and improving things."

"You know you don't mean that." Jean was looking at him now, with the
smile gone from her eyes. No more than Martha did she like to hear the
things she cared for derided. Instantly Herrick saw that he had gone
too quickly to his goal.

"I tell you what, Jeany, if we get that bridge built we'll have to
give Robert some incentive. We'll let him meet Dora before he does it
instead of after. It'll make her better, too, eliminate any possibility
of her loving him for anything but himself. How does that strike you?
She can't fall in love with his achievements, if he hasn't any."

"But that isn't the way we've mapped it out. Robert was going to get it
all done and offer it to her. It's just what he would do. If you go and
change it round you make him another kind of man. Maybe that other kind
of man wouldn't get the bridge----" Jean broke off suddenly.

"The bridge built at all. Is that what you mean?" Herrick finished for
her.

"Yes, I suppose I do. You see----" Jean frowned in her effort to get
exactly the right words. It seemed somehow very important that she
should get them just right, "The way we have it fixed now, Robert is
one kind of man and Dora is one kind of girl, and they're going to be
awfully happy. But if you change him she wouldn't be happy with that
kind of man. He'd be just the kind that would want to trail her through
the jungle after him. You will have to change her, too."

"Rubbish, Jean. That's the psychology of a girl of sixteen. Do you
suppose love depends on whether a man builds a bridge or not?"

"That isn't the point, Begee, and it's not the same thing at all.
Whether he built the bridge or not, under those difficult conditions,
depends on the man he is."

"Oh, Jean, you're a baby. Carrying out that logic then, if _I_ never
finish the novel, I am another man. And you'll have to get made all
over yourself. Would I be a different man to you?"

Jean looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. Then she raised her
eyes to Herrick's:

"Yes. You would be different."

"Why? Why would not finishing the novel make me any different?"

"Because, if you had never wanted to do it and never started, or
couldn't do it, that would be different. But you have always wanted
to, for years and years it's been haunting you. You can do it and you
have started it. So, if you stopped now, because you've got into a hard
place, it would mean that you hadn't the grit to go on. It would be
just plain cowardly. You'll be afraid of the pain and trouble of the
effort."

"Well, what of that? What's so specially fine in not being afraid of
pain? What's so horrible in being a coward? A coward is often a man who
sees values more clearly than the mob. What's so noble in beating after
something that won't make you any happier when you've got it? That's
all courage is, striving after something difficult or impossible to
get."

Herrick came closer and laid both hands on Jean's shoulders.

"It's just a lot of words, Jean, handed down till we swallow them
whole, this babble about courage and strength and getting the best of
things. Words, words, that's all. The measure of all this courage is a
measure of effort, not of accomplishment. According to that theory, a
baby that beats its head against a stone wall is brave."

Jean sat silent, held by the same terrible necessity of getting the
right words.

"No, it is not just blind fighting. It isn't beating after something
that you think's going to make you happy. It's seeing clearly and not
being afraid of being unhappy."

"Not being afraid of being unhappy? What else is there to be afraid of?
What else matters?"

"Being the best self you have, the very, very best."

"Is it?" His hold on her shoulders tightened, and he said, more to
keep that look on her face than for any further interest he had in the
subject:

"And this best? There is never any doubt about it? It is always
perfectly clear what it is?"

"Of course it's always clear--if we're honest."

"And every one knows what this wonderful 'best' in himself is and goes
trotting on alone and grabs it?"

"Extremist! No one trots right along and grabs anything. You know
what I mean, Begee. Life's like a story or an editorial. You don't go
on blindly putting down words without knowing what you're aiming at.
You know the points you want to make and you make them. You have your
climax before you begin."

"Good Lord! Do you believe that?"

"Yes. I think I do. I know it sounds terribly high-falutin but lots of
things do when you really get them in words. Life isn't just a jumbled
mess. It must make for something. If it isn't a road we build going
along, what on earth is it?"

Herrick's hands dropped from Jean's shoulders.

"It's a pendulum. That's all it is, at the best. That's all, Jean. We
swing through the arc, back and forth, from one higher point to another
and through all the lowest points between. When we reach one end of
the arc we are pushed back and do it all over again, and after a while
the arc grows shorter, and we hang there at the will of--what? Fate or
chance or our own limitations."

"Oh no, Begee, no. No. You're tired and you don't really believe it
yourself. It's a corking good image and we'll get it into the novel
somewhere, only Robert won't say it. But as philosophy, it doesn't
swing. I'm _not_ hung on a wire by Fate or anything else and when I get
to the end of my arc I _can_ go higher. Which may be bad mathematics or
physics or whatever it is, but it's good sense and gets things done in
this world."

Jean laughed as she laid hold of Herrick's shoulders and shook him
gently.

"It's you who are the baby. That's what you are. A baby that gets a
spiritual tummy-ache every time he strikes a snag."

Jean was very near now, smiling into his eyes, and Herrick could feel
the cool, firm strength of her.

"Am I?"

"Certainly, not a doubt of it. A baby that can scarcely walk. But never
mind, when he gets to the end of his arc, mother'll come and push him
along. Mother's a grand pusher and she adores it."

"Is she?" Herrick's voice broke and he groped for Jean with trembling
hands. "Prove it--prove it." His breath came hot against her cheek as
he seized her in his arms and crushed her mouth against his.

"Wake up, wake up," he panted, and through the anger and nausea that
seemed to be dragging her out of consciousness, Jean heard him. Years
afterwards she could recall the feel of each word as if it were a stone
that was hitting her, and the feel of Herrick's unshaven chin against
hers.

With all her force she tried to push him away. But, blind with his long
suppression, Herrick only held her closer. Not till the edge of his
hunger dulled did his hold loosen. Taking Jean's chin in his hand, he
turned her face up. Instantly his arms dropped.

For a moment Herrick refused to believe the look in her eyes. Then a
wave of anger swept over him, flooding his face and neck to a deep red.

"Well, we're married, aren't we?"

"If that's marriage, no." Jean stepped back out of range of this thing
that had taken every scrap of her self-respect and ripped it off as
if it were a cloak, that had held her, against her will, at its own
pleasure. "Don't you ever kiss me like that again--ever. Do you hear?"

Herrick said nothing. He went over to the window and leaned his
forehead on the cold glass. He had acted like a brute, but it didn't
matter. Nothing mattered. He had shocked Jean, but that didn't matter,
either. It didn't matter whether she was shocked or needed shocking or
didn't need it. Nothing in the whole world mattered at all.

Slowly Jean came and stood beside him.

"Please, Franklin," she said in a low hurried tone, "don't kiss me like
that ever again. I hate it."

"All right." Herrick spoke from his folded arms without looking up.

Jean stood where she was for a moment and then went back to the couch.
She took up her book and tried to read, but the words made no sense.
Herrick still stood at the window and the typewriter was covered on the
desk.

It was as if a murder had been committed in the room.




                           CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Late in December the rains set in. Heavy gray clouds hung low over the
city's hills, pressing all the joy and color from life, flattening the
world to a monotone of black umbrellas.

At New Year there was an interval of pleasant weather and then more
rain, steady, deliberate, endless rain. The street cars were crowded
with damp people, all trying to keep as far as possible from each
other, all peevish and nervous under the strain. Gutters broke and
streams of water ran everywhere. The streets were rivers of thick,
black mud and buildings reeked with the odor of woolen clothing drying
in steam heat. From the middle of January to the middle of February the
world woke in the morning to rain and went to bed at night with the
rain steadily pouring in long, gray lines from the leaden sky.

Against the background of the rain, Jean's days ran together in a
blur. She created a false enthusiasm and, under this self-imposed
stimulus, got so many words on paper. Sometimes she wondered how long
she would be able to keep it up. She thought now more and more often
of Pat steadily plodding in her mountain school, and of her mother,
trotting through each day's task, every crevice of her life filled with
the knowledge that she could do no more than she was doing, nor do it
better. Most of all she thought of Dr. Mary, buoyant and vital among
her people, holding to her purpose and working toward it surely. She
wondered whether Dr. Mary would remember her if she went.

There had been no mention at all of the night that Herrick had stood
long at the window with his face in his arms. The thing that had been
killed had been decently buried, so decently buried that it might never
have existed at all. Herrick worked spasmodically on a short story, but
he rarely worked in the evenings. They often went to the theater, and
at long intervals to Flop's. Once Jean had quite enjoyed herself and
they had gone again the following Sunday, but the out-of-town visitors
had gone away and it was duller, more noisy, less sincere than ever.

Through the four worst Sundays of rain Herrick wrote and when he had
finished went over the result with Jean. They haggled each point with a
desperate show of interest. When Jean said a scene did not ring true,
she explained very elaborately and carefully and Herrick listened and
argued and in the end usually agreed. Jean often thought of Robert as
some one who had died far away in the jungle.

In March the fury of the rain lessened, wore itself out in a succession
of damp, drizzling days almost harder to stand than the steady
downpour. Then the hills stood out once more softly green and clear
against the blue sky. With the coming of spring, Herrick gave up his
pretense of winter. The unfinished short story went into the waste
basket. Jean was glad and the tension of her nerves relaxed.

It was a lovely day in May, when Jean's work brought her close to home
about one o'clock and she decided to do the writing in the studio
instead of going back to the noisy office. As she opened the door she
pushed back an envelope of the gray paper that Pat used. Jean pounced
on it and without waiting to take off her things, tore it open. There
were only a few sentences on a half sheet:

"Will be down on the sixteenth.

"Train gets in about three. Don't meet me or upset your day in any way.

"Leave the key where I can find it. I like doormats best."

Pat was coming.

For the moment Jean could grasp nothing else. Pat was coming. She would
be here in that very room. They would talk. It was years since they had
talked. No, not years. Not quite two yet, since she and Pat had sat
together and swung their feet from the sink board of the Girls' Rest
Hall, and she had been almost hysterical because there was nothing in
the world but teaching. Jean's eyes filled with tears and she dabbed
angrily at them.

"You old fool! What do you expect? To feel the same always? No doubt
Pat feels older and has changed a lot too."

But the idea of Pat's having changed frightened Jean. Pat must not have
changed. She must be just the same sane, practical, efficient Pat. She
would be. And she was coming, coming on the sixteenth and the sixteenth
was to-day.

The next moment Jean was pounding out her interview on the machine. It
was done in a space of time unsurpassed even by the concentration of
Mr. Thompson. Jean sent a messenger with it to the office and began
cleaning the studio. By half past two the place was so clean that Jean
could not find another thing to do, not even rearrange for the fourth
time a vase of roses. She took a book to the window seat and sat down.

"Now you compose your mind and act like a rational human. She won't get
here any sooner if you flutter about like a demented hen. 'Flutter like
a demented hen'--it must be the effect of Pat's coming!"

By sheer will Jean succeeded in sitting still, but no effort could
keep her attention on the print. Her thoughts got away from her and
ran back down the months, fetching up in days she and Pat had spent
together; in graduation day, that seemed so many years behind her; and
courses they had taken together, that for some reason seemed closer
now, than when she had taken them.

In the glow of Pat's coming, forgotten things became recent and clear,
while recent things seemed unreal and far away. In this inversion, the
past winter, with the strained atmosphere between herself and Herrick,
blurred into a memory of some very disagreeable period she had lived
through long ago. Perhaps that unobtrusive, ever present third presence
that had moved so silently between them through the long weeks of rain,
and against whom she was ever on her guard, was not so real as she had
fancied. She had accepted the thing she did not want to believe and
believed it for fear of being a coward in not facing it.

"I'm an idiot, and a conceited one at----"

"Haven't a doubt about it, old girl. Didn't I always say so?"

Jean tumbled from the window seat and Pat's arms closed about her.

"Oh Pat--_Pat_."

They stood so for a moment. Then they separated, Pat wiped her eyes and
they grinned foolishly at each other.

"I knew I'd be glad. But I didn't know I'd be like this. I guess I've
been suppressing all the way down in the train, in case you'd changed a
lot, and you haven't changed a bit, not a single bit."

"What did you expect? After all it's only two years, even if it seems a
million."

"I guess I was trying to do one of mummy's tricks, get all primed up
just because I didn't want to. Jean, if you had changed, I'd have
busted on the spot."

"Well, you can stay whole then because I haven't. Now get off those
things. I feel as if you had dropped in for ten minutes."

"I haven't, so get rid of any such hopes. I am going to stay a week or
more. I don't care whether it's convenient or not. During the day I
shall be out on my deep and serious mission, but I expect the evenings.
Oh Jeany, do tell me what he's like. I've been expiring for months. You
never did describe him to me, you know, and I was too delicate to ask.
He might have only one eye or be bald. Is he?"

"No. He's neither lame, halt nor blind and I won't tell you a thing
until you get those things off and I make some tea."

When Jean had drawn the tea table close to the window that looked out
across the tops of the roofs to the crown of the Berkeley Hills, Pat
demanded:

"Now, go clear back to the beginning and tell me everything. Your
letters on the subject were the most unsatisfactory things ever penned
by the hand of man. Get out that mental searchlight and turn on the
analysis. Why did you fall in love? How does it feel? Were you swept
off your feet or did you just get dragged under? Begin."

"I don't know, Patsy. Honestly, I don't know."

"Good Heavens! If that isn't the most Jeanesque performance ever! Here
you can spend years rooting about in your soul for the whys and the
wherefores of some silly thing that doesn't have a why or a wherefore,
and for a big thing like getting married, you don't know why you did
it! It sounds to me as if you had fallen so head over heels into the
sea of love that you blinded yourself."

"No, I don't think I did that." There was no answering laughter in
Jean's eyes and the twinkle vanished from Pat's. "We had a lot in
common and used to have such glorious days out of doors together and
he wanted to write and I believed I could help him. He'd always been
alone and no one had ever taken any interest in the things he cared
most deeply about until we met, and it seemed to me, from the very
first moment, as if I had known him always."

"That's a symptom, I've always heard." Pat's tone brought Jean from a
path in which she seemed to be wandering by herself.

"I mean that I didn't lose my head and go around raving like Alma
Perkins did when she was engaged to Porter. Do you remember the
spectacle she made of herself? Of course, I loved Franklin. I wouldn't
have married him if I hadn't, would I?"

"No, I don't suppose you would," Pat answered, after an imperceptible
pause. "How did mummy take it?"

This time Jean laughed. "Pat, it really was funny. Mummy was divided
between being grateful to Franklin for being a 'burden' and dislike of
him personally."

"Doesn't she like him? Didn't she ever?"

"No. And you should have seen the wedding breakfast. Not even in the
days when she wasn't sure whether you were 'a good influence' did you
ever inspire such food."

"Why didn't she like him?"

"I don't believe she really knows. I was silly enough to describe the
first evening I went out with him and the people I met. When she saw
him, she said he had 'the flesh and the devil' written all over him.
You know how she condemns people to death on a technicality?"

"Haven't you got a picture of It? I'll die before I see It."

"Oh no you won't. But I'll 'phone in a few moments and tell It to come
home early. We usually eat out, but we won't to-night. I want to talk
and talk and talk. Now, tell me what you've been doing and what you
expect to do, for you haven't been so very explicit yourself."

"Well, in comparison to turning my life inside out as you have done,
mine's very tame."

"Well, go on."

"Oh, there's nothing to tell, really. I've been trying to see if I
couldn't raise the personal standards of some of the people in my
mountain fastness. That's all. It's kind of hard to explain if you
don't know the conditions. You see, most people think of the country
and country children as I did when I first went up there. I expected
them to be behind city children in some ways but I did not expect them
to be ahead of them in the ways they are. Jean, there's more rubbish
talked about the morality and health of the country than a million
books on the subject could get rid of in a million years. The purity
of the country is a myth! There are just as many underfed, subnormal,
dead, inert objects of pity among my people, big as well as little, as
there ever was in a congested city slum. Why, it took my breath away.
I just wouldn't believe it at first. I was all filled up on this 'pure
air' and 'God's out of doors' dope until I wasn't fit to teach a goat.
But I got it banged into me at last. That's why I'm here."

"Elucidate. You've jumped a few steps that my 'logical mind' needs. Why
does the immorality and stupidity of a mountain district school bring
you to town?"

"Because I want to talk to a woman I've never seen, but from reading
everything she ever wrote and every report she ever made before all
the societies there are and aren't, I have come to feel that she knows
everything on earth that's worth while knowing. She may have struggled
with bovine intellects in a mountain district school or she may not,
but I know she'll have something worth saying. Ergo, I come."

"Pat, as I have remarked many a time and oft, you are the joy of my
soul. Now who on earth but you would be so unspeakably efficient as to
come down here--I see I can't flatter myself that I had anything to do
with it--in order to consult an ideal on something she probably doesn't
know anything about? Idealism and efficiency go hand in hand."

"I don't care. Laugh if you like."

"Who is this prodigy? May I go and sit outside and listen to the pearls
of wisdom?"

"'Listen to pearls of wisdom.' Not so bad! Well, the name of this
remarkable woman is Dr. Mary Mac Lean."

"_What?_"

"Don't you like it? Sounds like a good, common-sense Scotch name to me.
Not in the same class with Jean Norris or Patricia Farnsworth, but no
doubt quite respectable in its way."

"Dr. Mary? My Dr. Mary!"

"Yours? What do you, married parasite, Bohemian newspaper woman, know
about Dr. Mary?"

"More than you do."

And Jean related in detail her one visit to the Hill Neighborhood House.

"And you needn't think that you are going up there alone. I've been
thinking about her and wanting to go terribly, but I let such a long
time go by and then it seemed rather--oh, I don't know. I just haven't
been."

"Well, we're going and we're going now. If I can't see Franklin right
away, at least I can see her, and they're the two people I'm most
excited about at the present moment. 'Phone your husband instantly and
come along."

Jean got Herrick on the 'phone and astonished him more than he had been
astonished for a long time by demanding that he come home to dinner and
come early. She would give no reason but chuckled happily as he had not
heard her chuckle for months.

Herrick went back and sat a long while at his desk without doing
anything. Then he telephoned to Flop, whom he had met accidentally
early in the afternoon, that he would not be able to help in the
celebration of Magnolia's birthday, as he had promised. After which, he
smiled and wrote five hundred words of very good editorial.




                            CHAPTER FIFTEEN


"I am certainly glad." Dr. Mary, as she came padding across the big
living room, saw only Jean. "I thought you were a 'promiser,' and I
loathe 'promisers,' almost as much as I do people who really forget me."

"No, indeed I did not forget you. I think it was because I remembered
you so well that I didn't come. I got to thinking how busy you must be
and--and----"

"You must have been rather busy yourself. The name they announced
wasn't Norris. Is it you?"

For the first time she perceived Pat and looked inquiringly from her to
Jean.

"Yes. The Herrick is for me. I was married shortly after I interviewed
you. Did you read the interview? I didn't call you anything, although I
assure you it was a temptation. You have Mr. Herrick to thank for that.
He pruned down my finest flights."

"Sensible man. Oh yes, I read it. I thought of memorizing it, you
worded it so much better than I ever did myself. But let's go into my
den. I always like to have friendly chats in little rooms. Big places
make me feel official."

"She's a dear," whispered Pat, as they followed the doctor to a small
room at the end of the hall.

Deep in her leather chair, the doctor lit a cigarette and beamed at the
two young women before her.

"Are you a newspaper woman too, Miss Farnsworth?"

"Nothing so exciting. A school teacher, and a country one at that."

"Let me congratulate and condole, may I, both at once?"

"You've taught, too!"

"Does that give me so completely away? Yes, I've taught, but it was
many years ago, in an interim between college and medical when I was
trying to earn money to put myself through."

"But you haven't forgotten."

"Not a thing. It makes me uncomfortable yet to think of some of the
mistakes I made, the big opportunities I let get by. I suppose I did
not have the right stuff in me for a teacher. I started so full of hope
and plans, although I knew it was not to be my life work, but I let my
enthusiasm die down. I let all kinds of small, personal things dull the
edge."

"But it's so difficult to keep the edge sharp. Sometimes I think that
living close to the earth and animals makes one like them."

"I don't know but that you're right. Only that never occurred to me
then. Perhaps I went at things too violently, but when I couldn't wake
them up, well--I just let them sleep."

"And they've been asleep ever since, at least mine have. I'm afraid I
can never wake them up."

Pat's voice was grave with her deep interest and Jean glimpsed the
scope of teaching as she had never before.

"Oh, yes, you can. Because you realize that there is something
underneath; I didn't. I called it emptiness, when it was really
desperate shyness and fear of new things, a kind of deep, perverted
faithfulness to all they have ever known."

"I've thought that, sometimes--and then my light goes out again. I
started a kind of library when I first went up, but all that the girls
and women seem to care about--the men never read at all--are love
stories, the sillier the better. Anything else is something going
on away off in another world. It does not concern them and never
will. Why, some of my people had, until recently, never even heard
of suffrage or sex hygiene or minimum wages, and they don't care or
understand when I try to explain. They accept their lives like the
weather. To the men the crops are good or bad, and the women have good
husbands or bad husbands and that's all. The boys and girls marry young
and the babies begin coming right away. For a few years the children
seem to be eager and interested and then, somehow, it leaks away. I've
only been teaching two years but I can see it, as if I had been there a
hundred. And I want to do something. I want to get those who come to me
started right. Perhaps, even with little children of six or seven, if
some of us could get the seed planted----"

Pat broke off, as if the physical strength for explanation had
broken under the terrific weight of the indifference with which she
was struggling. Jean looked at her and a coldness settled about her
own heart. It was so real to Pat and so worth while, something into
which she could pour the whole warmth of herself. Jean pictured the
last woman whom she had interviewed, with a scheme for saving stray
dogs; and Thompson's long harangue with the Art Department about the
illustrations.

"You're right, absolutely right," Dr. Mary went on; "it is the century
of the child. There's our biggest chance, especially for you younger
women, and so few see it. But there's hope. After all, we are beginning
to creep in this field. In the next ten years, I hope, we'll at least
get on our knees. Maybe in twenty we'll be able to walk."

"It's so maddeningly slow."

"It's like creeping paralysis, only going the other way. We are not
getting deader, but more alive, at the same speed. But if we hang on
to our patience we'll get something done."

Pat leaned forward. "I wish you would speak at the next state
institute. Maybe a few of us would get up on our knees a little sooner."

Dr. Mary laid her hand over Pat's. "Thank you. There's nothing that
makes me feel so unworthy and humble and grateful as meaning something
to other women. I love 'em, every one of them, the young, brave,
fearless women. Society's been asleep for ages, but it's waking up. It
needs us, in other ways than it thought it did, and we'll be there with
the goods."

Jean drew deeper into her chair. At the motion Dr. Mary turned.

"I'm not even going to apologize, Mrs. Herrick, for absorbing all the
conversation. You know what I am when I get started."

She grinned at Pat. "When Mrs. Herrick came to interview me, she didn't
get a chance to say a thing. I talked all the time."

"It was the only real hour I've had in the whole newspaper business,"
Jean said slowly, "and I wish I had never come."

Pat started as if Jean had called to her for help and the little doctor
said sharply:

"You don't like interviewing?"

"I despise it! It's the most futile, useless round of senseless rush
that was ever invented to waste one's days. It means nothing at all to
the one who does it or to any one else. It's just words, words, and
more words."

For several moments Dr. Mary said nothing, but sat looking at Jean with
an odd look in her small, bright eyes.

"If I am rude, you must pardon me, Mrs. Herrick, but why do you do it,
if you feel that way?"

It was Jean now who was silent, but Pat knew that she was trying to
find the right words for something that meant very much to her.

"Because," she said, at length, "I should go mad doing nothing at all."

Dr. Mary smoked her cigarette to the end in a silence that Pat recalled
afterwards as one of the longest and tensest five minutes she had ever
spent. Then the little doctor said in her brisk, off-hand fashion:

"If salary is no particular object to you, Mrs. Herrick, I could find
a place for you here. We're starting so many things and are overworked
as it is. We can't pay much, and as you have had no experience
before, the committee may kick at giving anything. But I believe the
laborer is worth his hire always, and have never found volunteer work
satisfactory. If you would like to try for a couple of months--it's
better all around to have it probationary--I can use you."

Twice Jean's lips opened but the words would not come.

"Well, since silence gives consent, I take it that you will try it."

"I shall be very glad."

"Then it's settled. Let me see; I suppose you'll have to give the paper
some kind of notice?"

"No. The managing editor never recognizes any such obligation when the
work isn't satisfactory. And it's only the other way round. I'd like to
begin with you right away."

"You can if you want to. It's your own affair. We're in the throes of
the summer camp and two of our regular workers will be away for the
next three months attending to that. How about next Monday?"

"Perfect," Jean said, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Now we'll have some tea."

Dr. Mary touched the bell and a few moments later a maid brought in the
tea things. The doctor had a fund of stories, humorous, pathetic, all
human, and she told them well. It was almost six when she rang for the
maid to take away the cups and then it was too late to show Pat over
the building.

"Never mind. You'll come again and very soon, and I shall not let you
escape without explaining every detail."

She dropped Pat's hand and turned to Jean.

"Monday, then?"

"Monday." They smiled quietly as if they were sealing a contract.

Out in the street Pat drew a deep breath.

"Well! If you ask me, I recommend that as about the quickest thing I
ever saw pulled off. You go up to introduce me, and come out with a new
life work. I believe you've got it at last, Jean."

"I think I have, Pat. I feel as if something had clicked into place
inside."

She stopped and looked at Pat with real fear. "Pat, suppose you hadn't
come! I wouldn't have gone. I'd left it too long. I feel as if you'd
rescued me from something and--as if you'd come just in time."

"Little trick of mine," Pat answered lightly, but her eyes clouded and
she slipped her hand into Jean's arm and held it there.

They did not speak again until they were almost at the studio door.

"We used to think we knew an awful lot, didn't we, Jean?"

Jean nodded.

Upstairs they found Herrick. Pat's first impression was very much what
Jean's had been the day Herrick had walked into the library and found
her sniffing the grass. Of a big man, strong but rather lazy, with
something frank and winning and clean about him, and nice eyes. And the
next was surprise that he was so different from what she had pictured
he would be, and that never would she have picked him out as the man
Jean would marry.

"This is Pat."

Herrick came forward and they shook hands heartily.

"I am awfully glad. I've heard of you, you know, until I was almost
jealous. When did you get in?"

"About half an hour before I 'phoned you," Jean answered.

Herrick turned to Jean.

"I wondered what the wonderful surprise was. I never could have guessed
it."

Pat felt something in him change, but before she could be sure, he was
talking pleasantly again.

Herrick went out and brought in things for dinner and they all cooked
together. Pat and Jean did most of the talking but Herrick seemed to
enjoy their reminiscences. From time to time, however, Pat caught a
heaviness in his eyes as they rested on Jean, and she decided that
there had been some slight quarrel before her arrival and that Herrick
had not been able to forget it. In spite of his gentle manner and kind
eyes, he might bear a grudge a long while.

The dinner was a jolly one. Jean looked as Herrick had not seen her
look since they raced hand in hand, against the wind, over the hills.
Half way through, Herrick turned to Pat.

"I think you'll have to come and live with us, Pat. You're a regular
tonic." Under the gayety of his tone, Pat felt the resentment. She
wondered what it was they had quarreled about and whether Jean had
altogether forgotten it. It wasn't like Jean to forget anything that
really mattered or, remembering, to pretend she did not.

"Oh, I can't flatter myself that I am responsible." Pat made no
pretense of not understanding. "It is----"

She glanced at Jean and Jean nodded. They had decided to say nothing
about Jean's new work until the black coffee was reached. Then Pat was
to spring the surprise in the form of a toast, but now at Jean's nod,
she continued:

"It's not my influence at all. Jean has a new job."

Herrick turned quickly. "Have you left the paper?"

"Yes. Thompson doesn't know it yet, but he will by to-morrow. If he
makes a great row I'll get him one more interview so he won't be
behind, but on Monday I take a real job."

"Doing what?"

"I'm going to work with Dr. Mary."

"At the Hill House?"

"Yes. I feel as if a hand had reached out from the blue and rescued me.
I'm going to work."

Again Herrick's face changed so that Pat wondered whether she had been
quite right about him in either of her estimates. He looked older,
heavier and rather bored.

"Yes," he said quietly, "I think that is your work."

For a moment Jean and Herrick looked at each other.

"I think it is and I expect to be very happy in it."

"I hope you will."

Herrick filled all three glasses and cried gayly:

"To the Poor, God bless 'em."

Pat stayed ten days. Sometimes she went with Jean on cases and
sometimes she was out all day on work of her own. But every evening the
three met for dinner in the studio and afterwards Jean and Pat talked
social and educational reforms. At first Herrick listened, not quite
grasping the vital import of these things to them; then, one night, he
asked Jean, with a lurking smile that annoyed even Pat, whether she
really expected to make over the world.

"No," Jean answered shortly, "I don't; but I'm going to patch at it as
long as I have strength in my body."

"The leopard won't change his spots, you know, no matter how many kind
ladies dab at him with their social paints."

"Then they will be cut out or burned out," Jean said in such a still
voice that Pat stared. But Jean and Herrick were looking straight into
each other's eyes and did not notice.

"Poor leopard, he'll die under such treatment."

"I don't know that that would be such a loss to the rest of the animals
if he did."

"No. I don't suppose it would," Herrick said after a pause, in a voice
controlled only by the need to maintain a pretense before Pat.

Pat picked up the table of statistics she and Jean had been discussing
and studied it closely. For a moment there was not a sound. Then
Herrick went over to the couch with a book and Jean took up the
argument again.

Herrick never joined the conversation after that evening but it seemed
to Pat that he was always listening and she felt that Jean felt it too.




                            CHAPTER SIXTEEN


One day in September when Jean had been working almost four months, Dr.
Mary came to her with an open letter in her hand.

"Jean, I'm going to give you this case, because I feel in my backbone
that it's out of the usual run, and that's saying a good deal, with
some of those we've had lately, isn't it?"

"It certainly is. Perhaps I won't be able to handle it."

"I'll take a chance. It's because I believe you can, better than any
one else, that I am turning it over. No one has done a thing on it yet.
It's brand new."

Jean took the letter. It was written on ruled paper in a fairly good
hand.

    "DR. MARY MACLEAN--Please come to see me as soon as possible.

                                                        AMELIA GORMAN."

"Well, at least Amelia seems used to giving orders."

"No information furnished. No request made. I'd like to go myself if I
had the time. I thought first of turning it over to the C.O.S. of that
district but, somehow, the woman interests me. Do you want it?"

Jean was already putting on her hat. Mary smiled.

"I know, Mary, but I haven't gotten over that first rushed feeling yet,
in spite of all your warning. I'm always sure that everything will go
to pot if I don't get to a case the very minute I hear of it."

"I hope you never will, not really. When that goes I can't imagine a
worse work than this to be in. You'd better take some money with you,
she's likely to need most anything."

An hour later Jean rang the bell of a shabby, two-story house out on
the Mission Road. The house stood a little back in a dusty, parched
patch of ground, where a few wilting geraniums struggled against the
dust-laden wind that blew always over the bare hills. A half-grown girl
opened the door. She seemed parched by the ceaseless wind and her dry
hair looked as if it had never been quite free of the dust.

"Does Mrs. Gorman live here?"

"Back room. She ain't Mrs." The girl stood staring while Jean knocked
on a door at the end of the dark hall.

"Come in."

It was a small room and held only a single bed, a child's crib, a
broken dresser and a chair. An emaciated woman sat up in bed and looked
at Jean with the calmest look of appraisal that had ever summed her up.

"You're from the Hill House. It wouldn't be anybody else. Are you Dr.
Mary MacLean?"

"No, I'm not Dr. McLean. She had to go out of town. My name is Herrick."

"Miss or Mrs.?"

"Mrs."

"I'm glad of that." The woman's voice was perfectly detached, as if
something bigger than a personal desire in the matter directed her.

Jean drew the chair to the side of the bed and sat down.

"Have you any children?" the woman asked abruptly.

"No. I have no children."

"Do you want them?"

For some reason it was impossible to resent this woman's questioning.
She did it so calmly, so deliberately, as if each question were the
end of a long line of thought, important to her. Jean felt herself grow
warm and uncomfortable.

"I don't--think very much about it."

There was another long pause, in which Jean listened to the wind and to
some one moving in the room above. Suddenly a child's voice broke out
in angry protest: "I won't!--I won't!" There was a mild scuffle, a door
slammed, then silence. The woman continued to listen for a moment. She
turned back again to Jean.

"I did," she said, in her odd way of continuing her own line of
thought. "I wanted a child. That's him we just heard. Mamie don't mean
to be mean but she ain't any brighter than she has to be and she don't
understand. That's why I wrote to Dr. MacLean. I don't know whether
you'll understand, seein' you never wanted one, but I'll have to tell
you, since you was the one she sent and mebbe there won't be time to
send another. I ain't always as strong as I am to-day, and there won't
be many more days, weak or strong."

"You mustn't talk like that. You can't----"

The woman turned her dark eyes to Jean and a faint smile touched them.

"There ain't no call to talk that way to me. I don't want no cheerin'
up. The time's past for that. I fought it all out here alone and now I
got my plan ready. I didn't send for no one to tell me I ain't goin' to
die, because I know I am. If it wasn't for Jimmie I'd be glad, laughin'
glad to go. It's him I'm goin' to tell you about."

For a while she seemed to forget Jean altogether and then she began
again, in a flat, even voice, choosing only the thread of her story, as
if she were used to husbanding her small strength.

"Did you ever live in a room like this? Get up in the mornin' in it and
go to bed at night in it, and sit all the evenin' in it, so that your
thoughts soak into it and you can feel them rush out at you the minute
you open the door? You can never get away. And there don't seem to be
nothing in the whole wide world but yourself. It's a terrible thing.

"I used to lay in bed at night and _feel_ myself shut up in my cell,
and then I got to thinkin' about all the other people in the world shut
up in their cells and none of us could get out or talk through to one
another, millions of us locked up tight.

"Hundreds of times I said to myself, 'If that's all there is to it, why
go on?' But I could never come round to the picture of killing myself.
Once I tried but I didn't get very far. And then I begun wonderin'
why it was that I didn't do the job straight through; wonderin' and
wonderin', until one night, like an earthquake, it hit me sudden. It
was all the people behind me, clear back to Adam and Eve, holdin'
me here, all the men and women that had loved each other and hated
each other and had children and kept things going. And if I killed
myself--it would be like takin' one of the girl's jobs in the factory
to finish so she could draw her pay and then not doin' it.

"Mebbe you won't understand, but you'll have to take it the way I say,
for I saw it as clear as I see you in that chair. We was put here to
keep things goin'. And I was goin' to stop 'em. There wouldn't be any
_me_ after I was dead and all them people back of me was goin' to drop
out of things, just like I had killed 'em. Did you ever think like
that?"

Jean shook her head. Before the fire of loneliness that had seared this
woman, she could not speak.

"We're all different, I guess. But I got so I couldn't bear the thought
of dyin' and bein' ended, without ever havin' had nothin' and leavin'
nothin' and so--I had a baby."

Jean felt as if the wind outside had torn its way into the room.

"You decided, made up your mind to have a baby, and had one?"

"It seems kind of queer, mebbe, when you say it like that, but it was
all simple after I'd been thinkin' about it. Lots of things are queer
when you first think about 'em, but after a while you get used to 'em.
It's like strangers you meet and get to know after a bit real well."

Jean looked away to the houses crouching on the windswept hill.

"He lived in the same house. He was the only man that ever asked me to
go any place with him or tried to kiss me. You see I was twenty-seven
then, almost twenty-eight. There was never no talk about marryin'. He
went away before Jimmie was born, a long time before. I think he was
afraid somebody'd find out. He was always kind of scared of people. He
sent some money for awhile and then he stopped. I didn't care about the
money. I can always get work, and as soon as Jimmie was old enough to
leave, I got a job in another place."

From under the pillow she took a bit of folded newspaper and handed
it to Jean. It was a clipping a month old, a condensed account of a
political fight in a small town in the southern part of the state. It
said that the fight had been won by the adherents of Mayor James H.
Martin, who could always be relied on to stand on the side of law and
order.

"He always said he was goin' to get into politics some day and he did.
I wouldn't bother now, because he ain't had none of the joy of Jimmie,
but I haven't more than a few weeks, days mebbe. It's cancer, like
mother had and grandmother and Aunt Sarah, and I want to know that
Jimmie won't have to go to an institution. He can't be so terrible poor
if he's Mayor and he'll do something for Jimmie. Maybe he'll be kind
of afraid at first but if you make him promise, he'll keep it. I'll
give you some letters he wrote and Jimmie's picture. Will you go?"

Evidently she had used up all her strength, for she lay back now,
wasted and white, with her eyes closed. Jean tried to speak and
couldn't. It was all so tangled, so thwarted, so stark and bare. It was
like the rickety house in which the woman lived, and the parched hills.
Jean felt as if the thick dust was choking her. The woman opened her
eyes.

"You don't understand very well, do you?"

"No, not very." Jean tried to say she did, but the naked honesty of the
other compelled the same from her. "I can understand how you must have
been lonely but----"

The woman shook her head. "No, that's just what you don't, or you would
understand it all."

Her hands, white from illness, took Jean's. "But you're kind and it
don't matter much. I wanted the Doctor because she was awfully good to
one of the girls that worked with me once, and when I was thinking of
somebody, I remembered her."

Jean forced back the sob in her throat. "I'll go to-night if there's a
train."

The sick woman smiled gratefully. "You _are_ kind," she said again.
"And--there's not many that's kind when they don't understand."




                           CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


Jean propped her note to Herrick on the desk where he would be sure to
see it as soon as he came in, and caught the six-fifteen train.

When Herrick came at half past six he found the note, read it three
times and tore it into bits.

    "Taking the six-fifteen to Belgrave on a case. May be away a few
    days.

                                                                 JEAN."

It was eight before Herrick stopped pacing up and down the studio, took
his hat and went out.

Giuseppe's was crowded. The air reeked with smoke and the heavy odor of
highly seasoned food. Not a place at the long table was vacant. Flop
was denouncing the low standards of American art, exemplified in the
flat failure of a recent exhibit of his own, and the others pounded the
table in the old way and shouted their approval. Flop caught sight of
Herrick first, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and then, with a
shout:

"Well, I'll be damned! Look who's here," got up and dragged Herrick
forward as if the latter had been trying to get away.

"Boy Blue! Franklin! Herrick!"

The racket was deafening. The Outlanders jumped on chairs to see what
was happening. Flop corraled a waiter hurrying by with a demijohn of
wine and took it way from him.

"This is on the house, Pietro. We drink to the return of the lost
sheep."

A waiter brought Herrick a chair. He took it, and walking deliberately
about the table, placed it next to The Kitten's. There was much
laughing and some quick looks interchanged and The Kitten shrugged as
if the matter did not concern her in the least, and continued to talk
to another man across Herrick's back. The enthusiasm, diverted for a
moment from its channel, went back. The Kitten finished what she had
been saying and was forced at last to meet Herrick's eyes. She tried
to hold the contempt in them, but it was useless. The corners of her
scarlet lips trembled. Herrick's hand took hers under the table.

"Don't be silly, Kittycat. We wouldn't keep it up, you know...."

Two hours later The Bunch went singing up the hill to Flop's. Herrick
and The Kitten turned down a side street. Herrick walked with the
light, springing step that had reminded Jean of the earth and wide
spaces. The Kitten skimmed along beside him, clinging to his arm. At
the foot of the stairs he lifted her, and carried her up. He put her in
the Morris chair and knelt beside her. Every motion was a repetition of
the last time he had knelt so. It was all exactly the same, even to the
bar of light from the street lamp, and the fine, tired lines about The
Kitten's mouth.

The Kitten bent and lifted his face from her knees.

"Why did you do it, Boy?"

"I don't know, Kitten."

She drew his head to her shoulder and stroked his hair quietly. There
was no claim in her touch, no insistence, only peace. The Kitten was
weary, too.

"Tell me about it," she said at last.

Herrick smiled. "She's straightening out all the misery and sin and
ugliness in the world, Kittycat, and it keeps her rather busy."

They talked for a while of Jean and the little doctor and the futile,
foolish tasks at which they labored.

"It makes me tired to think of so much energy." The Kitten yawned.
"I'm glad I have no 'work.' I wouldn't 'improve' a single living human
being, even if I could, not even you, Boy Blue."

"Most wise Kitty." Herrick drew her to him and kissed her passionately.

The next day they slipped away for the week-end to the cabin on the
Portuguese ranch where he and Jean had spent their honeymoon.

"It was the first place we ever went, Boy, and I want to go there
again," insisted The Kitten. After a moment's hesitation Herrick agreed.

The dairyman and his wife showed no surprise. They were as dark, as
silent as ever. The woman wore the same bright red skirt and the same
dirty white waist. She brought food to the cabin as she had brought
it before, without a word. There was the same full, silver moonlight
brimming the bowl of the little canyon, and the same quiet cows
wandering over the hills.

They stayed two days and went back. Herrick wondered what he would say
if Jean had already returned, and gravitated, according to his mood,
from a lie he knew would not deceive her, to the truth.

But Jean had not come. Nor did she come the next day, nor the next. For
the Mayor of Belgrave had a cold. Years afterwards, Herrick speculated
sometimes, what his life would have been, if James Martin, Mayor of
Belgrave, had not had a cold.

But the Mayor did have a cold, and not even Jean's most Machiavellian
tricks succeeded in getting at him. In a small neat house, behind a
small neat lawn, a small, neat wife guarded his civilian privacy and
Jean was forced to wait until the fourth day, when protected by an
overcoat and neck muffler, in spite of the glorious fall sunshine,
Mayor Martin again took up his official duties. Almost as soon as
the office was opened, Jean forced herself beyond the secretary and
confronted the Mayor, small and neat like his wife and the baby Jean
had seen being aired on the lawn.

In words as few and stark as Amelia Gorman's she presented the case.

"Now, what I suggest, Mr. Martin, is that you send to us monthly
fifteen dollars, for which we can board your child in a respectable
family. When he is fourteen, if he shows promise of making more than
a grammar school education advisable, this amount to be increased to
twenty. He can make up the rest himself until he graduates from some
technical school. In the event of your dying before he has reached the
earning age, this amount is to be continued. You can arrange it as a
bequest to us and need not mention the child."

The little man sat staring at Jean. Behind his flat, frightened eyes,
she could see the procession of his small hopes, running to their
death. He would do as she asked because he could think of no way of
escaping with the dignity that befitted his office. He would cover
his terror under the cloak of his mayoralty and submit to supporting
his child, as he might have contributed to the erection of a public
library. But for all the rest of his life he would enjoy the memory
of this morning. Once the danger of publicity was removed, he would
come to regard himself as a bold, bad man of the world, and from
the pinnacle of his knowledge of evil look down upon the sober,
uninteresting members of his town and of the church, where he went
every Sunday morning in a neat black hat.

"Well, Mr. Martin?"

Jean gathered up her gloves and handbag and rose. He reached out as if
forcibly to detain her, almost as if he expected, should he refuse,
that she would go through the town with a bell, proclaiming him in
public.

"Of course, I wish you and your office, to understand that I do this
through no legal, or, I may say, moral compulsion."

He was like a vicious terrier taking a last nip at some one's leg,
before being dragged away on a rope. "I have many demands made on me,
both public and private, and my income is not large."

"Fifteen is not much, Mr. Martin, for food and clothes and schooling.
You will find later that your present baby will require all of that."

At the mention of the baby, the Mayor frowned.

"I never shirk an opportunity, Mrs. Herrick, to make another happy. I
will remit the amount to you monthly by check. It is to be booked as a
contribution to your work."

"Certainly, Mr. Martin."

The Mayor escorted Jean to the elevator, rang the bell for her and,
as she stepped in, bowed elaborately. Jean chuckled. Already he was
assuming the manners of the bold, bad man.

The train got in about eight. Jean went straight to the studio, after
finding that Dr. Mary would not be back until the morning. It was dark,
and when Jean turned on the light she saw that the dust was thick
on everything. Herrick had evidently not straightened it out since
she left. It looked forlorn and struck through the exhilaration of
Jean's mood unpleasantly. As always, successful accomplishment gave
Jean a sense of physical well-being that she enjoyed as deeply and as
consciously as ever Martha did her moods of spiritual exaltation.

When she had put away her things, she turned off the light and
stretched out on the couch. Through the open window she could see the
stars, and their peace quieted the inner excitement that had held her
ever since she left Mayor Martin's office. She had done a good piece of
work with which Dr. Mary would be pleased and because of which Amelia
Gorman would die happier. But beyond this, the thread of her action
stretched down the years, binding together lives of which she knew
nothing. At a moment's notice she had entered these lives, just as she
might go to the window and call a stranger into the studio, and never
would life be the same to these strangers as if she had not done the
thing she had. The Mayor would grow old and die, a different man than
he would have been if every month he had not sent fifteen dollars for
the support of Amelia's child. And all the lives he touched would react
to this secret check. Jimmie would grow up in some workman's family
and their lives and his would be altered. She remembered how once she
had thought of each person, weaving before his own loom, deliberately
choosing or rejecting the threads that Life offered. Now she saw
myriads upon myriads weaving before a high loom whose frame was lost in
the immensity of time and distance.

She started as the door opened and Herrick entered. He did not see her,
but came over to the empty fireplace and stood leaning his elbows on
the mantel shelf. He looked tired and there were lines about his mouth.
Compunction for she knew not what seized Jean and she rose quickly.

"Begee!"

Herrick whirled. Jean had been the last person in his mind.

"You!" he demanded stupidly, and instantly recognized that his tone
gave the natural meeting the proportions of drama.

Jean laughed. "Sure. Who else?"

"Your note, you know, wasn't very illuminating. I didn't know whether
you were going for a day or a month."

"I know. But I was so excited and I didn't know myself exactly."

Jean saw that her abrupt going had hurt Herrick and she tried to make
up now. She came closer and laid a hand on his.

"I'll make some chocolate and then I'll tell you all about it. It would
make a perfectly ripping story."

Herrick looked down on Jean's hand resting upon his and it seemed to
him something disconnected from both of them. He wished she would take
it away. To his jangled nerves it was a real weight, pressing heavily
upon him. It was force, that strong, white hand, a mechanical force for
pushing obstacles from her path. It would push him and her mother and
all who did not see things as she saw them, all but the fat, mannish
little doctor with her stupid generalities. With the merest touch of
those firm, cool fingers it would push The Kitten into oblivion.

"A corking story?"

Jean resented Herrick's mechanical interest but tried not to show it.
She had been wrong and had said so and it was trivial of him to let the
memory rankle.

"Wait till you hear it. It's a regular Thomas Hardy novel. It ought to
be set in the granite hills of Devon."

While they drank the chocolate, Jean told him of the woman propped on
her pillows in the miserable room, with the wind blowing over the stony
hills; of the frightened Mayor with his overwhelming respectability.
Her eyes glowed and the strong, white hands moved in unusual gestures,
as if from the slough of human weakness and suffering into which they
were plunged, she was drawing quivering bodies and setting them on a
stage. Herrick's bitterness saw none of the drama, only Jean's own
safety from any suffering. There she sat, glowing with interest in her
"case," a stupid, everyday matter of seduction. She could work up a
tragedy about a scrubwoman overcome by physical desire. But for him,
for his needs, for The Kitten, for Flop, for any one whose way of life
was different, whose clothes did not please her, whose manner did not
suit her, she had no sympathy and no understanding. Herrick laughed.

"It's a scream, simply a scream! A lot of women puttering about,
fiddling with the forces of Nature and getting paid for it!"

Jean's face went white.

"I might have known," she said and sought for words that would hurt him
most, "that you could not possibly grasp the spiritual significance."

Herrick's face flushed and his eyes were two black slits as he bent
across the table.

"You're a fool, Jean, you and Dr. Mary and all the other dead, marble
women she has trailing in her train."

It seemed afterwards to Herrick that they stood for hours looking at
each other across the table, before Jean turned, and without a word
went the length of the studio and closed and locked the bedroom door
behind her.




                           CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


In the months that followed there were whole weeks when Herrick
despised Jean for her blindness; when he hated her for the calm, filled
order of her days; when he wanted to go and lay his head in her lap and
be comforted.

What would Jean do if he told her?

She would answer as she would to any cry of distress. In a scientific,
impersonal way she would even be happy at her ability to help. For the
time he would be her favorite "case." She would probe into his feeling
for The Kitten and into The Kitten's and decide what was to be done.
When she had analyzed it all, she would ask him what he wanted to do.

What did he want?

From considering the abstract possibility of his wife's action, Herrick
came down to Jean herself. Picture after picture of her flashed before
him. Jean in the Sundays before their marriage. Jean as she had looked
in the moonlight, beside the driftwood fires. Jean on the Sunday
mornings when they used to argue about the novel. Did she ever think
of it now? It was months since they had even mentioned it. Had she
forgotten this thing that had once seemed the motive of her days? Had
her interest ever been real, or had it only filled an empty space? In
the mazes of his own nature Herrick groped and could find no answer.
After almost three years of marriage Herrick knew less of Jean than he
had the first day in the library.

Would she go on forever as they were going now? They had never
referred in any way to the night that Jean had come back from Belgrave.
It might never have been, for all the outward difference it had made in
their lives. Only Jean never again mentioned a case nor did she ever
ask him to come on Sunday afternoons to The Hill House where she poured
for the neighborhood teas that she and Dr. Mary had instituted for the
winter.

On Sundays Herrick went to Flop's. Jean made no comment, except
sometimes to inquire about various people, with a forced interest that
exasperated Herrick. As for The Bunch, they never asked about Jean.
Behind the banner of "personal freedom," Herrick and The Kitten marched
unquestioned. As indifferent as the rest, Vicky had gone back to the
country. The Kitten had refused to go with him.

The long rains ended and spring came again. The air was clean and soft,
and fluffy white clouds sailed over the hills, once more cameo-clear
against the blue. Herrick and Jean saw even less of each other than
through the winter. They ate together in the mornings and then went
their ways. The paper was changing hands and Herrick spoke of the new
proprietor and the future policy. Dr. Mary and Jean were drawing up a
pamphlet on the evil conditions resulting from bad housing, and now
that the actual gathering of statistics was over, and the work had
widened to include quarrels with political bosses, with the Board of
Health and Building Commissions, Jean was in her glory. The breakfasts
were calm meals, unruffled, impersonal and dead.

The darkest spot in this third summer of Jean's married life was
Martha. The small face was thinner and whiter and, for the first time
in Jean's memory, her mother moved slowly about the house. Jean went as
often as she could and frequently found her sitting on the porch behind
the screen of roses, her hands idle in her lap. Twice, tiptoeing in
unexpectedly, Jean had found her mother lying down, her eyes closed in
such utter weariness that Jean's heart had stopped beating for a moment
in a terrible fear.

But each time Martha had insisted that it was only the heat and
promised faithfully that she would take more rest.

"Mummy, it's really selfish of you not to let me help. I know half a
dozen women who would be glad to come over and work for their home and
a very small salary, and I could spare it so easily."

"Now, Jeany, don't be silly." At this point Martha always got up
briskly and began preparing tea. "In all the years that I've kept
house, I've never had a maid."

"Which is no reason at all," Jean insisted. "You know, Martha Norris,
that once you see the error of your ways the trouble's over. You used
to tell me that yourself when I was a little girl."

"Maybe I did. But the cases aren't the same."

"Why not?" It was the oldest form of dispute they had, Jean quoting her
mother's own words and Martha insisting the cases were not the same.
"It is the same, exactly. You're not well, or else you're getting lazy.
Which is it? It must be one."

"Not at all. You're just talking to hear yourself, Jeany. You always
were fond of that silly arguing that pins people down to a yes or no."

"Oh, mummy, you're such a fake. You get so terribly philosophic when
you want to slip out of a thing. But now listen to me. I won't scold
you any more. But I'm going to watch you precisely as if you were a
'case' and I'll give you till the tenth of July and not one day longer.
If you look the way you do now you're going to the country, if I have
to take you there by force. Do you hear?"

Martha smiled. "Yes, dear, I hear."

It was an afternoon at the end of June and Martha and Jean were in the
clean, darkened kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. Bees buzzed
in the garden outside and the old pine was sweetly fragrant in the
warmth. There was something very positive and real about this peace
and clean orderliness, so that Jean wondered whether, after all, this
silent strength was an accident of her mother's nature, or whether the
quiet little figure, trotting on its mechanical round of duty, had not
achieved it, at perhaps a price no one guessed.

Jean watched her as she beat up a pan of the tea biscuits that no
remonstrance of Jean's had been able to stop.

"I'd have to make something for supper and I might just as well make
these."

And as always she had her way. Jean listened to the bees and watched
the deft hands at their work. It was so precisely as it had always been
and yet somehow it was different. Jean's mind wandered lazily about the
problem. What was different? Why did it no longer annoy her? It had
once.

She remembered the day of graduation when all her fine enthusiasm to
fill her life with work and beauty had died at the sight of Martha
dishing up the roast. And the day when she had heard of the library
work and Martha had gone on making apple pies. And now she was making
tea biscuits and pretending that nothing was the matter with her, when
Jean could see that it was a strain to lift the heavy mixing bowl and
that tiny drops of perspiration appeared at the corners of Martha's
mouth. She was ill and no doubt she knew it.

Jean got up and took the mixing bowl away from her.

"Mummy, you're all in. You can scarcely stand. You've got to tell me
what's the matter."

"Now, Jeany----" But Martha's eyes fell before her daughter's. "I
don't feel quite so strong as usual, but it's the heat. It's the
warmest June we've had for years."

"It's nothing of the kind. It's not a bit hotter than it always is. And
if you feel like this now, what will you be in July? I don't believe
I'll give you till the tenth. I have a good mind to cart you off to a
doctor this very minute."

"Now, Jean daughter, I appreciate your interest and all the rest of it,
but remember I am not a case. I won't be packed off to a doctor."

"I wish you were, I'd straighten you out in two minutes. You're really
a very simple proposition. I'd close this place, send you to a nice
quiet country house where you would have nothing to do but eat lovely
food cooked by some one else, and get fat."

"I should hate to get fat and there's no place nicer or quieter than
this."

"But, mummy, you need a change."

"Well," Martha took the bowl away from Jean and went on with her
mixing, "I haven't said that I wouldn't take that, have I? You always
were the most impatient child. I suppose you want me to put on my hat
this minute and leap on a train."

"I certainly would, but I can't imagine you 'leaping' at anything
unless it was particularly disagreeable. For the second time, listen
to your daughter, who has had much experience managing many families
and can surely manage one small mother. Next week Mary and I are going
to locate a new summer camp for mothers. We're going to take the train
and get off wherever it looks good to us and tramp and ride around till
we find the exact spot. It's going to be glorious. I've been looking
forward to it for months. I'd just bundle you along, too, but you
wouldn't enjoy it, and besides it's going to be awfully strenuous. What
you need is rest. But I won't budge a step unless you're fixed first,
do you hear? If you don't go to a doctor and get some kind of tonic and
promise to do exactly as he says, I'll stay right here and work without
a day's vacation. There, now will you do as I say?"

"What's Franklin going to do, while you and Doctor traipse about?"

"I don't know. He said something about taking a vacation himself once,
but he hasn't said anything very lately."

"Jean, I don't want to annoy you or interfere in any way with your
life. You're a married woman and must manage your affairs. But, I've
never seen any happiness come of a husband and wife having separate
interests and not knowing what the other's going to do. Not that I've
seen much happiness come of any married life. But if you do the best
you can, you can't do any more and you can't have it on your conscience
that the fault was yours."

Jean laughed. After all, if there was any change it must be in herself,
for certainly Martha was the same as ever.

"Mummy, times have changed. No modern husband and wife clamp on each
other's backs in the good old-fashioned way. Marriage isn't a pond in
which you both drown, hanging madly to each other."

"What is it?"

"It's--it's a mutual arrangement. If you have the same interests and
ambitions, you work them out together and if you haven't, why, each one
works out his own."

Even as Jean spoke, she wondered when she had come to formulate this
theory so decidedly. She remembered the night in the studio when she
had promised to marry Herrick and life had seemed to her like a river
in which they would both swim on together side by side. But the current
had come between and now they were the width of the stream apart.

"You could always word things better than I, Jean, but sometimes it
seems to me that that's all there is to them. They don't mean much when
you get right down to the bottom of them. How can two people, 'whom
God has joined together,' work out their lives apart? It's like the
nonsense you and Pat used to talk, just as if you could do with life
anything you happened to feel like. We weren't put in this world to
follow every whim and there's no bigger whim-killer than the state of
holy matrimony."

Martha stopped, cut the biscuits and laid each one carefully in the
pan. When she had put them in the gas oven she began clearing up the
table. Jean had gone back to her chair and sat looking absently into
the garden.

"I don't believe, mummy," she said at last, "that anything that makes
you feel smothered is right, no matter what holy state it belongs
in. If that isn't 'wrapping your talent in a napkin,' then what is?
Franklin doesn't care whether a hundred people live in a room or not.
He doesn't think it matters whether people live like intelligent humans
or like animals. He doesn't think that any one can change any one else
or make the world a bit better."

A look of pain crossed Martha's face. "It's an awful way to believe,
Jeany. I hate to think----"

"Then must I give up my beliefs and take things as they are?"

Martha wiped the last grain of flour from the table, washed out the
cloth and hung it on the rack to dry.

"Some women should never marry."

Jean looked quickly at her mother and then away. After a moment she
said gayly:

"All of which has nothing to do with the question in hand, Mummy
Norris, and that is that you go to the doctor and get a tonic or I'll
come and take you myself."

Martha agreed that she would go, and the subject of "holy matrimony"
and "separate interests" was dropped.

But as Jean crossed back to the city she decided that she would ask
Herrick what his vacation plans were and, if possible, arrange her own
to meet them.

Herrick was leaving the studio as Jean entered. He stared in such
surprise that Jean felt uncomfortable.

"I knocked off early this afternoon and went over to mummy's," she
explained. "She hasn't been well and I've been worried. I thought maybe
we might go to dinner somewhere, or we could have it here."

Herrick's first surprise gave way to amusement. After all, there was
something amusing in Jean's self-centered density. For months they had
come and gone without inquiring about each other's engagements and now,
because the notion seized her, Jean assumed the possibility of acting
as if they were in the habit of knowing each other's whereabouts every
moment of the day. The amusement deepened as Jean stood without taking
off her things, apparently waiting for him to decide.

Herrick had promised to take The Kitten to a Syrian restaurant that had
just opened, and every moment that he delayed increased the possibility
of The Kitten herself appearing. She often came for him if he were a
little late, although Herrick had begged her not to. She liked the
excitement of the risk she ran in meeting Jean, but she always claimed
that she came because she loved the studio.

Herrick stood undecided. A meal with Jean would be a restful thing.
There would be no emotional demands, no insistence. And The Kitten was
getting very insistent. At first, the renewal of her little, cuddling
pleas to be assured of his love had thrilled him and made him feel
alive. Her fits of childish rage had amused him, just as in the old
days. Besides, he could always bring her to time by leaving her for
a while. The sense of power was pleasant. But the monotony of its
exertion was beginning to weary him.

To-night she would be very insistent. From the first warm days of
spring she had been begging him to go for a week to the Portuguese
ranch and Herrick did not want to go. She had been through almost all
her bag of tricks. She had been the petted, teasing child, the angry
woman, the commanding mistress. There was one left. To-night she would
be the alluring, giving-all, asking-nothing lover. For that reason she
had chosen a new setting. In the isolation of the Syrian restaurant
they would be alone. She would wear the dress he liked best, a thin,
black clinging thing, and a hat that threw kind shadows on the small
face. Against the background of sawdust floor, of strange, dark men who
came to eat, she would stand out, fragile and completely his.

Jean saw the hesitation, the uncertainty in his eyes.

"Never mind, if you have another engagement. I'll go down to the
delicatessen and get something. I don't suppose there's anything in the
house to eat."

Jean smiled. She couldn't help thinking of Martha and what a heinous
crime it would be to have a house and nothing to eat in it.

"We aren't very good housekeepers, are we?"

"No, there's nothing; but the shops aren't closed yet. It would be
rather nice to eat here."

After all there was a touch of excitement in being invited to picnic
unexpectedly with one's own wife.

"I was only going to eat with Crane. He's been taking the cure again
and isn't quite sure of himself. He hates to eat alone. I'll 'phone him
and bring some stuff up with me."

Herrick ran whistling down the stairs.

The Kitten was angry and Herrick was very tender. But it couldn't be
helped. Crane was his boss and if he would have delirium tremens at
inconvenient moments, there was nothing that Herrick could do about it.
Herrick was patient. He called her soft love names and promised a week
at the Portuguese ranch. The Kitten relented. She was reasonable. She
understood. She said low, sweet things that came lightly across the
wire and touched Herrick in a caress.

Herrick and Jean got supper together. The strangeness of doing this
once familiar thing made them a little shy. They sought for things
to say that would not show the realization of this strangeness. The
sensation was new and exquisite to Herrick. It was pregnant with
possibility. He mashed potatoes vigorously and sensed a possible new
relationship waiting beyond the interlude of supper. What it might be
he did not know. He did not want to know. He was tired of moods that he
understood, reactions that he could bring about at a touch. To-night he
had no wish to rouse Jean to the depths of physical passion that had
been his aim in the old days when they had gotten supper together. It
was not in her, and to-night he did not care. He was weary of storms,
smothered at moments beyond endurance by the clinging of The Kitten's
arms. He would leave everything to Jean. He would do nothing, lead
nowhere, make no effort. He would follow, drugged to a sensuous peace
by his own inaction.

When the things were cooked, Herrick laid the cloth at the end of the
big table in the studio. He brought up a chair for Jean and with a
flourish handed her to it. He was like a boy starting on a new trip,
happy and excited. And, as always, Herrick looked the part. His whole
body seemed keyed to a greater physical firmness. His eyes had the
light that had been in them so often when they used to eat their
sandwiches in the rock coves by the sea.

Jean saw and wondered and felt unsure. Was it her own blind, sweeping
judgments that had stripped Herrick of all that of which she had once
been so sure? To-night he looked and felt as he had on the night he had
told her of his lonely boyhood and she had held out her hands to him.
Hadn't she changed at all since the days when she and Pat had settled
the questions of which they knew nothing? Did she still sit off on her
cloud and play her golden flute while people struggled along in the
dust below? Did she?

Jean talked of Crane, the pity of his wasted days, while the shuttle
of analysis wove back and forth in memory, behind her words. Had she
condemned as lack of purpose and sincerity what, after all, might well
be a concomitant of that very sweetness and boyishness that had called
to her? It was that which had called, Jean was very sure. And the
claiming hands that were always trying to hold her, to touch her when
she was near, the hunger of Herrick's kiss? It was the groping of a
child that didn't want to be alone.

They ate slowly and sat on after the last drop of coffee was drained
from the percolator. Herrick had asked Jean about the pamphlet and was
helping her with details of publishing and distribution. With a paper
and pencil he was making calculations, while Jean leaned across the
table, her elbows on the cloth, her chin in her palms. She and Dr. Mary
had gone over this ground but she saw instantly that Herrick knew much
more about it than they did. It amused Jean, this new humility that met
her at every turn to-night.

"I guess there are some things, just a few, that men can do best."
And she chuckled in the old, childish way that had always delighted
Herrick. It was such a ridiculous, delightful, childish chuckle for a
woman of Jean's size. It had always given Herrick in the early days
one of those double sensations, two contrasting emotions, that pricked
his sense as a pungent spice pricks a jaded palate. It made Jean half
woman and half imp.

The pencil quivered a little, but Herrick did not look up. Instinct
warned him to go on with the serious business of calculation.

"There," he announced, "if you'll be content with just ordinary paper
you ought to be able to get a thousand for----"

The door opened suddenly and The Kitten came in. She stood quite
still, while Herrick sat motionless, the pencil poised over the paper,
his lips parted on the word. Every drop of color left his face and
then rushed back in a deep red that swelled the veins of his neck and
congested his eyes. He rose heavily and the pencil rolled away under
the table.

The Kitten closed the door and came toward the table. A few feet away
she stopped. Jean noticed mechanically the scarlet of her mouth in the
dead whiteness of her face. It was like a wound, and when she spoke her
voice was high and cutting, like the crackling of tin that had torn the
wound.

"So this is why you lied?" She looked at Herrick and Jean's eyes
followed. His flushed face was heavy and ugly, and he looked
unspeakably foolish, staring back with his lips parted. Jean thought
of her father, standing in the bar of sunlight, and of her mother
shrinking from him. In a strange, unreal calm, she thought how odd it
was that she should have the same picture of her father and her husband.

She rose, with a detached feeling of not belonging here and at the same
time of being called on to do something, perform some unpleasant social
duty, that should have fallen to the lot of the hostess, who wasn't
herself at all.

"We've just finished dinner," she said quietly, "and there's not a
thing left. But I can make you some coffee."

The Kitten turned from Herrick and looked at her directly. The heavy
lids lowered and her eyes went slowly from the crown of Jean's head to
her feet, in a look that drew Jean's body after it into the mire.

Jean stepped back quickly. There was no pretense or misunderstanding
now.

The Kitten grinned. "Didn't you know it, really? I was always sure you
guessed. It's been such a long time before you--even."

Clearest of all the thoughts whirling in Jean's brain was the knowledge
that she felt no anger, nor was she stunned. With no warning this thing
had come upon her and there was no slightest doubt in her. Instead,
there was a kind of relief, grotesque but real, and as if she had
discovered at last the source of some annoyance that had long puzzled
her. Her brain seemed to be running in layers, streams of thought all
perfectly distinct. One layer was concerned with herself and Herrick,
from the first night they had eaten with The Bunch and The Kitten had
stared so rudely across the table. Her first vivid picture of The
Kitten had been across a table and now she was seeing her again across
a table. And another stream bore Herrick apart from The Bunch, alone
with her in the days before their marriage, and the things she had
believed and the things that had really been true. There was a stream
for Herrick and herself running through the last eighteen months, with
all sorts of landmarks coming to the surface. And there was the stream
of her own present calm, with the feeling that it was impossible that
she should feel this way, that it must be a false strength which would
fail in a moment and leave her at the mercy of this woman with the
white face and the scarlet mouth and the malicious eyes under their
lowered lids.

"No," Jean said, "I didn't know." The calm was broken for a moment
by a spark of cold anger at the insincerity of the question, or its
implication.

The Kitten shrugged and turned to Herrick. She was trembling with anger
now and it made her look like a fierce, small animal at bay.

Jean's calm was swept aside in a wave of physical nausea. She could not
stand there and see them quarrel. She moved to Herrick.

"Will you go? Please go. Quick! Now!"

"If you wish." Grotesque in his consideration, pitiful in his relief,
Herrick went. They heard his step echo and die in the silence below.

Jean and The Kitten stood looking at each other. Before Jean's calm,
The Kitten's anger crumbled. Jean went slowly back to her place at the
table and sat down again. Her brain seemed the only living thing about
her. She had a problem to solve, but the problem concerned the woman
before her more than it concerned herself. There was something she was
going to do, but she couldn't do it until she had talked to The Kitten,
and she didn't know just how to begin. She sat with her chin in her
palms, as she had sat while Herrick made calculations about the cost of
the pamphlet.

"Didn't you really know?" It was The Kitten who broke the silence at
last. "He always said you didn't, but I never believed it."

"Did you think that I would have gone on just the same?"

"I didn't know. You never loved him. What difference would it make?"
The Kitten waited a moment and added more kindly, as if she were making
something very clear to a child. "Vicky has loved other women; he's
always having an affair of some kind, and I don't say anything. You
see, I don't love him."

Jean did not move. She sat rigid as if the least movement would
precipitate her into the abyss The Kitten was opening before her.

"You thought I knew--and--would go on just the same?"

The thing rose, a barricade to further thought. Jean tried to get by
it, push it aside, go on to the end, but somehow she could not get any
further. She was living in a world, among people who believed things
like that. Men and women lived that way. People she knew lived that
way. Not "cases," but friends, people she had eaten with, to whose
houses she had gone, people whom she had been anxious to meet once,
friends of her husband, of the man she had married.

Jean closed her eyes. It made her sick, physically sick to look at the
little figure across the table, the hungry, contemptuous eyes, the fine
lines etched by unsatisfied desire in the smooth skin. They did not
belong in the same world, they did not speak the same language, and
there they sat in Jean's home, at Jean's table, and talked of Jean's
husband.

"You needn't look at me like that." The Kitten leaned across the table,
so near that Jean saw clearly the smooth texture of her skin and the
flecks of black in her eyes. "I don't see that you have such a lot to
be proud of. I loved Franklin, I have always loved him, long before you
came into his life at all. I loved him and I gave. You don't love him;
you never did, and yet you married him. You took. You sold yourself
for what? So you wouldn't have to teach school, to get away from that
bromide mother, the whole monotonous round! A great motive, wasn't it?
Oh, he's told me all about it?"

She spoke in quick, panting breaths, as if the words were coming faster
than she could utter them. Jean felt as if little pellets of mud were
being flung in her face. She moved now, pushing her chair away.

The Kitten laughed. "Oh, don't mind me, you can go clear over to the
end of the room if you like. You have always acted like that, you know.
It amused us terribly at first. You were so funny! You tried so hard
to be nice to me and The Tiger and the rest of us, but you couldn't
quite make it, could you? We were so awfully muddy and you were so
clean. Clean! Good God, you're not clean, you're empty. Why, I wouldn't
be you, you cold, dead thing, not for all the pain it would save me.
You----"

Jean rose. The mud no longer came in pellets; it flowed, a black,
sticky stream.

"I think you have said enough. After all, there really is nothing to be
said."

She came slowly about the table and stood before The Kitten. She could
almost hear the beating of The Kitten's heart, under the stubby hands
pressed so tightly over it.

"Well," demanded The Kitten, "what are you going to do?"

"Do?" echoed Jean blankly. "Why, I'm going away."

"You're going away! You're going to give him up, without any more
fight than this! You're going to swallow every single thing I've said,
without asking him? I say, how do you know it's the truth? How do you
know it's not all a lie, except my loving him?"

"I don't know," but as she spoke Jean felt something drop from her
eyes. With no warning this thing had come upon her and there was no
doubt in her. Like the sucking blackness at the bottom of the well, it
had always been there.

The Kitten smiled. "He must have had a hell of a time with you. Poor
Boy Blue."

Mechanically Jean put on her things, the things she had thrown down
when she came in and found Herrick just leaving. It was queer to put
them on again, the things that had not changed at all, while she had
been on such a long journey and come back. The Kitten was watching,
fascinated into silence by the ordinary movements of Jean pinning on
her hat, gathering up her gloves and handbag. When she was quite ready,
Jean turned to The Kitten. She felt no anger or disgust now. Instead,
she was sorry for the little thing, so eager, so avid, so unsure.

"You can tell him," she said slowly, "that I shall be at the Hill
House. I don't want him to come. Please tell him that. But if there's
anything to be discussed, he can write. I don't see what it can be, but
I suppose he will want to."

"Oh, yes, he'll write."

Then, for no reason at all, the two women smiled faintly, as if they
were speaking of a child. And, always afterward, Jean remembered The
Kitten as she looked smiling above the greasy dishes.




                                PART II




                           CHAPTER NINETEEN


Jean touched the electric button on her desk and Josephine Grimes
appeared with notebook and pencil. She was a tall, spare woman,
impelled through life by devotion to an invalid sister, to the Charity
Organization Society of New York City, and to Jean. The three were
somehow connected in Miss Grimes' mind and she never tried to separate
them.

Jean handed her a pile of mail. "All the regular thing, except that
one on top. That's very extra special. It's from Gregory Allen, the
architect Selina Mitchell thinks might be interested in the tubercular
tenements. He says he'd like to talk things over. So write him,
conveying something between abject gratitude and decent self-respect,
and make it to-morrow at 3.30."

Miss Grimes nodded and turned to the door. She never made any comment
on these semi-personal confidences from Jean, but at night they were
retailed verbatim to the invalid sister.

"And tell any one who rings up that I won't be back to-day, but, under
pain of death, don't give them the house number. Except Rachael Cohen.
But I don't think she will, because she knows I know about the meeting
to-morrow night and I'll be there."

Again Miss Grimes nodded and disappeared. Jean sat on at the desk for a
few moments, smiling into space. Then she locked the lid with a snap,
put on her hat without looking into the glass, snatched her gloves and
black leather wallet and left the office for the Grand Central Station.

The train was just pulling in, as Jean elbowed her way through the
waiting crowd, pressed close to the iron grille. It seemed as if all
the people in the world went by before she saw her, the same stout
figure, the same eager peering through the gold pince-nez. Jean waved
frantically. Mary stopped, stared for a reassuring second, dropped
her grip and came at a trot, calling back over her shoulders to the
bewildered red-cap to pick it up.

"Mary--oh--you----"

"Not a word or I shall weep. Lead me to the decent seclusion of a cab.
I haven't wanted to cry for thirty years."

Safe in a taxi, they looked at each other and laughed.

"Mary, I haven't been able to do a thing since I got your wire. Why
didn't you write me?"

"Didn't know it myself. I just woke up one morning with such a heavy
feeling in the pit of my stomach when I looked at Lucy Phillips that I
knew the hour had come. I took a leave of absence for a year and I may
extend it. I'm going to absorb and study what the rest of the world's
been doing. In short, I'm going to stay until I _love_ Lucy Phillips. I
was going to make my point of saturation Chicago, until I got to really
visioning you. Then I wired. I couldn't very well before, could I?"

"Hardly." Jean hugged her. "Mary, it's been an age. I don't believe
I've known, myself, how much and how often I've wanted you."

"I was thinking about it the other night. Almost seven years since
you came walking into the clinic and told me The Kitten was up at the
studio and you weren't going back."

"And mummy trotted over the next afternoon, and when she found we'd
both gone to keep our engagement with that Building Trades man as if
nothing had happened, she sat down and cried. Poor little mummy."

"How is mummy, Jean? I never could quite picture her here in New York.
I could never make her fit."

"Fits like a glove. But, then, no one can ever tell what mummy is going
to do. She not only likes it, but is happy, really happy, for the first
time in her life. I believe she has learned the trick at last."

"Much incense and lace altar clothes and Jeany all to herself, I take
it."

"Pretty near. But we have been happy, both of us, these six years here.
Mummy still believes social service is connected, or ought to be, with
religion, and she calls my very finest pieces of work 'the act divorced
from the spirit', but she lets me send out all the laundry and have
a woman in once a week--a maid she absolutely forbade--and there's a
church run by Father Something-or-other a few blocks away, and I'd get
fatty degeneration of the soul if it weren't for Pedloe. He gets six
thousand a year and poses as a radical, but he has the imagination of a
mouse. Some day he's going to fire me, if I don't do it first myself. I
work ten hours a day, get more and more furious at the whole business,
and come home every evening like a novice to her convent. Our chief
excitement is having Pat bring the children over for the week-end,
when her husband is out of town. She has two children and is going to
have another, all in four years, exactly like an immigrant. She hasn't
changed a bit, manages her family as if it were a college committee
and her husband adores her. Once in a while she brings an uncle of
Stephen's with her, a fat, good-natured creature about fifty, who, I
sometimes think, is a fool and sometimes I'm sure he's a philosopher.
Mummy likes him and makes all his pet dishes. Years ago he was married
to an impossible creature in an Arizona mining camp and she ran away in
six months. So you see he's had his 'sorrow' too."

"You don't mean that she still looks on Franklin as a 'sorrow'?"

"He's my 'lesson.' She never speaks of him, but I know she prays for
him."

"Good Lord!"

And for the remaining few moments of the drive, Dr. Mary sat chuckling.

"Here we are." Jean led the way toward the cool marble entrance of a
huge apartment house facing the Hudson. Young mothers in summer white
sat on camp stools, doing embroidery in the shade of the high walls,
under the trees that lined the Drive, and in the vacant lot across the
street. They chatted and moved white perambulators with the tips of
their white canvas shoes. Fat white babies slept under dainty white
coverlets. Older children in white played in the earth.

Dr. Mary stopped in the vestibule. "It looks like miles of them. I've
never seen so many baby buggies at once in my life."

"Mary, that sight has done more to inspire me with a love of work than
any other thing I know. Whenever I feel like sneaking a day I just take
one look out there and jump into my office clothes."

"I should think you might. Do they keep it up all day?"

"All day, every day, from spring till fall. They must sew miles of
scallops. Wait till you see the last rites. About six the husbands come
along; they're all young and rather slight, wear blue serge and straw
hats. They all look exactly alike. Each one detaches his special piece
of white property and off they go. Behold the female backbone of our
nation!"

"It makes me homesick for my frowsy crab-fishers and those poor
bowlegged mites that crawl over the hills alone."

As the key turned in the lock, Martha Norris rose from her chair by the
window where she had been reading in the green-gold light that slanted
up under the window awnings. Dr. Mary took the outstretched hand in
hers.

"I suppose you were surprised, but not more than I was myself. When it
came right down to it, I started at a moment's notice."

"I know. Jean was in the greatest state of excitement yesterday when
she got your wire." Martha smiled and it made the small face, rested
in the peace of the last six years, astonishingly young. But she
could think of nothing else to say. There had always been something
breathless about Dr. Mary's energy that made Martha feel inadequate.
Something a little indecent, in an enthusiasm and exuberance that could
carry a woman well over fifty across the continent, at a moment's
notice, to study. It was almost as if she infringed on a younger
generation, wore mental rouge and powder.

"It's a frightful journey, especially in this heat. You must be very
tired."

Martha drew a chair to the window and Mary dropped gratefully into it.

"I'll just make a cup of tea and we'll have cold supper later."

She pattered out and Jean and Mary looked at each other and smiled.

When tea was ready they had it close to the window looking to the
Palisades. Jean made valiant efforts to hold Martha in the talk but
it kept drifting away from her, and soon she was sitting quietly to
one side, as she always did, listening, while Jean and Mary talked and
interrupted one another and made a thousand plans.

"I tell you, Jean, I was getting to be a big frog in a small puddle and
that's not good for the soul. I'm not going to give a single scrap of
advice to a living soul for three months at least."

Jean patted the plump shoulder. "Croak on, Mary, croak on. Why, you'll
be taking the tenements out of my hands, if I don't step lively. Not to
mention the garment strike and Rachael herself."

"Never. I wouldn't offer a suggestion for ten additional years of life.
I'm going to sit to one side and watch."

"Mary MacLean, you'll sit to one side exactly as long as I'll let
you--forty-eight hours perhaps to get rested. And then--Lord; I feel as
if I had been asleep for years. Mary, this is going to be one glorious
summer."

"I have a slight feeling that way myself, Jean."

Martha got up and began clearing the table.

Out in the kitchen, Martha filled the pan with hot soapy water and
began washing the dishes. The voices went on. Once she stopped to
listen.

"Now, Jean, not another word. Please. I appreciate the offer and all
that, but I shouldn't do a thing but sit and stare at that river and
overeat, and where would my serious study be then? No, to-morrow I find
an apartment."

Jean laughed. "All right, go ahead, but you won't escape me that way."

There was a pause, and then Jean added softly: "Oh, Mary, this is going
to be a glorious summer."




                            CHAPTER TWENTY


A few moments before three-thirty the next afternoon Jean tidied her
desk, settled Miss Grimes with enough work for the rest of the day, and
drew out some notes she had made for Gregory Allen.

At a quarter to four she laid the notes aside and looked at the clock.
At four she verified the time by the big clock in the Metropolitan
Tower.

"Rather rude, to say the least."

At four-thirty she rose impatiently, moved to the outer office, changed
her mind and came back again to her desk.

"It costs a nickel and takes two minutes to 'phone. If he's that kind
of a person, I don't want him mixed up in the thing at all. He needn't
have answered my note if he isn't interested."

Jean looked over the notes again, and when she laid them aside for the
second time it was almost five.

"Well, I'll be darned. If----"

The outer door opened, a man's voice asked for Mrs. Herrick and
Josephine Grimes appeared. He stood close behind her. Without waiting
to hear whether he was to be received, he stepped into the room.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting, but I hope it hasn't been too
inconvenient." The tone implied, however, that it would not trouble him
very much if it had.

Jean wanted to say that it had been very inconvenient, but in view of
the fact that he had arrived, she said she was glad he had not been
detained altogether and sat down again at the desk. Gregory Allen
took the chair opposite and stretched out his feet, as if he were
used to making himself as comfortable as he could. He was a tall man,
about forty, with thick, dry, brown hair, full of reddish lights, and
red-brown eyes. His face and neck and hands were tanned as if he were a
great deal in the open, and the hands were long, bony and nervous. They
seemed to express something hidden deep in the rather slouchy figure,
under the ready-made suit that looked rumpled, although Jean saw that
it was really quite new. His shoes were not well shined and his tie did
not strike the note of the tanned skin and reddish hair.

He made no further explanation of why he had been detained and sat
silent, waiting for Jean to begin. Jean wished he would say something
to give her a better clew to his mental makeup, but as he didn't she
plunged in.

"I don't know, Mr. Allen, how much you know about conditions among the
poor, or whether you are specially interested in them. I think you
would rather have to be, to take any joy in this work at all, there are
so many restrictions."

Jean spoke as if she were handling an obstinate committee member,
and Gregory Allen smiled behind his eyes. But the smile did not come
through. Accustomed to classifying people in terms of architecture, he
decided that Jean was like a tower, an old Roman tower, rugged, firm
on its base, built for a purpose and for the accomplishment of it.
Whatever charm there might be would come from perfect accord between
form and purpose. He nodded.

"Not so much a restriction in finances," Jean went on, "but
restrictions imposed by the condition of the tenants. You see, the plan
is this: thousands of people, right here in Manhattan, die yearly for
lack of air and sunlight. Literally thousands of incipient cases of
tuberculosis, and those in the earlier stages, die because of their
living conditions, die needlessly. There is all the sunlight and air in
the universe right here. It is only a question of being able to get it."

Jean paused, but Gregory Allen said nothing. He did not know how many
people died in New York for need of air and sun, but now that he
thought of it, supposed quite a number. Jean seemed very positive about
it, and he saw no reason to comment.

Jean felt like shaking him, and, turning slightly away, made aimless
lines on the desk blotter as she continued.

"There is also a lot of vacant land, doing no good to anybody, just
where we want it. The problem is to get it, but, of course, you would
not be concerned with that, but only to put up a building for the sole
use of families in which there is any one either with, or threatened
with, tuberculosis. I don't want a contractor who thinks that anything
is good enough for the poor. And I don't want an architect who doesn't
grasp the spirit of it, either."

He might just as well get the situation straight to begin with.

Gregory Allen wondered whether Jean always enunciated her purposes so
emphatically, rather as if she were firing small shot at a target. She
was decidedly like a Roman tower, part of a fortification. Amplifying
his own figure, he scarcely noticed Jean's pause for his comment, nor
did he notice the frown as she continued.

"And in addition to this, the building must be as beautiful as it can
be made, beautiful even to details that may seem finicky, in tone and
line and tint. These people, besides being stricken in body, have been
cramped in soul, too, most of them, until they don't know there is
any beauty in the world. Or, worse, they don't believe that it is for
them. As one woman told me, not long ago: 'there ain't no free beauty
nowhere.' Well, we are going to give it to them, all we can possibly
give. It will take a lot of time and there's not a cent in it. It will
lead to nothing else. It is just a gift, the most beautiful gift you
can make, within the bounds of our funds."

"What are the bounds?"

"I don't know yet."

A smile darted from Gregory Allen's eyes to his lips, and settled
there. During his student days at the Beaux Arts, a grisette had told
Gregory that his smile flitted like "un petit oiseau" over his face and
then flew out of his mouth. Jean did not call it "a little bird" but
she liked it.

"Of course we can't go ahead without rime or reason, but we don't have
to stick too close to reason either. They are to be as beautiful as
possible, allowing for reductions if we don't raise quite as much as we
hope, and extension if we do. That's possible, isn't it?"

"Certainly. I take it there is to be a minimum of beauty below which
you will not sink, but you're going to leave the roof off and soar as
high as you can."

"Exactly." Jean laughed, and Gregory added a ray of sun slanting across
the tower. There was a pause. Was he interested, or wasn't he?

"Well," she demanded at last, "does it appeal?"

Gregory Allen looked at her sharply. He wondered whether, sometimes,
she did not pose a little. If he had not been interested by Jean's
first note he would not have come, would not have answered the note,
probably.

"Of course. That's why I came, to talk over the details. I made a
hurried sketch after your note, just a ground floor plan, but I don't
think now it will do." He drew a blue-print from his pocket and
smoothed it on the desk. "This, followed out, would give plenty of
light and sunshine, but there wouldn't be much beauty about it."

There she had sat wondering why he had come, and all the time he had
this blue-print in his pocket!

"He's too simple to be out alone, or else a dyed-in-the-wool egotist
who expects every one to read his thoughts."

Jean was still concerned with the problem as she bent over the plan,
following the line of Gregory's pencil while he explained.

"You see, it's not much more than an improved tenement, this way, a
well-ventilated, all-outside-rooms box." He tore the print across and
threw the pieces into the waste-basket. "I'll work up something else
and let you know as soon as----"

The door opened and Dr. Mary rushed in.

"Found it, the only place in New York worth living in. Got it, moved
into it, maid goes with the furnishings, and dinner's almost ready. For
Heaven's sake, hurry up!"

Then Gregory Allen came into range of the doctor's near-sighted eyes,
and she stopped.

"Mary, let me present Gregory Allen, who is going to draw plans for the
T.B.'s. Mr. Allen, Dr. MacLean."

Dr. Mary offered both hands. "One's for manners, the other for
gratitude."

"Mary, you couldn't possibly have found an apartment in one day." Jean
turned to Gregory. "Dr. MacLean only arrived from California yesterday.
She has never lived in New York and didn't know what part of town she
wanted."

"Can't be done. Impossible. I know. Once every three years my wife
finds our apartment impossible and we house hunt."

Gregory smiled his _petit oiseau_ smile and Dr. Mary accepted him on
the spot.

"All right. Then I include you in this evening's dinner. Come and see
for yourself. Can you?"

"I shall be delighted."

Dr. Mary in the lead, they left the office.

Gregory felt as if he were on a mischievous adventure.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


In winter Gregory Allen always looked forward to summer, except for
missing Puck, as a rest from the weary round of Margaret's enthusiasms,
her uninteresting friends, and the boring parties to which he went
because it was less trouble to go than to fuss about not going. During
the winter he never made any close friends, but always thought he might
do so in the summer. And then, after the first few weeks of freedom to
come and go as he pleased, he began to miss Puck with her long, serious
discussions of the doings of Lady Jane, and the well-managed house.
In these moods he went to the club of Beaux Arts graduates, knowing
beforehand that it would be no more interesting than either of the
other two clubs to which he belonged. But he always felt that something
interesting ought to develop, although it never did. The members who
frequented it were men like himself, neither rich nor famous nor pushed
out of the race, comfortable, moderately successful financially, with
modest summer homes on Long Island, to which they sent their families
from May to September. They had all adjusted their lives as he had,
and beyond the round of their work, were as unmagnetic as the routine
of their days. They all accepted each other as they were, and believed
they were common-sense, practical men.

As for women, Gregory met very few in the course of his work; and, once
relieved from his duty as Margaret's husband to the members of The
Fortnightly, he could no more imagine looking any of them up during
the summer, even if they had been in town, than he could have picked up
a stray companion of the streets and spent a pleasant evening in some
crowded dance-hall. He could no more imagine meeting Caroline Ainsworth
or Mabel Dawson on the street and going home to dinner with them, than
he could imagine doing something careless and impromptu with Margaret.
Gregory smiled as he pictured himself walking off with Mabel Dawson or
Caroline Ainsworth.

At Nineteenth Street the doctor turned east, crossed Gramercy Park and
stopped before an old brownstone front on the north side.

"Here we are." They followed through a wide, cool hall, flagged in
black and white marble, to a huge door on the right. Dr. Mary threw it
open and swept them in with a flourish.

"There, you doubting Thomases. Not so bad, is it?"

Gregory and Jean looked at each other and laughed.

"Mary, I'm glad I didn't bet you that set of Dostoievsky. I would have
been broke for a month."

"As long as you are repentant now, I won't crow. Dinner will be ready
in a few minutes. I'll hurry it up."

Like the hall, the room was high, cool and dim. The heavy, tapestried
furniture seemed built for the ample Dutch forms that had no doubt once
inhabited it. It was impossible to imagine raucous voices or useless
rush between these lofty walls.

"It's the only real bit of Old New York left," Gregory said, and with
one accord they moved to the wide window looking down on the Park.

The rumble of the Third Avenue El, two blocks away, threw into sharp
relief the spirit of the past, the old, unhurried past that hangs over
Gramercy Park. Behind the scratched and rusted palings, the dusty trees
stood aloof, superior to the hustle and roar of the great tide washing
its borders; faithful to dead standards, tolerant of the rented keys
that now open the gates, to the ever-changing stream of tenants that
flows in and out of the brownstone fronts, once the stately homes of
unhurrying men.

"It _is_ a bit of the past, isn't it?"

"Yes. It always makes me think of an old French marquise, stiff,
powdered, poor, but never forgetting. Here, like this."

He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and drew, with a few strokes,
a marquise of the older days.

"But you see, she has to make some concessions, while she waits here,
year after year, for the return of the Bourbons, and so----" Gregory
clapped upon her head a hat, just a little bedraggled and over-trimmed.
"The Spirit of the Present. She bought it at a bargain."

"Oh, Mary!"

"No. Don't, please." Gregory tore up the paper in such discomfort that
Jean wanted to pat him on the shoulder and say: "There, there."

"What?" Mary peered in through the door.

"When is that food coming?"

"In a moment." Mary disappeared.

Gregory looked at Jean and they laughed again. "Thanks," he said.

Until dessert the talk was general, mostly of the great strike of
garment workers, and of Rachael Cohen, the leader.

"She is literally like a flame. And her people follow her blindly. They
will win or lose by Rachael."

"Why lose?"

"They won't. They can't. But, the man whom Rachael loves, hates her
people, her power, everything about Ray that makes her what she is, and
yesterday Tom Dillon gave her the choice of leading this thing--think
of it, fifty thousand people--and winning, because Rachael _will_ win,
and a little house in the Bronx with some chickens and, I believe, a
baby for good measure."

"Poor girl," Mary said sadly. "Jean, do you remember Carmen?"

Jean nodded. "Oh, Mary, it makes me sick clear through sometimes."

And then, for a little while, they talked of old times and people
whom Gregory did not know, but he did not feel left out, only he
wondered whether there were many women in the world like these two.
Their interests were so varied and deep and they were so, almost
exhaustingly, alive.

But with the coffee and cigarettes, they came again to the plans, and
Gregory sketched his new idea. They all bent together over the table,
suggested, disapproved, argued and contradicted each other, until
Gregory forgot he was working with women at all.

It was half past nine when Jean pushed the plans away and stood up.

"Not another word, please," she begged, "or I'll begin on that
sun-porch idea of mine and then I never will get to the meeting."

"Does every one's pet wrinkle get included in the general plan? Because
I have a couple up my own sleeve," Gregory demanded, as he gathered up
the sheets, disappointed that the evening was over.

"Certainly. Didn't I tell you the limit was an expanding quantity? You
ought to have seen Mr. Allen's face, Mary, when I told him we didn't
know how much we would have to spend."

"We may not know the amount but we know how we're going to get it. And
now we've seen you, I think we will notch it up a few pegs, eh, Jean?"

Jean pretended to survey him critically. "Yes, I shouldn't wonder. Oh,
Mary, they'll just eat it up, won't they?"

"Who? Me?" Gregory felt a little silly at this banter, but enjoyed it.

"No, the cake, which you will hand 'round."

"Never."

"Don't be alarmed. It won't be to-morrow. Not until winter. Right
after the first blizzard we give a tea, very exclusive, only the rich
invited. You've made a nice technical plan full of dotted lines and
cross-sections, guaranteed to confuse any living female. Said plan
hangs upon wall, real live architect, all dressed up, explains. Money
pours in. By summer tenements are. Tenants move in. Q.E.D."

Gregory shook his head. "Plans until you're both dizzy with them, every
female in the world sick with the blind staggers--but no tea."

"Oh, by that time, you'll be such a reformed character you'll beg to
come."

Laughing, Jean moved to the door and Gregory followed. Dr. Mary came as
far as the front door and watched them down the steps. On the sidewalk,
Jean held out her hand.

"Good-night."

But Gregory Allen fell into step beside her. "Don't condemn me, please,
to a roasting hot apartment alone or to a Broadway show. Mayn't I come?
I'd like to see this Rachael."

"Of course, gladly, if you care to. But a lot of it will be in Yiddish
and it will be fearfully hot and smelly. I want to talk with the
committee and after the meeting is the best time."

Gregory did not answer but walked along beside her. She told him more
of Rachael, banished by her family because of her love for the Gentile
Tom; of the frightful conditions in the garment trade and the faith of
her people in Rachael. Gregory Allen heard only stray phrases here and
there. But he felt Jean's strength and belief as she swung along beside
him, as unwearied as if the day were just beginning. When a woman was
wonderful she was very wonderful indeed.

The hall was packed. From wall to wall a flat surface of women's
dusky heads swayed like a dark sea, with here and there, like rocks
rising above the surface, the hatted heads of men. From this sea rose
a suppressed rumble, so that the walls seemed to vibrate with the
throttled protest. As Gregory followed Jean to the seats instantly
vacated for them, he felt as if he were dropping down far below the
daily surface of his life. And as he took his seat it seemed to him
that a trap literally closed above him, a trap of foul air, so thick it
had the quality of iron, and of rebellion so unbreakable that it had
the resistance of steel. A trap that, once having sprung, would never
again rise above the imprisoned below. He looked to Jean. But Jean did
not seem to be imprisoned in a foul subsurface. Her eyes glowed with
excited interest and he realized that this was not a strange scene to
her, but part of her daily interest.

"Do you think they will lose?" she asked, with a look that made Gregory
feel as if her strong, white hands were drawing him gently with her
into this seething mass, rumbling below the settled plane of his life
with Margaret and Puck. But, before he could answer, the door at the
rear of the platform opened, and a man and woman came out.

"He's the National Secretary of the Garment Workers. And she's Rose
Kominsky----Ladies' Waist Makers. I wonder where Ray is."

The National Secretary was short and oily, with none of the dignity of
his race. Western hustle was grafted upon Eastern servility. In the
midst of bluster, he might suddenly cringe. He was a radical, but he
appreciated the good job of being National Secretary, and if it had
not been a tenet of his radicalism to despise insignia, he would have
delighted in a gilt badge. He made a long speech, shouting and beating
in his meaning with furious gestures of his fat hands. He amused and
disgusted Gregory.

The local secretary followed, riding in on the wave of the other's
emotion, with stated facts and proved data. As she flung her last bunch
of clinching statistics to the ceiling, scattering it like confetti on
the heads of the people, the rear door opened again, and a slip of a
girl in black, with great black eyes in the dead whiteness of her face,
came forward. The local secretary broke off her last sentence in the
middle and sat down. The girl came to the very edge of the platform and
waited quietly for the applause to cease. At last it died, and Rachael
began to speak.

She spoke in Yiddish but Gregory felt that the terrible silence of the
listening mass was a medium through which her words were registering
in his consciousness. Jean was right. She was like a flame. Like
an acetylene torch burning its way through all barriers of race
difference, social strata and language. So fully did he feel that he
knew what Rachael was saying that he scarcely noticed when at the end
she swept into English.

"Wait," she cried, "wait in patience and in courage. For thousands of
years our people have waited. For ages we workers have waited. And
now the time is coming, each year a little nearer, with every battle,
another inch. It is near, our freedom, near. Wait. Wait. And out of
that waiting rises the thing we demand. It hears us calling. It is
coming. It is there always, under the ashes of past hopes, never dead,
always burning, a light. Keep heart. Keep faith. Do not kill the little
spark. After all the years we have waited, can we not wait in faith a
little longer?"

Before the roar of applause ceased, Jean and Gregory were out on the
sidewalk. Here the heat was like a cool touch after the fetid heat of
the hall.

"Whew."

Jean turned to him: "Did you get more than you bargained for?"

"Yes. In a way, I did," he answered slowly.

"I warned you."

He might have been a child who had disobeyed. Gregory frowned.

"I know you did," he said shortly, and then added, with a look that
made Jean wonder what he meant, even after he was gone, "Thank you."

Did he mean for taking him? Or for the meeting itself?




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


"What are you doing, daddy?"

Gregory started, for Puck had come so lightly in her little
rubber-soled sandals that he had not heard her.

"Making a house, Pucklets."

"Let me see." Puck spoke with Gregory's quiet determination, as if she
always expected to have to hold out against some opposition. It sat
oddly with her golden hair and the delicate oval of her face which were
Margaret's.

"Well, look at it. See, that's the floor and these are the walls."
Gregory moved so that Puck could come closer, but went on with his work.

"What's that?" A ridiculous duplicate of Margaret's forefinger pointed
to a square separated from the main plan.

"That's a room."

"A room?"

"Surely. Look; there are the two windows and there's the door."

She made no comment and after a moment Gregory forgot her, standing so
still, her chin just touching his shoulder.

"There isn't any top on that house," she announced suddenly. "It's a
funny house. I don't like it."

At the same moment Margaret Allen appeared in the doorway.

"Why, Gregory, aren't you going to take her? It's after eleven now."

"Um." Gregory was making lines on a separate sheet and heard only the
modulated run of the words. He rarely paid any conscious attention to
Margaret's remarks in the making, because he could always come in on
time at the end.

Puck looked from her father to her mother. Her under lip drew in as her
mother's did when she was hurt, but it was with the man's straight look
of facing a difficulty that she turned away.

"I guess daddy's too busy to play with Puck. The house hasn't got its
roof on yet."

"Gregory! She's been looking forward to it so all week. Why, you're
working!"

"What did you think I was doing?" Gregory looked up curiously; he so
often felt as if she were the child and Puck the woman.

"I thought it was one of those water color things."

Gregory sometimes rested his eyes during these week-ends through the
summer, sketching the woods and soft green fields. They were not bad
sketches, but Margaret had no respect for them. Subconsciously she
was jealous of them. They stood for something in Gregory that had
escaped her. With more courage than any one gave her credit for,
Margaret Allen had long ago buried her early belief in her husband's
ability. She had been very sure when she married him, a year after his
graduation from the Beaux Arts with honors, that he was going to be a
rich and famous architect. Neither the fame nor the riches had come
in spite of her early efforts to connect with people who could be of
service. Nor later, when she had recognized the uselessness of trying
to force Gregory along these paths, and turned her influence to taking
a personal interest, which meant asking questions about technical
details which she could not understand. The little water color sketches
were like relics that Gregory had kept from the years before he knew
her, and when he had gone back to the office on Monday mornings, and
she came on a sketch among the scattered sheets of the Sunday paper,
she felt almost as if it were the possession of some woman who had an
illicit place in her husband's life.

Margaret bent over the plan.

"Greggy, did you get the Stevens house?"

Gregory watched her with a faint smile. She was very near, so that
the same clean, sweet odor drifted to him as when he slipped his arm
about Puck. The same little tendril, too slight to be a curl; brushed
Margaret's neck just below her ear.

"But what on earth is that? Surely the Stevens aren't going to have a
front like that?"

"Hardly. What's the good of making a fortune in five years if you don't
write it all over the place?"

"What is it then?"

"Tubercular tenements."

"What?"

"It's a building where the poor, who either have or are going to have
tuberculosis, can get as much air and light as the rich will let them."

"It sounds terribly socialistic."

"It's terribly individual."

Margaret straightened and locked down with a glance that reached him
from the far citadel of pride to which she retreated when she was not
sure whether he was making fun of her.

"Who's putting up the money? It's not just building itself, I suppose."

Gregory laughed outright, for he saw Dr. Mary and Jean and himself
standing at the table, that first night six weeks ago.

"It's got to be raised yet."

"I don't see anything so amusing about that. It means that you're not
sure of your fee, as far as I can see."

"Oh, I'm quite sure about that. There is no fee. I'm doing it for
nothing."

"Well, I must say----" Margaret broke off. It was the one fixed
principle of her relations with Gregory that they never had an open
difference of opinion, especially before Puck. Above all things
Margaret Allen was well bred and she could no more have cleared the
atmosphere in a burst of anger than she could have struck some one.
She never dynamited an obstacle with outspoken objection. She returned
again and again and scratched at it.

"Is the contractor giving his time, and the laborers?"

Gregory was still looking off to the line of trees and smiling.

"It isn't started yet. But they may."

Margaret moved to the piazza rail and sat down. She was slight and so
fair that she seemed part of the sunlight sifting through the thick
green of the wistaria.

"Who's backing it? Somebody must be behind it all."

"Oh yes. There's some one very much behind it; in fact, two people."

It was impossible for Gregory to think of the plan without Dr.
Mary--Dr. Mary and Jean and himself in Gramercy Park.

"There's Dr. Mary MacLean and Jean Herrick."

"What! Jean Herrick! The Charity Organization woman?"

"She works with the Charities. It's her scheme."

"Well!"

Words failed Margaret.

"Well what?"

"How long have you been working on them?"

"About six weeks. Yes, just about six weeks," he repeated, and went on
with a detail of the entrance hall.

"Sometimes it seems to me that you do things to be deliberately
annoying. Why didn't you say anything about it? You know I'm interested
in public things like that, and besides The Fortnightly is going to
take up housing and public dependents this winter. Mabel Dawson is down
to get the first speaker, and we've talked over Jean Herrick a good
deal."

"You have?" Gregory suddenly stopped working on the detail.

"She's becoming terribly popular, in the front line of everything,
the last word in feminism and all that, you know. A lot of the most
progressive clubs have her down for winter talks. But The Fortnightly
has to be careful. We have a good many of the old families and we have
to go slowly. Mrs. Herrick is extremely radical and speaks at labor
meetings and strikes and all that kind of thing, you know. Besides,
she's divorced."

Gregory's pencil jabbed a hole in the blue-print. "Is she?"

"Yes, one of the horrid kind." Margaret's tone separated divorces,
tolerated some and excluded others. "Mabel wrote to a cousin in
California to find out before we asked her. Goodness knows we're not
straight-laced, but there are things one can't stand for officially.
This Herrick was an artist, Mabel says, did futurist things before any
one else heard of them and drank like a fish. He abused her shamefully,
but she stood it as long as she could."

Gregory got up and pushed back his chair.

"But when he began to bring women right into the house, she left him.
So of course it wasn't her fault. Mabel says she's a wonderful speaker,
just a little masculine in her manner, but then such a life wouldn't
make her specially clinging or gentle. We've about decided to have her."

Gregory closed the drawing board and Puck came hopefully to his side.

"You mustn't tease daddy, dear; he's busy."

Margaret moved toward the door and beckoned Puck. "Can you take her for
just a little walk this afternoon, before the Dawsons come? They're
going to bring Squdgy, you know." By raised eyebrows Margaret indicated
the need of Puck's being perfectly happy before the arrival of Squdgy,
whom she disliked and was apt to ignore completely.

Puck slipped her hand into her father's. The motion drew his notice.

"It's all right, Puckie, go and dress Lady Jane and I'll take you now."

"Do you _really_ want us to take Lady Jane, daddy? I ought to take
Matilda; Lady Jane went last week."

"Well, I'd rather have Lady Jane, because she knows the first half of
the story already and I'd have to go all over it from the beginning for
Matilda."

Puck sighed her relief and scampered off.

"Greg, don't tell her any of those terribly exciting things. You never
seem to understand how highly strung she is. All last week she kept on
giving the most terrible versions of that bear story to Lady Jane. You
don't realize what an imagination she's got."

"Thank God," Gregory snapped, and wished that Margaret would sometimes
give him an excuse to be as rude as he felt.

Out in the woods, with Puck trotting by his side, Gregory tried to push
the picture Margaret had brought before him into the cool shade of the
trees. But, in the shortest interludes of Puck's silence, it was there
before him again, hot and glaring and tawdry: Jean Herrick, married to
a libertine. A man who, in sottish sensuality, turned from one woman
to another. And she had "stood it,"--that ghastly compromise of weak
women--until it had passed beyond bounds.

It was impossible. And yet what did he know of women?

There had been that one grisette in Paris, who had embarrassed him
so by calling his smile "un petit oiseau." A single month's mildest
flirtation with a pretty stenographer, who was more like a mischievous
boy than a girl. And Margaret. He had married Margaret because she was
so different from the grisette and, yet, when he had put his arms round
Margaret for the first time, and she turned her sweet, unresponsive
lips to his, he had wanted to crush her, hurt her in some way, just
as he had once wanted to choke the grisette. As Margaret wasn't a
grisette, Gregory had believed the big love of his life had come.
Afterwards the need of making his place in the world had claimed him.
And, now, occasional moods he dispelled with extra work and Puck.

Margaret had always told him he was interested in nothing that he could
not draw, and did not know what was going on in the world. Perhaps
women were part of the "things going on." Perhaps he was old-fashioned.
Perhaps it was a puritanical streak, this intense repulsion to thinking
of Jean married to a drunken libertine. It would not have been a happy
memory, but Gregory could imagine a dozen men he knew, himself even,
living down such a memory, doing useful work in spite of an unfaithful,
drunken wife put out of their lives. How did he know but that----

"Dad-dy, _did_ the bears get the children?"

Gregory came back to a realization that Puck had been asking this for
some time.

"No, the bears did not get them, Puck; not in the end, but they had a
hard time of it."

Puck's eyes blackened with suppressed excitement. It had a startling
effect, had excitement on Puck. It was like an acid that ate out all
her resemblance to Margaret, obliterated the softness of outline,
seemed to devour even the delicate tints of her coloring. Excitement
brought Puck up the years to meet him, sent him racing backward to her.

"Oh, I was _so_ frightened they'd get all eaten up and left out there
without their mothers and daddies knowing where they was."

Her hand clutched Gregory's, and her other arm protected the beloved
Lady Jane.

"Lady Jane's been terrible frightened, too. I couldn't get her to sleep
last night, not for a long, long time."

"Dear me, that's too bad. I guess we'll have to settle the matter right
now."

Gregory sat on the ground under a huge chestnut and filled his pipe.
Puck curled close, cautioning Lady Jane to be "very, most perticular
still," and Gregory began a rambling sequel to the tale of the Three
Bears. Behind the Three Bears--Jean stood with Herrick.

They were late for luncheon, but Margaret made no comment. Puck did
not look over-excited and Gregory was in one of his silent moods.
Margaret wanted to ask him details about the Tubercular Tenements, and
Gregory knew, by her mole-like burrowings about the subject, that she
was pleased with his connection. In a way he could not unravel, it was
connected with a new wing some millionaire friend of Mabel Dawson's had
just donated to St. Luke's hospital in memory of a dead baby.

As soon as lunch was over, Margaret and Puck went to take a nap before
the coming of the Dawsons, and Gregory took the detail his walk with
Puck had interrupted, out to the hammock under the maple. But the
lines grouped themselves to pictures of the last six weeks and he did
nothing. Six weeks! For the first time, Gregory blocked the period out
of the past and the incredible richness of it startled him.

Six weeks, forty-two days since he had come two hours late to his
appointment with Mrs. Herrick of the C.O.S. and wondered whether she
did not sometimes pose. Six weeks since he had gone with her to the
meeting and heard the rumbling of the world below the safety of his own
conventional social strata. Only six weeks since he had again begun
to feel the stirring of the old dreams that he had believed dead. So
that now, after he left Jean in the evenings, it was hard sometimes to
remember that the plans they discussed were not things he was actually
doing, instead of the things he had forgotten he had ever hoped to do.

At five the Dawsons came. Mabel and Margaret retired to the end of
the piazza, Squdgy was unloaded upon Puck, who obediently took him
off to the play-house, and Bill Dawson, fat, moist, as bored by
Gregory as Gregory was by him, did his best to start a conversation.
Gregory wished he could follow Puck's example with Squdgy and give
Bill a picture book. He listened, however, as well as he could, to
the perspiring stockbroker's denunciation of Socialism and all "this
fashionable parlor radicalism," politely assisted him to a plank of
personal reminiscence and prophecy, and, with a breath of relief, saw
him presently fall off the plank into the stock exchange, where he let
him wallow happily in his native medium.

He was still in it, when the maid wheeled out the tea-wagon and
Margaret and Mabel came to join them. Gregory knew by the look in
Mabel's eyes that this was the first time Margaret had ever come in
under the wire first, and, by the new respect with which she treated
him, that the tenements linked him favorably with the great civic
achievements of The Fortnightly, Puck brought Squdgy, delivered him to
his mother as if he were a sacrifice and climbed into Gregory's lap.
Nor could any frowns or suggestions that "big girls sit in chairs"
dislodge her.

At last tea was over and the Dawsons went, Bill leading with the now
sleeping Squdgy in his arms, Mabel and Margaret sauntering behind. They
passed down the lane and disappeared. The gold in the sky dissolved to
palest yellow and faint green. Crickets chirped. The earth, freshened
by the coming coolness, threw back to the world, in spicy sweetness,
the garnered heat of the day. Puck slept in his arms.

In the kitchen the maid finished the dishes and went across the
creeping dusk to the next house. Snatches of laughter came to him and
he saw the two girls come out and sit on the back steps. In a few
moments the chauffeur from the big house up the road joined them, and
they all went off together.

Gregory carried Puck in and laid her on her bed. Then he went into the
library and switched on the light. He spread the blue-print and began
again on the delayed detail. It was the last touch to the plans, and
he had promised to bring it with him to-morrow night. But the weight
of the day just passed pressed down upon him, and ideas came slowly.
Margaret had been long in bed, when he finally drew the last line and
turned out the light.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


"What on earth is the matter with you to-night? You look as if you had
lost your last friend and been evicted for non-payment of rent." Jean
was leaning back in her usual chair to the right of the window, drawn
just far enough to keep in view the tops of the trees, beyond sight of
the dry, trodden grass. Her chin tilted, she looked at him sidewise,
laughing.

All day, at every interval not crowded with work, Gregory had been
pushing the thought of Herrick away. The need to do this had filled him
with a vague anger at Jean, and he had not intended coming to-night.
But the evening had stretched so empty before him that he had come, and
now he was angry that he had.

"Cheer up, it can't be as bad as all that," Jean bantered.

The words jarred and the tone annoyed him. "I beg your pardon. I didn't
realize that I was so terribly glum."

He spoke with a stilted conventionality that made Jean glance at him
quickly. The smile went out of her eyes. She wished she had not spoken.

A silence fell between them, unusual in its artificiality. Jean tried
to think of something impersonal to say, but there had never been
anything effortful in these hours with Gregory and the present need
made her uncomfortable. After all, a thousand incidents of which she
knew nothing might have happened to depress him. He had spent the
week-end with his family. The hinterland of Gregory's life came close,
and Jean felt that she had intruded.

The silence deepened. Jean wished that Mary would come. She thought of
getting a book, of finishing a report that she had begun, of going into
the kitchen. But she never picked up a book when she and Gregory were
together, nor finished office details, nor looked after Mamie in the
kitchen. And this feeling that she must move, get away from Gregory,
break the silence, filled her with an almost physical uneasiness.
This sudden need to move beyond the reach of some tangible element in
the silence, frightened her. So that Gregory, turning unexpectedly,
surprised a strange, unusual look on Jean's face, that made the
conventional remark he had finally succeeded in capturing unnecessary.
Jean, too, was in a new mood to-night.

The silence tingled with something that Gregory felt must always
have been in it. Something was pushing into the foreground, from its
seclusion in the carefree weeks behind. The need to know definitely
about Herrick was there before him at last. He could admit Herrick or
exclude him. For a moment he had the choice, and then Jean said:

"I am afraid Rachael is going to be ill. She looked like a ghost
to-day."

"What?" Gregory leaned forward, peering through the words to Jean's
purpose in uttering them.

"They are getting dissatisfied. Things are not moving fast enough. And
Rachael is very tired."

Jean seized Rachael and dragged her forward, held her there between
herself and Gregory.

Gregory slouched back in his chair.

"That's too bad. I suppose it's the heat."

"No, it's more than that. Tom is pestering her. If she gives up, the
whole thing will go under."

There was a silence.

"Do you think it very much matters after all? It's a pretty big price
you want her to pay."

The words brought a picture of Herrick on the night he had kissed her
and she had locked the door of their room. Jean moved as if to get up,
but her own motion drove back the memory, cleared her brain and forced
Herrick's hot eyes into the past.

"When personal need reaches the depths it has in Rachael," Gregory said
slowly, "it becomes cosmic."

"That sounds like fatalism."

Gregory looked at her quietly. What had been her own need, when she had
married Herrick? What had been his, when he had married Margaret?

"It's all so unreal when it's over, but----"

And then Mary was in the doorway laughing.

"Well, of all the gloomy-looking objects!"

The words exploded in the narrowing space between them. Smiling, Jean
dragged herself up from her chair. "We're so hungry we're perishing."

Why did she say that?

But Gregory too was glad Mary had come.

"We weren't gloomy. We were thinking--a process quite unknown to you,
Doctor."

"Absolutely. Mine's action." Mary threw her things on the couch but
did not sit down. Her eyes twinkled. Her whole plump person emanated
mystery.

"Mary, what have you got up your sleeve? You're just about ready to
burst with it."

"Well, it's not so bad, but it needs the accompaniment of food. Mamie!"

"Dinner's ready."

"Come on. I'll tell you when we reach the demitasses."

Nor could she be persuaded or trapped into a statement until the table
was cleared for coffee and cigarettes. Then she said:

"Dr. Fenninger is in town."

"Mary! Not really!"

"Yes, he is. I met him to-night in the Subway."

"Who is Fenninger? The Great Poohbah?"

"Just about, as far as we are concerned. He prescribes bread pills for
every exhausted society woman in town and diagnoses the indigestions of
millionaires at a thousand per. Jean, do you think mummy would get up a
dinner for him? He's going to be in town a week. We won't tell her how
important he is, just that he is alone in town, family away, 'simple
little home dinner, you know,' 'just ourselves in summer,' 'impromptu,'
'home atmosphere,' and so forth."

"I think she would. I'll ask her."

"But why does this man get asked to dinner because he prescribes bread
pills for society women?"

"Have you forgotten that we have to raise funds for the T.B.'s? Now,
does light glimmer?"

"Not a glimmer."

"It's this way," Jean explained. "We invite him to dinner, very
expensive and elaborate and described as a simple little home affair.
We make him very comfortable and mention the tenements. We go on eating
and mentioning gradually. By the time we get to the black coffee he
believes he thought up the whole thing; gives us a check--but that
doesn't matter so much--is pledged by his own masculine conceit to
prescribe an interest in raising funds to every bored patient he has.
By the time The Tea comes off, there you are."

"Well! Of all the round-about, feminine methods of procedure, that
takes the cake. Just explain to Mrs. Norris that there will be two
extra guests. I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"Yes you will. Because you're not asked. Nothing like that. Home
atmosphere to a man means himself. We'll tell you about it, but that's
as near as he'll get, isn't it, Jean?"

Jean laughed. "I'm afraid it is. We may be able to work Fenninger in
on mummy, but she's heard about you and thinks you're a frightfully
important person. It would scare her stiff to have you to dinner."

"Give her another name, anything. I've got to be in at the death."

"Besides," Mary interposed, "we'll have it on Sunday--best set for
lonely man in city without his family, dismal Sunday, etc."

"Well?" Gregory's eyes met Jean's for a second.

"You couldn't come on Sunday. You--won't be here."

There was an imperceptible pause, and then Gregory said quietly:

"No, in that case, I can't."

In a few moments they left the table and went back to the living-room.
But Gregory did not sit down again. He moved restlessly about the
room, reading bits out of magazines which he picked up at random under
pretense of trying to find an article he had seen the week before.

A little after nine he said he was tired, and had work to do at the
office. When he had gone Mary turned to Jean.

"Well, of all the extraordinary manifestations! What on earth is the
matter with the man?"

"How should I know? Nothing, probably."

"Rubbish. He got all fussed up and peevish about something. Do you
suppose he was really hurt that we wouldn't let him in on the dinner?"

"No, of course not. Besides, how could he come? He always goes home
over the week-end."

"I know. But there was something. I never saw him act like that before."

"Oh, men are likely to do anything. They're--they're so inconsequent."

Jean wondered what she meant, as she lit a cigarette and took the chair
facing out to the tree tops.

But later in the evening, when they were not talking of Gregory at all,
Mary said suddenly.

"Jean, do you suppose we'd better make it some other day? Sunday is the
best, but I wouldn't like Gregory to be really hurt."

"Nonsense, Mary. Of course Sunday is the best day. No. Let's leave it
that way."

But she too left earlier than usual.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Gregory Allen walked slowly uptown in the hot night, he was aware
that something decisive had happened. Some thread, carried over from
the moments alone with Jean before dinner had snapped, when Jean said:

"You couldn't come on Sunday."

All through these summer weeks, he had felt alone with Jean. But the
conditions of his life, his home, his wife, his child, his obligations,
which had entered not at all into his consciousness, must have been
present to her all the time. She did not think of him as a separate
human unit, in the way he thought of her. He was married. He had
obligations. He conformed to the conventional social usage. Married men
went home over the week-ends. Therefore it was impossible for him to be
present at the dinner. Jean had not for a moment seriously considered
the possibility of his doing it. And he would have, gladly. He would
have broken the habit of years. He would have stayed the two stifling
days in town. He would have done this thing if Jean had not said:

"You won't be here."

Why would he have done it? Why did he want so much to go?

Again and again Gregory cut through the tangle of false explanations
and reached this point. But beyond it he would not go.

"Oh, the devil!" Gregory turned at Forty-Second, passed the Subway
station and continued on to his office.

The elevator had stopped running and he walked the three flights.
The last mail lay on his desk as the office boy had stacked it. On
the top, anchored by a paper weight so that he would be sure to see
it instantly, was a telegram. Gregory tore it open. It was from Amos
Palmer, asking him to come at once. The Palmers were hastening their
departure for Europe and wanted some changes made in the plans.

For weeks the Palmer place had been a joke with him and Jean and Dr.
Mary. They had taken turns in designing terrible ornamentations which
would advertize for miles Palmer's success in the leather trade. Dr.
Mary had insisted on a golden shoe for a weather-cock on the ten
thousand dollar barn, and Jean had suggested carving cattle all over a
turret. Gregory smiled as he recalled Jean's painful efforts with the
cow.

It was the biggest job he had had for years. But--the remaining month
of summer shut up with Amos and his wife and the ten-thousand-dollar
barn.

"I'll be damned if I----"

Gregory stopped, sat down at his desk and lit his pipe. He smoked one
pipe and lit another. Again and again he filled his pipe, lit, and
smoked slowly.

It was very late when he took down the 'phone and sent an affirmative
telegram to Amos Palmer.

Then he looked up trains. There was one at eight in the morning.
Gregory wrote a note of explanation to Margaret and laid it on the mail
to be sent out first in the morning. Then he took a sheet of paper,
started a note to Jean, tore it and began one to Dr. Mary. When he
read it over it sounded as if he were apologizing for going at all.
He tore this and tried again. Now he seemed to be asking permission.
This followed the others to the waste-basket and Gregory locked his
desk. There was really no need to write at all. They would understand
that he had been called away, and anyhow the plans were finished. When
he returned, things would be different. Summer would be over. Gregory
whistled as he packed the Palmer plans, and all the way down the three
flights to the street.

It was after one, but the crowds still moved in four streams, two up,
two down. Gregory wondered why so many people walked in the night, as
if the city, like a nervous woman, must never be left alone.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


The Fenninger dinner was a success, and Jean waited all the next
morning for Gregory to 'phone. She so thoroughly expected him to, and
waited so impatiently, enjoying in anticipation certain shadings which
she knew would delight him, that, late in the afternoon, when the
alternative of calling him occurred to her, Jean could not do it. She
did not like to feel this way, and told herself that her own interest
had colored her perspective. There was no need for Gregory to rush to
the 'phone as soon as he came back from his week-end with his family,
when she would surely see him in the evening. Nevertheless, that night
at dinner, when Mary asked her if she had heard from Gregory, Jean felt
a relief out of all proportion to the explanation she had forced on her
own logic.

"Funny, he didn't ring up."

Jean cracked a walnut with great deliberation. "I suppose he's extra
busy."

"Not so busy as all that. Jean, you can say what you like, but he
was angry. I imagine, in some moods; he would be awfully touchy, and
evidently he was in one that night. But he'll never be able to resist
long."

Jean picked the meat carefully from the shell and ate it slowly.

"Let's string him a bit first," Mary continued, "pretend we couldn't
work Fenninger and then spring it on him. He'll smile, then gurgle and
finally explode like a small boy."

Jean reached for another nut. "He is like a small boy, very often."

There was a silence, while Mary chose a bunch of raisins from the nut
dish and ate them thoughtfully.

"It's a damn shame," she said suddenly, apropos of nothing.

Jean rose and pushed back her chair.

"Oh, lots of things are a shame," she returned flippantly, and they
went into the living-room.

But when a week had passed without hearing anything from Gregory, Mary
rang up his office. He was out of town. No, they did not know when he
would be back, exactly, certainly not for another three weeks. He was
at the Palmer place.

"Well I'll be darned!" Dr. Mary apostrophized the tip of her cigarette,
and in acquiescence, the little ash-head fell off. "That's not like him
one single bit. Not even if he was called away in a hurry. I wonder
what----"

She did not see Jean for two days, but when she did, asked abruptly:

"Have you heard from Gregory yet?"

"No. Have you?"

"I rang up the office. He's gone to the Palmer place, will be gone for
a month."

Under pretext of laying aside her things, Jean turned away.

"I suppose they rushed things at the end, one of the whims of the idle
rich."

"That's no reason for his acting like a boor."

"Of course it isn't. But then he has."

"I don't believe it. There was something----"

"Didn't I tell you men were queer?" Jean spoke without turning.
"They--they don't have reasons, not good ones, for everything they do.
They----"

"Fiddlesticks! Maybe they don't know their own reasons, but they have
'em. Nobody, not even a man, switches round like that without some
cause. Why, he's been coming here three and four times a week, and he's
enjoyed it, too. I feel as if he belonged somehow, don't you?"

Jean was looking into the Park, to the trees, a sickly green with their
coating of summer dust under the arc lights. But she could see Gregory
lounging in the empty chair at the other end of the window, could see
him very distinctly, his nervous hands on the dark tapestry of the
arms, his head tilted back.

"Yes. He does seem to go with the place."

"Are you sure you didn't do anything? He looked awfully glum that night
when I came in."

"I don't know. Maybe I did, but I can't think of anything." Jean
continued to stare at the dusty trees. "Anyhow, if he's the reasonable
being you insist he is, he'll get over being huffy, and then we'll
know."

Mary laughed. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. But I'll
confess that it annoys me. Doesn't it you?"

Jean faced into the room. "No. But then I have real annoyances to
contend with."

"You've been at it again with Pedloe!"

"I certainly have. He's having a fit because I'm on the committee
for arranging strike relief. Of course, personally, Mrs. Herrick,
my sympathies are all for the strikers, but you understand that
officially----' Round and round he goes like a frightened squirrel.
Honestly, it's pitiful. He can't come out openly on either side. He's
just as shackled by that $6000 a year salary as a convict with a ball
and chain. What do you think he told me?"

Jean forced aside the figure of Gregory and put Dr. Pedloe in his
place. Holding the head of the Charity Organization firmly before her
eyes, she began walking up and down.

"Almost anything, from the way you look."

"He said that this strike, it's got fifty thousand women now and it
may become sympathetic before it's over and take in hundreds, was
essentially a struggle of Jewish workers. That the Hebrew Relief
should supplement strike benefits. And that in the cases of others,
Christians, well, he did not know just what they could do, but he was
very sure that the Organization could do nothing. Why? Because the
roots of the thing ramify so that some of our very heaviest subscribers
are in the tangle, and he doesn't dare go against them."

"What's he want you to do? Resign from the committee?"

"Yes. He hinted around for an hour, hoping I'd help him out, I suppose,
but I just sat and let him fidget. So in the end he came out flat
and told me he could not stand for having me officially mixed up in
it and I told him that I was not officially mixed up, that it was
purely a question of personal belief,--you ought to have seen him at
that,--and friendship for Rachael Cohen. He got off the strike then,
quick, and began to hint that in other ways I did not measure up to
Organized ethics. I always knew he was furious at those talks I gave
last winter, but he never said anything before. He was quite worked up
to-day, however, and finally put it just about as plainly as Tom did to
Rachael. You know he gave her the choice between him, a decent home in
the Bronx--and her people."

"Do I understand that Dr. Pedloe----"

"Scarcely. But he did intimate that in future he would be grateful if
I would attend to my duties as per Organization and nothing else. I
told him I would think it over and he almost fell out of his chair. He
simply can't conceive of any one throwing up a perfectly good job 'with
a certain position in this community, Mrs. Herrick.'"

"Are you going to?"

Jean walked the length of the room and back without answering. Then she
came and stood before the doctor.

"Mary, I'm getting pretty sick of the whole thing. It's just one
tangled mass of red tape. Here we are, literally hundreds, right here
in New York--and think of the whole country--intelligent men and women,
doing what? We feed a huge machine with our strength and brains, and
what comes out of it? What are we _doing_? What evils are we curing?
What are we constructing? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. We are an
obsolete institution. We are of no more use than the rudimentary fifth
toe of a horse. And we're not even honest about it. That's the greatest
danger. We pretend to ourselves and to society, that's too lazy to
look into it, that we are tremendously important. We get out reports
that look as if we were safeguarding humanity from all kinds of evil
and imposture, and spend thousands in keeping alive the fact that Mrs.
Jones got half a ton of coal last month. If we'd only be honest about
it! But we pretend we're doing good. The whole business is a pitiful
survival of the days when a kind lady went round in a pony cart and
gave away red flannel."

"I know it. But most of us can only go on plodding in the road that's
already made. We do what we can to broaden it or make it straighter,
and then we die. But if you see another, Jean, get down on your knees,
like mummy, and thank God."

"I have been thinking a lot lately about something I would like to try.
I suppose you and the T.B.'s have stirred some sleeping ambitions.
I don't know that in the end it would set the world on fire, but at
least it would have the vigor of honesty. It won't be going round in
a rut worn a mile deep by others. I want--hold tight, Mary--to gather
together all the strength going to waste in women's clubs and harness
it."

"Good Lord! Women's Clubs!"

"Go right on, Mary; there isn't a thing you can say that I haven't
thought of. I know all about the fiddling little sections for doing
fiddling, unnecessary things. I know all about the bickerings and
miniature storms, every drawback to getting efficient action out of
our sex. But--this is _our_ century. It is our first real chance in
history, and I don't know but what we're measuring up pretty well. I
suppose there are a dozen bigger things one could do, but for some
reason I want to get in on the ground floor of this."

"You want to start something all your own."

"That's it. I want to start something. I want to organize a body, local
at first, but national before we're through with it, a kind of woman's
congress to deal with all national questions that concern women. If
we have problems we ought to settle them, not one little handful here
and another there. And if we haven't, then let's stop ranting. I don't
want a national representation of clubs that have separate interests.
It's--well--'congress' is just as good a name as any other."

"Jean, I'd give a good deal to be fifteen or twenty years younger. I
wouldn't let you get into this alone."

Something choked in Jean's throat, and the old feeling that she had had
years ago in the clinic on the Hill, of gathering courage from this
white-haired woman, swept over her.

"Sometimes, Mary, I feel as if all the women in the world, who can't
get out somehow, were behind me, pushing me on."

Mary reached both hands to Jean's shoulders. "They are, Jeany--I
believe they are."

"And sometimes, Mary, I wish to Heaven they'd let me alone."

With a laugh, Dr. Mary sank back into her chair.

"Well, they won't. Now, tell me all about it. It's got the T.B.'s
beaten a mile."

"Not to-night. This is one of their pushing days, and I feel as if they
had me just about over the edge. I'm all in, and anyhow, it's pretty
vague yet."

So they smoked and talked of other things, but not again of Gregory nor
why he had gone without a word.

It was close on twelve when Jean let herself into the apartment, and
saw the light go suddenly out under Martha's door at the end of the
hall. Jean tiptoed to the door and opened it.

"Mummy, I saw you do it this time."

"Well, dear, if I can't sleep, I didn't know that I was not allowed to
read."

"Not without glasses. Did you go to the oculist's to-day?" Jean sat
down on the side of the bed.

"I didn't have time to-day. I'll go to-morrow."

In the shaft of moonlight, Martha looked very small and frail. Jean
bent and kissed her. "Please, mummy, don't put it off any longer. You
do need them."

"Yes, dear. I'll go to-morrow. I really will. I promise."

It was not often that Jean came and sat on the edge of the bed, and it
made Martha happy. She wanted to draw Jean down as if she were a little
girl again, only she knew that Jean hated more emotion than the mood
called for; so she only patted Jean's hands and smiled.

But to-night Jean would not have objected. She was tired to the point
of being glad to feel the worn fingers on her own. For all the way home
in the train, back and forth behind the plans for the congress, which
the quarrel with Pedloe and Mary's faith had brought sharply to the
foreground of her thoughts, had moved the thought of Gregory.

Why had he gone like that? Gone for weeks. What had it to do with the
strange mood of the night he had sat so silent, at the window? Why had
he looked at her like that when he had said: "Well?" Why had he said so
strangely: "No, in that case, I can't."

"You're tired, dear."

"Yes. I guess I am. It's been a busy day and I had one of my periodic
fights with Pedloe. Some day he's going to fire me, or I'm going to
resign, and he'll be the most astonished thing alive."

"Remember, dear, once you thought this the most wonderful work in the
world."

"I know. But I've outgrown it. It's such a useless round. It doesn't
get anywhere."

Martha stroked Jean's fingers. "I wouldn't do anything hasty, if I were
you. Lots of things straighten out if you give them time."

Jean smiled. "You don't know Brother Pedloe, mummy; a million years
wouldn't straighten out the kinks in his soul. Besides, I guess he fits
well enough. It's the whole institution that's worn out--a relic of
twenty years ago. I feel as if I were in prison."

"Well, don't make any change hastily. Wait until you see clearly. You
want things to come so quickly, Jean, and you want them so hard."

"I know." Jean slipped from the bed and leaned over the quiet face.
"But not to-night, mummy. I want nothing in the world but my own
comfortable bed."

Martha looked anxiously at her. "Pat was over this afternoon, to see
whether you were dead or alive. She says she doesn't suppose she'll
ever see you again until the building's up."

"I don't suppose she will."

"She's so proud of the baby, Jean, and he is a dear. Don't you think
you could take an hour or two and run over? She would be so pleased.
Pat loves you, Jean."

"I'll try. Maybe. Good-night, dear, and don't forget to wake me. Seven
and not a quarter past. You will, won't you?"

"Yes, dear. Good-night. And try not to think of work, but go straight
to sleep."

Jean promised and shut the door.

But the weight of Martha's unshakeable patience, of Pat's efficiency
and unswerving love, of Gregory's life beyond her knowledge, all this
settled security, this sureness of others, oppressed her, so that, even
between cool sheets, the ordered round of daily intercourse seemed a
difficult and intricate maneuvering among unknown quantities.

Why had Gregory gone like that?




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


For the first week a feeling of relief in going without writing to
Jean had persisted in the background of Gregory's mind. But as the
heat increased, and the improvements suggested by Amos Palmer and his
wife rasped Gregory's nerves to snapping, he realized that he had been
colossally rude. He had acted so badly that he could not write except
to apologize, and he could not do that without explaining; which was
impossible because there was nothing to explain, at least nothing that
would not prove him the fool he had been.

What had been his motive? He did not know, and now that he was speeding
back on the Express to New York, he did not care.

From Harlem to the Grand Central, Gregory sat in the smoker, his
suitcase at his feet, his hat on, hoping that Jean had no engagement
that would prevent her from going to dinner. He wanted to sit opposite
Jean and tell her about the Palmers, the endless alterations that
every few days, had thrown him into a rage and a resolution to quit.
He wanted to tell her about the house, as it was finally working out,
a compromise between Amos' ideals and his own efforts to keep the
man from being a laughing stock. He wanted to hear Jean's chuckle of
appreciation, for now that he had left it all definitely behind, it
certainly was funny.

When Jean heard the telephone in the outer office ring, she answered
quickly. It was one of those blindingly hot afternoons in late
September, after a comparatively cool spell, when summer comes back
with vindictive pleasure, like a cantankerous relative from the verge
of the grave, to spoil one's just expectations. For two hours Jean had
clutched her patience and held on through the exhausting insistence
of the Friday Committee to do its duty. With the excuse that she was
expecting an important message and would have to answer personally,
Jean escaped for a moment.

At the sound of Gregory's voice, Jean's heart beat furiously and then
seemed to stop.

"Hello. HELLO. I want to speak to Mrs. Herrick, please."

"This is Mrs. Herrick."

"Hello. This is Gregory Allen."

"Well!" It came with just the right degree of heartiness. "When did you
get back?"

"About two minutes ago. Am I in time to take you to dinner? Hello.
_Hello._ I say, Central, you've cut me off. I want----"

"Hello. No, they haven't cut off. I'm trying to 'phone, and listen to
a meeting in the other room at the same time." With the ease of this
falsehood, Jean's composure crept back.

"Who is it,--The Dalton?"

"Yes, after a month's rest."

"I'll come straight down and rescue you. Give everybody a ton of ice
all around and close the meeting."

"It's milk," Jean whispered into the receiver, "the Caseys have had a
quart a day for three weeks! We've been half an hour on it now."

"It sounds like an all-night session, but I'm coming just the same. Six
thirty, will that be all right?"

"Six would be better. I promised Rachael to see her to-night before
eight."

"All right. Six. How's everything?"

"Beyond our dreams. Did you put on the turret?"

"Worse. A cupola with an electric globe on top, a kind of spherical
Star of Bethlehem."

"Nothing but a blue-print will convince me. Bring it down."

She hung up and sat staring at the floor until a sudden cessation of
voices in the next room attracted her. Reluctantly she went back.

"We've decided to continue the Casey milk for another week, Mrs.
Herrick, until I have had time to look more thoroughly into the reason
of Casey's losing his last job."

Mrs. J. William Dalton's expression conveyed that after that, not even
Jean herself could do anything.

"Very well, I think that would be wisest." Jean did not sit down again,
but stood at the table fingering the mass of records. "And I think
we've done enough for to-day."

Mrs. Dalton opened her lips, thought better of it, and made no
objection. It was hot, and if she started to fight out the Monarco case
with Berna it would be another hour before she could get home, take
off her corsets, and have William forbid her "once and for all to go
getting all tired out with that Charity dope."

"Very well."

The Friday Committee groaned with relief, pushed back the chairs, and
gradually rustled away.

Jean washed her hands and changed to the clean blouse that she kept for
emergencies. She had just finished when the elevator stopped, the outer
door opened and Gregory crossed to the private office. Jean opened the
door before he knocked, and they stood for a moment, one on each side
of the threshold.

"My, but it's good to get back. You look ripping."

Every pulse in Jean answered so suddenly and unexpectedly to the
clasp of his fingers, that she almost lost the non-committal greeting
flitting in her brain.

"So do you, and I don't believe a word about the Star of Bethlehem."

"Well, it's true, whether you believe it or not. A heavily-powered
arc-light right on top."

Jean withdrew her hands and turned to get her hat from its peg. Gregory
watched her. She was extraordinarily strong and cleanly cut for a
woman. Every motion she made was firm and carried decision with it, as
if from a mass of possibilities she chose that particular thing and
nothing else.

"All right, I'll believe it. After all it's not more extraordinary than
what we accomplished. You're not the only one with news."

"Is Fenninger still alive? Or did he make his will in your favor and
die of indigestion?"

"Neither. But you'll have to wait. I'm not going to read my lines
without the proper back-drop."

"Will The Fiesole do, or isn't that swell enough for the Doctor?"

"It will do nicely; he'll think he's slumming."

The Fiesole was Mary's favorite place, and this was the first time
they had eaten there without her. Jean wondered if that were why it
seemed so different. She felt that this was a new environment, and yet
there were the same long rooms, stretching back from the street balcony
on which they sat. There were the same waiters, hurrying at the same
gait, as if they had been wound by machinery to a set speed which they
could never lessen or increase by their individual wills. There was
the same orchestra, sheltered behind the dingy palms, playing the same
semi-classical, popular music. There was the steady buzz of talk and
the same people might have been sitting there for months. The heat had
in it the same feel of dust, as if it held the disillusioned souls of
millions, ground to powder in their struggle for forgetfulness; there
was the same odor of highly spiced food, like too strong scent; the
same sensuous music, the passion in its heart hidden under the cloak
of form, except when it broke through and flicked the senses, till men
touched women's hands in filling their glasses and the women leaned
across the table.

"Well, you look as if you had never seen it before. Doesn't it suit
Fenninger, after all?"

Across the table Gregory was smiling. He looked happy and younger than
Jean had ever seen him.

"Perfectly. But he'd like any place where he was the richest man in it
and people could see him spend money."

While they waited for the first course, Gregory told her of Palmer's
suggestions and Mrs. Palmer's struggle between pride at being able to
spend as much as she liked, and uncertainty as to the taste.

"She has just one criterion, a hotel she once worked in that had green
marble walls in the hall, and blue velvet furniture in the lobby. It
was evidently large and rather quiet because she has kept an impression
of something 'terribly genteel.' She measures everything by it, the
timbre of your voice, the way you take off your hat, and the thickness
of the stair carpet. She's as pretty as a picture. The whole thing
would be repulsive, that old man wallowing in his money and passion for
this child, except for a kind of honest eagerness in the girl herself.
He wants to take her somewhere abroad to get the edges rubbed off, and
give his grown children a chance to cool down. She'll get the edges
rubbed off, and some of his, too, long before he thinks it's time to
come home. But she'll always be grateful, and never let people make fun
of him."

"Poor child. I hope they won't get rubbed too smooth before she sees
the star again."

"No. It'll take a bit longer than that. Besides the pergola will be
the first to go; she isn't sure of it even now, with Turkish lamps of
colored glass and Japanese wind-bells. In about three years she'll
make him sell it."

"I'll keep an eye on it. It's rather far, but it would make a glorious
convalescent home, if we could get it for nothing."

"No doubt _you_ could."

They laughed in understanding.

"Exit Amos. What did you do to Fenninger?"

"It worked like a charm. We didn't tell mummy a thing except that a
friend of Mary's was in town for a few days, and she wanted him to have
one really good home dinner. Mummy rose to the bait and begged for
more. As a relative I can't brag about that dinner but, by the time we
got to a frozen dream of mummy's invention, he believed that the whole
idea had originated with himself. And by the time the percolator got to
bubbling he gave me a check for three thousand as if he were hiring me
to attend to a few minor details he had no time for."

"Poor devil! And his part's only just begun. Does he know he's going to
operate on people for the remainder?"

"He's not. He just advises the operations; Mary and I do the surgery."

"Who is it?" Gregory was grinning, his small-boy grin.

"It's not a 'who.' It's an it. Fenninger's pet case is a millionaire,
cirrhosis of the liver, with two pieces of property on the East River,
one in the upper fifties and one in the nineties. He thinks we can get
either on a small lease; it can't be deeded over altogether because of
some legal tangle, but it's perfectly safe. Mary and I are going to
make our choice this Sunday."

"I want to help, may I?" There was a pause. Something hung in the
balance. And then Gregory said dully:

"Be sure to choose the right one."

"We will. Mary is good at that kind of thing."

The waiter brushed off the crumbs and brought the coffee. When they
began talking again the mood had changed. Gregory told Jean of a
competition to build a Peoples' Auditorium in Chicago. It was open to
the architects of America, and he had played with the idea through the
hot, lonely nights of the past month.

"Whenever the pergola got too much, I took a swat at this."

"Well?"

Gregory shrugged. "It was good fun. It saved Palmer's life more often
than he knew."

"When can I see them?"

Gregory ground the ash of his cigarette into the cloth as he answered:

"They're in the waste-basket. I was afraid to keep them around, like a
drunkard with a bottle of whiskey."

"Why?"

After a moment, Gregory answered: "It's years since I've done anything
but Stephens and Palmer houses."

Jean reached for the little silver coffee pot and held it over her cup.
But it was several moments before she noticed that there was no more
coffee in the pot. She put it down.

"That's no reason."

"Oh, yes, it is. If I don't try, I can't fail."

Gregory's lips smiled but his eyes were tired. Jean looked away.

"You wouldn't fail. I'm sure you wouldn't fail."

"It's almost twelve years since I left the Beaux Arts, and I'm putting
electric stars on Palmer pergolas."

"You are not!"

"Yes, I am, and glad to do it. You don't understand. Why, the night
that I thought most seriously about entering the contest, I felt as if
I were presuming, doing something I had no right to do. I walked till
almost morning in the woods, and then I threw the beginnings I had
made away. You don't understand. The worms have been at work too long
inside."

"They have _not_." The emphasis pricked like a sword. Jean was leaning
to him across the table. "You are not glad to put arc lights on
pergolas, and the worm has never gnawed at all. It's not what you do
that makes a failure or what you don't do. It's what we no longer dream
of doing, and--you _do_ want to enter."

The throbbing assurance drew Gregory's eyes. He tried to smile.

"But think of all the young, undefeated men whose souls have not been
Palmerized."

Jean's eyes were black and stern, as Puck's were sometimes.

"Your soul has not been Palmerized. Nothing can hurt us unless we let
it."

Gregory's fingers trembled as he lit another cigarette. Did she believe
that really, of every one? Was it abstract faith, a gauge by which she
measured men, or was it for him? He had to know.

"Then why didn't I go ahead? There's nothing exterior to prevent me."

"Because," Jean said slowly, "because, when we can really do big
things, the light at first blinds and rather confuses. But you get used
to the light and go ahead. You will draw the plans again."

There was a long silence, before Gregory said, without looking up:

"I believe I shall. And it will be all your fault."

Jean's smile was uncertain, too, as she replied:

"All right. I'm willing to take the blame."

They drank the last drops of cold coffee to The Auditorium, and then
Jean looked at her watch and got up quickly.

"There seems something specially fatal about plans and the strike. I
promised Rachael to see her to-night. I've got to run."

"Wait. I'll walk down with you."

"I may have to stay some time. I'm worried about Ray----" Before
the look in Gregory's eyes, Jean stopped. She knew he had not heard
although he was looking directly at her. She sought for words to
prevent his coming, but she knew they would be useless even if she
found them.

Gregory paid the check and they left the restaurant. In absolute
silence they walked along Division Street, between the rows of
shrieking hucksters, and past the babies tumbling in their path. They
halted before a dirty tenement on Essex Street. Again Jean tried to
think of something to say that would turn Gregory back, and could
not. So close that she could almost feel his body touching hers,
they mounted the first two flights with their imitation tiling and
flickering gas, the third with its cracked plaster, the fourth with no
lights at all, and the fifth, so dark that they had to feel their way
by the greasy wooden wall.

There was no light under Rachael's door. "I don't believe she's in.
There must be something wrong. Terribly wrong."

Gregory did not answer. She could hear him breathing in quick, deep
breaths. She began knocking sharply and calling. But no one answered.
Jean turned the handle. The door opened. It was silent and dark and
stifling.

"I think I had better leave a note." Jean entered the kitchen, and
Gregory crossed the threshold and stood close.

"Have you a match? I--think--I'd better--leave a note." Against the
weight holding her back, Jean forced herself forward toward the front
room, lit palely in the light from the street lamps far below. Gregory
could see her outlined in the hot blackness. He turned and closed the
outer door.

"Haven't you a match?" Jean groped in the space before her, for Gregory
was crossing the kitchen now, was coming to her.

"Haven't you--one--match?"

"No," Gregory answered at random, "no." His mouth was parched, although
his whole body was bathed in cold damp.

Jean's hand touched a little brass match safe under the wall
gas-bracket. Her fingers closed on it, and for a moment she stood
gripping it, leaning against the bamboo table under the bracket. Then
a yellow glare absorbed the darkness, and Jean sat down at the table.
Gregory drew one quick, deep breath and moistened his lips.

Jean found a scrap of paper and a pencil in her handbag, and the
pencil, obeying a law of its own, moved. Jean folded the note and stuck
it in a corner of the mirror. If Rachael came home she must see it.

"There." Jean rose and stood with her hand on the gas-cock. "If you'll
light the light on the landing first--it's just outside, it's hard
negotiating this labyrinth."

Gregory obeyed. Jean turned out the gas and followed. They went down
the stairs in silence. Without a word they walked through the crowded
street and turned west to the nearest Subway. At the entrance Gregory
stopped.

"I think I'll take the El. It's just as near for me and a lot cooler.
Good-night. And don't abscond with the strike benefits."

Jean nodded. "No. I won't. And don't put a pergola on the auditorium."

The tone was brisk. Jean smiled back as she vanished into the entrance
hole. Gregory turned away. He hated her.

Jean was grateful for the stifling air of the tunnel, the noise, the
lights, the groups waiting for the train. It was familiar and safe.
Wedged between a fat Jew in a black alpaca coat, and a sleeping Italian
plasterer, covered with the dust of his trade, Jean stared before her.
Had she said those last words at all, or only mouthed them?




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


Jean never knew by what power she left the train at the right station,
nor how she sat as usual for a few moments on Martha's bed and told
her of the meeting. She had no memory of kissing Martha good-night nor
coming to her own room.

But she must have done these things, because another day was creeping
out of the east, and she still sat by the window, trying to think, but
the motive power of her brain was dead. There was no explanation, no
reason, no wonder at it. Analysis and explanation were the pipings of
crickets, extinguished in a crash of thunder. There was only the thing
itself. She loved Gregory Allen with a love that she had not known
existed. It was a terrific wave, crushing upon her from the outside. It
was so far beyond her will or control, that the thought of beating it
back was drowned in its own flood.

All her life led to the moment when she had stood in the dark alone
with him and been afraid. All her life she had been walking blindfolded
to this point of blazing light. It reached back to the days when she
had longed so passionately for something to happen, for something to
smash the sordid monotony of dutiful acceptance. It held all the beauty
to which she had clung so desperately. It had been the driving power
of the wind over the hills, the lashing of the rain, the sparkle of
the sun on the Bay. It had whispered its reality in the moving leaves,
called loudly in the wash of the waves on the sand. It had always been
there close, all through her lonely childhood, the dreary years of
college, and in those long days in the open with Herrick. It had come
close in the wrapping fog and the crackle of the beach fires in the
little coves where she and Herrick had talked for hours with dead poets.

Jean buried her face in her hands. For in the dawn, creeping up the
river, Herrick was coming toward her. In the motionless void between
two days, he stood looking at her. And Jean knew that behind the fear
that had dragged her to the gas-bracket above the bamboo table was the
longing for Gregory's arms about her.

When the tips of the trees lit to gold, Jean rose and crept into bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was almost three o'clock when Gregory let himself into the
apartment, and the air of the place, closed for weeks, rushed at him as
if it had been waiting. With the force of a physical blow it shattered
the peace he had won in the long battle he had fought, alone in his
office, after leaving Jean. He opened the windows slowly. Then he came
back again into the living-room and the weary round began again.

He wanted Jean with the pent-up longing of years. He wanted her with
a need from which there was no escape. He had always wanted her, from
the first moment when he had come late to the appointment and Jean
had explained the scheme to him in her brisk, business-like fashion.
He had wanted her all through the summer, through every moment of it.
Through the long talks alone, while Mary studied or slept in the room
beyond. Through every gay dinner, and boring interminable week-end.
He had wanted her desperately when he ran away to the Palmer place.
And his need had thrust almost through his consciousness during those
interminable hours coming back to her.

He had wanted her as she crossed the office only a few hours before,
and he had wanted her terribly as she leaned across the table, the
faith in her clear eyes flicking to life all the dreams that life with
Margaret had killed.

And up in the reeking blackness shutting them in alone together, high
in the air, with Jean across the room, blocked faintly in that same
blackness, he had wanted her. And he had resisted. Against the current
dragging him to the center of life, he had clung to his silly little
rock of--what? No thought of Margaret had entered his mind. No fear
or convention. Neither custom nor social rule had anything to do with
this. Of what had he been afraid?

Gregory's forehead was damp, and he slumped low in his chair. He might
have held her in his arms, crushed her resistance, kissed her to the
ease of that gnawing hunger within.... What if she had resisted?... And
she might not have resisted. She was no girl of eighteen, desired for
the first time. She was a woman. She had been married, married to a
libertine.

"Good God!" Gregory jumped to his feet. "I am rotten, rotten clear
through."

But the pictures would not go. Their vividness tortured Gregory to
motion and until dawn he walked a beaten path through the living-room,
across the dining-room, back to the living-room through the hall. At
five o'clock he threw himself on the couch.

He slept heavily until eight, then took a cold bath and prepared some
coffee. He was at the office before nine. The desk was piled with a
month's accumulation that had gotten beyond Benson, and Gregory was
grateful that it had. He worked through without a break until four
o'clock. Then he segregated the most pressing business, packed his
portfolio and caught the Long Island Express.

Puck came hurtling down the path, screaming: "Daddy! My Daddy!"
Margaret came, too, not hurriedly, but with just the right degree of
welcome and surprise in her eyes. Her cool lips took the meaningless
kiss that still passed between them on all their meetings and partings,
for, with the death of all reality, they had grown wonderfully careful
of these insincerities. She led the way to the house, while Puck
capered beside him, and they had an early dinner.

Later, Gregory lit his pipe and wandered through the woods in the dusk
with Puck, but often Puck jerked his hand and cried impatiently:

"Daddy, aren't you listening to Lady Jane?"

Gregory stayed until the following Wednesday. When he went back,
Margaret and Puck went, too.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


It was the end of October. The trees in the parks and along the
Palisades were bare, but the sun still shone and children danced in the
streets to the music of the hurdy-gurdies. On Fifth Avenue, women in
costly furs drove from shop to shop, buying greedily. Starved through
their long summer with the mountains and the sea, they bought laces
and jewels and still more costly furs. Down in the restaurants of the
foreign quarters, the proprietors had taken in the little tables and
dismantled the artificial gardens. The husbands of the women in costly
furs now dined at home or in their uptown clubs.

Everywhere people settled to their winter's work. The strikers and
manufacturers were locked in a death grip, and Jean often sat up half
the night with Rachael. Rachael was whiter and more flamelike than
ever. She never mentioned Tom, but Jean knew that he had married a girl
of his own faith and that Rachael knew.

Then, on the fifteenth the manufacturers capitulated. With almost all
their demands granted the strikers went back to work. No jubilant mass
meeting marked the victory. Worn with the long fight the workers went
back quietly. Jean felt as if something had gone out of her life. The
settlement left vacant hours, and she wanted something to fill every
moment. For the thought of Gregory was always waiting, ready to slip in.

From dreading ever to see him again, Jean had passed through hours when
nothing else mattered, dizzy hours when she juggled with excuses for
communicating with him and persuaded herself that it was the perfectly
natural thing to do. And there were hours, lying awake at night, when
she did not think of herself at all, but went round and round the
endless circle of Gregory's motives. That he had shared her fear never
entered Jean's mind, for so deep and hidden was the longing to believe
that he cared, that not even Jean's analysis dragged it to light. One
impossible reason after another Jean grasped and held for a little
while, and then it slipped away. He was busy. He meant to ring up or
write or come--and didn't. Summer and winter were two different worlds
in New York. He had been bored and lonely then; now his days were full.

Jean held to this firmly, and, as the weeks slipped away, succeeded in
believing it. Still, she was glad when Mary at last stopped mentioning
him. Shortly after Thanksgiving, Jean and the doctor made up the list
of invitations to the tea, with which, in what now seemed another life,
they had threatened Gregory. Dr. Mary jabbed her pencil through his
name, which headed the old list made up that hot June night.

"It's your business, of course, Jean, and you can do as you like; but
_I_ wouldn't ask him, for anything. I don't believe it will make any
difference, and we have Fenninger. It's really going to look terribly
imposing, the building plans and the lot diagram, too."

"I don't want to ask him. Fenninger will be the whole show and more."

But, a week later, as Jean moved through the crowded rooms, explaining
the same things over and over, receiving congratulations and the more
substantial promises of checks, her eyes kept wandering to the door.
And she knew she was hoping that somehow Gregory would come. There was
no way that he could know, and yet----For what seemed interminable
lengths of time Jean kept her back deliberately to the door, and then,
when she was sure that it did not matter to her at all, turned, and for
one brief second--so vividly was he in her imagining--saw him with his
badly fitting clothes and the happy twinkle in his eyes.

When the last guest had gone, Mary dropped into a chair and groaned.

"It was a success all right, but thank God it's over. Jean, that is my
idea of Hell."

Jean was looking out to the bare trees of the Park. It was empty, and
bits of paper blew in a gusty wind about the paths. A leaden sky hung
low and the arc-light was not yet lit. Jean shivered.

"It's mine, too," she said, and the tears suddenly welled in her eyes
and ran down her cheeks.

"Why, Jean, what on earth is the matter?"

Jean brushed at the tears and tried to smile. "I suppose I've been more
worried about this going off well than I knew. _It's_ finished, too;
nothing left but to build now. It's rather like a death somehow."

Dr. Mary looked thoughtfully at Jean's back. It was not at all like
Jean to cry because a piece of work was successfully finished. In fact,
she had never seen Jean cry before.

"I shouldn't wonder if you didn't need a rest, Mrs. Herrick, in spite
of that energy of yours. I don't believe you had a decent, leisurely
meal all those last weeks of the strike. Will you take one?"

For a moment Jean did not know whether she was going to laugh or burst
into an uncontrollable fit of crying. She turned away from the window.

"Certainly not. I never felt better in my life. It's partly these
candles. I hate the things. They always look like funerals or a church.
Let's have some practical, plebeian light."

She switched on the electricity and then went round blowing out the
candles. By the time they were all out, Jean had worked up a disgust
of herself that deceived the doctor.

"It's not less work that I need, but more. I haven't had a fight with
Pedloe for a month, and the strike's so terribly settled I feel as if
there was never going to be another dispute worth mentioning between
capital and labor for the rest of my natural life."

"Cheer up. Society is beautifully rotten yet. Besides, just think of
that talk you're scheduled for on--Municipal Housekeeping, I believe
you said, Mrs. Herrick?"

"Garbage, Dr. MacLean, garbage, flies and infant mortality."

They laughed. "Jean, really we women are a scream, though no man would
draw that out of me with red-hot pincers. Why, in the name of common
sense, has everything got to be Housekeeping?"

"Because we've been locked up so long that we're afraid of the open.
And we haven't got over the idea that we have to placate men, even yet,
with a suffrage organization in every State. They still like to think
of us, running between the cradle and the stove, so every mortal thing
we do we've got to hitch up some way to a home. Decent milk, and the
regulation of food prices, and garbage, divorce, child labor, widows'
pensions, are all 'National Housekeeping,' and it sounds as if we had
only moved into a larger house."

"Is that what you're going to tell them to-morrow? If it is, I'm going
to stay right here and go, even if Third Cousin Nelly never speaks to
me again. And she won't. I slipped out of it for Thanksgiving, and
she's only got this one turkey left."

"You can go and eat it in peace, for I wouldn't have you at the meeting
if you begged me on your knees. There are depths of depravity and
duplicity in me that you have never guessed. You've never seen me being
gracious."

"You weren't so bad to-day."

"Not a circumstance. A mere nothing to what I shall accomplish on
Tuesday."

They smoked in silence for a while, and then Dr. Mary said suddenly:

"Some day I am going to write an article on the Biological Why of
Women's Faith in Each Other."

"Outline it now. Maybe I can incorporate some of it in the talk."

"I can't. I don't know myself. It's not written yet. But it is funny,
isn't it, how women in the aggregate do annoy one, and yet at bottom
each one of the mass has the same qualities of the individual woman,
who keeps our faith burning. I once went to a conference of women
physicians, and it almost drove me wild. There's something about my own
sex en masse that depresses me dreadfully. And yet, each one of those
doctors was an able woman, and I would have enjoyed an hour with her
more than with any man I had ever met."

"I know. I believe in my congress idea, but sometimes I wish I could
put it over without ever having to go near anybody. Trade Unions and
Consumers' Leagues and things like that aren't so bad, but these
clubs!--And yet it is just where most of the energy is going to waste.
They always make me feel like an overgrown, gawky boy, and as if all my
clothes were on wrong."

A few days later, as Jean stood on the raised dais waiting for the
well-bred clapping to cease, she almost wished she had urged Mary to
come. She could never do it justice, never.

The perfectly appointed clubrooms were crowded with beautiful gowned
women all looking toward her in polite interest. There was no
enthusiasm and no inattention. Beneath their interest in her as a
public person, was a restrained curiosity as to her as a woman. Jean
had long ago become used to being considered a growing force in her
world, but she knew these women had gauged to a cent the price of the
furs she had laid off in the anteroom and that the simple way she did
her hair, in a rather tight wad at the nape of her neck, was in some
way connected in their minds with indifference to masculine interest or
inability to capture it.

The applause ceased and the room rustled to silence. They sat waiting,
their white gloved hands graceful in their laps, their chins raised,
their well kept, unvital bodies in repose. Seen so, from the dais,
they all looked bewilderingly alike, as if many artists had faithfully
copied a model, varying as little as possible. Jean wondered what they
would do if she should begin:

"'Licensed prostitutes,' I am here this afternoon----"

She smiled. All the faces below smiled, one large smile cut up into
pieces.

Half way down the room, behind one of the pieces of the smile, Mabel
Dawson sized her up.

"Conceited as they're made. Because we know how to do our hair she
thinks we're feeble-minded."

Jean began to talk simply and convincingly in a way that held her
hearers but annoyed Mabel Dawson exceedingly.

"I don't wonder that her husband brought another woman into the house,
if she always explained things to him as if he were two years old."
Mabel then lost the drift of Jean's talk altogether while she tried to
trace the marks of suffering on her face.

Sitting well down to the front and looking lovely in a soft lavender
creation, Margaret Allen's mind was busy with the same problem. She
too was searching Jean's face for lines of suffering and could not
find them. A woman with Jean's past ought to look more as if she had
gathered up the broken threads and gone on. But Jean must be the kind
of woman who either never broke threads, or if she did, ripped out the
ravelings and wove new ones. There was nothing sad about her. In fact
her superb physique and very evident efficiency were rather hard. She
would always know exactly what she wanted and just how to get it. She
would walk straight to her point, in the low-heeled shoes that just
missed being square-toed and common-sense.

A patter of hands broke in on Margaret's cogitations. She listened for
a few moments. Jean was really making the subject interesting. A vague
envy began to crystallize at the back of Margaret's mind. She did not
want to dispose of garbage, but there were many things, in the last
twelve years, that she had wanted to do and had had to let go because
of Gregory and Puck. The chemicalization passed from envy of Jean to
annoyance with Gregory. It never occurred to him that she had given up
anything. She was never sure that he did not think she was a little
stupid. His tolerance of The Fortnightly was insulting, and yet women
like Jean Herrick thought it was worth while.

The meeting came to an end with sincere applause. Women gathered about
and begged for another talk, and proved by their questions a real
desire to do things besides hold meetings. Then two maids wheeled in
tea, and gossip bubbled up.

Holding her cup and the last crumbs of rich cake, Jean succeeded in
drawing to one side. Almost hidden behind an alabaster statue on an
ebony pedestal, she was studying the faces about her, when a soft voice
startled her so that she almost dropped the cup on the velvet rug.

"Oh, Mrs. Herrick, I just couldn't not speak to you." Margaret often
gave her sentences small twists that ornamented them. Jean smiled.

"Was the urge as great as that, really?'

"Yes, indeed. That was a wonderful talk! Besides, I almost feel as if
we were old friends already. I'm terribly interested in the tenements."

Jean's smile deepened but she looked puzzled. She met such a lot of
women like this, and was always forgetting them. Margaret might even
have been at the tea or sent a check.

Margaret laughed. "No, you haven't met me somewhere and forgotten,
though I shouldn't mind a bit if you had. I am Mrs. Allen, Mrs. Gregory
Allen."

Jean's fingers closed on the saucer. From a long way off she heard the
words dropping between herself and the woman before her:

"I am very glad."

The same power that dropped the words, lifted her hand, and Margaret's
came to meet it.

"I was terribly interested, and so glad that Mr. Allen was connected
with the tenements. It's so much more real than just ordinary houses,
more human and broader, you know. Sometimes I tell him he'll petrify in
all those angles and concrete, without the personal touch."

Jean grasped her brain and set it down outside, as she might have
lifted a screaming child and put it firmly in a chair. She would deal
with it later.

"There are dozens of things I would like to talk over with you.
Couldn't I presume on the acquaintance we haven't really got yet, and
ask you to take pot-luck with us? Now, please don't say you've got
something desperately interesting to interfere."

For years Jean remembered that moment, and the way in which Margaret
Allen receded, became more and more indistinct, almost vanished. But
not quite. Just at the moment she was dropping beyond the horizon an
icy hand clutched Jean's heart and Margaret was close again, smiling
and waiting for an answer.

"I'm sorry, but I'm really very busy. Winter is one long rush in this
kind of work."

"I know. It must be; that's why I'm not going to try and force you to
anything formal, just ourselves, and if you have a meeting afterwards
you can run away. We shall understand."

Jean felt as if she were in the grip of some small, persistent animal
that would never let go.

"Any night you say, Mrs. Herrick. But I'm just not going to let you
off." Her pretty lips curved in childish pleading. And Margaret
suddenly assumed a reality of her own. This was the woman whom Gregory
Allen had loved and married, whose life was bound to his, whose
babbling was always in his ears.

Jean almost laughed. She and Mary had paraded their bag of tricks,
their broader viewpoint, their richer personalities. He had been
interested, as he might have been interested in a play above the summer
level of Broadway, and had gone back to his home, to the stifling life
which evidently did not stifle him at all. Not all the big problems,
the genuine human needs that she had struggled with for the last two
months, had dulled the memory of that dinner when his need had called
so sharply to her, when she had wanted to take his head in her arms and
comfort him. And those moments in Rachael's room, when she had been
caught up and almost swept away by the biggest force that had ever
touched her life. And he? During these two months he had been quite
contentedly listening to this senseless chatter. He must have been,
since he had made no effort to escape it even for the brief visit that
common decency demanded.

"How about to-morrow, then? Don't you think you might just squeeze us
in?"

"If you will really understand and excuse me right after." She would
go and free herself from this power. She would go and see Gregory Allen
and this woman in the home they had made together. Pride and her own
sense of humor would do the rest.

"Indeed we shall. How about seven o'clock? Or is that a little late? I
can make it six-thirty if you'd rather?"

"Oh, no. Seven is quite all right."

Margaret wrote the address with a gold pencil she took from her
handbag. For a moment Jean felt linked to Margaret by her inability to
say that she already knew the number.

"I'll give you the 'phone, too, in case anything should happen, but
don't let anything, please."

"No, I won't." Jean took the slip, and at the same moment the chairman
glided up and began scolding Margaret for monopolizing Mrs. Herrick.
Jean was led away, and for another half hour she answered questions.
Then Margaret was before her again, delicious in a coat with fur cuffs
and a collar that framed her face like a huge leaf.

"Au revoir, until to-morrow at seven."

Margaret caught the envious glance of the chairman and made an intimate
little motion of farewell to Jean.

It was over at last, and Jean was walking along briskly in the coming
night. She was going to see Gregory Allen again. She was going to sit
at his table, with his wife and child, and talk of general things. She
was going to grasp this haunting power that held her days and crush it.
She would not be afraid after she had seen him there in his own world.

"I suppose she will tell him to-night--'Oh, Gregory, Mrs. Herrick is
dining with us to-morrow.'"

Jean smiled. He would be surprised. She could see his eyes widen in
that childish fashion that had come to make her feel----

"You fool. You unspeakable fool." Jean's scorn of herself before these
vivid pictures of a man, who had never given her the slightest right to
think he had any of her at all, lashed her pride to anger.

"You're thirty-four, you idiot. Suppose you do love him? What of it?
Maybe you won't after to-morrow night."

All the way down in the Subway the refrain beat in Jean's ears:

"Maybe you--won't. May-be you--won't. Mebbe youwon't. Mebbeyouwon't."

She let herself into Dr. Mary's empty apartment, and then telephoned
Martha that she had to work late. In the morning it would be different,
but to-night she could not describe the meeting, and Martha was always
interested in every detail.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


It was a few minutes before seven when the maid showed Jean into the
Allen living-room. A little girl rose from a hassock and stood looking
at her quietly. Then she came forward and held out her hand.

"My mamma's not home yet, but I'm Puck."

Jean took the mite of a hand in hers. "And I am Mrs. Herrick."

"I know. I'm going to entertain you. Won't you sit down?" The brown of
Gregory's eyes was softened to hazel in Puck's, but the spirit in them
was his. "That's the nicest chair. My daddy likes it best." The tone
was a childish treble of Margaret's, but the decision with which she
pointed out that particular chair was the same with which Gregory in
the end had always won over hers or Mary's suggestions. A lump rose in
Jean's throat.

"Stop it," she whispered fiercely to herself. "You're in it now. You've
got to see it through."

Puck had returned to the hassock, where she sat with her brows drawn,
looking for a foothold in this, her first social struggle. As one grown
woman to another Jean smiled and said:

"I think it's going to snow, don't you?"

Puck's face cleared and she smiled back at Jean, exactly as Gregory
smiled, the light touching her eyes and then settling in her lips.

"I shouldn't be s'prised. I told Lady Jane that this morning." There
was a pause, as if she were weighing a sudden decision. "Would you like
to see Lady Jane? She's just back from the hospital."

"Indeed I should, if you're sure it won't hurt her."

"I don't believe it will, not for a few moments. I haven't put her to
bed yet."

Safe with Lady Jane in her arms, the manner of hostess dropped away.
Puck came close to Jean's chair, and turning up the filmy clothes
in which Lady Jane was arrayed, pointed to a leg glaringly new and
unscratched.

"It was a bad accident and she broke it, but my daddy said it _might_
have killed her. She was lucky, wasn't she? My daddy took her to the
hospital and they--they--imput--"

"Amputated?"

"Yes. They--ampt--they did that to the old leg and gave her a new one.
But I don't let anybody touch her, except me and daddy. He loves Lady
Jane too."

"I'm sure he does." Jean smoothed Lady Jane's lacy skirts with
trembling fingers.

"Do you _like_ her?" Puck asked it abruptly after a brief pause in
which Jean fought to hold fast her belief that she had come to kill her
own fear once and for all.

"I think she is one of the nicest persons I have ever met."

Puck dropped the subject and climbed to the arm of Jean's chair. "Tell
us a story," she demanded, "we love stories."

Jean put her arm about the slight body and her own throbbed at the
contact.

"What shall I tell you?"

"Well, I like Cinderella a whole lot and so does Lady Jane." She
stopped, looked straight into Jean's eyes and added: "Mamma doesn't
like me to have too many fairy stories, but my daddy tells me one when
I've been good enough. Am I good enough now for Cinderella?"

"I'm sure you're quite good enough for Cinderella," and Jean plunged
into the story before she yielded to the impulse to kiss Puck.

With additions of her own, highly pleasing to Puck, Jean wound the fate
of Cinderella to its climax. The coach was ready and the Prince about
to start on his quest, when the door opened and Margaret Allen hurried
in.

"Oh, Mrs. Herrick, what must you think of me! Those impossible
cross-town cars and there wasn't a taxi in sight. Did Puck give you my
message?"

"Indeed she did, and she's been entertaining me beautifully. We've
been----" In the nick of time Jean remembered--"having a lovely time."

Puck looked gratefully at Jean and slid from the chair.

"Now, Puck."

"Please, mamma, just till daddy comes. He'll be here awful soon now."

"Now, dear, don't tease." Margaret shook her head with gentle firmness.

"But, mother, maybe he'll let me stay to-night. He----"

"Puck, say good-night to Mrs. Herrick while I go and hurry Annie." She
smiled at Jean. "You see, it really is pot-luck, including delayed
dinner and family discipline."

Puck came and laid her hand in Jean's.

"It wasn't a lie, not a really lie, was it? Because we _did_ have a
lovely time."

"No, I don't think it was a lie."

"Next time you come, I'm going to ask my daddy first----"

But a key turned in the lock and Puck fled.

"Daddy!"

"Well, Pucklets!"

Jean knew that the man bent and lifted the child to his shoulder.

"And how goes it? Lady Jane had any fever to-day?"

Jean went quickly to the window. With the coldness of the glass against
her forehead, she tried to think. The murmur of Margaret's voice
directing Annie came from the kitchen. In the hall Gregory was hanging
up his overcoat. Puck's high treble fluted in a string of words that
conveyed nothing. Gregory had come home, back to this world of which he
was the central pivot. The very air was changed, charged with a vigor
that it had lacked. And she, an outsider, was closed in there with
them. Jean gripped the window-shelf and waited.

"Daddy, Mrs. Herrick likes Lady Jane too."

They were almost at the door. Without turning, Jean felt the man stop,
Margaret had not told him.

Jean turned and stood with her hands hanging quietly at her sides. Puck
clinging to him, Gregory crossed the threshold. It was Jean who spoke
first.

"Indeed I do like Lady Jane."

Jean felt that she was throwing the words to him, aiming blindly
and hoping that he would catch them. For the smile with which he
had listened to Lady Jane's symptoms was still in his eyes, as if
consciousness had been killed at that moment.

"Of course. Doesn't everybody love Lady Jane?"

He had caught the words. Across the child they looked at each other.

"This is a surprise."

Jean felt as if they were playing a game. A thousand things that she
had wanted to tell him during these weeks rushed to her mind. She felt
childish and excited, like Puck. "Yes----" She had intended to say
something about meeting Mrs. Allen yesterday, to enlighten Gregory as
much as she could, but she found herself facing the words "Mrs. Allen"
and she could not go on.

Then Margaret entered, trying to sum up in a rapid glance the measure
of her success in proving to Gregory that important people like Jean
Herrick thought her worth while cultivating. But there was no surprise
in Gregory, and Jean felt that Margaret was annoyed. She had set her
little stage and the actor wouldn't play.

"Come, Puck, have you said good-night to Mrs. Herrick?"

Puck cast one long, beseeching look at her father, but for once he
failed her. Without seeing her pleading, he bent and kissed her
good-night.

"Good-night, Puck; sleep tight."

Puck's shoulders straightened. There was forced politeness but no
friendliness now in her eyes as she held out her hand to Jean.

"Good-night, Mrs. Herrick."

Jean wanted to drop on her knees, put her arms about Puck and explain
straight into those stern, hurt eyes.

"Good-night," she said, and without another word, Puck marched out of
the room.

"Come, Mrs. Herrick, I'm afraid everything is spoiled as it is."
Margaret led the way to the dining-room and they sat down in a silence
that Jean felt was never going to be broken. When Margaret spoke, Jean
turned to her gladly.

"I've been thinking all day about what you told us yesterday and I'm
getting more excited every moment. Why, it's perfectly tremendous, that
idea of a woman's congress, something bigger than women have ever done
before. Mrs. Herrick is planning a general woman's congress, Gregory,
to deal with women's problems all over the country."

Gregory Allen did not answer. Margaret bit her lips with vexation and
then hurried along to cover the breach of his rudeness.

"Won't you tell me some more about it, Mrs. Herrick? You presented so
many new points, even in the Garbage Disposal, that I know I didn't
get half of them clear. As I understand it, all the clubs with civic
divisions already formed, will come together in a central body right
away? Don't you think that's a great idea, Gregory?"

Under pretext of passing him the crackers, Margaret made a last effort
to draw him in. Jean's anger vanished in pity for her. She was like a
bright moth buzzing helplessly against a silent, bronze Buddha.

What thousands of meals they must have had like this, Margaret's
enthusiasm pricking at his silence!

Jean had not wanted to talk about the Congress at all, but now she
plunged in, before Gregory could answer.

Beyond their voices Gregory sat, catching a phrase now and then that
interrupted the trend of his thought but did not turn it. Nothing was
real but the fact that Jean had come back into his days. Through no
action of his own, she was sitting at his table. He had closed a door
of his life and Fate had opened it.

"Don't put a pergola on the Auditorium."

In the past weeks Gregory had heard Jean's last words until sometimes
it had seemed to him that he would go mad. They were such ridiculous
words to have marked the end.

And here she was. So close that almost without a motion he could reach
and touch her hand--the firm, large hand that he could see without
looking at it--crumbling the bread beside her plate. With his eyes on
his own plate, he could see the outline of her throat, the even throb
of the strong pulse that beat at the base. Night after night, during
the last ten weeks, he had shut it away, forced it out of his vision
and gone on reading, while across the table Margaret sat embroidering
clothes for Puck.

He had closed and locked a door. Margaret had opened it. His brain beat
in a chaos of anger and gratitude and pity for Margaret.

"Gregory, just listen to this." They had reached the dessert without
Gregory's noticing that the maid had brought things or taken them away,
and without his uttering a word. Margaret's patience had reached its
limit, and she turned to him now with the same controlled impatience
with which she disciplined Puck.

"Mrs. Herrick believes that there are spiritual forces, just as real as
physical ones, like gravity and cohesion and all that, that are going
to waste because nobody has tried to channel them. Isn't that right,
Mrs. Herrick?"

Gregory was looking up now. Like a humming-bird Margaret flitted aside
to let the stronger force sweep him into the current.

"Yes, I believe that what we call personality is almost a concrete
thing. You can feel it, just as you can feel any force. It seems to me
there is a lot of this vital undercurrent in women."

And Gregory felt again the hall, packed with Jewish workers, and
Rachael leaning from the edge of the platform.... "How is Rachael?"

Jean wondered whether the words she was trying to grasp would ever
come within reach. Margaret looked with a puzzled frown from one to
the other. But she didn't care much what he said as long as he said
something.

"Rachael won the strike. But it took all the strength she had."

"You see, Gregory, I am not the only woman who believes in women." Jean
was grateful to Margaret for fluttering back.

"Evidently not."

"When we really get started we might have a special meeting to give the
men a chance to apologize. How would that do?"

Margaret covered her triumph with flippancy, as if only by
condescending to Gregory's interest could she keep him from lapsing
again. Jean visioned an evening at this level and knew she could not
face it. She glanced at her wrist-watch and then at Margaret.

"Do you really have to?"

"I'm afraid I do."

Jean pushed back her chair.

"I know you warned me. But won't you come soon again? I know how busy
you are and so I'm not going to set a day. Just ring up any time, if
you don't mind the informality. Perhaps, between us, we can convert
him."

Jean moved into the living-room to get her things and Margaret followed.

Gregory stood where he was. In a few moments Jean would be gone. The
maid would clear the things. He and Margaret would be sitting in their
usual places in the living-room. He would pretend to read to still
Margaret's comments on Jean. Jean's rumpled napkin lay beside her
plate. It seemed to belong intimately to her, although it had a large
embroidered "A" in the corner. It was a possession of Jean's and she
had gone a long way away and left it behind. She would never come back.
Gregory was positive of that. Why had Jean come? He did not know. But
she would never come back.

Gregory went into the hall and took his hat and overcoat from the
cupboard. Margaret's voice was insisting that Jean "ring up any time."
Jean was not answering.

Gregory came back into the dining-room with his overcoat on. Margaret's
surprise escaped in a swift glance, and then a smile of triumph lit her
eyes. She had won after all. She had forced Gregory from his usual
indifference to their guests into at least a semblance of what Margaret
called "common social decency." It was true that he did not look
over-gracious at the thought of escorting Jean home, but it was more
than he ever did for Frances or Mabel.

"Really, there's not the slightest need. I'm going straight down----"
Jean tried to remember what she had told Margaret she had to do, or
whether she had told her anything.

"I'm going down anyhow. I've got some things to do at the office."

Margaret followed to the elevator and they dropped from her world
together.

Outside Jean turned to Gregory.

"There is no need, really."

Her voice almost begged him not to come.

"I have to go to the office."

Without a word they began to walk, straight ahead, although that was
not the direction of the Subway station. Myriads of stars looked down
from a black, cold sky and the bare trees along the pavement creaked
in a rising wind. A few people hurried by, but the street was almost
deserted. Just before they came to the end, where it swerved into a
more brightly lighted one, Gregory stopped.

"Jean, why did you come?"

His voice was harsh, and Jean felt the rigidity of his body, although
they were almost a foot apart, and he did not touch her at all. She
tried to turn her eyes away. If she did not look at him she could lie.
But the desperate need in his drew her back.

"I had to. I had to know."

"You--didn't know?"

Jean shook her head.

"But you know, now?"

"Yes. I know."

There was a long silence in which all the tangle and pain of the last
weeks were swept away. In the next block a taxi rattled to a stop
before one of the huge gray stone apartments. A noisy trio got out
and went laughing across the sidewalk. That was another world, with
noise and confusion and aimless talk. In the world closing tighter and
tighter about them there was no noise, no confusion, no aimless talk.
It was still, filled with a depth of understanding beyond the reach of
words.

The chauffeur slammed the door, mounted, and the taxi came swaying and
rattling toward them. Gregory signaled and it lurched to a stop at the
curb. With her hand still in his, Jean moved toward it. She got in and
Gregory stepped in after her.

"Where to, sir?"

"Gramercy Park," Jean said quietly, and Gregory closed the door. He
took her in his arms and kissed her to weakness.

"It had to be, Jean, from the beginning."

"I know." Jean drew closer in his hold.




                          CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE


Jean's work now took shape to her as something visible and apart. It
was the system of wires that ran through life, connecting the days. The
dynamo that kept it all vibrating was her love.

The depths of its peace surprised her. She loved, in secret, a married
man. She had met his wife, eaten at their home, held their child in her
lap. She had not only broken the standards of society, which did not
matter at all, but she had broken what she had believed were her own.
These did not matter either. There was nothing degrading in slipping
away to meet Gregory, for nothing could degrade their love any more
than a small boy could degrade the sun by throwing mud at it.

Christmas came. Applicants flooded the office, but Jean snatched as
many hours as she could. When it was possible they had lunch together,
and she often worked at night to make up for the teas they had in the
quiet tea-room in the upper Thirties. They always went a bit earlier
than the crowd and had an alcove to themselves. Jean had a sensuous
delight in the contrast of leaving the office behind her, the waiting
room never empty, the staff of extra helpers, the jangling 'phone,
and then--this other world with Gregory. The place had once been a
brownstone mansion, with carved staircases and pendulous chandeliers
of crystal. Heads of baby angels looked down from the cornices and
the shadows of stately men and women seemed always to lurk in the
corners, aloof and disdainful, but curious of this new generation that
smoked and talked immoderately on all subjects, at fragile tables,
painted in strange colors. Waitresses, in chintz polonaises and
powdered hair, served tea and muffins at extravagant prices. The same
girl always served them, and Jean felt as if the alcove was theirs.
It was the nearest they had to a home together. Here they retailed
gossip and talked over their work. Gregory was giving every spare
moment of his time to the designs for the auditorium and Jean loved
to have him consult her even when the technical details were beyond
her understanding. That he needed her in this way filled Jean with a
warm glow, a distinct physical reaction that softened the outlines of
her whole body. Coming from a happy hour with Gregory, Jean tackled
problems that had troubled the office for weeks, and, as Berna said,
"simply bored through them!"

Jean rarely thought of Margaret, and, when she did, it was as of one
of their acquaintances. If Margaret had not been Gregory's wife, Jean
would have enjoyed telling him about her. She could not feel personal
about Margaret. She did not even resent her. In the natural world there
were peacocks and orchids and slugs and worms; there were small, useful
animals and needful growing things, and beautiful poisonous fungi that
seemed to exist for no definite purpose. They all followed their own
law. So there were Kittens and Tigers and Herricks and Marys and Jeans
and Margarets and Pats. They were all different, and all needed. The
mistake was in misunderstanding and confusing values. She had done this
when she had married Herrick and Gregory had done it when he married
Margaret.

But the really wrong thing, the wicked thing, was to be afraid. To
refuse because one had not the courage to accept. To grow too weary
spiritually to reach out and grasp the next rung of one's development
and so swing up and up to the height of one's possibility. After a
meeting with Gregory, Jean had often to make an effort to keep from
running, so close was this tie between the spirit and the flesh.

On Sundays, when Gregory could get away without too greatly disturbing
the plan of life in which he had so long acquiesced, or too greatly
disappointing Puck, they went for long walks in the country. Jean lied
to Mary and to her mother about these walks. She wanted every scrap,
even the knowledge of their existence, to herself. Sometimes, at the
last moment a complication arose, impossible to overcome, and the walk
was postponed. Neither Jean nor Gregory ever asked why or referred
to it again. They accepted, without the indignity of complaint, the
conditions of their loving.

Gregory was happy, too. And, although, unlike Jean, he never realized
in his muscles the spiritual values of their love, he did feel that
life was a bigger and deeper thing than he had ever dreamed. Margaret's
well-meaning scratching at his interests no longer annoyed him. He felt
that she had been cheated, made in one of the small molds, when there
were so many larger ones in which she might have been shaped.

The day before New Year, Jean took the afternoon off and they went for
a long tramp through the snow in Jersey. It was a glorious day with
blue sky and sunshine, faintly warm on the hill crests. They walked
until dusk and then had tea before a log fire in a little French
roadhouse, where the fat wife of the proprietor insisted on Jean's
taking off her shoes and putting on a pair of Gustave's red carpet
slippers while the shoes dried.

Jean laughed. "I shall never understand why such a healthy-looking,
able-to-manage-herself being gets so much mothering. Every night in
winter I have to restrain mummy by force from feeling if my stockings
are damp. I wish you knew mummy, Gregory. She's so impossible to
describe, but she makes such ripping anecdotes."

"I do feel rather cheated, but I have a pretty clear conception. I
think she's like this."

He drew a small shaft, firm at the base, tapering to a point.

"Mummy to the life," Jean chuckled. "Now do Mary."

"That's harder." The pencil poised over the paper some time before he
made a line.

"There. That's as near as I can get, but I'm not sure that the
proportions are right."

It looked like two triangles, one imposed on the other, apex to apex.

"What's that in geometry? It's not like anything in life. Poor Mary,
why does she come to a point in the middle and then flare again?"

"Because that's what she does. I always had the feeling with her, more
than with any one I ever met, that she was spiritually constructed in
sections. She has the ground work of one kind of person, but she isn't
that kind. She started out planted firm on the earth, then she spired
to a point, refused to end there, wanted to get back to earth again,
couldn't, and so her soul built another triangle, on top of the first.
She ends in a firm base again, but it's in the air. Now what do you
suppose she would say if you told her--about us? She might say almost
anything."

"Why, I know exactly what she'd say."

"What, Infallible One?"

"She'd say that it was none of her business."

Gregory laughed. "I suppose she would. After all, she is almost always
right."

It was dark before they started back. With the ending of their days
they always grew a little silent. Small, clear stars pricked the black
and the moon peered timidly over the ridge top. They walked through
the dry snow hand in hand. Twice Gregory stopped, drew Jean into his
arms and kissed her. It made them both giddy to kiss like that, alone
in the open, under the stars. Jean's lips clung to his, and when his
hold loosened, she drew him to her again.

The deck of the ferryboat was deserted and they stood together in the
stern, watching the ice cakes swirl in the black water. A cold wind
swept down the river and whipped their faces. When the boat docked,
Gregory took a quick kiss.

"It was a great walk."

Jean nodded.

"Happy New Year," she whispered, and led the way down the gangplank.

On New Year's morning Jean astonished Martha by going to early
church with her. Martha asked for no reason, but her heart sang its
thanksgiving as they trotted along through the clean crispness of the
New Day. It was only six o'clock, but the church was full. The high
altar, white in its frostwork of sheerest lace, blazed with candles.
The air was heavy with the odor of thick white flowers and incense that
never quite died out. Through it, like a refreshing draft, came the
woodsy smell of greens and berries.

Abject with gratitude and humility, Martha slipped into the last pew
and Jean knelt beside her. It was like dropping back through the years
into her childhood. From force of association, Jean leaned her head on
the pews in front and closed her eyes. She did not pray but she felt
strangely near a God.

After a moment she stole a look at Martha, just as she used to do when
she was little and wanted permission to get up and sit in the seat. It
was queer how a motion could start an old train of thought. As strongly
as if she were feeling it now, she remembered the anger that had always
stirred her when her mother went on praying, without seeing the look.
She had always hated the way Martha knelt, almost crouched, in the
last pew. It had always made her want to walk straight on, up to the
very altar itself, and face God standing, with her eyes open. If people
loved God, as they said they did, why were they so afraid of him? If
this was His house, why did they sneak around in it like burglars? How
furious it had made her! And now, nothing had changed: Martha still
crept into the last pew and crouched before her God, and it did not
make Jean angry at all. Instead, it made a lump come into her throat,
and down to the depths of her she was glad that Martha had her God.

She had Gregory.

A young priest entered and the service began. Jean rose and knelt and
made the proper responses. Words that she could not have recalled in
any other setting, came spontaneously to her lips. While row after
row of communicants went to the rail, she knelt, her head bowed. The
monotonous murmur:

"Take and eat this--the body and blood of Christ which was given for
thee, preserve thy body and soul to everlasting life."

Over and over, row after row, hung a background for her thoughts.

"Take, eat--preserve thy body--everlasting life."

Against it, she walked in the dark with Gregory and felt his lips
seeking hers.

"--and may the blessing of God Almighty and His Son Jesus Christ remain
with you always. Amen."

The young priest, followed by his assistant, moved across the chancel.
Every head bowed before his going. There was a moment of silence, as if
the earth had stilled, while God Himself went back to His own; then a
rustle and people rose.

Martha and Jean were the first out. Jean slipped her arm into her
mother's.

"Mummy, I'm terribly disappointed, but that belated Christmas present
isn't done yet. You can't have it before Tuesday."

Martha pressed Jean's arm.

"I've had my present, Jeany, and it's made me wonderfully happy."

Jean smiled down at her. They walked along quickly for a few blocks,
and then Martha said:

"Which do you think Mary would like better, Jean, chestnut dressing for
the turkey, or just plain?"




                            CHAPTER THIRTY


In March, before the actual building of the tenements began, Jean and
Gregory went away for a week-end. They had decided on the spur of the
moment and taken the train like two truant children. Their plan was to
get off wherever it looked attractive and stop at the first farmhouse
that would take them in.

The train was a popular express and crowded, so they had to stand until
the first stop was reached. Then Jean got a seat and Gregory went into
the smoker. With her elbow on the windowsill and her chin in her hand,
Jean gazed into the fleeing fields and was glad that Gregory was not
there. It was almost too much, the deep hollows still snow-filled, the
bare earth of the upper stretches, the faint green of swelling buds,
and the two days before them. No duties to intervene, no appointments
to keep. It was their first interlude of almost perfect freedom. But
there were going to be many more in the summer ahead.

The train had made two stops. There were plenty of seats now. Jean
looked up and saw Gregory coming towards her. For a moment she had a
mixed feeling of complete possession and at the same time of personal
isolation. He was hers, so completely, so inevitably hers, and yet this
was the first time they had gone away together, stolen a little piece
of life for their own. It was a diminutive honeymoon, but she couldn't
say that to him. As she moved over and made room for him beside her,
she realized how little they knew of each other's daily habits, their
methods of doing personal things, and yet the way Gregory dropped into
the place she made for him, gave her the feeling of having been married
to him for a long time. She wondered what he was thinking.

But evidently Gregory was concerned with no such complicated analysis,
for he turned to her presently:

"No place has hit the mark yet?"

"I don't believe I've been looking. I've just been soaking."

"Let's toss. Heads, the next; tails, the one after."

It was heads. Jean settled in her seat. Gregory looked at her and
smiled. The smile deepened. He could not help but think of Margaret.
Whichever way it had fallen, she would have suggested throwing again.
The second station "might be so much better."

"You're a brick."

"Perfectly true, but why at this particular moment?"

"The explanation's much too subtle for your feminine mind."

"Because I didn't suggest tossing again?"

"Well, I'll be darned! How did you guess that?"

"You're a brick," Jean grinned. "As dense, every bit."

They got off at the next station, to the astonishment of the solitary
native waiting for the down train, and struck across the fields. When
they came to a forked road they stopped.

"We'll take turns at these decisions. You first."

"North."

They walked a mile between rickety fences that seemed to go on forever.
Gregory looked out of the corner of his eye and Jean laughed.

"Did you do it on purpose?"

"If there isn't a break before that big maple down there, we'll call
that a turn."

They reached the maple.

"Left," shouted Gregory, without stopping to reconnoiter.

They crossed a field, boggy with snow-filled ruts, and climbed a low
rise. Directly beneath lay an old farmhouse with a sagging brown roof
and red window casings, dulled by generations of sun and storm. A woman
in a blue apron moved across the brown, bare earth behind the house to
a white chicken run. Jean thought of the Portuguese ranch where she and
Herrick had gone on their honeymoon, with the silent woman and the cows
wandering over the hills.

"It wasn't _me_, that's all; it just wasn't me."

A very old dog rose from the sunshine, sniffed dutifully as they came
up on the stoop, and lay down again. Gregory knocked on the screen
door, and a girl with a baby in her arms opened it. She listened
without interest while Gregory explained, and went off without a word.
In a moment they heard her shrill:

"Ma, oh _ma_!"

The woman who had been feeding the chickens appeared, wiping her hands
on her apron. She had a lumpy, overworked body, but her face had in it
the patience of the earth, and there was something of spring in the
pale blue eyes.

"Well, I guess we kin fix you up, seein' it's only for a couple of
days. We couldn't take permanents yet, the spring cleanin' ain't done."

"There's the little room up back, ma?"

"How about the one over Uncle's? You could fix that up--it don't want
much more than airin'."

Jean and Gregory waited while the two women settled the matter. The
decision was in favor of the big one over Uncle John's.

"Mattie'll show you." The older woman took the baby and the girl led
them up a narrow white staircase, uncarpeted and spotless, that
zigzagged to the floor above.

At the end of the hall she opened a low door, painted white and
fastened with a hand-made latch. They entered a huge room, whitewashed,
with white wainscoting, white matting and a great white bed, the most
spotless room Jean had ever seen. Ancient apple trees brushed the four
gleaming windows and the cluck of chickens came from the yard. The
smell of the earth, warmed slightly in the spring sun, and a faint
fragrance from swelling trees, flooded it.

Jean reached out and touched the baby green of apple leaves. It made
her think of the old pine and her attic room, and of how often she had
reached out to shake the fog diamonds from the needles and wish that
something would happen, anything to break the monotony. The old pine
was thousands of miles away and that self years in the past. Inwardly
and outwardly she now lived in another world. And yet, looking down
the years, Jean could put her finger on no moment of sudden change. It
must all have been there, from the beginning, in herself; her right of
way through the world of action, which she had once believed held no
entry for her; her marriage with a man who came to her from one woman's
arms and left her for another; this wonderful love that was so right
in spite of the world's standards. And the future? It was there, just
as the present had been in the past. Jean leaned out of the window and
drew the warm sweetness into her. For the first time in her life she
felt part of a scheme, obedient to a law that worked on without her
will.

The girl went out of the room and Gregory put down the grip. He
came and stood beside her. She turned and laid her face against his
shoulder. He stroked her hair gently, a new tenderness in his touch.

After a moment she raised her head and smiled.

"Let's go out and explore."

From the kitchen window Mrs. Morrison watched them. "Seems like a nice
couple and powerful fond. Look, Mattie, he's holdin' her hand."

Hand in hand, Gregory and Jean were peering into the chicken run. The
girl shrugged:

"I guess they ain't been married long. He won't be doin' it this time
next year."

"Don't talk so shaller, Mat. What if he ain't? It can't be spring all
year."

"No need fur it to be winter, either."

"The sooner you git over thinkin' them things, the better it'll be fur
you, my girl. You got one of the best men livin'. There ain't a better
provider than Jim in this county. Kissin's good enough, but it don't
fill the wood box or spread the table."

The girl looked sullenly after the retreating figures.

"I'm sick o' livin' with people that's good providers. It's like havin'
nothin' but bread mornin', noon and night. I want some----"

"That'll do, Mat, I don't stand fur no such talk as that. When Jimmy
begins runnin' round and needin' shoes, his ma and pa kissin' ain't
goin' to put 'em on him. Besides a woman shouldn't want things like
that. It's fur men to think of them things. Hand me out the bread pan;
I'll mix up some biscuits, seein' we ain't enough loaves."

The girl handed it to her. "I suppose I'd better spread a clean cloth."

"Take the big one in the second drawer, and you might put the wax plant
in the center."

As the girl worked, she kept glancing to the window, but Jean and
Gregory were out of sight, beyond a dip in the orchard.

"It is nice," she said wistfully.

Then the baby whined and she went to him. As soon as he saw her he
stopped and gooed. The girl laughed and picked him up.

"You old false alarm you!" She burrowed in his neck and he squirmed
with delight.

Out in the orchard, Gregory and Jean wandered under the apple trees,
great old things, cumbered with dead branches.

"They can't have made a cent from this place for years, and it would
pay with a few hundreds put into it. But this eastern land, a lot of
it, is just like the families, run to seed. The men who have enough
kick in them to do anything go away. A place like this always makes me
feel wonderfully business-like and efficient, as if I could make the
dead thing live again."

"It doesn't make me feel business-like. It makes me feel vague and
poetic and--and unresponsible. I can't imagine anything more peaceful
than those old, useless, unfruitful things, all budded over with baby
green. I wish humans could grow old like that, keeping the possibility
of spring."

"That's properly vague and poetic, but I don't know that it would be
such fun. Think of looking seventy and feeling twenty!"

"It would be better than looking seventy and feeling it. A wee bit
of spring, every year, right to the end, would be better than none.
Wouldn't it?"

Gregory laughed. "Half a loaf better than none? Not for me. I'd rather
have nothing than a tantalizing dab like that."

A cold finger touched Jean's heart. Were their snatched hours more than
a "dab," a half loaf to him? They were glorious hours, but after all
they were only crumbs. Jean shook off the feeling, and her hand slipped
into Gregory's.

"Well, when you're seventy and I'm sixty-five, you'll be so jealous of
my little green leaves, you won't know what to do."

"Will I?" Gregory held her close and rubbed his cheek softly against
her hair.

"We're never going to grow old and gnarled, Jeany."

"I'll come and stick a little green leaf on your deadest bough."

"Better give it to me now." Gregory turned her lips to his and kissed
her. "That was a nice little leaf," he whispered.

They rambled on again, turning up dead leaves for the small celandine
that peeped out in surprise that spring was really come. As they turned
to go back, the clang of a bell, mellowed by distance, reached them.

"I'll race you." They started, Jean a yard ahead. In a moment Gregory
was in front of her. He shook his head reprovingly.

"Why, Jean Herrick, I'm astonished! What would Dr. Fenninger say?"

"Put me under observation in a psychopathic ward."

Gregory kissed her in the hollow of her throat.

"For that, he'd commit me to Matteawan."

The midday dinner was a heavy affair, but both Jean and Gregory won
Mrs. Morrison's approval by their appetites.

"I do despise to cook for them peckish people, that looks as if they
was choking down every mouthful. We're all hearty eaters here; even
Uncle treats his vittles like he enjoyed 'em."

The old man at the end of the table looked up. "You're a powerful good
cook, Mary. I ain't never sat down to a meal at your table that didn't
hit the mark."

He was a very old man, small and withered, with a wrinkled brown face
and kind blue eyes that peered like the wildflowers from the dead
leaves. His meal was a bowl of oatmeal, covered with yellow cream, and
a special kind of brown bread on a blue willow plate. His defense
of his niece's cooking was his only part in the conversation, but he
filled the room with the sense of his presence. Like spring warmth from
the frozen earth, peace radiated from him. When he had finished his
cereal and cream he left the room.

Mary Morrison looked after him.

"He's the best man that ever lived. I've ate and slept in the same
house with him for almost fifty years and I ain't never seen him cross
or heard him say an unkind thing."

"He ain't got nothin' to cross him, ma; not that I'm saying he ain't
good."

"There's always things to cross folks, when they're the crossin' kind.
I never seen any one yet that couldn't git crossed, give 'em half a
chance. Sometimes you shame me, Mattie, with that shaller talk."

The girl began scraping the plates without answering. Mrs. Morrison
went on to Jean.

"Mattie here's the kind that no chip gets by, but life'll learn her.
I kin remember when Uncle had things to upset anybody when he was
younger, but he never let 'em. He'd just go off and read the Book a
spell and come back among folks smilin'. Why, he's read the Bible clear
through most two hundred times, and there's a stack of _Christian
Heralds_ out in the barn that reaches to the second loft. He don't read
nothin' else and he reads 'em all the time."

Mattie carried off the scraped plates, and her mother gathered up the
knives and forks. With the touch of the dirty dishes, she came back to
her everyday manner.

"Now you folks kin do anything you like. There's some books on the
shelf in the parlor, if you want to stay in, but most city folks want
to be outdoors every minute. It's right pretty over in the woods, but
the ground's damp yet, even in the sun. You'd better take a buggy
robe; we got a lot of old ones in the barn fur that."

Jean was already at the door, when Mrs. Morrison added:

"I clear forgot to ask your names; seem like I always know people when
they like the place."

Jean stepped into the outer hall.

"Murray," Gregory said after a brief pause.

"Murray. That's easy. We git some awful queer ones in summer, and I was
never no good at names. Mattie has to keep 'em straight."

She passed through the swing door with the tray of forks and knives,

"It's Murray, Mattie; Mr. and Mrs. Murray," Jean heard her say.

Jean went quickly out into the sunshine. Gregory waited until his pipe
was drawing well before he joined her.

For an hour they kept to the road that led up hill and then down into
the dogwoods, just beginning to swell with spring. At last they spread
the robe where the sun splattered through in golden pools and a little
creek gurgled as if it had done something very sly and clever in
stealing away from winter. Gregory lay with his head in Jean's lap and
they talked, the silences growing longer and longer, until, looking
down after an unusually long one, Jean saw that he was fast asleep.

It was the first time that Jean had ever seen Gregory asleep. She
wanted, with an almost irresistible need, to draw him closer. The
thought of Margaret Allen stabbed as it had never done before. Margaret
had nothing that was hers, but she had so much less than was her own.
And Gregory had so much less than was his. Between them Margaret stood,
clutching with each hand a part of what was theirs, giving nothing in
return.

Then the need to make Gregory happy, to yield for his happiness every
scrap of herself, to give everything that was beautiful, to drown in
this beauty the ugliness over which she had no control, and, if there
was anything unbeautiful in their own relations, to make it perfect,
swept Jean. There should be nothing but peace and content in her. Her
hand moved lightly over Gregory's hair. It was thick and soft, with a
deep wave that drew her hand.

Herrick's hair had been fine and rather silky. Again Jean wondered at
the separateness of her two selves.

The sun was going when Gregory woke. He had slept deeply and woke with
a dazed, child look in his eyes. Jean wished for a moment that he were
really a child so that she could pick him up in her arms and carry him
away, follow the sun, and never be separated any more.

"That was some sleep!"

"You _almost_ snored."

"Impossible. Even my prosaic soul couldn't snore in the spring
woods--with a lady."

He reached both arms and drew Jean's head down.

"Such a nice lady! I love her."

"I don't believe it. Sleeping! While the lady has to stay awake and
drive away--malaria. Look, the sun has almost gone, it's only just
touching the very edge of the farthest strip."

Gregory heard none of this. He was watching the light in Jean's eyes.
They were so gray and deep, so like quiet pools, touched with sun, in
which one could go down and down and never reach the bottom.

"I don't believe it," Jean repeated; "I can't possibly, in view, or
rather sound of, the evidence."

"Then you shouldn't be here with me. To go off with a gentleman who
doesn't love you! You ought to be ashamed."

"I'm not." Jean laughed and laid her face against his. His lips
touched her chin. "Maybe I love him enough for both," she whispered.

"No--you--couldn't--love--him as much--as that, because he loves
you--just that--much himself." Little kisses on her neck and cheek
broke the words. And Jean felt part of the soft, black earth, the tang
of the rotting leaves and the spring budding.

They walked back through the woods, chilly now that the sun was gone.
It was dusk when they came to the road again. The lamp was lit and
there was a homey smell of fried potatoes and fresh cake. Mattie had
put on a clean dress and done her hair low on her neck. The break of
outsiders had penetrated her consciousness and she was looking forward
to the evening, Uncle John had already had his supper, and was reading
the Bible in his armchair by the stove. There was no sign of Mattie's
husband. But near the end of supper a wagon stopped.

"Good land, that'll be Jim, and we've et most everything clean."

"I'll scramble him some eggs, if it is. Don't you go fussin', ma. He
ought to let us know."

But the wagon went on and no one came.

Jean insisted on drying the dishes and after the requisite amount
of objection Mrs. Morrison gave her a towel. She often talked over
with Mattie this strange eagerness of city women to do dishes. Mattie
always concluded that it was only because they never did them any
other time. But Jean really wanted to do them. She liked the feel of
the low-raftered room, all skewed out of plumb with age, dim in the
corners, where the lamplight did not touch. Through the uncurtained
windows the fields stretched away under the cold night sky. They framed
the warm comfort within, gave it a permanence it did not really have.
With the filling of the dishpan Mrs. Morrison began a story of a family
feud that had gone on for years and was all about a chicken, in the
beginning. From time to time she stopped while she held long arguments
with Mattie on exact names and dates. Jean caught snatches of it
between her own thoughts.

At last the dishes came to an end, and Mrs. Morrison hung up the
checked apron.

"Now, if you folks likes music, we got some pretty records and Mat'll
be glad to work 'em fur you."

"You're coming, too?"

"I don't mind if I do, until it's time to set the bread. But I'm an
early bedder, like most country folks. Now, Mattie, she'd stay up
gassin' all night."

The girl frowned. "Country folks got such silly notions they fix to
live by. You got to go to bed at seven so you kin git up at five,
whether there's anything to git up fur or not."

"Honest, Mat, sometimes you make me think of old cousin Beggs that
hadn't all her senses. If country folks didn't git up till the time you
want 'em to, who'd feed the chickens?"

"Seems like most people just keep 'em so they can git up to feed 'em.
Not more'n a third of 'em lays, anyhow. What tunes do you like, Mrs.
Murray?"

"Won't the graphaphone wake the baby?" Jean made a last attempt to save
herself and Gregory.

"He always wakes up round this time anyhow and he likes it. When he's
old enough I'm goin' to git him music lessons."

"You have quite a little time to look around for a teacher! How old is
he?"

"Four months. But it'll take all that time to find one in this hole."
The first spark of mischief lit the girl's eyes. Mrs. Morrison laughed.

"Go along with you and put on 'I'm Waiting at the Gate.'"

She rolled down her sleeves, lowered the lamp and followed them.
She sat on the step that raised the "parlor" from the living-room
and leaned back against the door jamb, as if the Axminster rug and
plush rockers with which the delightful old room was desecrated, was
unfamiliar ground. Mattie put on the record and it began its wailing
call for some one to meet some one else at the old gate and not to
forget.

The woman in the door closed her eyes. Mattie sat beside the machine,
her cheek in her hand, staring at the carpet. They were lost in the
sentiment of words and music.

"Pa always liked that terrible," the woman murmured, as the plaint
ended in a mournful throb. "Mattie used to play it by the hour fur him."

For a moment something fleeted across her face and Jean saw it in
the face of the younger woman, too, hopeless longing, desire without
strength to demand.

Was that it, the bond that had held them, pa and ma, and Mattie?
Was that why the girl had married and stayed? Would the baby, too,
generation after generation, until the stock died out?

As if in answer, a small cry came from the room beyond.

"You kin put 'em on. It's easy. I got to go."

She went out. Jean followed. In the center of a fourpost bed, an atom
kicked its flannel-swathed legs and puckered its face for a real howl,
if its first warning did not bring immediate attention. But as Mattie
lifted it the puckers smoothed, the incipient howl turned into a gurgle.

"Some day I'm just goin' to let you howl and howl and howl until you
get so hungry, you old greedyguts! Don't you think I've got anything to
do but feed you? Hey, answer me!"

She kissed and tickled him and he writhed with delight.

"There, satisfied now, ain't ye?" She held him close and the baby's
doubled fists dug into her breast. The only sound was the faint hiss
of the baby's sucking. Suddenly the girl looked up.

"Got any babies?"

Jean shook her head.

"Been married long?"

Again Jean moved her head slowly in negation. Her eyes never turned
from the small black head against the girl's white breast.

"It's just as well not to begin right off. I was a fool, but nobody
told me. I'd like to have waited a while till I'd been somewhere and
seen somethin', besides trees and chickens."

The baby made his first stop, withdrew his milky lips and smiled at
Jean. She knelt and laid her chin in the warm crease of his neck.

"You ought to have one if you like 'em that much." The girl nodded
backwards to the room behind. "He kind of looks like he might like 'em,
but you never kin tell. Most men don't care a rap _after_ they're here."

Jean got up. The baby went half-heartedly back to finish. The girl
began rocking him and humming the refrain of the couple that never met
by the gate after all. The baby's eyes closed. Jean tiptoed from the
room.

Gregory lay on the couch reading. In the kitchen Mrs. Morrison was
setting the bread. Jean drew a glass of cold water from the pitcher
pump on the sink, drank it slowly and went upstairs without going again
into the parlor.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


Although for the last year Dr. Pedloe had objected to many things that
Jean had done, he really was proud of the energy and magnetism that
made her district better known than all the other districts combined.
He had rather enjoyed reproving Jean, but had never considered removing
her. Now, when he understood that she had not only thought of leaving,
but was about to leave, he offered to raise her salary. Nothing else
occurred to him.

"It's nice of you, and I appreciate your appreciation of what I have
tried to do, but really, Dr. Pedloe, it is not a question of money, at
all. I have just outgrown it. I am not making any criticism, but I feel
stifled. I want a bigger coat. The old one is too tight."

To refer to the elaborate organization of which he had been the head
for fifteen years, as an old coat possible to outgrow in six, annoyed
and amused him.

"Really, Mrs. Herrick, I don't see where you are going to find a
fitting garment. Expanding--er--coats are rather tricky garments."

The remark pleased him and he smiled.

"I have found one." Jean outlined her idea of a Woman's Congress, in
time to grow to national proportions.

"It will take years, Mrs. Herrick."

"It may. And then, again, it may not."

"In the meantime it will be just as suffocating as anything else."

"That's where we don't agree. It's constructive. We shall be building
towards something, slowly, no doubt, but surely. We shall not
be--patching uselessly."

Dr. Pedloe's smile vanished. "I wish you every success, Mrs. Herrick.
No doubt we can still be mutually helpful. If there is anything I
can do, please believe that the patched coat is at your disposal. I
understand that you wish to sever your connection by the end of the
month?"

"I should like to very much. We are going to try and get into running
order as a definite organization before the summer vacation takes every
one out of town, and be ready to plunge in head first in the fall."

"I see."

"But of course, if you have no one in mind for my district, or would
like me to stay on a few weeks to break in my successor----"

"I don't believe, Mrs. Herrick, I need to trespass on your new interest
to that extent. I have in mind Miss Carlisle, of Upper West. She is
much more fitted by experience and temperament for your district than
for her own simple one. I have been wanting to put her in a larger
field for some time."

"Then perhaps----"

Dr. Pedloe nodded. "I don't mean to suggest--but if you care to assume
your new duties before the end of the month, I should not want you to
feel that we stand in your way. You are taking Miss Grimes with you?
Then Miss Carlisle might come down for a couple of days, shall we say
the beginning of the week, to get a general idea of your office system.
Would that be perfectly satisfactory?"

"Oh, quite. It's very kind of you to be so considerate."

Dr. Pedloe rose, his dignity saved. "Perhaps I shall call upon your
organization some day for a return favor."

Jean wanted to wink at him, but she held out her hand.

"We shall be more than glad."

They shook hands, and Dr. Pedloe turned to his desk as if, in the half
hour's talk, mammoth duties had accumulated. Jean let herself out.

Down on the sidewalk she stood still and laughed until she realized
that people were staring.

"He did it, got it in by the tail, but got it. _Fired_, by Gosh!"

She could scarcely keep from telling Ben as he took her up in the
elevator to her own office, or Miss Grimes, who was the only one in.
But the former would have been so puzzled and the latter so indignant,
that she refrained. Besides, only two people could get the full flavor,
Mary and Gregory. She was going to have tea with him at half past four,
and there was not a spare moment before that. Mary would have to wait.

In the privacy of her own office, Jean stood in the middle of the floor
and stretched her arms to the spring air pouring in at the open window.

"It's going to be another glorious summer. A perfectly ripping summer."

Then she turned to work and refused to think of anything else until the
clock struck four. On the first stroke she closed and locked the desk.

Usually Jean reached the tea-room first. She liked it so. She liked to
be there a few moments ahead, to listen to the hum of women's voices,
catch scraps of conversation from a world of other interests, and then,
to look up and see Gregory cutting through it straight to her. It set
her apart, made her a direct choice in a concrete way that never failed
to make her heart give an extra throb.

But to-day Gregory was already there. He was sitting with his elbow
on the table, his chin in his hand. With his free hand he traced idle
designs on the tablecloth. At the sight of Jean he rose and drew out
her chair, letting his hands rest for a moment on her shoulders, which
was the only caress the publicity allowed. But as he took his own place
again, Jean saw the worried look in his eyes. Gregory rarely came
troubled to tea, and when he did, it took only a few moments to drive
it away. Sometimes she liked him to be a little tired, for the joy of
dissipating it.

"Well, how did things go to-day?" It was their stock beginning, but
to-day there was a forced interest in the tone that struck through
Jean's gayety.

"Great! I've been fired."

"That's a good cause for gratitude." For a moment they smiled in
understanding of their own viewpoint. Then the tea and muffins came
and Jean began to describe Dr. Pedloe's disapproval of her and all her
works. Gregory listened and his eyes appreciated the points as Jean
made them. But he offered no comments of his own and suddenly Jean
wondered whether he was listening at all. Gregory never sat attending
in that absent way. Fear crept on Jean, but she pushed it aside. If it
were something serious he would tell her. But nothing very terrible
could have happened in the twenty-four hours since she had seen him.
His work was going well and he was pleased with the designs for the
contest. Still he sat there, crumbling the muffin which he made no
pretense of eating. Jean went on with the telling, but her own interest
lessened.

Across the table, Gregory believed he was listening with the outward
show of interest he always felt. But there was no real interest in
him. For Puck was sick. She had been ailing for several days, and this
morning the doctor had come, and after he had looked at Puck and talked
a little with Margaret, he had telephoned for a nurse. Gregory's nerves
were still taut with the anxiety of waiting for the doctor to come
from Puck and tell him what was the matter. Like all persons unused
to illness, he wanted the relief of a specific name. It localized the
danger and brought the enemy into the open. He had steeled himself to
anything, for Margaret's excited helplessness had ended in a burst of
hysteria and he knew he would have to face it alone. Then the door
of Puck's room had opened and the doctor beckoned to him. Puck's
fever-bright eyes looked at him without recognition, and Gregory knew
that if Puck died he would remember her always like that, so small in
her white bed, with no smile of welcome for him, and unconscious of
Lady Jane by her side.

"There is nothing to worry about, but I will be frank with you, there
is a lot to look out for. Your child is one of the finest samples of
modern, high-strung baby nerves that I have seen in a long while. That
fever doesn't amount to anything and she will be up in a few days. It
won't be necessary for me to come again, so I will tell you now, keep
her back. She is too old for her years already. She has inherited a
rather hysterical nervous tendency, but she's got a will of iron too.
She rarely cries, does she? No, I thought not. If she threw things
around and had what old-fashioned parents used to call 'a bad temper,'
she would let off the steam that way. But she doesn't. We grown-ups
forget all about our own childhood. There, I guess that's all. Keep her
back. Don't reason with her too much. She thinks too hard, anyhow. A
little of the plain old-style faith in what mother says or father says
is wonderfully restful, like believing in God when we grow up. See that
she has other children to play with, and keep an eye on her yourself.
We men so often think that children are--any woman's special province."

Gregory had sat on beside Puck's bed until the nurse came. And for the
first time since they had put Puck, a wailing mite, into his arms,
he had felt helpless, inadequate, lost in the problem of the small
person, so distinctly a bit of himself. And of Margaret....

He had come to meet Jean, full of the need to talk about this, to get
a little of her sanity. But now, sitting opposite her, he could not do
it. It belonged so completely to the world outside their world. How
could he tell any one, Jean least of all, this fear that Puck might
grow up like her mother? For the first time, tea with Jean was an
effort, held something of the same quality that the forced cheerfulness
of dinners with Margaret had. As he crumbled his muffin and listened,
Gregory tried to be just. It was not fair to Jean to drag his worries
into their hour, but the effort to keep them out tangled his already
too complex world almost to breaking.

Jean watched the nervous working of his fingers and her fear grew.
Something must be very wrong. Her longing to comfort him struggled with
her pride against asking a confidence he might not wish to give. At
last pride went to defeat.

Jean covered his hand with hers.

"What is it, Gregory? You look worried to death."

Her touch assured him sympathy. He would tell her. What? Ask her to
understand all that Puck meant to him? Show her a part of his life that
she did not touch at all?

"Out with it." The forced gayety of the tone rasped. He wanted to
withdraw his hand. Where was the boasted intuition of feminine love?
Why didn't Jean know what he wanted to tell her? The firm fingers
pressed his, as if to give him courage. He looked up. Jean was waiting
with a calm strength in her eyes. What on earth did she think was the
matter? The situation became suddenly overtuned and ridiculous. Gregory
pushed back his chair and rose.

"Nothing, really. Have I been such an awful bore? I'm sorry, but I'm
terribly tired. I was up all night."

"Why?"

Jean's eyes, on a level with his own, demanded the truth. Gregory felt
trapped and angry.

"Oh, that damned contest. I've been working for the last two weeks on
the wrong tack." He held her coat and Jean turned to slip her arms into
the sleeves.

What a silly she had been! As if any man ever lost a night's sleep
and was the same the next day. After all, she was rather like Martha
sometimes. Jean smiled to herself.

As he turned up the collar of her coat, Gregory's fingers brushed her
cheek. She turned her head and kissed them swiftly.

"Well, rub it out and do it over again, because you know you're _going
to win_."

       *       *       *       *       *

Gregory met the nurse in the hall. She carried Lady Jane in her arms
and smiled reassuringly.

"She is ever so much better. She had a fine sleep and woke with no
fever at all. She asked for you."

Puck was propped up with pillows, her eyes fastened on the door waiting
for Lady Jane. At the sight of Gregory she wriggled with delight.

"Well, Pucklets, all better?"

He sat down on the side of the bed and put an arm about her. Lady Jane
was forgotten. Puck reached up and stroked his cheek. It was an old
gesture of Margaret's, and brought back sharply the days of his brief
engagement when, sitting on the arm of Margaret's chair before the
library fire, with the slender grace of her pressed near, he had wanted
sometimes to crush her to him. But always she had seemed to sense the
ferocity of his mood and to stave it off by this gentle stroking of his
cheek, as she might have quieted her pet Angora. Gregory drew a little
beyond the reach of Puck's touch, and she nestled to him.

"Quite all well, Puckie, sure?"

Puck nodded. "I got all better when I went to sleep. I can get up
to-morrow, can't I, Miss Burns?"

"I don't know about that, but very soon, if you're a good girl and
don't talk to father too much."

"I won't." Puck's lips snapped as if she were never going to say
another word and the nurse went out laughing.

Gregory's hold tightened. He had always thought of Puck as another
self, very small and feminine, but still a great part of himself. Now
he knew that she was Margaret, too. And something else, beyond them
both. She was herself. She was a part of his experience, his reaction,
his fate. And yet her own experience, her own reaction, her fate could
never be his. Sitting with his arms tight about Puck, who soon fell
asleep, Gregory felt the terrible isolation of every living soul. No
one could ever reach another. He and Margaret were worlds apart. They
had never really touched at all. They had created Puck and Puck was
distinctly herself and apart. She would grow up and marry and have
children of her own....

Gregory put Puck back on the pillow and tiptoed from the room. Annie
was just bringing in the soup. In a few moments he and Margaret were
eating, and Margaret was retailing the misfortunes of the Burns family,
which had forced pretty Gertrude Burns to take up nursing.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


At the end of the week Miss Burns left and in a few days Puck was
running about the house as usual. The only reminder that something
had changed somewhere in his world, were the advertisements of summer
resorts that littered Margaret's desk. The doctor had ordered "bracing
air, salt water and everything as unlike the city as possible." So
Gregory rented their own bungalow on Long Island to Benson for the
summer and tried to be patient with Margaret in her search. She finally
decided on a small boarding house in Maine, as far from civilization as
she could get, where there were other children for Puck to play with.
Margaret did not expect to enjoy the summer and measured her devotion
to Puck by the degree of her own discomfort.

Puck was not told until it was necessary to pack Lady Jane's things.
Then she was hysterical with excitement at the idea of going "a long,
long way on a boat." She invested Maine with all the magic details of
Gregory's bed-time stories. But when she found that he was not coming
with them, her joy died as suddenly as if it had been turned off with a
spigot.

"I don't want to go 'a long, long way on a boat' without my daddy." She
squared her shoulders and looked quietly at Margaret.

"But it's too far, dear. Daddy has to stay and work for us and we
mustn't tease him."

"I don't want my daddy to stay and work for us."

"But, Puck, it's a lovely place, with the great big green sea rolling
in almost to the house and little boats to go out in when it's calm."

"I don't want the sea to roll into the house, and who'll take me out in
the little boats?"

"The man will. He takes all the children every day."

"I don't think I want to go."

Margaret did not argue the matter further and went on packing the
trunks. Puck, however, stopped all preparations and sat with her brows
drawn in a frown exactly like Gregory's, hugging Lady Jane.

She did not run to meet Gregory that night and through dinner scarcely
spoke. Gregory watched her anxiously. At half past eight, without being
told, she went to get ready for bed.

"What's the matter with Puck?"

"I had to tell her this afternoon that you can't come with us."

Gregory put down the evening paper. "I suppose you exaggerated it's
being a long way, and she thinks she's going to the ends of the earth?"

"You needn't be rude. Please remember that it will be no particular
pleasure taking a nervous child on a sea trip alone."

"Damn!"

Margaret bit her lip. "If you could control your temper until we're out
of the way, it would help. I have had about all I can stand with her
and finding the place and settling the details."

Gregory was ashamed of his outburst. After all, Margaret could not help
being herself and he was sorry for her in an impersonal way.

"But I wish you wouldn't talk so much about her nerves. A baby scarcely
six. You'll make her so."

"I don't think you can tell me anything about Puck that I don't know.
Remember, I am with her all day, not just at night in time to tell her
stories. If any one excites and makes her nervous, it's you. Remember,
you never hear the versions of those stories she gives Lady Jane."

Margaret had used this shaft so often that the barb had dulled. "Well,
she's not going to have any of them for some time."

Puck's bare feet pattered along the hall and she entered ready for her
bed in her little white pajamas, that buttoned up the back out of her
reach. Gregory buttoned them and swung her into his lap.

"Where's Lady Jane? Is she too tired for a story to-night?"

"Lady Jane don't feel like stories to-night."

"Dear me! She's not sick, is she?"

"No, she's not sick, really. But she isn't very happy."

Across Puck's head, Margaret made warning signs to Gregory to drop the
subject, but his hold only tightened and he rubbed his chin on Puck's
soft hair.

"That's too bad, Puckie. What's she unhappy about?"

Puck herself had been warned not to mention Maine but nothing had been
said about Lady Jane. And Lady Jane was desperately unhappy, almost as
miserable as Puck herself.

"I--don't--think--she wants to go to--Maine."

"Oh, she'll like it after she gets there. Especially if you take
Priscilla and Dorothy along too."

"They don't want to go either."

"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do. You go along with mother on Monday,
and then, if you want Lady Jane or Priscilla, I'll bring them when I
come."

Puck jerked upright in his arms. They looked at each other. Slowly Puck
smiled. Gregory smiled back. With his hands on the slight shoulders, he
looked into her eyes.

"I can't come up with you and mother, Pucklets, but I'll come later,
before the summer is over and stay a whole month."

There was a pause during which Margaret wondered why men were so
annoying. Without a doubt, Gregory had intended to come up, but it was
just like him to give no one the satisfaction of knowing it.

"I think, daddy, I'll take Lady Jane and Priscilla. You couldn't take
care of them very well, could you?"

"I think that would be better. I don't quite understand about their
food," he added, remembering suddenly that Lady Jane and Priscilla were
in the stage of being babies for the last two weeks.

Puck cuddled into his arms with a deep sigh of relief. Her tottering
world was stable again.

"Tell me about Pergameleon," she demanded, and Gregory obeyed with the
garbled version that passed for the story between them.

A week later he saw them off on the boat and came back to Gramercy Park
to have dinner with Jean.

It was going to be a happy summer.

After much deliberation Dr. Mary had taken a second year's leave from
the Neighborhood House, and gone to London for the summer to study
conditions in the East End. The house was theirs.

Gregory felt young and carefree as he touched the bell button, with the
one long and two short, that was his ring.

Enveloped in a kitchen apron, her hands covered with flour, Jean opened
the door.

"Why, how do you do?"

"How do you do? I thought I should find Dr. MacLean. She's not in?"

"No, I'm sorry, but she's just run over to London for a minute. Will
you leave a message?"

"If I may. Will you tell her, please, that you're the most glorious
thing in the world and I love you?"

The last words were buried in the warm smoothness of Jean's neck. She
turned her head and their lips met.

"Now, if you'll go and take off your coat and put on an apron you can
help me make some Martha Norris biscuits."

Gregory did as he was told, and they got dinner together. Afterwards
they went into the living-room where they had sat so often the summer
before, good friends, disturbed in no way by the presence of the little
doctor, and Jean wondered what power had arranged this summer, so far
beyond her dreams. Mary in London, Margaret and Puck in Maine, beyond
the reach of week-ends even. There was only Martha.

Deep in the leather chair, with Gregory's arms about her, his fingers
moving gently over her cheek and throat, Jean wished that Martha would
go away too. She wanted them all out of her life, every one, for the
next three months. Beyond that she did not think.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was perfect. So perfect that Jean marveled and was humble. The days
themselves, the actual passing of time took on personality. As the
givers of happiness, the hours became conscious. They were servants
bringing gifts.

Jean's duties were light and she and Gregory spent a part of each day
together. The quiet tea-room was now a thing of the past, so far in the
past that Jean smiled whenever she remembered how homelike it had once
seemed. They had long, lazy afternoons on the sands of nearby beaches,
making comments on the human shadows that moved beyond their own
world of reality. They chattered like children or were silent as the
mood dictated. They had dozens of gay meals, like the first they had
prepared on the night that Margaret and Puck had left. And quiet hours
in the warm stillness of the summer nights, with the voice of the city
coming in echoes over the dusty trees of the Park. These were the best
of all. In those moments it seemed to Jean that their souls mingled,
and that the law of each human soul's separateness was set aside for
their benefit.

Hampered only by such demands as Jean felt to be her duty to Martha,
the weeks slipped by. Ringed about by their freedom, Jean felt that
their love was striking into a deeper and deeper reality. A quality of
peace and security enveloped it that she did not know had been lacking
before. Its roots went down below her personality, the accident of her
"Jeanness," down into the stuff of life itself. Often, when she and
Gregory sat silent, Jean felt that this love was not theirs at all;
they were the possessed, not the possessors.




                         CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


The third week in August, Dr. Mary returned. She came without warning,
so that, late in the afternoon, when Jean came rushing in to start
dinner, she stopped, staring at the figure upon the couch with surprise
so intense that it deprived her of motion.

"Sunstroke, Jean?" Mary threw back the two braids of white hair, drew
the hideous blue dressing gown closer and put on her slippers.

"Mary!"

"The same. Come in and sit down, won't you?"

Jean smiled and managed to get her arms about Mary and hug her.

"Well, that's more like it." Mary paddled back to her couch and Jean
dropped beside her. "My, but it's good to be home again."

"We've missed you," Jean ventured and when she heard the ease of her
own tone, a little courage came back. "Now, begin at the beginning and
tell me the whole thing."

To her relief, Mary did. Jean listened with a fixed smile of
understanding, made the expected comments, laughed in the right places,
and waited for the one long and two short rings that meant Gregory.
While Mary disposed in scathing terms of all English Social Betterment
work, Jean wondered whether she had seen the fruit and vegetables that
must be waiting on the dumb-waiter and how to explain them. As far
as Mary knew, Gregory had dropped from their lives. And any moment,
it would come, the one long and two short, and she would have to say
something.

"I tell you, Jean, I thought there was no brand of human left alive,
who could make me despair of the race. But a middle class Englishman
does. He's insulated, absolutely insulated in his own righteousness. He
would rather----"

There it was, the one long and two short.

"Good Heavens! Jean, are you giving a party? I saw a whole box of
things on the waiter."

"No. It's only Gregory. I stumbled into him accidentally one day and,
now the family's in Maine, he comes to dinner sometimes."

"Well, I'll be darned. What was the matter with him? Did you ever find
out?"

"Never asked him," Jean remarked from the door. "I forgot all about it,
myself. I don't believe he ever thought it needed any."

"A regular homefest! Run along and open the door. I won't bother to
change my things."

Jean opened the door, but before Gregory could take her in his arms,
she stepped back with a warning look.

"You're much too early! I haven't even begun to get dinner." She
motioned to the living-room. "Mary," her lips formed.

"Hell!" Gregory almost said it aloud.

"Well, go into the other room and wait as patiently as you can," she
whispered.

Jean went into the kitchen. The table was strewn with the things for
dinner just as Mary had dumped them out. Jean's eyes filled with tears.
"I won't let it end, I won't, I won't." In the other room she heard
Gregory's well-feigned surprise and Mary's laugh.

Jean put on her apron and began to get dinner. Mary's anecdotes flowed
on like a river, breaking every now and then on the rock of Gregory's
laughter. After all, perhaps it did not make so much difference to him.
Last evening they had sat for almost an hour, silent, with their hands
linked across the intervening space between the chairs and Jean had
been wonderfully happy. Had he been happy, too? How did she know that
he had not been a little bored? Jean's eyes blurred and the tomato she
was peeling slipped into the sink with a plop.

"You fool. What do you expect? She _is_ interesting and he can't sit
there like a statue." Jean scooped up the tomato and threw it viciously
into the garbage pail.

"Jean! Oh, Jean, come here a minute," Gregory called. "Do it again for
Jean. It's a scream."

Mary twitched the dressing gown so that it trailed like a royal robe
and twisted the white hair into a knob not unlike a coronet.

"Mamie Horton, of Chicago, now Duchess Mary of Belfort, doing the East
End, visiting a family of eight living on three dollars a week." The
doctor's face froze into a mask of horror and she pointed dramatically
to what was supposed to be the laborer's dinner table. "Most
unhygienic. I will send you a case of shredded wheat to-morrow!"

"Never, Mary. That's too much. You've spoiled it."

"Well, it wasn't shredded wheat, but it was just as bad. Jean, I longed
for you. If there had been anything in thought transference you would
have hopped on the next boat. You think your committee is bad! You
ought to see real caste at the business. And worse than that are the
Mamie Hortons. Why, when I told a group of the reals and the pseudos,
at a luncheon, about the tenements, and how you had raised the money
and had the whole thing going in a few months, they stared at me, and
Horton actually said: 'Reahlly,' in that exasperating English voice
that means: 'You're a liar.' It takes a year to call a meeting over
there."

"I suppose she wouldn't believe the evidences of her senses if she saw
them. They're finished except a few last touches."

"Not really, Jean!"

"Infected, Mary! 'Not reahlly!'"

"Score! But, Jean, you don't mean they're all ready for tenants? I hope
they're not in yet."

"They will be in another week."

Dr. Mary bounced out of her chair. "Let's go out and see them."

"What? Now?"

"Yes, now. It won't take long. Gregory can call a taxi while I get on
my clothes. You don't know how I've come to love those things, Jean.
Whenever that cumbersome machine of 'British thoroughness' lumbered
over me I used to say,

    "There's a land that is fairer than day,
    Where things get done right away."

"What's the objection to going now? Won't the food keep?"

"If you've made up your mind, it doesn't matter whether the food keeps
or not. I don't suppose there is any reason not to go, except that you
ought to be tired."

"I almost died resting for the last five days. I could _walk_ there."

Jean went back to take off her apron and Gregory followed.

"It'll be better than staying here," he whispered, with his arms about
her. "And it was going to be such a nice evening."

Jean patted his cheek. "Never mind. We'll have a lot more. Now run
along and call a taxi."

Dr. Mary was indefatigable. She insisted on inspecting every floor and
getting the view from every side. And, in the end, she pronounced it
"a darn good job." But Jean did not feel it was "a job" at all. It was
a bit of her life and Gregory's. It was built of the hours they had
spent together. It was not an insensate thing. It was alive. She and
Gregory had created it. Her hand moved on the clean, white wall.

"You nice living thing. Make everybody well and don't let anybody die."

Jean smiled. It was somewhat like a prayer.

When there was nothing left but the solarium on the roof, they sat down
to rest on one of its green benches. In the afterglow, the East River
ran a stream of gold. The span of the bridges hung airy webs in the
heat-hazed air. Far below little tugs chugged up and down, whistling.
The gray of their smoke filtered through the gold, softening it to
filmy gauze. But across the river, on the workhouse island, a bell
clanged. From the last sunny spots, old men and women came reluctantly,
and the hideous red buildings swallowed them, one by one. Soon they
would all be asleep, the old men in their wards and the old women in
theirs. Perhaps in the night some would die quietly in their sleep.
In the morning the superintendent would look up the names on the
books, notify any relatives he could find, and send blanks to charity
organizations that there was room for a few more of the homeless old.

Not one of them had ever expected it to end like that. The race had
speeded faster and faster, beyond their strength. They had stumbled,
gone down, and been trampled under. Strong in the faith of their
own ability, she and Mary and Gregory, all the well-groomed men and
beautiful gowned women about them, went securely on. But what guarantee
had they that this strength would last forever? Each human being was
such a tiny obstruction, a mere grain of sand against the force of a
terrific current. Even in the small trickle of the stream which one
called one's own personal affairs, it was impossible to guide the
force. Here was the course of her summer twisted suddenly by an event
over which she had no control.

"I won't let it. I _will_ have the next four weeks."

"A penny, Jean. You look as if you were settling the affairs of
nations."

"I was doing what mummy calls 'guiding Providence.'"

"Too strenuous for summer, Jean. Leave it 'til winter."

"No. 'Now's the appointed time.' 'To-night the Lord may come.' Hence,
you and Gregory go home alone, Mary. I go to Jersey. I've had a
revelation."

Nor would Jean let Gregory go even to the ferry with her, but insisted
that he go back and hear more of the East End.

"But, dear, I want to see you terribly to-night. I want----"

He had dropped behind as they were following Mary out so that for a
moment he and Jean were alone. Jean smiled and shook her head.

"Can't be helped. I've got to go really. Besides it's--it's your
revelation too."

"I don't want any revelation. I want you," he added hotly.

"So do I, that's why I'm going." The words came in a low rush, and then
Mary was looking back to them.

But it was only when Jean actually stood with her finger on the button
of Pat's bell, that she realized how astonished Pat would be, and how
she had neglected Pat and the babies that summer. And once Pat had
known almost every thought that crossed her mind.

"I'm besotted, absolutely dippy, and I'd use God Almighty if I needed
Him."

The door opened and Pat herself stood gazing as if she doubted the
evidence of her senses.

"_Jean!_"

Two small naked figures, lurking in the shadow of the upper landing,
came tumbling down at their mother's cry and Jean was lost in a tangle
of arms and legs.

"Jean! It's Auntie Jean!"

"Jeanie, Frank!" Pat clutched at the waving legs, while Jean held them
closer and laughed across at Pat.

"At least they're glad to see me, Pat, and you've only shrieked 'Jean!'"

"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Herrick. Won't you come in? I was just
putting the children to bed."

"So I see. And we're going right on with the process." Jean hoisted
her namesake to her shoulder and started for the stairs, dragging the
rotund Frank by the hand.

When they were safely tucked in and Jean had recounted as much of
the old witch who was turned into a gingerbread house as she could
remember, and promised to come soon, "very, very soon, lots soon,"
Pat turned off the light and she and Jean went down to the cool
dark piazza. And then, for the first time, in her gratitude for the
darkness, Jean realized how deeply she hated to lie to Pat. She would
have given much to be able to throw both arms about Pat and say:

"Patsy, I want you to help me. I want you to take mummy out of the way.
I want this last month, free and beautiful for the most glorious thing
in my life. There is only one little month left, Pat, four short weeks,
and I want them so."

"I thought you were never going to come any more, Jean, and I was
beginning to get 'hurt,' like mummy."

"It wasn't because I didn't want to come." Jean looked out into the
moonlit garden. "But I've been terribly busy, and mummy hasn't been
well. The words left Jean with the feeling that something very deep
inside her had been ripped out.

"Mummy not well? Why, Jean, what's the matter?"

"I don't know, Pat. You know she never complains and would sit up in
her coffin to explain that she was perfectly well. But she isn't. I
want her to go away for a rest, but you know how likely she is to do
that. I can't go along, too."

"The summer has been a fright. Even Frankie got rather peaked last
month, and it takes a great deal to wear an ounce off him."

There was a short pause, and then Jean added, with an effort at a laugh:

"Perhaps she's just homesick for a little trouble or illness. Now if
Elsie lived in some nice quiet suburb and was going to have one of her
horrible babies, or Tom would cut off a leg, she'd pack up and be right
there on the dot."

"And you're so disgustingly efficient and healthy! Poor mummy, you were
never meant for her daughter. I say, do you suppose she would come over
here if I could develop something that doesn't have to show? I couldn't
turn pale or faint, not to save me, never did in my life, but I might
manage a general breakdown. Worry over the children and Big Frank's
raise in salary?"

Jean looked away. "Are you sure it would be all right? She loves the
babies and she would come in a minute, if she thought you needed her."

"Well, I do. I'll 'phone her to-morrow."

"She'll come--and thanks, Patsy."

Blurred by the porch screening, a small patient face looked quietly at
Jean. Jean got up quickly.

"Let's go inside, Pat. I believe it's cooler."




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


Gregory Allen had never intended to let three months pass without
telling Jean of his promise to go to Maine. But at first his going had
seemed a distant point, and then, as it crept nearer and nearer, the
right moment for the telling never came. Now, how could he say: "I am
going to Maine to-morrow for a month. I promised Puck when she was
ill." He had said nothing of the illness at the time. How drag out his
own state of mind on the afternoon he had had tea with Jean and lied to
her?

Gregory wished that Jean would say something, almost anything, to break
the silence. Not a soul seemed to be alive in the great building about
them. On the river occasional excursion steamers turned their dazzling
flashlights, lighting the room and Palisades to uncanny, whitish glow.
They were huge phantoms moving in the stillness. All the worlds of the
universe hung motionless in perfect adjustment. Jean sat utterly at
rest, so near him that by the smallest motion he could touch her. But
Gregory did not move.

"Did you ever feel anything so restful? It's positive, the silence, not
negative. _Listen_ to it. I could almost 'go into the silence' myself,
if I didn't have to shut my eyes and concentrate. If I could keep them
open and--and dissolve instead. I believe it would be rather restful."

"Do you?"

If he hacked at this peace with words he would force an opening through
which an opportunity might come, and Jean would know that he did not
want to go, except for his promise to Puck. But Jean drifted back
into the stillness again and it seemed to Gregory that she actually
dissolved into the unfathomable silence.

With a nervous gesture he rose at last.

"It's almost two o'clock."

Jean laughed. "Frightful. What will the hallboy think?"

But Gregory did not answer the laugh. He had yet to tell Jean, and now
there was no time to lead up to it. He had to say baldly: "I am going
away to-morrow."

Jean was smiling at him.

"There's no need to look so desperately serious about it, Mr. Allen, I
just mention it casually."

"It _is_ late, and I have to be up early." Gregory said and went into
the hall for his hat. "I'm going up to Maine to-morrow for a month and
I have several things to do before I go."

It seemed hours before he could pull against the force holding him
where he was and turn to Jean. She had followed him and was standing
near, the teasing smile still in her eyes. For a moment they looked at
each other and then Jean said:

"It will be glorious up there now, but--don't forget--the contest
closes the first of October."

In his relief Gregory took Jean's hands and bent cavalierly over them.

"Your command, Fair Lady, is obeyed. I promise not to forget." He did
not trust himself to kiss her again and went quickly.

Was there another woman in the world like Jean? The sanity of her love
made everything possible. In its light even the month ahead did not
loom so gloomily. There would be happy hours playing with Puck and
good, stiff work to finish the plans in time.

Jean stood for a long time in the hall and then went slowly back and
sat down by the window. Something had struck her violently and stunned
her power to feel. She saw it as distinctly outside herself, and at the
same time it was in some way connected with her. It was like a part of
her which Gregory's words had suddenly cut away.

There they lay separated from her, the deep peace and security of the
summer, the assurance of her own sensations, that wonderful clarity in
which she had seen their love and perfect understanding. And there had
been no understanding at all. The world that they both ignored, because
it was not a real world, was a real world to him. It was not only real
to him, but he must believe that it was so to her. Otherwise he would
have told her before.

Jean looked stupidly about the room. Last night she had come back
from Pat's and found Martha reading by the table. This morning, at
breakfast, Pat had telephoned, and she had helped pack Martha's few
things and taken her to the Tube. After that she had rung up Gregory
and they had stolen the afternoon together. It was only a few hours ago
that they had come in, the first time Gregory had ever been here.

It was all exactly like a game she had played when she was a child. It
had been a game of much elaborate preparation. It had required the most
violent upheavals of the doll's house, terrific cleaning and washing
of everything. Martha always made special cookies and Jean was given
ten cents for lemons and candy. Early in the morning of the day itself,
Jean began telephoning along the clothes-line to imaginary guests. But
no guests ever came to the party, because no children lived near, and
in the end Jean had always had her party alone.

At dawn, weary with the endless round, Jean went to bed.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE


Mary had decided to stay on and work for an M. A. at Columbia. She was
busy choosing courses of study and quarreling with professors about
prerequisites, so Jean, by pleading extra work herself, managed to keep
away from Gramercy Park for the first days of Gregory's going.

In the morning she went to the office and at night she came back.
She tried to read and turned page after page with a detached sense
of accomplishment in which all understanding of the words was lost.
Finally, one night, when she had read from eight till eleven, and found
that it was not the same book she had been reading so dutifully for
days, Jean threw it across the room, and, standing defiantly in the
center of the floor, faced the thoughts that she had refused entrance
since the morning she had crept to bed in the gray dawn.

"Well? What are you going to do about it? What can you do about it? Why
is this any different from his going away for a week-end?"

With her hands in the side pockets of her skirt, Jean paced up and
down. It was the way she straightened tangles in her work, and the
familiar rhythm seemed to throw this problem to an impersonal distance,
beyond the haze of her own emotions.

"Well? What are you going to do? Are you going around always clouded
up in this tragedy? He isn't any more married now than he was in the
beginning, and you knew it from the very first. You knew he had duties
and obligations. You rather prided yourself on your logical attitude
toward them. You weren't being logical. You couldn't deny them because
they were right there in front of you. But the first minute you got a
chance to close your eyes, you shut them so tight that--that it's taken
an operation to open them."

Jean stopped before the window and leaned with both hands on the sill,
frowning into the night.

"He would have gone on living his life and so would you, and you would
have done your work, too, if you had never met at all. Yes, you would,
and so would he." The corners of Jean's lips twitched, for always
before, when she had thought of Gregory's home, she had thought of it
as something he had acquired by accident, not as something that he had
made, an expression of himself. "We _do_ mean something to each other,
something terribly real, but it won't be real, if you begin to mess it
up with jealousy. That's what it is--jealousy. You know that nothing in
the world could have dragged _you_ out of town this summer and you're
mad and hurt and jealous clear through. There! Put that in your pipe
and smoke it whether you like the flavor or not."

Jean began walking again. She went very carefully through the summer,
picking up the happy hours from the scattered heap into which Gregory's
going had shattered them, and built them anew.

"The trouble was that you never recognized the conditions; all you did
was to ignore them, until you came to believe they weren't there."
Again and again Jean dragged this fact forward from the background into
which it was always slipping. "You never mentioned his wife or Puck and
you slopped it all over with 'delicacy and broad-mindedness.' You were
afraid, that's what you were, whether you knew it or not."

Jean came to a halt again in the middle of the room.

"Now, Jean Norris, from now on you're going to face things as they are.
You are _not_ going to ignore the existence of his wife, or of Puck.
You're either going to--or quit."

But the idea of quitting was so ridiculous that Jean laughed out loud.

At the end of the week she wrote a long, cheerful letter to Gregory and
went to have dinner with Mary.

Gregory answered by return mail. He said he was working on the plans,
which were getting along, but he was so sick of them he didn't know
whether they were good or bad. He never mentioned the country nor how
he passed his time when he was not working. Only at the very end there
was a line clear across the paper of extremely thin and wobbly columns,
under which he had printed: "These are the other boarders. Christian
Scientists."

Jean kissed the letter and tore it up. "I don't want to take to
'carrying it in my bosom.'"

A week later Jean came home early one night, after a cheerful evening
with Mary, to find Martha quietly mending under the lamp.

"Why, mummy Norris!" Jean took Martha's sewing and laid it on the
table. Squatting on her heels, she grinned with mock reproof. "Why,
Mrs. Norris, may I ask? Did I tell you you could come home?"

Martha's eyes twinkled. "You may be a very important person in the
outside world, Jeany, but you're my baby yet, and I think I'll come
and go a few years longer without asking permission. Besides, Pat is
all right and has a thousand times more sense than you have and is far
better able to look out for herself." Martha pointed to the mending on
the table.

"It's not inability, mummy, it's a question of belief. It's an economic
principle. Why should I mend stockings when I ought to be resting
my mammoth brain for further world efforts? And if I could make you
understand, think of the extra pennies some poor woman might earn."

"Economics! Fiddlesticks!"

"All right! I'll bring you home a brochure to-morrow on Conserving
Mental Waste. Maybe you'll believe it when you see it in print."

"You'll never make me believe it's good economics or anything else,
to wear stockings like those." Martha held up a pair run from heel to
knee, with a great gap at the toes.

"And you'll never make me believe it isn't a wicked waste of time to
mend them like that." Jean seized a pair from the neat pile. "You can't
tell which was the original thread and which was the mend."

"I suppose it would be all right if I mended them so they would hurt
your feet. After all, Jean, logic is not your strong point, whatever
you or your brochures may say."

Jean hugged her. "I'm rather coming to that belief myself, mummy. What
time did you get back?"

"About five. I didn't suppose you came home to dinner, but----"

"Mummy, is there some sherbet in the ice-box?"

"I----"

"_Is there some mousse in the ice-box?_"

"There is."

"And is it pineapple? Answer me!"

"I rather think I did make pineapple."

"What's the matter with my logic, now?"

Martha laughed and picked up the mending. "It's not the same thing at
all, but you'll only talk me down anyhow. So go and get the sherbet. I
believe I'll have some, too."

While they ate it Martha talked of Pat and the children and for some
reason Jean felt that life was safe and sure again. There could be
nothing very terrible in a world where little children said the
delightful things that Pat's babies did, where women like Mary kept
their belief and enthusiasm undimmed, and the Marthas thoughtfully
made pineapple mousse as a surprise.

Four weeks to the day, Gregory wired that he would be back and to keep
Sunday for a walk. The world was a nice place, a very nice place,
indeed.

Sunday was a day of blue haze and golden sun.

"It was made expressly for us; I ordered it," Gregory declared, as he
and Jean swung along, under arching maples that were just beginning to
turn crimson, with here and there a brilliant scarlet leaf among the
green. The fences were buried under honeysuckle and wild blackberries.
The summer was passing in one last passionate abandonment of giving.
The bare brown earth, freed from the burden of crops, like a woman
released from family cares, went back to its youth. The air was pungent
with the sting of sun-warmed loam. The old world frolicked in a second
love.

Gregory felt that he was physically leaving the dismal month through
which he had just passed, behind him. He strode along and knew in every
nerve that Jean was there beside him, just as strong and unwearying as
he, stepping step for step with him. He had thought of her so, very
often in the last four weeks, even when he was wading out into the
breakers with Puck perched on his shoulders, beating his chest with her
small, hard heels and shrieking with delight.

Gregory seized Jean's hand and they shot down the green-roofed lane.
Terrified birds winged with shrill calls into the blue and an old cow,
chewing her cud in a quiet corner, lumbered away to safety. At the end
of the lane, Gregory stopped unexpectedly and Jean spun round him like
a top at the end of a string.

"Gregory! Whatever's struck you?" In the circle of his arms Jean got
back her breath.

"The earth and you, a most intoxicating combination."

Between each word Gregory kissed her. Jean rested against his clasped
hands. "Well, don't make me drunk too. One's enough."

"Do I make you drunk, Jeany?" Gregory whispered and leaned to the white
hollow of her throat. But Jean suddenly dodged under his arms and stood
off, laughing at him.

"All right. But I'll make you answer me later."

The color ran under Jean's skin and then Gregory laughed.

"But I am so awfully glad to see you, Jean. I've got to take it out in
something."

"So am I." They were now in step again. "I missed you terribly." Jean
paused and added, looking off over a brown field to the right. "You're
lots better at drawing than at writing, Gregory. You didn't tell me a
thing. How's Puck and all the wobbly row of Christian Scientists?"

"You ought to have seen her. She did her best, but Lady Jane hasn't
the right kind of eyes and they wouldn't close." He bubbled over in
amusement. "You can't speak to Divine Mind with your eyes open, it
seems, and so Puck has to stay out."

Jean visioned Margaret going "into the silence," for evidently she
belonged, and wondered which of the wobbly columns she was.

"Is everybody in it?"

"Everybody. It was a regular epidemic. If I had stayed up there another
week, First Principle would have got me sure."

Suddenly Gregory realized that they were talking about Puck and
Margaret and his life in that other world. He wondered how it had
begun, but before he could think back, Jean was asking:

"I suppose that means an end of economics and uplift generally? I
imagine Divine Mind isn't a thing one shares with garbage or child
labor."

"Hardly. 'Full realization' is a terribly absorbing state."

It was strange to be talking like this to Jean. But it was a relief. He
had always felt that Jean understood, but it was nice not to have to
think ahead always, to loosen the curb once in a while.

"Better than Montessori or garbage anyhow."

"Heaps."

They spoke no more of Puck or Margaret but both felt that something,
somewhere, had changed. What had seemed perfect before was a little
more perfect now.

Gregory told her of the plans, the final week of work, and how he had
mailed them at the last possible moment.

"And if I win, I'm going to see that along with the valuables buried
under the corner stone, goes a picture of the one who made it all
possible."

"Who might that be?"

Gregory did not answer.

"Me?"

He nodded. His hand claimed hers.

"I shall have to have one taken then, and I've never had one since I
was old enough to rebel."

"Oh, no, you won't. I'm going to draw it myself."

"What will I look like? Please don't make me in two sections, like
Mary."

"You're like this." Gregory sketched a tower. It was the square Roman
tower, but the top was blurred. Jean pointed to the blur.

"What is _that_?"

"_That_ is a ray of sunshine."

"Silly," Jean whispered, and kissed him.




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX


The dead year was buried in a flare of gold and scarlet. For a little
while the gray sky hung low over the earth, and chill winds blew
through the empty world. Then the gorgeous dead season was forgotten
and winter settled in earnest.

Jean laid away the memory of summer. Again she met Gregory in the
tea-room and they were happy in the isolation of the alcove. On
Saturdays, when it snowed too heavily for tramping, they went to
matinées and sat through many driveling plays. They rarely spoke of
Margaret, but often of Puck, and now that this ghost was no longer
hidden Jean was glad of the hot, lonely nights after Gregory's going.
There was nothing that could hurt because there was nothing unknown.

The old feeling of power ran high in her. She was rapidly centering
public interest in her work. Compared to the mighty tree which she and
Mary had pictured in moments of enthusiasm, the Congress was a tiny
root, but it was striking deep and in good soil. Jean was happy. She
came sometimes to meet Gregory so radiant that even he, who had seen
Jean in many radiant moods, was startled.

"You look like a Gloucester fishing boat under full sail," he said
once, when Jean came hurrying up late for a matinée.

"Well, I can't say that you flatter."

"But a Gloucester boat is the finest thing that floats. It has
wonderful lines, and when it comes down the bay with all sails set----"

"But tearing along Broadway to get to a theater! Besides it sounds
horribly overpowering. Doesn't the thing ever sink?"

"Never."

Between the acts Gregory drew a Gloucester boat and Jean insisted that
she was going to pin it up in her room where she could see it on waking
and get the conceit knocked out of her for the day.

But in the mornings when she woke, warm under the blankets, with the
sharp air pricking her face, she liked to lie looking at it until she
could hear the whistling of the wind through the rigging and feel the
heave of the sea under the keel. Standing in the prow, she and Gregory
went out to sea, leaving behind the echoes of a waking world, the
banging of doors, the rattle of the elevator, the running of bath water
from the apartment across the light-well, the whir of coffee-grinders,
gearing the world to working strength for another day. Her own power
to slip away on these trips with Gregory amused Jean and she wondered
if Martha felt the same physical sense of cutting loose, and going out
into space, when she left her body crouching in the last pew and went
up to talk to God.

Christmas and New Year passed and February came in a black rage of
cold, that exhilarated or depressed to the breaking point. It depressed
Gregory and he came to the office one morning of black cold, late in
February, convinced of the uselessness of all things. Nothing mattered,
neither happiness nor pain. If one did manage to seize a little
happiness, it was only an interlude. What was the good of a few moments
of exhilaration and the sense of personal power, when it went before
you could make it really yours?

Gregory threw the mail about on his desk and lit his pipe. He felt
old. He tore open the envelopes and sorted the contents and knew that
he was going to go on doing this for the rest of his life. Margaret
had been exasperatingly cheerful this morning, and as Gregory recalled
the gentle sweetness of her voice as she had said, when she kissed him
good-by: "There is all the success and prosperity we want right _now_,
dear," he tore open the last envelope so violently that the letter
within was torn in half. The incident loosened the tension and Gregory
laughed at his own childishness as he laid the pieces together and read
them.

He read them once. Then he read them again. He looked round at the
walls, the floor, the water-cooler in the corner, and read it again.
He got up and opened the window. The freezing air rushed in and, after
a moment, the world adjusted itself. Things stopped spinning and came
out of the blur, but still the impression persisted that it was a joke.
Gregory brought the two pieces of the torn letter to the open window
and read them for the fourth time.

He had won the Chicago contest. He had covered paper with lines and
figures and sent it a thousand miles away, long ago, before the leaves
turned. He had never let himself really hope and, for days together,
had forgotten all about it. Even Jean had not mentioned it for weeks.
The thought of Jean steadied him. Jean had always said: "You will win."
She had never doubted, or, if she had, had hidden it under a seeming
faith that had been a comfort, even if he had not always shared it.

Gregory reached for the telephone. How should he tell her? Should he
read the letter itself, or keep her guessing? To be kept guessing made
Jean angry and he did it sometimes to tease her. Gregory stood with his
hand on the receiver, composing a beginning. But he would have to get
to the point some time and he could hear Jean's: "Oh, Gregory!" Then
they would go out somewhere and tramp for miles in the pitiless cold,
because it would be absurd even to try to go through the day's grind.
Gregory took the receiver from the hook.

Slowly he hung it up again. He went back and sat down at his desk.
After a few moments he got up mechanically and closed the window.

He had won the contest. He was no longer the fairly successful
architect, bitter, in lonely moments, at forgotten dreams. He was
"made." Everything had changed the moment he tore the letter in anger
at the sameness of things. There was no doubt about that. Nothing would
be the same any more. He would have to live in Chicago. The building
would take several years and he would have to be on hand all the time,
if he was to get all there was to it. He would have to leave Jean.
He would no longer be able to ring her up when he wanted to. There
would be no more long walks. No more dusky hours at the little French
roadhouse, hours when the need of parting drew them so near together,
Jean would no longer be there in the background of his life, so that he
always felt that he could reach out and touch her.

Gregory jammed his pipe between his teeth and began walking up and
down. Was there never a spot in life, never one short hour that was
perfect? He saw the future that might have been, had he and Jean
belonged legally to each other. Love, success, accomplishment. He and
Jean--and Puck.

Gregory's face was drawn when he sat down at his desk again. He drove
his mind through the day's work as if it had been a slave.

At four he closed his desk and went to meet Jean. She was already at
their table, sitting partly turned to watch a group in the large room
beyond. She was smiling, and when she caught sight of him the smile
deepened.

"Do look at that old peacock over there. I have been watching her for
the last five minutes and she's never stopped preening once."

He had come, still uncertain how he was going to tell Jean, and she
asked him to look at an old woman. But he turned and then he laughed
too.

"Well, what's happened exciting to-day?"

"Oh, nothing much. Nothing that will surprise you terribly."

Jean put down the teapot. "Gregory Allen, out with it!"

Gregory seized the alternative of banter, which had not occurred to him
before.

"If I'm bursting, as you so impolitely suggest, it must be terribly
important, and if it's terribly important you--you ought to guess it,"
he finished lamely.

"Now, Gregory, don't tease. Besides, I haven't an ounce of sense left.
I've been struggling with a Tammany politician until I'm limp. What is
it?"

Gregory took the cup she was holding to him. He felt that as long as
the cup was in transit a choice was left open. But once it was beside
his plate, he would be obliged to say, in the only way he had been able
to frame it at all: "I've won the contest, and I have to go and live
in Chicago. They want me there to talk over some slight changes by the
middle of March and--I might as well stay on, because I'm going back
there to live anyhow."

"Gregory, don't be silly. Please, what is it? I know it's good, because
your nose is wrinkling up at the corners."

"It is good." Gregory put down the cup. "I've won the contest."

The old peacock cackled a shrill note and Gregory heard her say: "Just
fancy, at her age, a deep pink, my dear, I----"

"Gregory--my dear...."

The blood rushed to Gregory's eyes so that Jean blurred to something
white and shining, near but impossible to touch. He looked down.

"I shall have to go to Chicago. They've asked me to be there by the
middle of March."

"Of course. Why, I'd want to take the next train and rush out, whether
they'd asked me or not. Oh, Gregory! I always knew it but--I feel all
wiggly inside."

Her hands moved to him across the cloth but Gregory's did not come to
meet them.

"But I shall have to live there, Jean, for good; for several years
anyhow. It will mean so many things. Here I should only be "that fellow
who's building the Auditorium out in Chicago." I'm not young. I've got
to get it all now, every scrap of it. I've got to, Jean. I've got to!"

Afterwards, Jean knew that in that moment she crossed a line and left
something of herself behind forever. But now it must be the same as it
had always been, until she was alone. If she yielded an inch, she would
go plunging down into the emptiness.

"You do see, don't you?" Gregory's voice pleaded for her courage, but
she did not answer, and he hurried on.

"If there were any other way, ... but there isn't. It will lead to all
kinds of things. I've got to be there. Don't you see, dear?"

Why did he keep on saying that, over and over, as if she were a child?
Why did he sit there, looking into his plate, as if he were hurting her
only and against his will? Jean drew her hands back into her lap.

"Jean," he whispered, "Sweetheart, don't make it hard."

"I'm not going to. After all, you know,--Chicago's only eighteen hours
away."

He looked up. "Well, I'll be damned! Do you know, Jean, I never thought
of that?"

And he had not. It had seemed so final, such a complete upheaval of the
present that he had pictured no thread running to the future. It would.
Of course it would. Why shouldn't it? Jean would be the same. He would
be the same. Each had his work. Their meetings would be farther apart,
but freer. He would never have to leave Jean because he had promised to
be home at a certain hour, nor invent explanations for Sunday tramps.
In a way it would be more perfect, not less. And as soon as he had
things going he would come back for a few days. Later he could come for
longer. In summer, if he had a vacation, he would spend it with Jean.

"Jean, I'm coming straight round this table and kiss you."

"No, don't."

But he was already there beside her, and under pretext of adjusting the
curtain, kissed her quickly. Jean wanted to strike him. Then he was
back in his own place, talking again. All the first joy of his success
rushed over him. Jean felt it, the hidden power that she had fanned
with her belief and love. It was burning away her own forces and Jean
felt cold.

They had a second serving of tea. The rooms emptied. Gregory was still
talking, rushing away beyond her reach.

It was almost seven when she threw her crumpled napkin on the table and
rose.

"I've simply got to go. Besides we could never get it all talked out,
if we stayed until midnight."

"I know. I feel like a kid parading his bag of tricks. I believe I've
been standing on my head for the last hour. Have I, Jean?" He was near,
helping her on with her coat. His fingers touched her cheek. "Why
didn't you set me right end up with a thump?"

"Oh, I adore small boys on their heads. I--I always want to do it,
too." Jean wondered why he did not grip her shoulders and shake her
back to consciousness, but he only laughed and they went out, past the
groups of pretty waitresses resting now in the empty room.

It had turned warmer and snow was falling in great white flakes.

"I believe I'll walk. I'm not going home to dinner anyhow." Her courage
was gone. She could not go down into that stifling Subway, talk
nothings above the roar of the train, feel Gregory close among all
those strangers.

"But it's going to be a regular blizzard. Look! It's getting thicker
every minute."

Jean turned up her fur collar. "I don't mind. Maybe it's the last
blizzard we'll have. I always wallow in the last blizzard. It's a kind
of rite."

"Well, then, if I can't stop you...."

They were standing so close that Jean could feel his warm breath on her
face. Muffled figures, bent against the driving snow, pushed by them
and disappeared into the black hole of the Subway entrance. Automobiles
shot noiselessly through the whirling whiteness. The world itself had
changed.

"To-morrow then about four?"

"No, I can't to-morrow. I've got a meeting. Friday."

"All right." Gregory held out his hand, but Jean raised her muff to
keep off the driving flakes and only smiled across it.

She went back to the office. They had all gone. There was a note tacked
to the lid of her desk and Jean read it. She tore it up and threw it
into the waste-basket but some of the pieces fell upon the rug and she
bent to pick them up carefully. She opened a window, and covered one of
the typewriters that had been left uncovered. Then she telephoned to
Martha that she would not be home to dinner. Martha urged her not to
work too late and Jean hung up the receiver.

Now she was alone, utterly alone, with the thoughts she had beaten back.

Gregory was going away. He was going out of her life for months at
a time. Three short weeks and it would be as it had been before his
coming--empty, work-filled days. Jean bowed her head on the desk.

"You fool, you fool, you helped to do it."

She had been so glad to give and give and give. Never to falter in her
faith, or let his courage drop below the standard she had set for it.
He had needed her and now he did not need her at all.

Jean slipped to the floor and clutched the cushion of the chair.

"Don't let me feel like this. Don't let me," she begged, but there was
no answer. The reasonable machine of her universe held no God. It ran
itself.

When she was sure that Martha would be asleep, Jean went home.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the next two weeks they saw no more of each other than usual.
Jean was busy, and Gregory had to leave things in order for Benson, who
was to take on the office. Besides, it kept up the fiction of there
being no big change. But on Tuesday, the day before he was to leave,
Jean did not go to work.

It was a day of sparkling sunshine and hard snow, packed firm. They
went into the country. They talked of little things, rested, made
snowballs and glided, hand in hand, over the ice of a small pond. It
was a day like many they had had.

It was almost dark when they stopped at the French roadhouse. There
were no other guests, and Madam Cateau lumbered forward in her felt
slippers to greet them as old friends.

"It is a long time that you do not come. I think you forget me. Then
I remember and say--But the chicken they do not forget. Me, yes, but
not the chicken." She shook with laughter and waggled her great red
forefinger under Gregory's nose. "I am right? Yes? The chicken you do
not forget. Two plates it was. Three, maybe?"

"Three at least. I wouldn't swear that it wasn't four."

"And to-night I have the same, with the mushrooms. Why do I make it
this morning? It is not the right day. Le bon Dieu, maybe?"

She waddled off and Jean took a table close to the fire.

It was impossible that they were doing this for the last time. The
fire burned with a deep glow. Outside the bare trees, ladened with
snow, creaked in the wind that came creeping with the dark from hidden
places. In the kitchen Madam Cateau scolded the waiter. Dishes rattled
and finally the perspiring Gustave came running with the soup. It was
rich and thick, and across the table, so near that she could see a tiny
black speck on Gregory's white collar, he was eating it, smiling at her
between spoonfuls, his face damp with the soup's heat and the reaction
from the long walk in the cold.

When dinner was almost through, Madam plodded in again.

"The same room? Yes? Perhaps a smaller one is warmer."

"No. The same. Make a good fire. It will be all right."

They drank the coffee in silence and smoked, listening to the woman's
feet plopping on the floor above. It was quiet in the kitchen now. A
loosened shutter creaked and ashes fell softly in the grate. Upstairs
the door closed. Madam came thumping down and they heard her settle
with a grunt into her chair by the parlor stove.

They went upstairs. The room was just the same. They might have been
away only an hour. The same colored print of Napoleon stared above the
dresser; the same stiff, white tidies covered the chair seats. The
same red and white counterpane spread over the bed, with its nosegay
of red and white embroidered roses in the exact center. The curtains
were drawn half down, but below, through the spotless panes, the field
stretched bare and silent under a clean young moon. Gregory went over
and pulled down the shades.

Jean took the plush rocker that Gregory dragged to the hearth. He sat
on the floor, his head against her knees, and together they listened to
the breathing of the fire, the whispering wind, and the branch scraping
on the glass. Gregory drew Jean's hands down and held them against his
lips.

The little noise outside died in the throb within. His lips pressed hot
in her palms. With a sob, Jean bent and drew him into her arms.

In the morning they went silently back to the city while it was still
early. The wind had risen in the night and blown the last snow from the
branches. The trees cut thin and black in the new day.

Gregory was to come back in May.




                         CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN


Spring was late, but when it came, it came with a rush. In a day, the
trees swelled in buds and blades of grass pricked the frozen earth.
Jean woke one morning, late in April, to the feeling of a new force in
the world and in herself. It was as if she had been walking through a
tunnel, and now, unexpectedly, stepped into the light. Time had somehow
slipped its leash; it no longer strained behind but ran forward. Jean
jumped out of bed and went through the morning exercises that she had
neglected for weeks. Raising and lowering herself on her toes, she drew
in deep breaths of the spring air and with every breath the last two
months receded, the future brightened, until, her whole body glowing,
Jean came to a final halt, planted firmly on both feet.

She entered the dining-room humming, so that Martha, who was shirring
eggs in the kitchen, poked her head through the swing door, as if she
expected to see a stranger.

"Why, Jean!"

"Why, mummy!"

Martha smiled. "All the problems in the universe must be solved this
morning."

"Not exactly. But I confess they don't seem quite so hopeless. I guess
it's the spring. Who could be altogether miserable on a morning like
this? In the spring tra la!"

Martha went back to the eggs. Such a sudden change of mood was beyond
her, for it was weeks since Jean had come humming to breakfast and,
although Martha had said nothing, she had worried. But there had been
nothing to worry about, since Jean could hum because the sun shone and
the earth-smell came through the open windows. Martha wondered why
intelligent people gave way to moods, when they must know what a little
thing in the end would dispel them.

At the office Jean found a letter from Gregory. It was the longest she
had had and the writing of it had stretched over a week.

"It's the only way to do," Gregory wrote, "because if I don't, things
pile up to tell you until there are so many I can't tackle them
all. Sometimes I want to get right on the train and come over, when
something very good happens. And it's just the same when something bad
happens, so you see I want you pretty much all the time."

At this point, Jean rang for Josephine Grimes and told her there would
be no dictation ready until eleven. When Josephine had gone, Jean
locked the door.

"I don't care if it is silly. I have to be sensible enough the rest of
the time."

Jean came back to the desk and read and re-read Gregory's letter until
she felt that they had been together through the days of its writing.
They were interesting days, filled from morning until night with new
impressions and new people.

"At first it felt queer and unreal, to have millionaire pork packers
and mayors and things like that consulting my convenience. I felt
about the way Puck does, just before Galatea comes to life. Not that I
want to convey that a pork packer is like a Greek statue. It felt like
this----"

Here followed a marginal drawing of himself standing before a group of
pedestals at various angles of motion, but the flagstone on which he
stood was anchored at the four corners with the words, _I did win the
contest_.

"I'm afraid I'm getting too cocky about winning, as if I had done it
all by myself, when it was you, more than half. Yes, it was, and you
needn't smile as I am positive you are doing, and insist it was all my
great ability. Of course I have ability, tons of it. Does that satisfy
you? But when I look back now on the hopeless, dreamless creature you
rescued, I want--well, I never claimed to be any good at words, and
even drawing fails me here. I want you close. I want your arms round
me and that glorious cool hair hiding all but your eyes. Why do you
come so often, dear, just at dawn, and wake me that way, as you did
that first morning at Morrison's? It was just about a year ago, wasn't
it? Maybe that's why I've been thinking of them lately, or maybe it's
because you came every morning last week. You shameless, brazen----"
Here was the figure that he usually drew instead of writing her name,
the Roman tower with the shaft of sunlight across the top.

The division for that day stopped here and the next was about some
changes in the plans that he had decided to make. The description was
brief and technical but Jean knew the old design so well that she could
reconstruct it without an effort. Evidently he had been interrupted,
for he broke off short and when he began again it was about Puck. Puck
was delighted with Chicago and as far as he could judge it was because
she would never again have to be nice to Squdgy.

"I believe Squdgy was your Dr. Fenninger and my Amos Palmer to her.
I hadn't any idea that she really disliked him so much. Funny little
entities children are, changing right under your eyes every minute.
Sometimes she looks like this and the next day she's this."

Jean's lips quivered. How closely he must observe Puck! It hurt in a
way and yet it made her very tender, too.

There was no direct mention of Margaret but in the last division,
written the day before, Gregory said that she need not think New York
was doing everything. Chicago had an institution, a group rather, whose
motto was The Ultimate End.

"So what's the good of fiddling with any little by-products of social
uplift or religion? Fascinatingly logical, isn't it? You dive straight
at The End. It's the weirdest yet, a lot more simple than garbage or
the Divine Mind."

And Jean could see Margaret, slim and blonde and graceful, diving to
The Ultimate End.

There was only one sentence more.

"From the way things look now, I believe I can make it before the
fifteenth. So 'put your house in order.'"

Jean folded the letter and laid it in the drawer with the others. Then
she called Miss Grimes and dictated steadily for two hours.

Ten days later, Jean took down the receiver to hear Gregory's familiar:
"Hello! You see I made it."

"So I see. But where are you?"

"At the Grand Central, where you will be in about ten minutes--unless
you want me to come over."

"No. I'll come down."

Afterwards they laughed, but at the time there had seemed nothing else
to say.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gregory stayed three days. Two of his business appointments and one of
Jean's took part of their time, and made it impossible for them to go
to Morrison's as Jean had hoped they would be able to do. But she tried
not to think of it, and held firmly to what they had.

During these two days the feeling Jean had so often experienced in the
past, of having to beat through an outer covering to get at the real
Gregory underneath, was gone. At moments, Jean felt as if some subtle
atomic process had taken place, regrouping the elements of the man,
without changing them in their nature, but re-combining them in such
a way that the effect produced was quite different. But it was not a
permanent feeling, or rather, it was true only at times. In the close
hours of the second afternoon, which they spent at Madam Cateau's,
there was no room for analysis in the content that held them, and Jean
felt that Gregory had never been away at all. But coming back, he told
her of a possible commission, the first that had come through his new
connection, and Jean felt the difference again sharply. And simply
because it was a change, Jean resented it until her sense of justice
and humor conquered. She had always known and believed Gregory had it
in him to do big things and now that he was proving it she had a queer
feeling of hollowness inside.

"You're going to be disgustingly successful, Gregory. You ooze it
already."

"Do you mean that I really act conceited?" He asked it with such desire
to be answered honestly that Jean laughed.

"I didn't say that. Of course you don't. But you--let me see how to put
it. Here, give me a pencil, maybe I can draw it."

Gregory watched with a grin while Jean constructed figures unknown to
geometry.

"Words are clumsy, I grant, but those things! Which is the 'is' and
which the 'was'?"

"That's the 'was.' It's one of the Egyptian pyramids, with curlycues.
Those are the moods when the spirit inside got away from you."

"And the 'is'?"

"That's a geometric eagle."

"With the curlycues become audible in one horrible screech."

"That isn't his mouth open. It's his under-beak where the pencil
slipped."

"That's better. You had me quite scared." Gregory took back the paper
and pencil and Jean's hands with them. "For which I am going to punish
you."

Again and again, in the soft dusk, under the budding elm, he kissed
her, and then he held her close and they did not speak at all.

When they began walking again they were serious.

"You see, Jean, you don't really know how it feels, because you never
quit on the game as I did. I did honestly believe that it was all over
for me and that I was never going to get anywhere. I felt like a little
cog in a huge machine, whose place could be taken by any other little
cog just as well. That's a damnable feeling. I felt at the mercy of
whatever power kept the machine going."

"But we are all cogs, in a way."

"Look out. You'll be an Ultimate Ender yet."

"Is being a cog the ultimate end of everything?"

"Something like it. We are all specks in a cosmos that's more
complicated than a Chinese puzzle. You reincarnate and reincarnate for
millions of cycles, and when you get through you're only a sphere with
a face in the middle. Did you know that? Your spiritual you, when it's
been perfected through a billion æons is going to be a kind of gas bag
with features in the center. The latest discoveries in all occultism
prove it."

Jean laughed. "I believe I'll stop off half way. The Ultimate End
doesn't appeal to me."

"I'll stop off in that place, too,----" Gregory did not finish, and
Jean did not ask him what he had been going to say. Hand in hand they
walked along, until they came in sight of the brightly lit station.

"It's been a glorious afternoon, hasn't it?"

Jean nodded.

On the next night, which was the last of Gregory's stay, they had
dinner at The Fiesole. Jean did not want to go there, but when Gregory
proposed it, she could think of no good reason and so they went.
Gregory filled their glasses, and across the raised rim of his, smiled
to Jean.

"Amos Palmer!"

"To the Turkish lanterns and Japanese wind-bells!"

And Rachael. Should she say it? It was such a long, long time ago. Jean
did not know whether Gregory remembered that the night he had told her
of Amos and the pergola, was the night they had gone to Rachael's. What
a big thing it had seemed at the time and now it was so little. Was the
course of all human relationships just that--a series of steps, from
one desperate need, to a temporary peace, and then on to another need?
Did one never come to a lasting peace, a flat, restful spot with no
more steps? Or did one just step off at last into nothingness?

"What is it? Are you yearning for Japanese wind-bells and an electric
pergola?"

"Was I looking like that?"

"Rather abstracted, Jeany. And----" Gregory was on the point of
adding--"and this is our last night," but changed it. They both knew
that well enough. So he said: "And besides it's rude."

"I was just wondering whether she has outgrown the pergola yet or
whether Amos is still happy."

"I don't know. I saw in some paper not long ago that an English Duke
was one of the guests on a yachting trip with Mr. and Mrs. Amos Palmer.
From what I know of the Duke's reputation--Good-by wind-bells and maybe
Amos."

They kept the talk at this level until they had almost finished dinner.
Then, in spite of their efforts to hold the mood, it slipped from them.
Brief silences fell, which were hastily dispelled as soon as either
one could think of something to say, sufficiently unimportant. But
they came again, until at last Jean made no effort to escape them, and
Gregory sat rolling breadcrumbs in the old way and frowning into the
tablecloth.

He did not know when he could come again. The months ahead were going
to be busy ones and he would have to snatch an interlude when he could.
And yet, going without the definite point of a return, left these days
unfinished. He wished Jean would ask him.

But Jean said nothing. If Gregory knew he would tell her and if he did
not know she did not want to be told that this, for which she would
wait alone, week after week, as she had waited, was to be left to
chance, thrust into an unfilled moment.

"Let's walk to the station, up Second Avenue and across, I haven't been
down this way for ages." There was an hour yet before train time and
Jean knew that she could not sit here, filling the lessening hour with
nonsense and silences.

"All right." Gregory signaled the waiter and paid the bill. He was
disappointed, but what had he expected? He did not know. He only knew
that he had not thought of spending their last hour sauntering among
pushcarts. But if that was enough for Jean----And he succeeded so well
that Jean's heart grew heavier and heavier and she kept back the tears
only by a desperate effort.

But when the reality of separation detached itself in a concrete crowd,
in long lines waiting before the ticket windows, the starter booming
the trains through a megaphone, and the red-cap who hurried up for
Gregory's grip, Jean's pride slipped beyond her hold. She stared ahead
and her lips trembled. His arm slipped under hers and drew her closer.

"Jean," he whispered. "Jean, dear." His fingers closed about her bare
wrist above the glove.

The hand of the huge clock jerked itself forward another minute. And
there was nothing to say. Less than if they had been strangers. With
another jerk, the hand touched ten. Gregory dropped Jean's arm. Without
a word he hurried through the gate and it closed behind him.




                         CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


The summer passed. Once in September Gregory came on a flying business
trip and left the next day.

Winter closed early with a jealous grip, and Jean worked as even she
had never worked before. She managed committees, lobbied bills, spoke
at meetings and drove her plans through all opposition.

Dr. Mary was busy with her final thesis. Evening after evening Jean and
Martha sat reading quietly as they had done in the old days, and Martha
was happy.

Just before Christmas Gregory came unexpectedly, solely to see Jean.
They went out to the French roadhouse where he had ordered dinner by a
wire to Madam Cateau.

It was a Christmas dinner. The table was already laid in their old
room, when he threw open the door and ushered Jean in with a flourish.

"Merry Christmas."

He closed the door and would have taken Jean in his arms, but the look
in her eyes stopped him.

"Why, Jean, what is it?"

For Jean stood staring at the table and fighting desperately not to cry.

"I--thought----"

Jean turned and buried her face on his shoulder.

"What is it, dear? Can't you tell me?"

Jean fought fiercely to stop, but she wanted to shriek, to laugh, to
let down utterly, to sob out all the hurt, the suppression of the last
ten months, close in Gregory's arms. And all the time, at the back of
her brain, her burning eyes pressed into Gregory's coat, she saw the
gay little table with the wine glasses and the white chrysanthemums and
the ridiculous turkey, with the foolish paper frills about its brown
legs.

Gregory held her gently, stroking her hair and wondering what had
happened. For he had expected Jean to be as surprised and delighted as
he had been when the idea occurred to him.

Slowly Jean's nerves relaxed and the sobs lessened. She must be happy
now, while they were together. In a few hours Gregory would be gone and
if she spoiled these hours there would be nothing, not even the memory,
in the months ahead.

Jean raised her head and smiled. Gregory smiled too with a warm little
feeling deep inside for this sudden, unexpected weakness.

"Whatever was the matter, Jean girl?"

"Nothing--only--I was wishing--we could have--Christmas and--we've got
it."

Gregory laughed so that down in the kitchen Madam Cateau heard and
laughed, too.

"Of all things to cry about! Because you get something you want. I'm
glad it doesn't affect me that way." He punctuated the words with
kisses and then, lifting her bodily, carried her across the room and
put her down at the table, a little out of breath with the effort.

"You're no feather-weight, Lady of My Dreams. Or maybe I am hungry."

It was a good dinner and Gregory enjoyed it, although they had to hurry
at the end to get back to the city in time for him to catch his train.

Jean waited behind the iron grill until the train pulled out and
she could no longer distinguish Gregory waving his hand from the
Observation. Alone she turned into the months ahead.

Weeks of waiting, snatching, losing, waiting again. Years broken
by flying visits, some longer, some shorter. No calm, no peace, no
sureness. Their lives would touch, run close for a few hours, a few
days at most, and part. No foothold, no smallest spot their own, no
door they could close against every one but each other. And it would
always be like this. The happiness of the moment must be clutched,
until the force of the holding almost strangled it to death, just as
to-day's dinner had done.

It would go on and on. Their meetings would grow more and more the
result of circumstances, be wedged in the unfilled places between the
world's demands.

She would fill her days, fuller and fuller, to keep the thought of
Gregory away. She would do bigger and bigger things, and people would
speak more and more admiringly of her. While she struggled not to
wonder when Gregory was coming again!

Or he might never come again. An accident in the lives of either might
separate them forever. Gregory might be called to the ends of the earth
and she could not follow. He would go with Margaret and Puck and she
would remain behind.

They would grow older. They would hold to the small, common interests
of each other's lives by an effort. A little while, and they would no
longer talk of this person and that without elaborate explanations.
Gregory's little sketches of people she did not know would grow
meaningless. Their lives would run two paralleled streams, mingling
only in the moments snatched together. And what would these moments
hold? No shared interests, no mingled hopes. Their hands and lips would
cling, on to the very end, because something in Gregory would always
call and something, beyond her brain or will, would always answer.

The white face of a clock peered at Jean through the snow. It was
almost twelve. After all, she would have to go home some time.

       *       *       *       *       *

The holidays passed and a new year began. Jean took long walks through
the snow and believed, sometimes, when she came back tired and hungry,
that she had left the tangle behind. There were moments when, whipped
by the cold to an almost drunken ecstasy of health, the old sureness
returned. Her love and Gregory's was clean and big, like the open,
eternal as the earth.

But the snow went.

It grew warm again on the upland, cool in the hollows, as on the days
she and Gregory had stolen two springs before. Jean battled to hold her
peace but it slipped from her as the grass pricked the earth again and
buds swelled on the branches.

She proposed a national campaign to awaken interest in other states,
and link the women of the country in a common bond. But, while she
listened to the applause that greeted her first suggestion, she heard
beyond it the wailing gramophone wrapping the rebellious Mattie and
her mother in sensuous peace. She worked until far into the night on
this new project, but the old apple trees rustled in the orchard and
dogs barked from farm to farm across the fields. She went to special
luncheons to meet important people, but Uncle John was always there,
eating his porridge in the blue willow bowl. And at night, when she
lay alone in the dark, too weary with the crowded days to sleep, there
was always a baby's dark, fuzzy head and wet, groping lips. Jean
tried to push it away, but it would not go. In the morning, when the
coffee-grinders set the world in motion, it was always there, smiling
and pummeling with its fists.

And in the end, Jean let it have its way.

It came and went with her, at home, in the office and to Mary's.

Jean thought of Amelia Gorman and the gray house on the windy hills. If
she had a child, nothing ever again could shut her off from the current
of life. It was the only real thing in all the world. It was the past
and the future down to the end of time.

Jean weighed the price. A child of hers and Gregory's against a
national congress of strangers. Any one of a dozen other women could
manage that, but her job, her very own job, no one else could do.
Before the miracle of her own power Jean was humble.

A strange new softness came over her, so that Martha wondered, but Mary
referred to it outright, one night during her last week in New York
when they sat talking before the open window as they had not done for
months, with Madame la Marquise budding to youth before them.

"Jean Herrick, I wish to goodness you'd stop looking like a large
blonde angel, just about to fly beyond mortal ken. It makes me feel a
hundred years old, and as if I hadn't accomplished a single thing the
whole time I've been here."

Jean laughed. "I'm sorry that I look like such a foolish thing as a
large, blonde angel, but I'd rather you felt a hundred than I, Mary."

"But I'm not stuck on it myself, Jean."

"Then don't. It's all in the mind, anyhow. No one needs to grow old."

"Piffle. There's a lot of rubbish talked like that these days. There's
no need to grow grumpy and useless, but, after all, we can't turn
back the hands of the clock. We do grow out of one possibility into
another--and they don't come back either."

Jean shrank a little, as if Mary had touched the glowing spot inside.

"Then--live every possibility up to the hilt and take the next."

"Logical and doubtless true. But I wish you wouldn't look so much as if
your next was an ascent straight into Heaven. It makes me feel old--and
a little lonely, Jean."

"Don't, Mary; please don't, I don't want you to feel like that."

"Oh, it's not as bad as all that. But, really, Jean, I never did think
of the difference in our ages until lately. We always seemed to be
walking along at the same gait, but these last few weeks you look as if
you had been doing it out of politeness, and if you really wanted to
you could pick up your skirts--and run forever."

"I do feel like that, Mary; exactly as if I had wings."

Dr. Mary looked up, but the joke on her lips did not come. There was a
short pause and then Jean said:

"Mary, I'm going to tell you something that I believe I've wanted to
tell you for a long time."

And she did, looking out over the Park while Dr. Mary sat silent.

Jean went back to the beginning, to the sense of a fuller world because
Gregory was in it. Calm and unashamed, she spared nothing.

"I was glad when you went away, Mary. It was wonderful having this
place, like a home all our own. And then you came back." Jean smiled,
thinking of the tragedy of the discovered vegetables, and how miserable
she had been.

She told of sending Martha away, of Gregory's going to Maine, and of
her own readjustment toward Margaret and Puck; of Gregory's winning the
contest, his removal to Chicago and of the long months since, trying to
hold intact the beauty of their love, through hurried meetings, flying
trips, moods of forced gayety clutched tight against the force of
circumstance always tearing them apart. And the terrible white light of
logic illuminating the end.

"It will come, Mary; it must. I can see it like a wall, standing there
at the end of--one year, two, five perhaps. But--it will end."

For the first time Jean's voice shook. Nor was Mary's steady as she
said, after a long pause:

"But you've _had_ it, Jean. Nothing can take it away."

Jean shook her head. "I know, Mary. But that's like the rubbish that's
talked about not growing old. It's the theory of those who have never
had a thing--that the memory of it can be enough."

Dr. Mary winced and lit a cigarette. "Maybe it is."

"When you've had a thing and--it goes--you have two pains, because the
memory and the happiness hurts as much as not having it any more. And
then--there's a third--the nothingness of everything else. That's the
worst, that awful, dead emptiness, where nothing counts and you just go
on because there's not even the will to stop. And the terrible, empty
future."

"But he isn't dead, Jean. And you have your work. You can write, and
even if you can't be always together, there----"

"I know. Those things are a lot when they're a part, but they're
nothing at all when they're all. I have less even than Margaret has.
Yes, less even than that. She has the shell and I have the kernel,
but the kernel has to have its own shell or it dies. No marriage
certificate in the world could make her really his wife, but no
blindness in the world can keep our love what it is really--like this.
I don't believe that society invented marriage because a man wanted to
keep one woman as his property or because women wanted to be supported.
They were just groping blindly to keep love alive, to bind it fast,
that biggest, freest thing in all the world, and keep it safe for
itself."

"Well, they've made a sad mess of it."

"I know. They didn't mean to build a prison, but they have. Some day
there will be no state or church locking people in--but there will
always be walls around real love--like ours. It makes its own and grows
stronger and stronger behind them. And when it can't, it just withers
and dies and--there's nothing left. I can't have it that way, Mary, I
can't. I can't watch it grow less, and I know it will--and I can't shut
it out forever. There is only one way, Mary--I want a child--terribly."

Dr. Mary dropped her cigarette so that it smoldered into the rug and
burned a small, black hole.

"But, Jean----"

"I know, Mary. I've thought it out--everything, every single thing.
I won't lose my job, because, of course, I shall give it up. I'll go
away. I shall have to lie, right and left and all the time. I shall lie
to the world and I shall lie to mummy. That will be the hardest, lying
to mummy. But it would kill her, and I don't want to hurt mummy, but
I am not going to let her stop my life, withhold the biggest thing in
it. No one has a right to do that. It is _my_ life and _my_ job, Mary;
the job of every woman when she really loves a man. And nothing else
matters."

The little doctor gulped twice, and rapped out:

"Then go ahead and have it."

Jean slipped to the floor and laid her head on the other's knees.

"Mary, do you think--I'm--very----"

"No, Jean, I don't. I'm--I'm green with envy."

The tears ran down the doctor's cheeks and she made no effort to wipe
them away.

After a while Jean looked up.

"I'm going to write to Gregory and tell him. I don't want to see
him--till he knows."

Dr. Mary snuffled. "Here endeth the Congress."

Jean smiled. "Mary, a dozen other women can run the Congress and I
don't give a whoop who goes on with it. Josephine Grimes can take it
over if she likes."

Through the tears the blue eyes twinkled.

"Jean, you're the--most glorious--fool in the world--and I'd like to
shake you."




                          CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE


"How do you like it?" Margaret turned, looking back over her shoulder
to Gregory. Her fair hair and white shoulders rose from a swathing of
cloudy fabric that showed now palest pink, now mauve, now faintly blue.

"It's ripping!"

Waltzing slowly the length of the dusky room, she moved with a flower
lightness, a spirit-like unreality that touched the artist in him.

"You look like an orchid come to life in the depths of a forest."

Margaret stopped and swept him a curtsey.

"Thanks. To affect one's own husband like that is an achievement."

Gregory smiled. This new manner of Margaret's, half flirtatious, half
cynical, amused him.

"Then what will happen to old Burnham? He'll be downright dizzy."

"Don't be coarse, Gregory. I don't like it. Besides, you know I do it
for you."

"Oh, I'm not jealous. Not a bit."

"You may laugh, but it _is_ good business. Weren't you asked to join
The Meadow Club after our last dinner?"

"I was."

"Well?"

"I thank you." Gregory doffed an imaginary hat and swept a bow. "What
have you in mind this time?"

"Don't be silly. Besides, it's every hostess's duty to look as well as
she can."

"You've done that. Maybe Burnham will resign in my favor and I'll be
president of the Architectural Society of America."

"There's no reason that you shouldn't be some day, if you go about it
right. It has to have a president, doesn't it?"

"Absolutely essential." Gregory chuckled and switched on the lights. In
this mood of helping-wife Margaret was delightfully naïve.

"Well, I'm doing my part. If you do yours----"

"There's no knowing to what heights I may not climb."

"But you can't get anything without some trouble in this world. You've
got to work for it, in every way." Margaret spoke as if she were
enunciating a divine decree, and moved with stately coldness to the
door.

"Very well. I'll work to-night. You've put me next to Phyllis Henshaw,
haven't you?"

"Yes. And it's Gothic Cathedrals. She's mad about them lately. That
ought to be easy for you."

"I can take that trick with my eyes shut."

"But don't make her feel that you know more about it than she does. Let
her talk. She loves to."

"I'll remember."

"And please get dressed. The Phillips always come too early and you're
not even shaved yet."

Margaret floated away and Gregory went into his dressing-room.

This was to be the last and most important of the Allen dinners which
Margaret had begun early in the winter. The guest of honor was to be
James Burnham, President of the Architectural Society, with eight
lesser luminaries. It would be a success because these dinners of
Margaret's always were a success. Sitting beside some eminent man,
whose conversation she could not follow, Margaret reached her climax.
As wife and companion, she was one being, as hostess another. In the
act of presiding over a dinner table, Margaret found a clarity of
vision that kept her in safe paths. Men whom Gregory admired and for
whose good opinion he was anxious, never refused an invitation to one
of Margaret's dinners.

As he dressed Gregory smiled to think what a chasm lay between the
first dinner and this. Graceful and surefooted, Margaret had scaled
the social cliffs, picking with unerring instinct the right spots. The
dinner to-night was to mark the apex.

And it did. Looking about the table, at the soft lights, the exquisite
flowers, the well-gowned women and alert men, Gregory felt that only
a sketch of the Taj Mahal would do it justice. While he talked Gothic
Cathedrals he drew one mentally and sent it to Jean. The subdued
abundance, restrained success, the perfect balance of personal
accomplishment and concealed consciousness of it, rose in delicate
spires and minarets against a background of inexhaustible possibility,
Eastern in its opulence.

On Margaret's right sat James Burnham, white-haired and charming, but
knowing to a hair's weight what it meant for any hostess to secure him.
Yankee in the shrewd appreciation of his own value, Southern in the
charm of its concealment, and Latin in his attitude to all women, the
famous man bent to Margaret with undivided attention. Margaret vibrated
in harmony to his note. Her eyes sparkled and she had the manner of a
beautiful woman withholding an advance she perfectly understood and had
full power to reciprocate. Gregory looked on amused, while he followed
instructions and let Phyllis Henshaw rhapsodize among the Gothic
arches. He speculated about Margaret as if she were a stranger, and
wondered why men with wives like that were ever jealous of them.

Coffee was served in the living-room, a method of Margaret's for
redistributing her guests. By the new adjustment, Phyllis Henshaw fell
to James Pelham and Gregory could not help smiling at Margaret when he
caught her eye. Skill like this amounted to an art. From time to time
he glanced at the white-haired president, listening with a mechanical
smile to the Gothic ravings and wondered whether any man, except
perhaps a Jesuit diplomat, could have achieved his purpose better. At
the first opportunity, Gregory edged his own partner to the rescue, and
then realized that he, too, was weaving a pattern of the evening to
Margaret's design. He had an almost irresistible impulse to call across
the room to her:

"Is this the way you want it? Or have I made a mistake?"

There was neither bridge nor music, and yet most of the guests stayed
until almost twelve. It was even a little after before Phyllis Henshaw
kissed Margaret effusively and assured her that it had all "been simply
perfect." When the front door closed behind them, Margaret dropped into
a chair and yawned.

"People can say what they like, but there's absolutely no other way to
do it. A dinner is the only thing."

"Q. E. D."

"But next winter I'm going to do it a little differently. We won't
begin quite so early in the season--now that I know who's who. We won't
give more than six either. That's enough to cover all the people that
really matter."

"A kind of inverse ratio? In time, at that rate, we'll have to eat
alone."

"I suppose that's awfully clever; but, really, I'm too tired to follow."

Gregory realized that he was being petty. For the evening had been
just as much of an accomplishment, in its way, as Bobby Phillips'
engineering miracles in the Orient, or the Auditorium itself, for that
matter.

"It was all right, Margaret, and I'm sure if Burnham wrote sonnets he'd
be sitting up at this minute."

A dreamy smile touched Margaret's lips. "He's perfectly fascinating.
I don't wonder women fall for him." She moved toward the door. "I let
Nellie go to bed, Gregory, so you put out the lights. And please don't
make your usual racket in the morning. I'm all in."

Gregory finished his cigar and then went upstairs. He stopped for a
moment in Puck's room as he always did. She was sound asleep. Lady Jane
sat stiffly on a chair. Of late, Puck often forgot to take Lady Jane to
bed. Puck was growing up. Gregory laid Lady Jane softly on the coverlet
and tiptoed out.

Bunched on the dresser was the last mail that he always had sent up
from the office when he left too early to get it. He tossed it aside,
picked up Jean's with a thrill of pleased surprise, for Jean usually
wrote once to his twice and he had not yet answered the last, and made
himself comfortable to enjoy it.

Gregory read the letter from the abrupt beginning, "I want to talk to
you, dear," to the ending "that's all," and laid it down. There was
no haze to be cleared away by a second reading, no doubt of Jean's
meaning, no possible misunderstanding. Into the three pages Jean
had compressed the wonder of their love, the nuances of its beauty,
the impossibility of continuing like this. She made no claims nor
recognized any on her own part. Only, she could not go on. She stated
it as simply as she might have said: "I cannot meet you to-morrow. I
have a meeting."

Before the simplicity of Jean's mind, Gregory was helpless. With one
clean blow, Jean had cut away all the elaborate superstructure of
ordinary human intercourse. The scaffolding was stark before him.

Step by step, Gregory went back over the past year. There had been
hours of longing that not even his work had stilled. Days when Jean
had moved beside him, enjoying his triumphs, memories that had helped
him through temporary difficulties. She was always there, more or less
vivid, according to his need. The visits to New York he had planned
weeks ahead. The Christmas dinner he had snatched at the risk of
business loss. The perfect walk through the snow to Madam Cateau's; the
tenderness of Jean's tears; the gay meal and Jean's cheery smile as the
train pulled out; his pride in Jean's courage; desperate moments of his
own rebellion, stifled in shame before her greater strength.

And all the time, Jean had been beating against this "ugliness." It had
been one thing to him, another to her. He did not know her. Perhaps he
had never known her.

He went back to the night he had come in with Puck to find Jean
standing by the living-room window, and the storm that had raged in him
through that intolerable hour of Margaret's chatter and the need that
had driven him to leave the house with Jean. Again Gregory felt the
silence of the street about them, then the clatter of the taxi as it
stopped at his signal; and the dizzy moment when Jean had said quietly:
"Gramercy Park." It was Jean who had said it. Again Gregory felt the
reverence and gratitude that had stilled his passion through that dark,
silent ride.

Love had meant to her what it had meant to him and he had gloried in
her honesty. She had brought back the courage that the weary round of
years with Margaret had almost killed, and kept it alive. She had been
glad of his success. Again he felt her leaning to him across the table
and heard her say:

"It is only eighteen hours away."

It was Jean who had said it, just as she had said: "Gramercy Park."

And now she said, just as quietly and simply: "I can't go on."

Cold damp broke out on Gregory's forehead.

She could not go on.

She wanted it to stop. She would fill her days without reference to
him. He would fill his with no thought of her. He would make no more
flying trips to New York. Never again. Not even once more, unless----

Gregory rose. If he did not get up now and move he would always sit
there, staring at the three pages covered with the clear black writing,
on the table beside him.

Jean with a child. A child of hers and of himself. She had weighed the
price and was willing to pay. The fences that society had put up, Jean
was willing to throw down. The conventions they had scorned in secret,
Jean would scorn openly. Unconfused by all the little noises of the
world, Jean heard the clearest call and answered.

"She doesn't realize what it would mean. She----"

The last sentence of the letter moved before him.

"I have thought it all out, dear, and I know. It's the one thing
against everything else, the one thing that counts against all the
things that don't."

Gregory's chin dropped to his breast and he walked up and down like an
old man.

Jean with a child. A child of hers and his. Jean and their child,
alone, one thousand miles away. Another human being, part of himself,
just as Puck was a part.

Another Puck. The best of Jean and of himself, a fearless little Puck,
whom he would see at long intervals, scarcely know, whom he could
not acknowledge, but who would always be near, tearing at his heart,
claiming his love. Gregory's lips went white.

"My God," he whispered, "I wish I had never seen you."

Then he began walking again, up and down, up and down.

The stars were white in the morning sky when he went back and sat down
once more beside the table. He put the three sheets of Jean's letter
carefully together and tore them across many times. Then on a single
sheet he wrote:

"I am not brave enough. I haven't the courage. I cannot pay the price."

He took the torn bits of Jean's letter and his own and went out. He
dropped his into the green box on the corner. The chill wind of dawn
seized Jean's and carried them away.

He closed the front door softly and went slowly up the stairs, past
Puck's door and Margaret's, back into his own room. The pen was still
wet with ink. Gregory opened the window and threw it into the street.
In a few moments an early milk wagon clattered along and scrunched it
into the dust.




                               PART III




                             CHAPTER FORTY


"Are you sure you feel all right, mummy? You don't look as if you had
slept very well."

"Nonsense, dear. I slept at least five hours straight off and you
know----"

"Oh, yes, I know. Napoleon never had more than four hours and Saint
Catherine or Winifred or somebody else did mighty works on ten minutes.
But they're not you."

Jean laid her arm across her mother's shoulders and drew her close.
"You won't be silly, will you? If you don't feel well you'll 'phone me?
There's nothing very special to-day."

Martha's face, smaller and frailer than ever, glowed with love
satisfied, and for a moment she closed her eyes in the old spirit of
humble gratitude. But Jean, looking down, saw only the thin hair, white
now, and her throat contracted.

"Jean, sometimes I feel as if all my life, this last year has been
waiting for me, one whole year, just exactly as it has been. Now that I
waste so much time just sitting round, I think of it a lot."

The lines along the corners of Jean's mouth deepened and she looked
old and tired. But her voice had the same brusque quality with which
she had always forestalled any emotional demand. If the year had been
wonderful to Martha, it had not been useless, and Jean was grateful.

"Of course, if you are trying to tell me, Martha Norris, that I used to
bore you to death----"

"Don't be flippant, Jean. You know perfectly well----"

"There. That sounds more natural. I guess you're all right. But don't
go and overdo. Will you promise me that?"

"I never do. I'm a regular parasite."

"Well, it agrees with your disposition, so keep it up." Jean bent and
kissed her. "You're really much nicer than you used to be, mummy.
Pneumonia must be good for the soul."

"Got me into line at last, haven't you? But remember, even the effects
of pneumonia wear off."

"Then I'll take my innings while they're going. Remember, if you go to
service this afternoon you are to call a taxi. Do you hear? You are
not to take any of those 'nice, quick walks' you are so addicted to.
There's a wind like a knife blade to-day. Will you promise?"

"I'll use my judgment, dear."

"I leave you in peace. You are yourself. I don't believe you ever had
pneumonia. Mummy, you've been faking."

Jean gave her mother another quick kiss, and went. From the street
below, she looked up and waved. Martha waved back.

But when Jean was out of sight, Martha crossed to the side table where
Jean had laid Mary's letter. Part of it Jean had read aloud, the first
two paragraphs and on from the middle of the third page, but the part
unread she had returned to twice, and when she slipped the letter back
into its envelope, Martha had seen her hands tremble. Martha's own
hands shook as she unfolded the pages, scrawled with the doctor's heavy
black writing, vigorous and violent as Mary herself.

"Now listen, Jean, it's one chance in a million and you can have it if
you want. I shall expire with envy, but I've just enough sanity left
to know that I'm too old. To go to China and organize a kind of Red
Cross--Associated Charities--Relief of the Poor, with trifles like
directing the education of feminine China thrown in, because, years
ago, little Wong Lee used our gymnasium and I treated him half way
decently! He is now minister of something-or-other in New China and he
throws this pearl at me. I would give twenty years of my life to do it,
but I haven't twenty left, not ten even of any great use in such a big
undertaking. But you! The old courage would come back. Things would be
worth while again. You would----" Here a word had been scratched, but
Martha bent long and close over the paper and at last she made it out.
"You would forget."

After the third effort, Martha succeeded in folding the sheets and
getting them into their envelope. Then she went back to the chair by
the window and sat down. Dampness came about her lips and temples and
she closed her eyes.

It would be a new life for Jean. Jean would forget.

Why did Jean need a new life? Had this wonderful year, so full of
peace to Martha, been stagnation to Jean? Had the deep gentleness and
understanding which had come to Jean been only a masque? Had it been
possible only with an outlet of confidence to Mary? What was it that
Jean was to forget? Back and forth through the last eighteen months
Martha's memory went, gathering forgotten looks, stray phrases, quiet
evenings when Jean lay on the couch reading, evenings so full of
contentment to Martha, that she had thanked God for each one.

Twice the maid came to the door to clear the breakfast table and went
back to the kitchen on tiptoe. The third time Martha heard her.

"All right, Katy, you can clear away now."

At twelve o'clock Jean telephoned, as the habit had grown since
Martha's illness in the early winter. Martha assured her that she felt
all right and would go and take her nap "as ordered."

"Be sure you do. And I'll be home early. It's Katy's afternoon out,
isn't it?"

"Yes. I think I'll tell her she can have the evening, too, because she
wants to go over to Montclair to see her cousin."

"But don't you do a thing for supper. I'll stop in at a delicatessen."

Martha went back to her room and lay down. The effort of answering had
exhausted her, so that now she shook as with a chill, and her heart
thudded sickeningly. When Katy came to call her to lunch, Martha did
not want any. She heard Katy eat a hurried meal in the kitchen, clear
the dining-room and go. After a while the perfect stillness of the
house rested Martha a little, and she got up and went into the kitchen.
Usually, she enjoyed these afternoons when Katy was gone and she was
free to putter about and make little delicacies, for which Jean always
scolded her, and ate with tremendous relish. But to-day, Martha had to
rest often as she made the chocolate cake that was Jean's favorite, and
she did not ice it at all.

In her private office, Jean made her third effort to write to Mary.
In the outer room two typewriters clicked and from across the hall,
through the open transom, she heard Jerome Stuart, of the Men's City
Club, dictating.

"I will take the matter up with Mrs. Herrick of the Women's Civic
League, as it seems to me both organizations working together can
accomplish better results."

Mrs. Herrick of the Women's Civic League. That meant herself and the
eighteen busy, empty months since Gregory's letter.

Jean's hands dropped to the keys and she sat looking down into the
street. The wind had swept it almost clean of people and the few who
had to be out, beat along, muffled in clothes, like unthinking bundles
propelled against their wills.

"If only mummy could stand it. But she couldn't, and she would be so
utterly miserable."

Across the hall, Jerome Stuart was talking again:

"It seems to me that this is a matter for women rather than men. I will
refer the matter to Jean Herrick of the Women's Civic League, and can
assure you of prompt action."

Jean ripped out the paper and closed the machine.

"Nothing in the world is worth making mummy miserable for, and,
besides, Mary would see through me in a minute, if I wrote in this
mood. She'd know that I'd rather go to China than do anything else in
the wide world. Never to see these streets again, nor the river, nor
the people. To go where there are no memories unless I call them up.
But mummy----"

Jerome Stuart was crossing the hall now, coming to consult with Mrs.
Herrick of the Civic League. This tall, quiet man, with his unshakeable
faith in humanity, would look at her with his deep gray eyes, eyes too
gentle unless one had seen them flash against injustice, and, in a few
moments, she would find herself starting some new piece of work. Jerome
Stuart had done this often in the six months he had headed the Men's
City Club, and Jean had been glad. But to-day she wanted no burden of
another's enthusiasm forced upon her. She wanted nothing except to get
away by herself. She heard the secretary tell Jerome Stuart that she
was busy and she heard him go back again to his own office and close
the door.

A little before five Jean left. The wind had reached a point of cold
fury that made it almost impossible to breathe.

"I do hope she hasn't gone to service, even in a taxi." The possibility
worried Jean all the way home. "I wish Lent came in the summer." As she
let herself into the apartment she called gayly:

"Hello!"

There was no answer.

"Oh, mummy, it _is_ silly. If God's everywhere, why can't you talk to
Him here?"

It was half past five now, and, at the latest, Martha would be in by
six. Jean put the kettle on the gas and the cold chicken and ham into
the ice-box. The chocolate cake stood on the lowest shelf of the pantry.

"It's no good. I can never change her. I might just as well let her go
peacefully on."

She turned the gas low under the kettle and went into her own room to
take off her things. The connecting door to Martha's was ajar, and the
wind, whistling down the light-well, rushed at Jean, striking like a
hand.

"Whew!" She threw her things on the bed and hurried to close the window.

Sitting in the rocker by the bed, one shoe on, the other by her side,
her hands quiet in her lap, her head back, tilted a little as if
listening, and with a terrible smile on the open lips, sat Martha.
Jean swayed on the threshold, and then moved slowly and heavily toward
the chair. The curtain blew in and the end flapped against Martha's
shoulder. Jean put it aside. Without a sound she dropped beside the
chair and her arms closed about her mother. The little figure lurched
sideways and the cold cheek lay against her own. As cold and still as
the dead, Jean knelt.

The mechanism of her brain had stopped, back there ages ago, on the
threshold. Her will, her power to feel, had dropped into an abyss of
nothingness. Jean knelt, knowing that her mother was dead, that she
had died in the act of getting ready for service, that she must have
died about three hours ago, while she was trying to write to Mary, that
there were many things to do and she would have to begin doing them.
But she could neither move nor think of what they were.

All her life came to this point and stopped. Tiny incidents, forgotten
to consciousness, rose from the mass of memories piled upon them. They
had neither relation nor sequence, but tumbled chaotically in the void.
Martha making a dress for her doll; Martha on graduation day; Herrick
and their Sunday dinners with Martha; Tom and Elsie; the months with
Gregory in which Martha had no part and the night she had come home
to find Martha mending and had been glad. The two terrible weeks she
had passed alone by the sea, after Gregory's letter. The return--Mary
gone West and Martha happy again in the solitude with Jean. And the
long months since, when her mother was the realest thing in the world
and Jean had felt the narrow binding bands of Martha's love and been a
little comforted.

Now the band had snapped and she was alone.

Across the light-well, a woman put a child to bed. It knelt and said
its prayers, just as she had used to do, and afterwards the woman
tucked it up, opened the window and turned off the light. The elevator
clanked from floor to floor. Children scampered across the apartment
above. Dishes rattled in the kitchens. Men were coming home to dinner.
The great building was vibrant with the sounds that mark the definite
closing of a day. That small period of finite time, man's working day,
was ended. But here, there was no light, no sound in the still rooms.
The small, intimate ending of the hours was lost, engulfed in this
tremendous ending of all things.

A sputtering noise broke on Jean's consciousness. It had been going on
a long while. She laid the little head gently against the chair back
and rose. A strange odor filled the apartment. She went out into the
kitchen. The water had completely boiled away and the solder had melted
from the kettle. Jean turned off the gas and went back.

There were so many things to do, and now she would have to begin doing
them. Death, the most silent, private thing in the world, necessitated
many outward offices, the presence of strangers, an official routine.
Jean lifted her mother's body and laid it on the bed. She closed the
parted lips and bound them. Then she began to undress her. Never,
in her whole life, had Jean done such service for Martha, and now
it seemed as if, from some vast distance, her mother was watching,
embarrassed and reluctant, so that Jean felt awkward and ashamed. One
by one she took off the garments, noticing with detached numbness the
beautiful mending in Martha's stockings, the neat tying of the corset
laces. Jean had never seen her mother undressed, and the youthful
quality of the skin astonished her. She felt inhuman, perverted, to
notice this, but the feeling ran only on the surface of her brain, as
if she had taken an anæsthetic, strong enough to deaden sensation, but
not strong enough to kill consciousness. Suddenly she recalled Herrick
passing his fingers over the smooth satin of the painted canvas and she
covered the little body hastily in a white night dress, as if shielding
it from stranger eyes.

How small and still she looked like that, and, at the same time, so
terrible! A little while before and she had been Martha, her mother,
narrow in her beliefs, jealous in her love, full of obstinate faith
and human weakness. Now she was part of the universe, of the terrible
law of life and death. What tremendous finality to be centered in that
small body! And how young she looked! Only the white hair seemed to
have marked the years. A few short hours before and Jean had felt her
throat tighten at the frail body and the thin white hair. And now, in
a moment, Martha had outlived time, defied human laws. Age was a cloak
imposed by Time and removed by Death. At some distant spot, Martha,
young and happy, was talking to her God.

The mechanical movement of lifting and undressing her mother stirred
Jean's consciousness, and she realized now that the window was still
open and the freezing wind blowing in. She reached for the comforter at
the foot of the bed and drew it up. This covering the small body was
one of the useless, sentimental things people did with their dead. But
she had no power over her actions. Years of association with the flesh
had created habits that fulfilled themselves mechanically. A lifetime
with the shell of the body had given it an existence of its own, and
although the closed eyes and bound lips proved Martha beyond the need,
the very flesh and shape had created demands of their own.

Jean covered the body snugly and stood looking down. With this, her
work was done. Never again would she do anything for her mother.

Jean shivered and then something beat its way through the numbness
of the last hours and she dropped to her knees. With her face on the
small, still breast she sobbed, dry, tearing sobs that ripped the last
eighteen months to shreds and buried her beneath them.

She was alone in the world. There was no one now to consider. No need
to pretend. No one in the whole writhing mass of humanity belonged to
her nor she to any one.

The desperate emptiness of Gregory's going rose in a gaunt specter from
the grave where she had tried to heap it to stillness by the small
duties of loving and caring for Martha; trying to make up, out of her
own realization of loneliness and pain, some of the empty years of
her mother's life. Now the need was over. She would never again have
to take a book and pretend to read in order not to worry the patient
figure sewing under the lamp. She would never again have to take the
image of happy hours and lift it from her brain, that it might not
claim the moments that were Martha's. There was no need to do anything,
anything at all. She was alone, free in a terrible freedom, alone in an
infinity of emptiness.

The front door opened and Jean heard Katy come down the hall into the
kitchen. She got up and went out and told her. Katy began to cry,
and although Jean knew that Katy had been fond of Martha, there was
something so officially appropriate in these instant tears, that Jean
frowned. Katy choked her sob into a sniff.

"If you would make some strong black coffee, Katy, I should like it."
Then she went into the hall and telephoned to the doctor who had
attended Martha during the pneumonia of the earlier winter. He lived
nearby and came in a few moments. He pronounced it death from heart
disease and told Jean that her mother's heart, weak for years, had
never recovered from the strain of pneumonia.

"Did she have anything special to worry her? Any shock to-day? Still,
there was no reason that it should have terminated so soon."

"Not that I know of."

"No special shock to-day?"

"No. We live very quietly and there would be nothing without my knowing
it."

"Um. Sometimes these things take sudden and unexpected turns. There
is not always a definite explanation." He stopped as if something
more personal and sympathetic was expected of him. Taller than he,
Jean looked down coldly. He was used to women crying or going into
hysterics, and although he was always scornful of such procedure,
years of habit in meeting these emergencies had given him a tactful
gentleness of which he was vain. But now there was going to be no need
for restoratives or sedatives and so he took his hat.

"If there is anything that I can do to make it easier, please feel----"

"Thank you. There is nothing."

When the doctor had gone, Jean drank the black coffee that Katy brought.

"Could I be seein' her, Mis' Herrick?"

Jean did not want Katy to see her. But she could not refuse, for the
feeling persisted that Martha was no longer her mother, her own special
human property. She was part of the law of life and death, day and
night, the seasons. She had entered the cosmos. Personal preference was
washed under in this tide of law.

Jean heard Katy go into the room and drop to her knees. There was a
moment of sobbing and then a mumbled prayer. In a few moments the girl
came out. Jean heard her muffled sobbing in the kitchen.

"If you would rather go home to-night you may, Katy."

"And leave you?"

"Certainly. I do not mind. There is nothing to be afraid of," she added
more gently.

"I know." Katy took advantage of the gentleness to sob openly. "The
dead can't hurt us--God rest their souls--and such a gentle sweet
lady--but it does give me the creeps--it always done----"

"Then, Katy, I would rather you went. In fact I would rather be alone.
You can come early. Be here by seven-thirty."

Jean went into the living-room. Martha's chair stood pushed back from
the window, as she had left it when she had gone to get ready for
service. Her glasses lay on the window-shelf. Jean sat down in the
chair. In a few moments she heard Katy tiptoe out. The streets were
empty, except for the wind. It moaned about the corners of the big
building, shutting Jean in from the rest of the world. And beyond the
wind, the black river ran swiftly to the sea.




                           CHAPTER FORTY-ONE


"I am the resurrection and the life."

Alone in the church, Jean sat upright in the first pew. The stained
windows, the fine linen of the young priest's cassock, his deep-toned
chant, the odor of incense, the satin-grained wood of the pews, the
exquisite lace of the altar cloth, impressed themselves in a setting
warm and intimate for the small gray coffin resting at the altar rail.

Jean sat dry-eyed, as if she were witnessing a rite in which the priest
and Martha had a part. They belonged. She had handed Martha over to
this young man, and now he and Martha and God were carrying on some
ceremony. She was an outsider.

The stinging sweetness of the incense rose in a blue cloud as the
priest incensed the coffin. His voice ceased. He looked inquiringly
toward Jean. Alone in the apartment, just before the undertaker had
come, Jean had kissed her mother for the last time. But in the depth of
the waiting silence, a need to look once more on that restful little
face gripped her, and she rose and went slowly to the casket, Against
the white satin of the pillow, so lightly that even in death she seemed
resenting this comfort, Martha was resting. It seemed to Jean that
the eyes under the thin, veined lids were quietly happy and that the
mouth, so oddly young now, smiled. In the beloved atmosphere of prayer
and adoration, Martha had gained consciousness. Loosed from the flesh,
all the emotional capacity, the power of love and devotion and joy
suppressed had been freed at last by the cessation of earthly cares
and prejudices to express itself and claim its own. In the interval of
rest below the altar, Martha had come to life, a life in which the body
had no part.

Jean touched the thin hair on the temples. "You're happy, dear, aren't
you?" And, afterwards, Jean often had the feeling that the little head
had moved in acknowledgment.

She went back to the pew. The cover was screwed down. The young priest
preceded the coffin to the door. In stole and surplice he stood beside
the open grave. "Dust to dust." The earth and dry snow powdered upon
the lid. It was all as Martha would have wished--calm, beautiful, alone
with Jean and God.

Jean came back to the apartment. The trees on the Palisades were hidden
under a burden of white. Thick white snow muffled passing footsteps.
She was alone, absolutely alone in the still, snow-muffled universe.

The next day Jean went back to the office. Jerome Stuart made no
conventional reference and Jean was grateful. He suggested their
getting to work on a new Child Labor law and they talked over details
for an hour. When he had gone back to his own office, Jean wrote a
brief note telling Mary. But even Mary was not real, She, too, was off
beyond the barrier that shut Jean from the rest of the world.

At the end of the week Katy returned. The routine of life settled.
Trained by Martha, Katy duplicated to her best the comfort that Martha
had infused. Each night as Jean closed the door behind her, she felt it
claim her, this grotesque, terrible duplicate of Martha's devotion. For
thirty dollars a month, Katy created a home, followed the small customs
that had sprung from Martha's love.

As the days slid by, one exactly like another, Jean felt as if she were
being walled forever in Katy's ordered emptiness. She left earlier
in the morning and returned later at night, but it was there waiting,
until the day came to center in the moment when she would have to
turn the knob and enter the warm, lighted vault; sit alone at the
well-prepared meal and afterwards try to read in the silence. All day
she was conscious of it waiting.

Strange fears rose in Jean and she was helpless before them. Sometimes
she left the office in the middle of the afternoon and went home to
face and conquer the terrible emptiness, and sometimes she walked in
the night until she could scarcely stand, and it was there waiting
for her. Gradually in the depth of the emptiness, something formed,
a shadow-shape that Jean could neither annihilate nor grasp. It was
as if, in her going, Martha had left a door open behind her, a narrow
crack through which Jean could neither see clearly, nor quite close.
And the thought of death began to sift down through life, absorbing its
reality.

Jean saw herself, her work, her smallest act, as a pebble in the
conglomerate mass of time. Like a gigantic rock crusher, Time reduced
all effort to powder. In the vacant hours of the night, under the
gleam of the cold, gold stars, the endings of things came to obsess
Jean. Everything ended, everything. No matter how deeply indented the
surface, the ending washed it clean again. Separation washed out human
relationships, old age washed away physical effort and interest, death
washed away all. Everything ended, books, buildings, days, nights,
work, rest, love, life. Everything lasted for a while and then stopped.

Hour after hour Jean sat, staring out to the river, stifled by the fact
of death, that great ending containing within itself all the ends of
one's smallest acts.

Where was Martha now? Was there nothing anywhere of that patient
little figure that had trotted so busily through its daily rounds?
Were all the habits and preferences one built up through the years,
but things of flesh? Was there nothing left anywhere, in any form, of
that gigantic faith? Did man impose upon himself this sentence of life?
Summon himself from nowhere, to struggle for a moment, and go back to
nothingness again? In his terror of the immense quietness of Death,
had he invented Heaven, an escape from the inconceivable peace he had
never known in life? Had he invented God because he dared not be alone
beyond the grave? And if Man had not imposed his own sentence, who had?
Martha's God, the Tyrant who hurled us into life, whipped us through
the years, snatched us away at the end, never for one single moment,
revealing His purpose. Or was it all some huge machine set going in
the unthinkable beginning of Time, grinding purposelessly on to an
unthinkable end?

The door would neither open wide nor close, and Jean's hair whitened
above the temples.

In April, when the trees began to bud, she gave Katy an extra month's
wages and dismissed her. Jean had reached another ending; the ending of
the senseless battle that had once seemed so worth while. She was going
back to the gray fog, to the wide still spaces, back to the warm sands
and cool salt winds and the sea, that neither sought nor promised peace
but had it.

When the details of her going were arranged with the committee, Jean
went to tell Jerome Stuart. Now that she was leaving, this quiet man
with the stooping student shoulders and the thick gray hair, always
ruffled to disorder, stood out for a moment, against the background of
their work together, and Jean felt, as he sat looking at her, that he
was surprised and disappointed. But it did not matter. Nothing mattered.

"You are really leaving for good?"

"Yes. I never expect to come back to New York. I've turned in my
resignation and it's been accepted, with a provision of their own
invention that, if I change my mind within a year, I am to return."
Jean smiled. "And I let it go at that."

"Then all the schemes we've talked over are not to be? No one else can
take your place and carry them through."

For a moment Jean felt them dragging at her, holding her back. To what
end? What would they give in return? Greater comfort, for a time, to a
few people whom she would never see. A few patches put in the social
fabric.

"Oh, yes, they can. Why, Charlotte Stetson's so anxious to try her hand
she could scarcely be decently regretful!"

Jean tried to speak lightly but Jerome Stuart's expression stopped her.

"Please don't be insincere, Mrs. Herrick."

Jean flushed. She was destroying this man's conception of her and she
had valued it.

"You are acting on a lessened impulse and it is wrong," he added
quietly. "It is always wrong and so--it is always a mistake."

"Not always," Jean defended, and rose abruptly. If she stayed she
might ask him of life and death and the aimless muddle of the whole.
"I've thought it over carefully. I am not acting on impulse. It is a
decision."

He said nothing as he followed to the door and rang the elevator bell.
But as Jean stepped into the cage, he held out his hand and said
with the look that had often made Jean feel that, in spite of his
forty-eight years, his grown daughter, and all the years of public
service behind him, he had kept unspoiled the sweet cleanness of a
little child.

"Think it over again--and come back."

She shook her head. She did not want to lie again to Jerome Stuart.

The next day Jean stood in the empty apartment that had been her home
for five years. With the removal of the furniture it seemed to have
changed its spirit. The bare walls stared back indifferent to the pain
and happiness they had encompassed. Before another twenty-four hours
were gone, some one else might be looking down into the tree-lined
street where, later, the fat white babies would be wheeled, and where
now the trees were beginning to leaf, not as they would in the full
eagerness of a few weeks hence, but in the meager, timid fashion of a
chilly spring, a little leaf here and there.




                           CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


The porter dimmed the lights for the night. In the berth above a man
snored, and across the aisle an old woman breathed in gasping squeaks.
Jean pulled up the blind, and, propped on her pillow, stared into the
night and tried not to hear. But the breathing of the crowded car was
persistent and grouped itself into strange rhythms and chords that
stripped away spiritual differences and leveled the sleepers to a
common physical need.

Jean remembered how she had lain so, her first night in a sleeper, ten
years before, and how the hot, dark intimacy had excited her. How near
she had felt to some mystery, as if she were just about to penetrate
some exciting secret. Even the blackness of the prairie had quivered
with it. The red and green semaphores, uncannily obedient to a hidden
power, had winked their inclusion in the great adventure. The lonely
little stations, specks of light in the night, had been so friendly and
knowing. Now they hurt, so bravely and uselessly battling against the
engulfing darkness, the thick, limitless blackness of the prairie.

Late in the evening of the fourth day, Jean stepped from the train,
and Mary put her arms around her. As they crossed the Bay, they sat
very near together in the bow and watched the city lights, diffused
in the high fog, glow a red mist over the hills. But it was not until
they stood in the small room opening from the Doctor's, that the armor
Jean had raised for her own protection loosened, and then she dared not
speak for fear of crying.

A gong sounded.

"We meet every night in the Assembly Hall for half an hour or so," Mary
said huskily and Jean nodded. "This is going to be your room. Don't
wait up for me."

When Mary was gone, Jean switched out the lights and went to the window
where she had stood so often in the old days, relieved at Herrick's
going, wondering at her own lack of wonder; and a year later, tingling
with excitement at the offer from New York. Almost ten crowded years.
And now she was back.

When the gong of dismissal sounded, Jean went into her own room and
closed the door. She heard Mary come and light the light but she made
no sound. After a while the light went out, but from time to time Jean
heard a match strike, and she knew that the little doctor was lying
there smoking. It was strange to have Mary smoking and thinking about
her, as if she were "a case," but there was comfort in it too, as if
she had come home and some one was watching over her. At last Jean
slept.

In a few days, Mary spoke tentatively of China. But the hour of
rekindled interest did not return and they did not mention it again.
Jean took on a few cases and attended to them mechanically in the
mornings. But no misfortune or sorrow penetrated below the surface
of the mind trained to handle them. The real hours of the day were
the afternoons, when Jean walked for miles alone against the clean
sea wind, or through the gray fog, that now seemed to be filled with
the souls of the dead; helpless things that had not been able to get
through this grayness into the joy in which they had believed; or
lingering souls, loath to leave the only world they had ever known.

In the evenings, Jean took some classes, and tried to mix cheerfully
with the other workers, women like those whom it had once so stimulated
her to feel working at the tangle with their thin, white fingers.
But now they depressed her, sheltered from personal emotion behind
their diffused pity for the world. Often, she left them to walk in the
Latin Quarter until night emptied the streets of the dark men, forever
arguing and gesticulating, and the frowsy women, terrible in their
fecundity, nursing their babies from big, brown breasts. The tremendous
vitality of these people rested Jean, so that watching, she herself
seemed to be accomplishing.

But the days slipped into weeks and the weeks to months and she still
stood aside watching. She wrote no letters to New York and received
none. Sometimes she felt that she ought to write to Jerome Stuart but
when she tried to think of what she would say, she could find nothing.

It was a week before Christmas, a blue, clear day between rains, that
Jean sat by the sea and tried to face the coming year. What was she
going to do? The waves lapped the sand, fishing smacks scudded by, and
white gulls circled overhead. Jean's thoughts went round and round
in an ever narrowing circle, and when she tried to slip through this
closing space and grasp the coming year, Gregory, on the sand beside
her, stirred. Her fingers touched his crisp, dry hair. The beach was
crowded with people, but they were alone. The sand was littered with
papers, and broken piers jutted into the water and the air was heavy
with summer heat. But she was alive with every nerve in her.

Jean got up and began to walk back across the dunes. On and on over the
shifting sand, past the straggling cottages of workmen, on through the
well-kept streets of wealthy homes, dwindling again to middle-class
flats, until finally, at dusk, Jean stood on the last hill looking down
into Chinatown. She was tired at last, so that the weariness in her
muscles corresponded to the weariness in her soul, and she had the
temporary peace that comes of physical and mental accord. The odor of
sandalwood and opium and strange eastern things rose to meet her as she
went forward down the hill.

Stolid women pattered along, making their ridiculous purchases,
haggling over a leek, a single pork chop, a wing of chicken. Calm men
sat smoking long pipes in their dim shops. She might have left it the
day before. The vast stability of it mocked her. It was like the ever
moving, never resting sea--this human necessity to eat, to buy and
sell, to move about. Hundreds of people had died since she had walked
these streets with Herrick. Death had touched her own life. Thousands
of walking, talking units had been taken, thousands of the little empty
spaces had lasted for a second and then the moving mass had closed in
again.

A woman came from a dark doorway, a rainbow bundle strapped to her
back. From the bundle a small brown face with almond eyes looked calmly
on the confusion of living. The mother stopped to bargain for a fried
fish and Jean touched the smooth, brown cheek.

"A silly mess, isn't it, baby?"

The mother turned instantly and moved farther into the familiar safety
of her own people. At the corner Jean stopped again, looking toward
Portsmouth Square, the benches filled with men and boys, the familiar
refuse of Babary Coast. She was still looking when a man, hurrying
round the corner, brought up so suddenly that he seemed to have been
thrown back upon his heels.

"I beg your pardon."

She turned quickly and looked at Franklin Herrick.

Jean spoke first. "I don't know why it is so surprising. I suppose it
would have been stranger if we hadn't met."

"But I didn't know you were here."

"No, of course you didn't."

They stood looking at each other. Herrick had grown heavier, his
features had coarsened. He looked untidy.

"I--I am really glad."

Jean smiled. The implication of possible regret on _her_ part was so
Herricky.

"Why, no, why should I?" She answered his unspoken thought, but
Herrick did not notice. The interest of the thing claimed him as
nothing had done for months. He had once been married to this large,
prosperous-looking person, the one woman whom he had never been able to
influence, to swerve a hair from her own path. And here she was after
eleven years, looking at him with the same straight look, throwing
aside all sentiment, going violently to the bottom of every little
question, as if it were a matter of importance.

"Could we go and have tea somewhere? Unless you are in a hurry."

"It was you who seemed to be in a hurry."

"Well, I'm not, now. Tea, then?"

They turned, and Jean knew that Herrick would go straight to the tea
house where they had had their first tea, but when he ordered the same
little almond cakes and preserved ginger, Jean laughed.

"What is it?"

"I knew you would do that."

"Did you? But you always did know what I would do. I think that was the
trouble, I could never feel masculine and superior. I always felt like
a window with you, as if you were looking straight through me."

Jean's eyes sobered. She must have hurt deeply, more often than she had
known.

"That would have pleased me terribly once on a time. I should have
adored making people feel like windows."

Herrick waited until the waiter had shuffled away for more hot water.

"Doesn't it make you feel that way now?" This was going to be really
interesting.

"No. It wouldn't. But then one changes a lot in eleven years."

"Less two months," he added softly.

Was he actually going to set a stage? But he looked so seedy and heavy
and bored, that Jean's annoyance melted in pity again.

"When you think of it as more than a tenth of a century, there seems
plenty of time, doesn't there?"

A tenth of a century! It was horrible put that way; an eternity. And so
like Jean. A flush crept up to Herrick's eyes and he looked away.

"_You_ have made good. Your tenth of a century has not been wasted."

And Jean saw, as if he had told her, the sordid sequence of the years
to him. The knowledge of that dreary waste saddened her.

"I have worked. The East is full of opportunity."

Work, opportunity. The old worship of effort for its own sake. Herrick
forced back the words that rose to his lips.

"Yes. I saw that you had done some big thing about tubercular
tenements. The papers here had quite a bit about it. I think some one
tried to start a movement like it."

Jean shrank. She could not talk of that to him.

"Yes," she said shortly. "I had something to do with it, but so had a
lot of other people."

But she would lead. It was her way to lead and then to share the
credit. It was the old, maddeningly generous way. No, she had not
changed, not really, no matter what she said. Her life had gone as
she had planned it. Nothing had swerved her from her ideal of work and
success. Hard and cold and intrinsically selfish, she had forced life
to her will. And he: a cloying affair with The Kitten, more and shorter
affairs, always seeking, never finding, wasted through his own capacity
to feel, dragged down by the biggest thing in him, the weakness that
might have been a strength.

If Jean had cared! It would have taken such a little from her store of
patience and faith in herself. She had been niggardly, hoarded it for
herself.

"You have had a lot," he said at last, "everything you ever wanted."

From the tragic emptiness of his eyes Jean turned her own. Before his,
the emptiness of her days stood clean and filled with happy memories.

"I _have_ had a lot."

The grotesquely carved balcony vanished into the tea-room of the upper
thirties. Instead of Herrick, heavy and soft with regret, Gregory sat,
strong and happy in his success, and she had wished for a moment that
he had not won, and had been proud and miserable and weak with love.
Tears rushed to Jean's eyes and she bit her lip to keep them back.

Herrick started. Not even to Jean could work alone bring that look.
Slowly the color left his face.

"You--have found out what love is, too."

Jean nodded. Herrick covered his face hastily with his hand. He had
been right then, right in his first analysis, so long ago, by the camp
fires in the sandy coves. It had been in Jean always. In those silly,
idealistic first weeks of their marriage, when he had been content with
so little. It had been there the night he had seized and kissed her and
she had pushed him away. It had been there, hidden so deep from his
touch, that he had ceased to believe in its existence.

And some one else had touched it to life. He sat with his shoulders
bowed, his face hidden. After a long time he said:

"You are married, then?"

His hand still hid his face. The hand, too, had coarsened and grown
thick. There was black hair along the joints and the nails were
ill-kept. And once Jean had liked Herrick's hands. They had held hers
so surely, racing along the sands.

"No," she said quietly. "Not legally. He was married and had a
child." After all, it was not much to give in atonement, this little
confidence, but it was the best she had.

For a moment Herrick did not move. Then his hand came slowly down. He
stared, puzzled. Amazement and finally understanding flashed across his
face. Herrick leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud.

"Good Lord, Jean. _You_--an affair!"

Jean rose. Her knees were shaking and she was cold.

"Don't," she commanded in a whisper, and Herrick, half risen from his
chair, sank back. Seeing nothing, Jean crossed the balcony, walked
swiftly through the great banquet hall and down the stairs to the
street.

Herrick sat where he was until the waiter came and asked him to move
his table to make room for a group of long-coated merchants in gowns of
silk. Then he paid the bill and went. It was night.

In her room at the settlement, Jean walked up and down, her hands
gripped behind her in the old habit. Twice Mary came to the door and
listened to the even stride, and went back to her book and tried to
read. It was close on one o'clock when the door opened and Jean came
in. Instinctively, Mary rose as if to meet a crisis. At the movement,
Jean laid her hands on the doctor's shoulders and forced her gently
down. Then, just as she had done on the night she had left The Kitten
standing by the greasy table, and on the night when she had told Mary
of her desire for a child of Gregory's, Jean dropped to her knees, and,
sitting back on her heels, said quietly:

"Mary, I'm going back to New York just as fast as a train will take me.
I'm a weak, cowardly idiot."

"Really? I don't know that I would put it quite so strongly myself."

Jean smiled. "That's not strong enough, Mary, not by half."

"Maybe not. But why this sudden realization?"

"I had tea with Franklin this afternoon."

"Well?"

"Poor Boy Blue! Poor, weak, vain, longing Begee!"

"Jean!" Mary gripped her shoulders. "What fool thing are you
contemplating now? You're not going to tow That back East, are you?"

"Good Lord, no!" Jean laughed as Mary had not heard her laugh since her
arrival. There was a silence so long that the doctor drifted down a
dozen false paths of conjecture before Jean said:

"Mary, do you remember that vacation I took suddenly, after telling you
that night--just before you left? You knew, didn't you?"

"Yes. I knew. I would have stayed, Jean, only it wouldn't have done any
good."

"No. I was glad you weren't there. It made it easier, in a way.
And I was glad when Pat went, too, and the children. I had only to
deceive mummy, then--and keep going." Jean stopped and Mary smoked two
cigarettes before she began again.

"And then mummy died and there was no need to pretend any more, no need
for anything. Mary, it wasn't true that I came West for a vacation. I
didn't come to see you. I came to leave it all. I let go."

There was another long pause, before Jean went on.

"I had loved a man so that his going took all the meaning out of life.
And I went on for a while through a kind of inertia and because, from a
baby, mummy had beaten a sense of duty into me. It was no force of my
own. I had jumped into a stream, and when the current was too strong
for my strength I went down, just as Franklin and Flop and The Kitten,
and all those whom I used to despise, went down when their particular
current was too strong for them. Why, on the night I got Gregory's
letter, if I could have gone to him I would have. I would have had it
all back, under any conditions, at any price. Nothing mattered, nothing
in the whole world, but to feel his arms about me, to know that it had
not finished. I would have gone to her, just as The Kitten came, and
asked her to give him to me."

"But you didn't, Jean."

"No. Because something in me, that I hated for its clearness, saw that
if it had been to him what it had been to me, he would never have
written that letter. I had had nothing, Mary, or such a little part of
what I had believed I had."

Jean shivered. Mary's hand moved to comfort, but did not.

"And then, this afternoon, when Franklin said I had had everything,
and I saw him sitting there heavier and coarsened and so empty--Mary,
he's so tragically empty--it came to me suddenly that I had had a
lot. I have always had friendship, Pat and you, and unshakeable love
like mummy's, and I had those wonderful months with Gregory, and not
even the ending of it can really take them away, and I wanted to give
Franklin something, so I told him that I had loved a married man and
that we had never been legally married."

A little smile twitched the corners of Jean's lips.

"And he leaned back in his chair and laughed and said: 'Good Lord,
Jean--_you_--an affair!' and I have been listening to that laugh and
hearing that '_you_--an affair?' ever since. And in a way, he is right."

"Jean!"

"Yes, he is. You see, I had never thought of it like that, stripped of
all the personal element, just bare and stark as it would sound in a
court of law. It was _me_, and so it was different. What is an affair,
technically? It's a love, without legal bonds, that breaks up or dies
of its own accord. Never mind what it is to the parties concerned,
that's what it is to the world. That's what my love for Gregory is to
the world, to Franklin; what his and The Kitten's and Flop's and The
Tiger's was to me."

"Jean, you're crazy. Isn't the spirit anything?"

"Everything. But I am trying to make it clear what it was to
Franklin----"

"Of course it would be that to him."

"And what he made me see. How do I know the measure of the force that
drove him to The Kitten? We have no measure but our own needs. Fifteen
years ago, would I have thought it possible, when the days wouldn't
pass fast enough to get me into life and work, that a day would come
when success, achievement, the chosen work of years, would all shrivel
to nothing because one certain man had gone out of them? Three years
ago, would I have believed that Gregory could fill his days without me,
could have gone on without my sympathy and love and understanding? That
he could have nothing deeper in his life than that chattering doll?
Mary, there's only one thing that I am sure of, and that is that we
don't know a single thing about any one else, or ourselves, either."

Jean rose and stood looking down at Mary.

"And so you are going back?"

"Yes. I am going back. I am not going to drift, here, beside the sea
and hills, which are my Kitten, my succession of sordid loves, my
easiest way. I am going back. It won't be easy. I know that. There
will be times--Mary, you don't know what it means to die inside, to see
and never to feel, not even anger, to have nothing sharper than memory."

"And you don't know, Jean," Mary spoke slowly and rose from her chair
as if she had grown very tired, "what it means to have been emotionally
comfortable all your life. Never to have gone down nor up. Never to
have died nor been alive. To have grown old in comfort. A kind of
paradox, isn't it, to have been always so comfortable that sometimes it
hurts."




                          CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


It was late in the afternoon of a cold, clear day two weeks later
that Jean stood outside the Grand Central Station and looked at the
moving streams of strangers, all touched to faint friendliness by the
accident of being in the same city, on the same street, at the same
hour as herself. She felt as if she knew them all, but had slipped back
noiselessly without warning among them, and as yet they had not seen
her.

Jean was smiling to herself, when one of the moving units escaped the
stream, and came to a halt beside her.

"Well, Jean Herrick, of all people! I thought you were in California."

Jean turned to encounter the sharp face and mouse-bright eyes of
Catherine Lee, whom she had neither seen nor thought of for years,
although, during the first winter in New York, Catherine had been the
center of a group that met every Sunday evening for tea, usually at
Jean's.

"I _was_!"

"When did you get back?"

"About ten minutes ago, and I feel as if I had been dropped from
a parachute. I was just debating the Y. W. C. A. or the Martha
Washington. I loathe hotels----"

"I say, do you mean you have no plans at all? Because we can put you up
at our place if you care to--ten rooms down on Grove Street, a garden
the size of a handkerchief, a fountain the size of a lemonade straw,
four, free, feminine souls, and an empty attic. Yes?"

"It sounds like a Demonstration. Till I get my bearings, and thank you
a thousand times."

"Come on. We'll walk, unless you're tired."

"Of sitting still for a week!"

They swung away, Jean shortening her step to the quick patter of
Catherine's. As they went, Catherine told of her work and Jean listened
enough to make out that Catherine had built herself a firm place in
this city she had once hated: that any woman with brains and grit could
force New York to recognize her and that managing concerts and readings
paid "like the devil" if you got in right.

The patter of the crisp voice went on until, as they turned into
Grove Street, Catherine broke off so sharply, that Jean feared her
inattention had been discovered, and was just about to apologize when
she caught a flush on Catherine's dry, brown cheeks, and followed her
eyes to the heavy-set figure of a man, standing on the curb, throwing
pennies into the slush, while a horde of street urchins shouted and
fought for them. The man's clumsy body was convulsed with laughter, and
he made false motions of throwing, with ungainly sweeps of his arms.

Catherine hurried forward and Jean felt that she wanted to reach the
man and put an end to the spectacle. But as they came to the red brick
house, with white window facings and green window boxes, the man turned
and crossed to them.

"Jean, let me present Philip Fletcher, Nan Bonham's cousin and the
nearest thing we possess to a male inmate. Philip, Mrs. Herrick of the
Women's Civic Leagues."

Philip Fletcher ripped off his hat with absurd exaggeration and made a
low bow. Now that she looked at him closely, Jean saw that the man's
features were well cut, his eyes were clear, blue and kind, a trifle
too far apart, and that his mouth was weak. Jean's first impression
that he might not be quite normal mentally, vanished. He was evidently
a simple soul, without dignity, but of a vanity that demanded attention
even at his own expense.

He followed them in, and as Catherine led the way up to the attic, Jean
heard him go on laughing down the hall and into a room at the end. She
was sure that he had often thrown pennies before and would often do it
again, and be overwhelmingly amused each time.

"Well, how do you like it?"

The attic ran the whole length of the house and had a big open
fireplace at one end. The original windows had been replaced in the
front by leaded glass doors, opening on a small balcony. The walls were
burlapped and the furniture upholstered in gay chintz. It was a woman's
room but it reminded Jean in a way of Flop's, as it might have been if
The Bunch had never entered it.

"It's glorious!"

"I'll have a fire lighted right away and the bath's across the hall.
There's sure to be plenty of hot water, because the old souse that
Philip's wished on us for the last furnace man, nearly explodes the
furnace every day." She was at the door, when she turned and added,
"Phil's in one of his annoying moods to-night. Don't take it too
seriously."

Jean laughed and promised that she would make allowances. But she
fancied that Catherine flushed again at this, and wondered why _she_
took him so seriously.

An hour later, refreshed by her bath, Jean heard the dinner-bell and
went down with a pleasant sense of curiosity to meet the "four, free,
feminine souls." They were seated when she entered and Catherine made
the introductions, by pointing each out with her forefinger from the
head of the table.

"Beth Marshall, that healthy blonde who looks as if she did Swedish
exercise every morning, private secretary on Wall Street. That dark,
artistic being next, Gerte Forsythe, magazine writer, and furnishes our
emotion. Nan Bonham, deceives the world with her white hair, has the
soul of a baby and runs the Presbyterian Relief in Brooklyn. Girls,
Jean Herrick, head of the Women's Civic Leagues. It's stew, again."

"And, verily, I say unto you, the stew shall follow the roast, and the
hash the stew, until the third and fourth generation of them whose
parents come from New England."

"Shut up, Phil. Nobody invited you to come to-night, anyhow."
Nevertheless Nan's blue eyes twinkled and Jean knew that she found her
cousin's humor amusing.

As Jean spread her napkin, she felt Philip Fletcher sizing her up and
she knew that Catherine was watching. She tried to think of something
flippant that would show she could enter the mood, but before she could
think of anything, more to reassure Catherine than from any desire of
Philip Fletcher's approval, Gerte claimed his attention, and Catherine,
in evident relief, was talking easily again of her own work, as she had
during their walk from the station.

Nan joined with Gerte and Philip. Beth ate in placid silence. With
this grouping of interests the meal continued, until coffee, which was
served in a small basement room, cozily furnished, before an open fire.

Immediately after the coffee, all but Catherine went their way. No one
said good-night, or made any mention of seeing Jean again, although
Jean was sure that they had liked her. Their "freedom" had hardened to
a ritual of incivility. If she stayed for a week or a month, she would
see these women, tired, gay, bored, happy, and they would see her in
these many moods too. They would call each other by their first names.
But, if she left to-night they would probably never think of her again,
nor she of them.

Jean stared into the fire, and a little of the feeling that she had had
long ago on Flop's balcony, of there being so many people in the world
with the threads of their lives all crossing, came back. She thought
how strange it was that a few hours ago she had known nothing of
these women or Grove Street, and now she was there, and Catherine was
explaining the community plan on which the house worked and, finally,
asking her if she wanted to come in.

"Of course we'll take a vote on you, it's part of the charter, but it's
only a form." She hesitated and added, almost shyly, "I think you would
be comfortable and we would really like to have you."

But as Jean began to thank her, Catherine's manner changed.

"Matter of business and--general comfort," she said in her short,
snappy way. "Such a lot of people wouldn't fit."

"Then I'm a candidate for the vacancy?"

"We'll notify you formally but I guess, if you want to, you can be one
of The Theses?"

"The Theses?"

"As against the rest of the world, The Theses. Gerte's distinction."

Jean laughed remembering the Tiger, not so unlike the thin, dark
Gerte, and wondered why people who dabbled in the arts needed these
meaningless distinctions between themselves and others.

But later, as she lay on the couch drawn close to the open window in
the attic, and looked out across the buildings, rising in the outline
of a fever chart as far as she could see, Jean was glad that she had
met Catherine and that she was going to live here with them. And
although she knew that, at any previous period of her life, it would
have been impossible to her, now, contrasted with the lonely nights
staring out to the river after Martha's death, the paid hominess of
Katy's effort, the smoothly running indifference of these women would
be pleasant. She was beginning a new life, in a new manner. And as she
dropped to sleep, Jean had a hazy notion of owing something to Franklin
Herrick.




                          CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR


The next day Jean went back to work. Charlotte Stetson, who had taken
her place, tried to evince genuine pleasure but could not quite
convey it. Jean felt that she had been suitably mourned for as dead,
and that this sudden and unexpected resurrection was an intrusion in
questionable taste. So it was with mingled amusement and curiosity
that, about eleven o'clock, Jean knocked on Jerome Stuart's door, and,
at his short "Come in," entered.

"Well--I'll be----" he had risen, but dropped back into his chair with
an amended "Thank God."

Jean laughed, "Now I _do_ feel like a returned corpse. I suppose I
ought to have written but it never occurred to me."

"I'm glad you didn't. Nothing exciting has happened for weeks, and I
always did like a surprise."

"I'm glad you take it that way. Charlotte Stetson made me feel that I
ought to creep back into my tomb. She----"

"Oh, to----" Jerome Stuart broke off, realizing that he was about to
say aloud what he had so often said in the last eight months, "To the
devil with Miss Stetson," and added clumsily, "To be quite honest, you
know, it was only a kind of surface surprise. I've always known you
would come back."

There was no conceit of assurance in the tone. This quiet man who did
things quietly had learned. Perhaps he, too, had run away from life
once and come back.

"Thank you," Jean said, following her own train of thought, and Jerome
Stuart seemed to understand. There was a short pause and then he said,
smiling:

"Well?"

"Well, begin at the beginning. What has been going on in the world?"

"How much do you know? I suppose you know about the Sweat Shop law?"

"No. Did it go over? I am glad. No, really I don't know a thing that's
been going on."

Jerome Stuart handed her a bunch of clippings, but Jean could not focus
her attention on them, because she felt that the man before her was
studying her quietly. He might have known that she could return because
he knew that one didn't quit unless one were a coward clear through.
But the details puzzled him.

She handed back the clippings. "Great. After all California _is_ a long
way off and they have their own problems out there."

"Of course. What are they doing?" Jerome accepted the implication,
as Jean intended, that she had been working. She began to sketch the
Hill House, what they were trying to do, and Mary. But the doctor
bulked larger than any of it, and Jerome knew that this woman meant
much to Jean. He had never thought of Jean with the emotional feminine
associations of most women, with the "best friends" his daughter Alice
had had since babyhood, and this new point of view held him to the
exclusion of any interest in the Hill House or its accomplishments. It
was a new background against which this large, unemotional person moved
in human intimacies. So that, when a chance remark of Jean's introduced
some young college girls who were working with Dr. Mary, Jerome found
himself talking of Alice, her approaching marriage, her amusing
frankness about life, the mixture of old-fashioned love and modern
feminism that Alice called "seeing life clearly and seeing it whole."

It was after one, when the stenographer knocked on the door for her
afternoon batch of letters, and recalled to Jerome that he had an
appointment at two-thirty and had not yet been to lunch, He gave the
girl her work and turned to Jean.

"I haven't even begun on our latest and I have an appointment at
half- past two. Couldn't we have lunch somewhere? I want to tell you
about Mike Flannery. He's the alderman who's going to give us the most
trouble."

The suggestion fitted in with the intimacy of their long talk, so that
Jean did not realize she was doing anything unusual, until Jerome drew
out her chair in a corner of an attractive tea-room. Then all the teas
and luncheons she had had with Gregory in just such rooms marshaled
before her, and Jean wished she had not come. In time it would be easy,
but now it was difficult to keep her attention fixed, and the luncheon
began in a restraint that Jerome felt, but whose origin puzzled him.
It was not until the meal was over that, in the relief of its ending,
Jean's mood lightened to its earlier cheerfulness.

"We'll give Mike Flannery a run for his money and the surprise of his
life," she said, as the waitress departed with the bill.

"I suppose you'll want a few days' grace to get rested and set up the
lares and penates."

"There's not a penate to set up. I am sharing a house with four other
women and all the lares are in place. I'm with Catherine Lee and Nan
Bonham, Brooklyn Relief."

"Grove Street!"

"Yes. Do you know them?"

Jerome laughed until Jean demanded:

"Why? Are we very ridiculous?"

"I beg your pardon. No, of course not. But Grove Street is the
skeleton in my family closet. You give teas during the winter."

"Do we?"

"Yes, indeed, large teas where celebrities and semi-celebrities are
handed about with the cake. Alice adores them, drags Sidney to almost
every one, 'to keep his social viewpoint broad,' and nags me to death
to go too."

"I take it that you don't often oblige."

"Not if I can escape, although, as teas, they are the best of their
kind. Catherine Lee's a hustler and she does manage to root out talent.
She gets her business tied up with her social life and so, when she
wants anything, she can generally put her finger on some frequenter of
the teas who can get it for her."

Jean laughed, and together they went out into the street.

"To-morrow then? And Mike Flannery."

"To-morrow."




                          CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


The machinery of the house on Grove Street moved smoothly and Jean
was more physically comfortable than she had been at any time since
Martha's death. And although, at first, she sensed very keenly in the
lives of these women the undercurrent of loneliness that had drawn
them together, and the accidental nature of their intimacy, in time,
she accepted it without analysis. It would have been tragic if they
had been conscious of it, but Jean was sure that Catherine alone ever
felt a quality of chill in this perfect freedom of which they were so
proud, and without definitely wording it, felt, in this perfection of
adjustment, the harmony of indifference.

Philip came often to dinner, and soon Jean accepted his boisterous
manner. It so fitted the man's nature that it was perfect in its
way, like the capers of a puppy. It was only when Philip, in his
unconsciousness of the fitness of things, capered before others, as he
had on the night of her arrival, that one objected to his clambering
over strangers. Jean saw nothing humorous in Philip's performances,
but when she could, pretended an amusement that delighted Nan. Still,
she always felt that in these moments Catherine was watching and was
never quite deceived. Nor was she sure that her kindly tolerance of his
horseplay deceived Philip. Often, before a more than usually outrageous
effort, Philip seemed to single her out with a defiant glance as if
to say, "There goes your stupid pretense of dignity. It isn't worth
keeping." He was always talking about the "big, simple realities" and
urging marriage and babies, but he knew no women outside the household
and seemed quite content. He laughed at Catherine's affection for Tony,
a musical protégé of recent discovery, thereby annoying Jean greatly,
until she discovered him making Tony promise not to tell who had given
him the new suit. He did not want Tony to tell, but he would have liked
the house to find out. He often did things like this and then resented
it when no one knew. He annoyed Jean without interesting her, but at
the end of a month she found she had summed him up more definitely than
any other member of the house--he had big impulses, small thoughts and
no will at all. After Jean had reached this decision her manner changed
toward him. She treated him with greater patience and at times with
respect.

In the evenings, Jean had many appointments to organize working women's
associations or speak at meetings. The idea of a national Congress
of women, which after attaining the dimensions of a group of civic
leagues, had lain dormant in the bitter loneliness of Jean's personal
life, woke again. A certain quality of excitement and vigor was gone
from Jean's conception of it but she accepted the change. She knew
that no plan would ever have the same keenness as in the days before
Gregory's going. Something had gone out of her then, and now all
purpose was calm and subdued, like the staid friendships of middle life
against the idealization of youth. She never willingly looked back to
Gregory's letter. But she no longer viewed it as a terrible pit into
which her life had dropped. It was a wall dividing the past from the
present; turning her back upon it Jean faced the future. And the surest
measure she had of her reward was the feeling that came again into
the earth and sky and hills. Now, on the out-of-town trips she had
sometimes to take, she found the old, living, personal spirit in the
earth come back. It was as if, in the days of her loving, the earth
had withdrawn its unneeded comfort. Now, the old, old earth, kind and
understanding, came back into its own.

On Sundays, Jean took long walks, most often alone, sometimes with
Nan when she could not refuse. But at forty-two, freed from dependent
relatives for the first time in her life, Nan had an excited childish
exuberance about her that rather bored Jean. She often wanted to urge
Nan to snatch at life before it was too late, grasp some reality
besides her love and admiration for the clumsy, capering Philip. But
when she thought about it seriously, she did not know what it was she
would urge Nan to snatch. The knowledge and disillusion of experience,
where now Nan had curiosity and, perhaps, hope?

Catherine, Jean rarely saw except at meals, and Beth's engagements with
men, mostly younger than herself, kept her away a great deal. But, on
the few evenings that Jean was home, it came to be the custom for Gerte
to drop in to the attic. And no matter what the subject, Gerte soon led
it to her own work, burbling on about her plots, clothing the meager
incidents in long words. Jean often wondered why Gerte wrote or how she
sold what she did, she had so little insight, no imagination, and was
so empty of any deep experience of her own. At thirty-two, Gerte was
pitifully curious about love and sex and marriage, and Jean was sure
that she thought almost constantly about these things. She pitied Gerte
but never quite liked her.

Twice Jean had dinner at the old Stuart farmhouse on Staten Island, and
these evenings stood out from all other evenings in a warm glow. She
and Jerome united to tease Alice, so sure of herself and so untried,
but she was almost as glad as Jerome of the girl's indestructible
optimism. Sometimes she and Jerome referred to it afterwards in the
office, and this happy comradeship between the quiet man and the
big, blonde girl, seemed to Jean one of the most beautiful things
she had ever seen. It made her feel nearer to Jerome Stuart than the
successful accomplishment of any plan and softened the resentment
toward her own bleak girlhood. She often wondered how Jerome would
stand the loneliness of Alice's marriage and sometimes, for a moment,
Alice's going so eagerly out to the happiness Jerome's loving care had
made possible, seemed cruelly selfish, until Jean thought of Martha
and smiled. How imperceptibly one's viewpoint glided from youth to
age, and how alike was all youth and how alike all age. In middle life
the wandering paths of youth met, and when one reached that spot,
one picked up the waiting burden of loneliness and understanding and
staggered away with it, groaning or smiling according to one's pride.
She rather thought that Jerome would smile.

Early in April she and Jerome began to plan a summer campaign against
the cheap dance-halls and mediocre concerts on the piers that furnished
the principal recreation of the poor in summer. Sometimes Jerome got
quite violent about it.

"There's no reason there shouldn't be something worth while and we'll
give it to them."

"We will that--whether they want it or not."

Jerome laughed. "When you take that tone you make me think of Alice
planning Sidney's future. I always feel so heavy and masculine and
unnecessary. You make me feel as if my greatest privilege will be to
trail along behind such energy."

"And when you take that note, you make me feel flippant and feminine
and superficial."

"Not a bit of it. You just feel Machiavellian and subtle. I know."

"Solomon! Well, no matter what your feelings are, you're not going to
shift any responsibility because of them."

"I don't want to. I'm perfectly willing, eager even, to pilot the
way from pier to pier, dance-hall to dance-hall. I may even make
small, tentative suggestions, which will tickle me to death to have
considered." Jerome Stuart's eyes twinkled in a way that had once
reminded Jean of Gregory, and had hurt. Now she liked it.

The teas, dreaded by Jerome, Jean easily escaped. No one took offense
at her preference nor made a personal matter of it. If there was no
consideration of each other in this scheme of freedom, neither was
there any claim. It was not until late in April that Catherine put the
matter of the last tea as a personal request.

"It's the yearly Round-up," she explained, "and is really a matter of
business. This year it's specially important to me, I have several
protégées I want to launch and now I've got the woman who can do it.
Mrs. J. William Dalton----"

"Who!"

"Exactly, if she makes you feel like that. There could not be two.
Besides, I hear that hers used to be The Poor. Now it's Art, but when
she gets them both combined, she just runs amuck. That's what I intend
her to do. Tony Rimaldi is fourteen, the oldest of ten in a Mott Street
tenement, and if you had come to the other teas you would know that
Tony is a genius. He plays the violin so that even I get woozly inside,
and Philip has been known to cry. Peter Poloff's nineteen, and although
he will never equal Tony, he has enough of the real thing to make him
a worth-while pianist, and he's never had a chance. Dalton's going to
be the motif of this round-up and afterwards she's going to sponsor a
concert for my prodigies and, _zip_, their future's settled! But every
one of you has got to help. Dalton simply can't function without a
back-drop, and we're going to give her one."

"Willingly, but what can I do?"

"Come. She hasn't forgotten her sociological days yet and, besides, the
publicity you and Stuart are creating about legalizing illegitimate
children hasn't escaped her. He has to come too. We'll give her the
whole shooting match, sociology, art, pedagogy, science, society,
_anything_ we can get our fingers on. You will, won't you?"

"Certainly."

"And that Stuart hermit? His daughter can't persuade him, but perhaps
you can."

Jean laughed. "What Alice can't do with her father hasn't much hope for
any one else. But I'll try."

And for the next ten days Jean tried to think of some way to trap
Jerome into promising. But Jean's social tact was most unsubtle and she
could think of nothing but a point-blank request. To her relief, Jerome
brought up the subject himself. It was only a few days before the tea,
when he said, with a mischievous grin:

"Well, how's the Round-up coming on?"

"Famously. The branding irons are heating. We've got you all corralled."

"Not a loophole in the stockade. I know that."

"Not a wire loose. Don't try to find one."

"I haven't the least intention. I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"What!"

"To tell you the truth, it's no longer the distinction it was to have
no opinion on Tony's genius. You haven't heard him either, have you?"

Jean leaned back in her chair and they laughed together in the way that
had come to make them both feel that somehow they had outwitted the
world together.

"And I was commissioned to gag and bind you and drag you there! I feel
cheated. I must do something. How about that person with the theory on
The Concentration of the Point of Interest, who did those weird wall
paintings for the Educational Exhibit? And that psycho-analyst? I don't
think Dalton's got to psycho-analysis yet and it would tickle her to
death. Could you get them?"

"Perhaps. All right. I promise. Only you must promise that Dalton won't
get at them too heavily. I like the men, both of them, and I don't want
to spend the rest of my life paying up the obligation of this tea."

"I'll rescue them personally, if I see them in danger. I can't promise
more."

"That will do. Only don't neglect me in your kind offices. I still
labor under the delusion, in spite of Alice, that the main interest of
a tea is the food."

"Don't worry. I'll watch over you and your digestion, too; the
refreshments are going to be a wonder."

"On those conditions I expect to enjoy myself." And with the
Gregory-grin Jerome went back to his own office.

But on the following Sunday, when Jean entered the already crowded
rooms, she saw only Alice and Sidney in the group gathered about Tony.
Jerome was nowhere in sight. Jean had deliberately waited until she had
heard Tony tuning up, so that now, as the room rustled to expectant
silence, she slipped into the shadow of the heavy curtains drawn to
assist the candle-light and took in the scene with quiet amusement.
They all looked so different somehow: Gerte in a slithery green thing
that would have delighted The Tiger; Nan like a lovely duchess in
palest lavender and Catherine in severe and expensive black. Jean
recalled Mary's "humans functioning socially" and she felt as if she
were watching some distinct psychological process.

"Fine show, isn't it?" Philip stepped from the deeper shadow of the
curtains unexpectedly, but the understanding in his eyes merged so with
Jean's own thoughts that his being there did not surprise.

"Really, clothes are ridiculous," she whispered back, feeling a
comradely nearness to him in this identity of impression. "Perfectly
harmless material cut and slashed into the wildest shapes. Take any
one of those gowns and look at it long enough and it gets screamingly
funny. Look." In her own interest and Philip's understanding, Jean laid
a hand on his arm, turning him slightly toward a friend of Gerte's,
a red-haired, slender girl in a tunic embroidered in green and gold
dragons, fastened with cords and blobs of coral beads. "Now, why is
that rig necessary because she sculps, and what, in Heaven's name, did
it start out in life to be?"

Philip looked as Jean directed, but his eyes moved independently,
for the rest of his body was concentrating at the point where Jean's
fingers rested lightly on his arm.

"Li Hung Chang's combing jacket," he offered after a moment, when Jean
had removed her hand. Jean laughed and was just going to ask him what
he thought of some one else, when Tony began to play.

Jean still stood close to Philip, almost touching him, but after a few
bars she forgot him, the crowded rooms, the too strong fragrance of
expensive flowers. She forgot that she did not really like Tony, petted
and spoiled by over-attention. She did not see the look of satisfied
accomplishment on Catherine's face, nor Felix Arhn scowling his deepest
foreign scowl of approval; nor Mrs. Dalton sitting quietly, her jeweled
hands in her lap. She did not even hear the music distinctly. It
created about her a medium into which she dissolved in feeling; and
when her brain registered, it was not notes or present impressions,
but memories of the first happy days with Herrick, and deep moments of
love with Gregory. Her face softened, so that Philip, stealing glances,
felt his throat tighten, and his eyes were hot and moist. He wanted the
music to go on forever, to keep Jean close with that look on her face.
And he ached for it to stop, before his hands should reach to her.
When it stopped, Jean would be again the hard, clear-headed woman who
scorned him and tried so hard sometimes not to show it. He had hated
her often for her conceited assumption of superiority, but he knew now
that he could never hate her again. That slightly quivering mouth had
taken his weapons from him.

The music ended. Philip turned to Jean, but she was acknowledging the
efforts of a tall man with gray hair and smiling eyes to negotiate the
buzzing groups and reach her. In another instant Jean was introducing
him.

"Mr. Fletcher, let me present Jerome Stuart."

As they shook hands, Philip felt Jerome size him up and dismiss him.
For a few moments Philip stood where he was and then, unnoticed either
by Jean or Jerome, moved away.

Tony played twice more and when he laid aside his violin, Jean and
Jerome looked quietly at each other.

"It makes me feel like two cents," Jerome whispered and Jean nodded.

"It's usually the way, isn't it?"

"Nearly always, I haven't enough conceit left even to tease Alice. I
shall confess."

"Come and do it now. I should like to hear you----"

But, before they could reach Alice, Mrs. Dalton spied Jean and billowed
down upon her. In vain Jean tried to insert Jerome between them,
dragging in every public effort in which he had been concerned for the
last year. Mrs. Dalton heard none of it. Catherine was right. She had
not forgotten her sociological days.

"It had such definite results," she cascaded, quite lost in this
renewal of acquaintance with the head of the Women's Civic Leagues.
"Such definite, concrete results, don't you know. While this
other--heredity is such a factor, don't you think? One never knows what
strange strain will crop out. Genius has so many strands intermingled.
Now, take our own little Tony. _What_ are we going to do about that
impossible family of his? We _must_ rescue him. We simply can't let him
smother there in those hideous rooms."

"They are pretty impossible," Jean conceded with a frown. "But it's the
very best possible thing for him at present. How long it will be, I
don't know, and in the end, of course, he will go. He would, even if no
one did anything for him. But now, he is just one quivering plate for
impressions and, although he may never realize it himself, it will mean
a lot--the hot, crowded rooms, the crying babies, the fierce fight for
life and the inherent joyousness of his people that nothing can quite
kill. Out of this jumble Tony ought to draw into himself something that
nothing else could give. He comes from the People and he ought to give
his gift back to them."

"Oh," Mrs. Dalton gasped, but Jean went on impatiently: "There's such
a lot of talk these days about The People and their Power and most of
us don't know what we mean by it. We hear such a lot about the Will
of the People, and the Spirit of the People, and the Literature and
Soul of the People, and we are beginning to hear about Music of the
People. But here in America it seems to mean negro melodies or Indian
lyrics, the plaints of a dying race. Why shouldn't there be modern,
industrial music, not the blaring of factory whistles, but the spirit
of industrialism, the life of the immigrants, the economic fight, the
whole struggle of this great Melting Pot--sound etchings, like Pennel's
skyscrapers and bridges. Tony ought to be able to do it. He has the
genius, the heritage and the environment."

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Herrick, you must come and talk to the Lost Art. You
put it all so vividly, but then you always did. Do you remember, in the
old days----"

"Pardon me," Jean interposed hastily, "but Miss Lee is signaling
me," and, feeling that she was not playing fair, Jean escaped. A few
moments later she looked back and saw Jerome, whom Mrs. Dalton had at
last connected with the Sweat Shop law, being drowned under a similar
cataract, to the great amusement of Alice, who stood by, making not the
slightest effort to save him.

It was Catherine who released him at last. The next moment, Jean was
barricaded between two tea trays and Jerome was looking at her in real
reproof.

"Well, have you any decent excuse? Is that the way you keep a promise?"

"Promise? Did I make a promise?"

"You certainly did. You let me suppose that I was not to be thrown to
the lions without a saving effort on your part. And then you went and
threw me yourself."

"But she would have gotten you in a little while, anyhow."

"You can't prove it. I've dodged that kind for many years now, long
before you knew what a Civic League was."

"I thought this was your first tea," Jean parried.

"All the more reason for seeing that I enjoyed it. I may come to
others."

"You know you're safe on that score. This is the last."

"Well, you've got to atone, in some way, for that performance. Will you
come to supper?"

"Supper!"

Jerome smiled. "I don't care if you've eaten a whole cake. I hope you
have. Your punishment will be no worse than mine. I promised Alice that
I would trot along with her and Sidney to a little joint they always go
to after these functions. How much longer will this last? The music is
over, isn't it?"

"It is. But this may dribble along till almost eight and there are
always a few to stay and eat the scraps. I believe Catherine expects
you and Alice and Sidney to be among the chosen few."

"Don't tell Alice; I rather fancy the little joint." Jerome's raised
brows indicated Mrs. Dalton, and Jean nodded.

"How soon can you slip away? In ten minutes?"

"I'll try. Go over and keep Dalton anchored where she is and I'll start
my escape."

Jerome obeyed and Jean began to make her way out, stopping only when
she was forced to. Once she was halted close to where Philip Fletcher
stood, apart, silent, his mouth drawn downward like a hurt child's. As
Jean passed close, he moved toward her, but some one else claimed her
attention, and Philip went on into the hall. He watched for Jean but
she went upstairs by a back way, and when she came down he saw she was
ready to go out.

"Will you tell Catherine that I'm going out to supper? I tried to get
at her but she is too busy."

"If I see her," Philip replied and knew that Jean, already joined
by Jerome Stuart and Alice and Sidney, did not hear. They left the
house together and Philip stood staring at the door Jean had closed
so quietly, like a child slipping away on an adventure. Across the
threshold of the living-room, Catherine caught the look on Philip's
face, broke off a sentence in the middle, then grasped the thread
almost instantly, and went on.

When the household and the Chosen Few sat down to the scraps, there was
much speculation on Gerte's part as to what had become of Philip. But
Catherine said nothing.




                           CHAPTER FORTY-SIX


Philip did not come for a week. Every day, after the first three, Nan
rang up the office, but either Philip had just left or had not yet
come. Every night Gerte wondered why, until Catherine finally advised
her to write if she was so anxious. And then, on the second Wednesday,
Philip appeared. He came late, in his most boisterous mood. Gerte
fussed over him, touched him, patted his shoulder, insisted that they
had been worried to death about him. Even Beth showed a slight sense of
restored comfort, as if some special piece of furniture to which she
had grown accustomed had been replaced. Nan was almost as exuberant as
Philip. Catherine alone refused to confess any anxiety or relief.

Jean fancied that Catherine's attitude interested Philip, and that in
some way he had changed. His hilarity was still diffused to include
them all, but when he spoke to Jean directly, he seemed to clear a
little space of this boisterous litter, to enter with her an interval
of reality. Jean was too busy, however, with her own work and helping
Catherine with the coming concert to give it much attention.

The concert was to be on Friday and on Monday Jean had her secretary
send out a list of complimentary tickets. Jerome came in while Jean was
dictating names, waited until she had finished, and, when the girl had
gone, said:

"Well?"

"Well?"

"I didn't hear mine; don't I get a ticket?"

"Do you want to go?"

Jerome smiled. "You can't make me mad that way, not a scrap. You're in
league with Alice. I can see that, but you can't get a rise out of me
that way. I'm going to the concert because----"

"Never mind. Don't bother to invent a reason. You're going because you
want to."

"Oh, feminine intuition, deep, unfathomable and always right! Exactly.
I'm going because I want to. Do you know a better reason?"

"None. What did Alice say?"

"She doesn't know yet. I can't reform all at once. I'm going to appear
and astonish her."

Jean took a ticket and handed it to him.

"Where is it?"

"Between Alice and myself."

Jerome fingered the ticket as if he were about to say something,
didn't, and slipped it into his pocket.

"But please don't forget that some one has to be responsible for me.
With Tony I guess I shall be safe, but with that Poloff person there
is danger. I _never_ know when the end of one of those classical
selections has arrived and I may disgrace you by clapping at the wrong
place."

"Never fear. I'll see that no harm comes nigh thee."

"See to it better than you did at the tea," Jerome shot back from the
doorway as he left.

On Friday, Jean did not go to the office at all. Gerte had left some
alterations on her dress until the last moment, and all afternoon an
excitable French seamstress buzzed about the house like a gnat, getting
in every one's way, calling incessantly on Le Bon Dieu for needles of
the right size, her thimble, for Madamoiselle. Catherine, maddeningly
calm in any confusion caused by others, went quietly about, saying
bitter, sarcastic things in a gentle voice, and only the realization
that this evening was something of a trial for Catherine prevented them
from retaliating in kind.

Not until the pickup supper was over, and the French gnat gone, did
peace descend. Then, stretched on the couch before the open window of
her attic, Jean looked up into the soft spring dusk and let its peace
wrap her. The little stars still twinkled with some of the crisp,
business-like twinkle of winter, but spring had already come. Down in
the narrow streets it was warm. Soon summer would be there. In a short
while, a few weeks at most, the house would be empty and still as it
was now. The others would be gone on their summer vacations. Jean felt
that she would like the house, alone in the silence.

There was barely time to dress when Jean at last jumped up and turned
on the light. It was three years since Jean had worn an evening dress
and that had been a very simple affair compared to this. Nan had
insisted on the lowest possible neck and not the vestige of a sleeve.
As Jean hurried into the filmy chiffon, the intricacies of its hooking
amused her.

"I feel exactly as if I were a puzzle putting myself together."

She was preening anxiously before the glass, making sure that she had
solved the puzzle correctly, when, without waiting for an answer to her
knock, Catherine hurried in.

"Just this one hook, please. I simply can't manage it and
Gerte--why----"

Catherine stopped and took Jean in from top to toe and back.

"Jean Herrick, _are_ you going to wear your hair like that?"

"Why, what's the matter with it?"

"It's the way you talked to that labor crowd last Monday."

"Surely. I always do it that way."

"It's impossible with that gown. Nine-tenths of you looks like the real
thing and the other tenth----"

"You've got it twisted. One-tenth looks like me and the other
nine-tenths are somebody else. I feel--like an idiot--in this thing."

"You come darn near looking like it with your hair that way. Fluff it
up some."

"Oh, come on, Catherine, and get hooked. I don't know how to fluff it
and wouldn't if I did. What difference does it make, anyhow?"

Catherine looked at her queerly. "None--I guess."

Jean finished the hooking. "There, you're gowned enough for the whole
bunch." Catherine's dress was very simple and apparently made no effort
to be anything but a covering. In reality it was a frame and shadow
box, that softened the sharpness of Catherine's face to piquancy, made
her thirty instead of forty, mischievous instead of caustic.

"You're ready, then?" Catherine spoke as if she were giving Jean a last
chance to redeem the hair, drawn back in the low, tight knot.

"Been ready for hours and mapped out a whole summer waiting."

Catherine, standing near the switch, turned off the light.

"Do you mean that, too, about not going out of town all summer?"

"Yes, except, perhaps, for week-ends."

Catherine did not answer, but Jean had the feeling of something moving
between them in the darkness. Then Catherine passed into the hall.

"Come on. There's Philip with the taxi."




                          CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


The others had already arrived when Catherine, Jean and Philip took
the three vacant seats on the center aisle. From her box, Mrs. Dalton,
resplendent in black lace and diamonds, recognized the arrivals and
waved graciously.

"Thinks she's slumming, I suppose. We're a cross between Mott Street
and Society. What do you suppose she'd do if I fingered my nose at her?"

"I haven't the least idea. Why don't you try and find out." Since the
tea, Jean often considered Philip's foolish suggestions amiably.

But before he could say anything more, Alice leaned across the vacant
seat.

"Who on earth is this one for? We've been guessing for the last five
minutes."

"Why waste so much energy? Whoever it is will probably be here in
another five and then----"

Standing in the aisle, Jerome included the entire row in a welcoming
nod, took the vacant seat and looked inquiringly at Alice.

"Any objections, kiddie?"

"Daddy Stuart, you are the most annoying male thing in captivity."

"Now, Alice, if you will think back, slowly, carefully and logically--a
most difficult performance for you, I own, you will remember that I
never actually said I would not come."

"You nice old fake--I don't care why you came as long as you're here.
Everything's going to be wonderful to-night, I feel it in my bones."

"Perhaps it will be beyond me altogether."

"Never mind. I'll take care of you. Don't applaud on your own
initiative and stop the moment I do."

"Oh, you're not going to be burdened with the responsibility. I've
arranged to be tutored through this already."

"You have, have you? Well! So _you_ were in the plot, too." Alice
leaned to Jean again.

"Not exactly. I----"

"You're both as bad, one as the other. Manage it yourselves." The laugh
was more a caress than a sound, as Alice turned to Sidney.

"Thanks." Jerome faced Jean, fully, for the first time, and then,
almost instantly, picked up his program and began to study it
carefully. For, in that passing glance, Jean had detached herself from
the background of bright light, evening dress and subdued chatter into
which his first general impression had plunged her, and stood apart,
unfamiliar and strange. Jerome read the program through once, and then
again, giving meticulous attention to each selection, but, as if there
were a magnet beside him, the change in Jean kept drawing him away.

What was it? Jerome was used to the transformation of evening dress
which he insisted reduced all women to a common denominator. But Jean
was not at all reduced to a common denominator. Nor was she herself.
She was and she wasn't, in an annoyingly confused fashion that made
Jerome feel, if he kept his eyes long enough on the program, that
Jean was exactly the same, except that she wore a low-cut light dress
instead of the everyday high-cut dark one. But at his faintest move to
verify this by a direct glance, she was somebody else altogether.

Jerome picked out certain numbers and considered these especially. He
must turn and get this thing reduced to a phrase and so eliminate it.
The concert would last for at least two hours and a half, and he could
not sit there staring at his program and wondering why Jean Herrick was
and wasn't Jean Herrick. He wanted to look at Jean, but he did not want
Jean to look at him.

Then Catherine spoke and Jean leaned across Philip to answer. Her back
was to Jerome, and without moving he glanced up sidewise.

There was the same heavy knob of hair, low on her neck. The same
threads of gray, which Jean might easily have concealed but never did,
ran through the thick mass into the tight wad. The same bone hair-pins
inserted in exactly the same way. It was an unbecoming way to do her
hair, ugly even in office clothes, and preposterous with a low-cut
gown. Jerome studied the tight wad with puzzled intensity. He had an
idea that the solution lay here somehow. He had heard Alice say that a
woman's character showed in the way she did her hair and the sweeping
assertion had amused him as Alice's large generalizations always did.
But perhaps Alice was right. Surely such a fashion of doing one's
hair was more than an exterior detail. It shrieked aloud of lack of
taste, of a sense of fitness, of indifference to accepted standards.
It stood for a kind of density or conceit in a way. It was a glaring
discord, just as if Jean had brought her black leather wallet or worn
her white chamois gloves, or carried a fountain pen concealed in the
chiffon. Jerome's eye ran along the row of seats in front. That was it,
that impossible wad of hair screwed into a cumbersome knob. It was so
incongruous that it might well strike one, a man especially, used to
taking in a woman's appearance as a whole, as something quite wrong,
wrong enough to make a distinct impression. Relieved, and amused at his
own interest, Jerome's eyes returned to Jean.

And then, he was suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of Jean's neck and
shoulders, of the soft, white velvet of the skin, the warm smoothness
of the flesh, the firm muscles molded in curves that called to every
tingling nerve of his fingertips. It seemed to Jerome an interminable
time that he sat so, conscious to the depths, of that velvet whiteness.
Until Jean moved and released him.

The green and gold curtain drew back and Tony, clutching his violin as
if it were a weapon of defense against the staring enemy, advanced to
the footlights. From her box, Mrs. Dalton made comforting signals, and
J. William himself, a meager black and white figure just behind her,
clapped his thin, cold hands in encouragement.

Jean leaned back. Jerome could feel her relaxed, lost completely from
the first notes. Jerome moved, so that in no way did he touch even the
wooden arm of Jean's seat, and tried to listen. But he heard only the
opening measures, and, after that, did not know that Tony was playing
at all.

This was not the Jean Herrick with whom he had worked so pleasantly.
It was another woman. That Jean Herrick made no demand apart from
intellectual sympathy. While this--something in the very fiber of the
woman, akin to the soft velvet of her skin, those definite curves,
called to him. He had never even thought of Jean's age or whether she
were good looking. Although if any one had asked him he would have said
she had a fine face. But her body had never entered his thought at all.
He might have known, if he had considered it, that her flesh would be
firm and white, her muscles well molded, but ... Jerome drew still
farther away. He did not want to touch her now. Instead there was a
distinct repulsion, as if Jean had offered him a caress uninvited.

He was not used to thinking of women in this way. Unrestrained emotion
had never played any part in his life. Other men might have moments of
physical surprise like this, but he had never had them. He felt unclean
and at the same time, as if the fault were not his. Jean had done
something, tricked him, taken him at a disadvantage.

When Alice's hand on his arm catapulted him back to reality, he found
that Tony had played entirely through the first division of the program
and disappeared.

"Aren't you glad you came? Isn't he wonderful?" Alice was pinching him
in her enthusiasm.

"Yes ... of course ... yes, he's wonderful."

"Then apologize like a little man and confess that you've been bigoted
and silly and will never be so obstinate again."

"I ... apologize."

"Forgiven. Now apologize to Mrs. Herrick."

Jerome turned reluctantly to Jean, and away again, without speaking.
For Jean was staring straight before her, and although he could not see
her eyes, he knew they were full of tears.

Jean Herrick crying! What reserves of emotion she had! What reactions
he had never glimpsed!

The applause was tumultuous now but Tony did not come back. After a
short interval, Peter Poloff, all very black hair and violent gestures,
appeared and fussed about, having the piano moved this way and that.
At last it was arranged to suit; he perched on the edge of the stool,
pulled up his cuffs, and crashed down upon his instrument in pitiless
technique.

Jerome drew deeper into his chair and made no effort to listen. If he
did not get this matter straightened in his own mind before the concert
ended, he felt that to-morrow and the next day and always after,
whenever he spoke to Jean, he would see, under the high-cut, ugly
clothes she wore to the office, those calling curves and that white
flesh.

But he had settled nothing when, with a final crash, Poloff extricated
himself from the keyboard, received the applause with exaggerated bows,
and, most patently jealous of Tony, walked off the stage.

Jerome picked up his program and so escaped Alice's claiming
enthusiasm. But he knew every pressure of Jean's fingers. He felt her
move as if she were going to speak to him and hoped she would not. He
did not want Jean to speak to him yet.

Then Philip whispered something and she leaned away. The buzzing of
Philip's voice continued until Jerome wanted to reach across Jean and
strike him. To his taut nerves it was like the sting of a pestiferous
insect. When he felt that it was beyond his silent endurance, it
stopped and Jerome wanted more than anything else for it to continue,
anything to keep Jean from turning to him yet. But when she did not,
only settled quietly in her seat, waiting for Tony to come again,
Jerome was angry. And then Tony was back for the last time. From
sun-soaked vineyards across the sea, the music called in folksongs and
old dances of the people. The simple, plaintive things stirred Jean to
the depths, interpreted all the inexpressible beauty in the sky and sea
and earth and human love. Jerome knew that her lips were quivering and
his own were parched and dry.

Not a sound broke the stillness until Tony drew the bow in the last
note. Then a clapping and stamping forced him back again and again,
until, forgetting his pose of grown-up artist, Tony stamped his foot
in childish rage and shook his head. There was no mistaking that. The
audience rose laughing and went out.

A few moments later they were all together on the street, and Myra
Cohen was explaining about "eats" at her studio to which they had
promised to go en masse.

"But you must come, Mr. Stuart; please don't break the party, it's
been too utterly lovely." With one eye on Gerte and Felix, who already
showed signs of starting off by themselves, Myra made a last effort.
"Please, Miss Stuart, won't you make him, and you, Mrs. Herrick?"

"Don't count on me. But Mrs. Herrick is a miracle worker." Alice
shrugged her incompetence before Jean's superior influence, and as Myra
dashed away to intercept Gerte and Felix, she and Sidney moved after
them. "Put it over," she called back to Jean, "and you'll go down in
history with my thanks."

Jean looked at Jerome with understanding. Neither did she want to go to
the studio and eat unhealthy messes until weird hours. But she had no
good excuse.

"It really won't be a long affair, and you can leave when you want."

"Sorry. But I can't. To-morrow I leave early for that St. Louis
convention and have a dozen things yet to do."

Jean smiled. "I wish I had one half-as-good as that. But I guess I'll
have to go."

Jerome did not answer the smile. Jean thought he looked annoyed
for some reason and offered no further suggestion. With a short
"good-night" he left. When she turned she found only Catherine and
Philip waiting.

"What's the matter with your friend?" Catherine demanded.

"A good excuse. Twice as good as I'd need myself to escape."

Catherine stopped. "You don't have to go, if you don't want to."

"Please don't desert us," Philip said, with the genuine courtesy that
was his at unexpected moments. "It won't be the same, at all."

"Flattered, I yield." Jean swung to step beside him.

But at the corner of the street, Catherine brought them to a sudden
halt. "Excuse or no excuse, I'm dead tired and here _I_ quit."

She left them staring after her.

"I don't believe Catherine's well," Jean said, troubled, as they
started again. "Sometimes lately, she looks so terribly tired."

Philip did not answer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three times in the few hours remaining before dawn, Jerome awoke, each
time to full and instant realization of the thing that had happened. It
was incredible, ridiculous, disgusting. Each time Jerome reached this
conclusion, he turned over, thumped his pillow to momentary coolness
and forced sleep. But each time, before he quite succeeded, a small,
shamed relief crept over him, that he would not be seeing Jean again
before he left and that he was to be away three weeks.




                          CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT


A week after the concert Catherine gave up hope for Poloff. Mrs. Dalton
did not like him. Some reason, connected with an absconding Russian
maid who had once stolen some jewelry, had cut all Russians from her
interest. She was very gracious about it and very obstinate.

"But Tony's another matter. She's sickening about Tony. If I didn't
really love him she would make me hate him. Then, why can't she come
out and say what she intends to do? How do I know she won't go off
to Europe or Asia or Africa for the summer, and every week makes a
difference to Tony."

"Why don't you ring her up?" Jean advised. "She's already spoken about
it you say, it wouldn't be like attacking her from the blue. It would
be easy to make a reasonable excuse."

"Would it?" Catherine asked in such a suddenly changed tone, that Nan
and Gerte as well as Jean stopped eating and stared. Jean flushed, but
Catherine had not been herself since the concert and now her sharp face
looked almost drawn and her lips were a tight line.

"I think so. I'll do it, if you like, drop the seed anyhow. I used to
have to do a lot of indirect managing of her in the old days."

"Thank you," Catherine said after a pause, "but this is my affair. You
don't love Tony and I do."

Catherine did not wait for dessert and left the table. As soon as the
door closed, Gerte burst out:

"What in the world is the matter with Catherine? She's been like a
loaded pistol ever since the concert and now she's just about ready to
go off."

"She's tired out," Nan said shortly and then began, in a most unusual
fashion for Nan, to talk about her work. Neither Jean nor Gerte paid
much attention, but it bridged the gap, and Jean felt, that for some
reason, this was all Nan wanted it to do.

But the next day, when Mrs. Dalton rang up and begged Jean to help her
manage the Rimaldis, Jean at first refused. It was not until she saw
that it was either a question of doing as Mrs. Dalton asked, or having
the whole matter dropped, that she at last reluctantly consented to see
Giuseppe Rimaldi and force him to reason.

"I'll see him this afternoon and let you know," Jean promised and Mrs.
Dalton hung up.

The arrangements took longer than Jean expected and the others were at
the table when she came in, a little excited and triumphant, as the
contest with another will always left Jean. Giuseppe Rimaldi had been
hard to handle, and it was only by threatening him with the law, which
would take away from him both Tony and the new violin presented by Mrs.
Dalton, that he had yielded and promised to let Tony give up selling
papers and have this time for practice. In her success. Jean forgot
Catherine's rudeness of the night before, and launched into a picture
of Giuseppe Rimaldi, surrounded by wife and children, all except Tony,
defending his poverty.

"Like a captain defending a fortress," Jean explained. "No wonder
Dalton couldn't handle him."

"It was a miracle that _you_ were on hand to do it," Catherine said in
a cold, detached tone, each word like the prick of a knife.

Jean's eyes flashed. "If there had been any other way, I should not
have interfered."

Catherine pushed back her chair. "You needn't apologize. But from now
on you can have Tony--as well."

Gerte made no comment this time on Catherine's going, but Jean saw
Nan's face flush scarlet. As soon as the meal was over, Jean went up to
her own room.

What had Catherine meant by that "as well"? What unfounded hurt to her
own vanity was she harboring? There was something more than temporary
fatigue, or nerves, the matter with Catherine, and whatever it was, Nan
knew.

The days passed, a sultry spring moved toward a scorching summer, and
Jean did not change her mind. Catherine was different, so different
that it was impossible to seek an explanation, even if Catherine had
allowed the opportunity. Her wit, always sharp, stabbed now with a
venom that penetrated even Gerte's imperviousness. She dipped her
slightest remark in a well of hatred, and sent it tipped with personal
animosity straight to its mark. Nan alone escaped. It seemed to Jean
sometimes that Nan was mentally tiptoeing through this tension, as a
nurse moves with a patient.

All the old charm of the winter was gone now. The meals were
disagreeable interludes of forced effort that grew more and more
difficult to make. The only nights in the least approaching the
pleasant dinners of the past, were the nights when Philip came. Then,
for some reason that Jean did not seek to analyze, they all united
to drag together the tattered shreds of the old gayety to cover this
ugliness. Catherine did not help, but neither did she hinder. On
these nights coffee was served on the tiny lawn under the full-leafed
ailanthus. The lights in the rear tenement shone through the leaves
like low-hung stars, the fountain was turned on to the full capacity of
its trickle, and there was a definite feeling of relief in the air. But
Philip did not come often. Not nearly so often as he had in the winter.

Jerome's three weeks lengthened to four, then five. Jean did not hear
from him. The original date of Alice's wedding passed with a hurried
note from Alice that her father's return had been delayed, she herself
was going to the mountains, and the wedding would take place whenever
he got back. Then she, too, dropped into the silence.

Gerte went to the Berkshires. Nan took a cottage with a co-worker
at Rockaway; Beth went to Maine. Catherine and Jean were alone.
Catherine made no explanation of why she was staying beyond her usual
time in town and Jean did not ask her. There was little talk between
them. Jean's efforts at meals rebounded from the wall of Catherine's
mechanical replies like rubber balls.

At last in mid-June Jean reached the snapping point of her endurance.
Either Catherine would have to force a pleasantness she did not feel,
or else Jean would take her meals out. She could not eat another dinner
sitting opposite Catherine's bitter, cynical eyes and tight lips.

It was a suffocating evening, threatening thunder, and the air, like
hot wool soaked in glue, crushed Jean's last scrap of strength to keep
up this senseless and annoying pretense. They had finished dinner, and
Jean was standing by the French window opening to the garden, while
Catherine still sat at the table.

"Suppose we eat out here after this." At least the sky would give a
feeling of space and freedom, and the trickle of the fountain and
noises from the tenements fill the strained silence. Jean passed into
the tiny garden and took the steamer chair by the fountain. Catherine
came as far as the window and stood looking at her curiously.

"Why? Do you object to the dining-room?"

"It seems empty for just two--as if the others had died."

Catherine shrugged. "Rather sentimental, mourning three able-bodied
women gone on their summer vacations."

"You know very well it's not that." Jean looked at Catherine framed in
the window. She was dressed in white and now, in the twilight of the
unlit room, her thin face was strained and gray. Jean broke off and
turned on the fountain. The little tinkle rested her when she was very
tired.

"It's so stupid to care--about anything," Catherine murmured, as if she
were not talking directly to Jean. "If you never let any one in--you
don't have to drag them out."

"But that's too high a price to pay for anything," Jean said more
gently. "It would take such a lot of happiness to pay for such little
escapes."

Catherine laughed harshly. "You don't pay for it all at once. You
string it out over the years--all through your life--like buying peace
on the installment."

The last words she seemed to hurl at Jean and went. Jean watched her
disappear through the farther door; heard her go up the stairs and
close the door of her room.

Jean sat on alone. The misunderstanding of the last few weeks spread
through the heat. Catherine's bitterness saturated the heavy air and it
seemed to Jean that mystery and bitterness were pressing down upon her
physically. Nothing was the same as it had been. The clean precision
of the winter was gone. Motives were no longer clear. Every one and
everything was confused and blurred in the water-sogged air. Jerome
stayed away, long after the supposed date of his return, without an
explanation. Things were piling up in his office and every day his
secretary wanted to know if Jean knew when he would return. Catherine
was almost ill with bitterness and hatred of something concealed.
Philip came rarely and then he, too, was different. And since the
others had gone, he had not come at all. Everything was shrouded in a
thick mist of misunderstanding, and Jean felt that it was, somehow, all
meshed together, Jerome's unexplained delay with Catherine's bitterness
and Philip's strangeness with Alice's postponed wedding.

The leaves hung motionless in the breathless night. Jean felt that if
she did not get up and out into a wider space, she would be walled
forever in that ridiculous garden. As she passed Catherine's room on
the way to get her things, she saw that there was no light. The silence
reached through the paneling and Catherine's bitterness was a living
thing, with which she was closed in alone in the darkness.

Jean passed quickly on her way down again, and opened the front door
quietly.

As she stepped out she almost collided with Philip, his hand stretched
toward the bell button.

"Why the get-away? Will you divide the loot?"

"Did it really look as stealthy as that? It's this weather, all messy
and heavy and silent, a thunderstorm gum-shoeing about, afraid to come
out into the open."

Jean stood aside and waited for him to pass. "Catherine's upstairs, but
I don't think she's going out."

Philip paid no attention and closed the door behind Jean. At the click,
Jean thought she heard a noise at Catherine's window, but when she
looked up there was only the white curtain, limp in the heat.

Philip did not ask whether she objected to his coming but strolled
along beside her in one of his quiet moods, so that, after a few
blocks, she did not mind his being there. From time to time he made
some quiet comment, surprising in its keen appreciation of the color
and drama about them. He saw none of the squalor and dirt and tragedy
in the swarming streets, but like Herrick, long ago on that first
walk through Barbary Coast, a beauty, that Jean, too, saw when it was
pointed out.

Suddenly, as if they had risen from the litter, a gnarled old man and
a woman with an orange handkerchief about her withered brown face came
dragging a hurdy-gurdy. The man dropped the shafts and began to turn
the handle. "Back To Our Mountains" wailed to the night. As the old
woman fawned forward with her tambourine, Philip dropped in a dollar.

"Do you always do things as rash as that?"

"Sometimes," Philip answered quietly, and Jean was ashamed. Perhaps
there was some memory connected with this melody for which Philip would
pay any price. The man had hidden spots of sensitiveness like this
love of music, especially thin, tuneful music, for pictures of simple
scenes, and poetry, the lyric poetry of emotion and beautiful sound.

Jean surprised Philip by sitting down on the nearest step. He took a
place on the step below; children gathered about them, dirty, dark-eyed
children of another race. Philip and Jean were far away in another
land. He scarcely heard the tunes wheezed out, one after another, twice
around the repertoire. It was a mist through which he moved with Jean.
He wanted Jean as he had never wanted anything in all his life, and his
hour was come. It frightened him a little.

At last the old man got between the shafts of his cart, the old woman
pulling feebly on one. Smiling and nodding to the two on the steps they
stumbled away. The children plunged again into their games.

Half an hour later, Jean found herself sitting opposite Philip in an
East Side tea-house. The table was covered with dirty oilcloth and the
sawdust on the floor reeked with sour dampness. Shabby men with broad
Slavic faces drank Russian tea from tall glasses and argued of life and
death and government. In one corner a black bearded Russian in peasant
clothes strummed a balalaika, and a small boy in flaming red and with a
tinsel cap, stamped and writhed in a Cossack dance.

"It's great, isn't it?"

Jean nodded. "I often used to wish that I could draw or paint when I
first came to New York." And although she knew that she would have
striven to get on canvas the battle in the souls of these aliens and
that Philip would have painted the picturesque clothes of the balalaika
player, and the tinsel cap of the dancer, she felt nearer to him than
she ever had.

"I used to try it, but I could never get it. I'll show you the sketches
if you like." Jean knew that Philip was proud of these things and glad
to show them. "I should like to see them."

It was after eleven when Philip paid the check and they turned
homeward. The air was broken now with little puffs of hot wind. Philip
took off his hat, so that the puffs of air stirred his hair, and made
him look like a contented baby in a draught. But the evening had been
pleasant and Jean was ashamed of noticing how his fine hair, leaping
suddenly erect, made him look foolish. As they turned into Grove
Street, the first heavy drops splashed, and before they could reach the
door, were coming in a steady patter.

Philip followed Jean into the dark living-room, now filled with a
mysterious cooling breeze like a presence. In a rush the storm broke,
lashing the ailanthus in the garden, beating out the breeze, and the
air stung with the smell of rain and the little square of earth.
Somewhere above, a window slammed. "Catherine," she whispered, and
Philip felt that he and Jean were alone against the world, with all
its silly notions, like shutting windows in a thunderstorm.

Jean moved toward the garden and Philip stood beside her. The rain beat
like shot poured through the opening between the tenements. A little
strip of earth held fast between bricks; thunder, crashing against
tenements; a jumble of majesty and squalor.

    "I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone
        And the moon's with a girdle of pearl.
    The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim
        When the whirlwinds my banners unfurl."

The lines slipped in between the crashes and Jean felt the clouds
racing across mountain peaks.

"It would be wonderful," she said in the same low key, as if they alone
were articulate in a world lashed to silence. "I have never been in the
real outdoors in a big storm and I have always wanted it. It would be
glorious----"

"With you," Philip whispered. His face was white, as if the lightning
had touched it, and his eyes blazed. Jean stood silent before them.
And while she stood looking at him, the thunder broke in a deafening
roar that rocked the earth and smashed all subterfuge, all petty social
pretense at misunderstanding; so that when the last reverberation died
away and Philip said softly: "You know, don't you?" Jean nodded.

"Well?" he said with an effort. The sternness of his lips weakened
in nervous twitching, a pitiful betrayal of the thin veneer of his
composure. Jean turned to the garden and leaned her forehead against
the frame of the window. Weariness weighted her, weariness too heavy to
struggle with explanation, too deep to resent this demand so unexpected
and unwelcome. Philip did not move. Jean's bowed head was more eloquent
than words, the dejection and weakness of her strong body more cruel.
In mockery of his momentary hope, a faint echo of the thunder rolled
out to sea.

"Never?"

Jean shook her head.

Philip stared at the thick knot of hair, the broad shoulders, the long,
strong lines of Jean's body, and the blood rushed into his eyes. His
hands clenched on her shoulders and he swung her round, gripping her
beyond the power to move.

"You think I'm weak and silly, and you try not to laugh at me. Laugh
if you like, you couldn't hurt me, neither you nor any woman like you.
You think you're terribly honest and straight, don't you, and you
never tell the truth, not even to yourself. You know how I feel when
you are near me; you must know it. You've got it in you, the call of a
woman to a man and you pretend, you smother it all up under a sham of
companionship and interest, and it's a lie."

Jean tried to release herself, but the fingers dug deeper into the
muscles of her shoulders.

"I think you'd better go."

"I'll go when I'm ready, not before. Nobody has ever told you the truth
about yourself."

"Don't say any more, please," Jean begged.

But the pity in her voice fanned the rage in Philip.

"You're successful in your little fiddling two-by-four job, but if you
died to-night, the silly interfering would go on. You haven't got a
spot in the whole world that really belongs to you. You've got nothing.
Nothing at all----"

Jean shivered. "Don't," she whispered pitifully, "oh don't, please
don't!"

Suddenly tears filled Philip's eyes. "I want you so; I want you so. It
isn't enough, is it? It's only outside, isn't it, sometimes, now when
it thunders, and the earth smells? I'm not worthy of you, Jean. You're
the most wonderful thing God ever made. You want it too, don't you,
something near and close, the thing in the thunder and the sweet earth,
and I can give you that, Jean, even if you can't--give so much to me.
But just tolerate me, Jean, I will ask so little, just be kind and----"

The tears ran in tiny globules down Philip's cheeks.

Jean shivered with nausea, and stepped back. Philip's hand clenched and
his face became evil in its baffled longing.

"You----" His voice broke in a squeak.

Jean raised her head and looked with white, set face at him. Then
she made a motion as if to pass and leave him standing there, but he
stepped before her.

"You fool, you poor blind fool. You can draw men now," in his pain his
eyes clung to her body, "but in a few years you won't. I'm coarse. I
know it. You're so damned honest, but you don't like the truth any
better than any one else. For a few years you'll be a woman yet and
then--you'll be hungry and furtive like--like--Catherine."

With a quick motion Jean passed him, and without looking back walked
out of the room. Philip heard her go quickly up the stairs and then the
house was absolutely still. The rain dripped from the ailanthus, and
a single light high up on the fifth floor of the tenement went out.
Philip took his hat and went slowly, like an old person, from the house.

Staring down from her attic Jean saw him turn the corner and his bent
head and sagging, unexercised body made her feel ill.

It was a long time after that when she heard Catherine pad away from
her window to her bed.




                          CHAPTER FORTY-NINE


A little before dawn Jean got up. The narrowness of the couch, the
heat of the sheets, the motionless air of a scorching day cramped her.
She tried to hold her mind with unaccustomed attention to the details
of dressing, but everything was different, the walls, the feel of the
room, the furniture, even the toilet articles that she had had for
years. They no longer formed part of an unnoticed background, but stood
out as distinct points, drawing her attention. They thrust themselves
into her consciousness, as familiar things do when seen again after
a long absence or a serious illness. Between yesterday and to-day
something had happened so that the person who was handling the comb and
brush, moving the clothes from one chair to another, turning on the
bath water, was different from the person who had done these things
yesterday.

When Jean thought of Philip gripping her shoulders, disgust rushed over
her in scorching waves that left her cold and quivering with anger.
All night she had grown hot and cold at the memory. She had gotten up
to escape it but now as she dressed she felt it stronger even than she
had during the night. The thing was not a grotesque exaggeration of
the darkness, but a reality persisting into the light. And as she put
on her clothes she tried not to know that she was doing it hurriedly,
covering from some need to her own peace, the white arms and neck.

She never wanted to speak to Philip again, nor see him, nor hear of
him. The thought of Catherine creeping back to bed, her gray hair
in two plaits down her back, sickened her. Catherine, stealing about
catlike in the night, and Philip weak and angry in his baffled desire,
and she, Jean, so far from desire and jealousy and need like this, all
mixed up in this unclean situation. Jean felt that she would never be
able wholly to free her shoulders from Philip's clutching fingers,
or forget the things he had said. She would never again be exactly
the same person who had opened the front door and found Philip on the
landing, Philip, with his flat jokes, his heavy, flabby body, his
grotesque caperings.

"For a few years you will be a woman yet."

Jean's face flamed. She wanted to go downstairs and out of the house
and never come back. She did not want to see Catherine, and yet, if
she went out at this extraordinary hour of the morning, the need of
an explanation, or some reference to it, would bulk between her and
Catherine when next they met. And for her own sake and Catherine's
they must pretend. They would drag through breakfast together. Perhaps
Catherine would even refer in some way to Philip, as if their coming
in late at night had disturbed her. She would do it casually and well,
better than Jean could meet it.

The sun touched the tips of the flagpoles on tall buildings, and
another day crept out from night.... It was not true. None of it was
true. And yet, the words sounded as clearly in her ears now as they had
when Philip had hurled them at her. "You've got it in you, the call of
a woman to a man."

Nothing personal, nothing her own, part of her conscious choice. But
something hidden, impersonal, something that she shared with all the
pitifully weak victims of lust and their own senses.

The breakfast bell sounded. Jean went slowly across the room and opened
the door. She stepped into the hall and heard Catherine come out from
her room below. She stepped back and closed the door quietly.

When she was sure that Catherine had gone, she went downstairs. The
stairs and the hall had the same quality of strangeness as the familiar
toilet articles and her own attic. As Jean took her usual seat at the
table, the quiet dining-room seemed to retreat and Jean felt physically
smaller in it. And as she closed the front door, the whole house seemed
to be whispering about her. She turned and looked up at the mellow red
bricks with cool spots of ivy grown window boxes, the white curtains of
Catherine's windows, up to her own attic. The whole house was strange,
inimical, self-righteous in its aloofness, as if she had betrayed its
trust.

It would be impossible to go on living there. She could not stand
living under pretense to Catherine and, besides, Philip would no longer
come. It was the nearest thing he had to a home and it had been his
long before she came. And if Philip stayed away, something would go out
of the days for Nan, and Nan had so little. Nan's life seemed emptier
than ever now, when Jean thought of it in relation to Philip, all
possibility of love and warmth centered on the fat body slouching away
into the night.

Jean stayed at the office only long enough to attend to the most
important matters and left before noon. The rest of the day she spent
looking for a place to live. But it was difficult to find. She walked
all that day and all the next and the next, going home long after the
dinner hour, when she was sure she would not meet Catherine. And then,
on the fourth day, she found it, a four-room apartment, a penthouse
on the roof of a quiet, middle-class apartment house in Old Chelsea.
High above the street, it perched on a secluded corner of the roof, and
faced the Jersey shore.

Jean scarcely looked at the rooms as she followed the caretaker and
even while the latter was still pointing out the usefulness of a
drop-table in the kitchen, Jean was back in the little living-room,
facing west, just where the widest space between distant factory
chimneys opened to the Jersey shore. The roar of the city below rose
in a pleasant murmur that gave an added feeling of peace and a deep
security, as if nothing dangerous or violent, no matter how it tried,
could ever reach up to this sun-drenched peace. For the first time in
five days Philip's hold loosened and he slipped back into a roaring
vortex that could not reach her.

That night Jean went home to dinner. She had determined to wait up
in case Catherine was not there, but Catherine was, and they had an
uncomfortable meal during which Jean made repeated efforts to introduce
the subject of her moving and could not. At last she said abruptly,
just as they both rose and Catherine moved toward the living-room as if
afraid Jean was going to suggest the lawn,

"I've taken an apartment, Catherine."

She waited a moment for some comment, but none came. She could scarcely
throw the statement at Catherine and walk out of the room, so she began
to describe her wonderful new home upon a roof. But Catherine's silence
made her uncomfortable, and she stopped as suddenly as she had begun.

As if she had been waiting for Jean to clear away this ornamentation of
enthusiasm, Catherine said:

"When are you going?"

"This week, I think."

"I suppose that means we will not see you again."

"Not if it rests with me." Jean fancied that Catherine smiled, but it
was too dark to see. If Catherine was going to be nasty, there was
really no obligation to consider her any longer. Jean went on toward
the hall, but Catherine's next statement stopped her.

"I suppose Nan will be the next. She's getting the home-bug, too--and
she has a tremendous respect for you."

"I don't see how even Nan's energy could keep house and work with the
hours she has."

"Nan might give up her job--if the home-bug gets bad enough. Philip
is always suggesting that she keep house for him and Nan only needs a
starter. Funny, isn't, how fashionable it's getting--to want a home? Do
you remember those old teas at your place that winter? Perhaps we've
all gone as far as we can."

Jean resisted the longing to switch on the lights and say, "I'm sorry,
Catherine. It was the last thing that would have entered my mind. I've
been happy here with you, but it's best for me to go." Instead she
moved away across the living-room, for she felt that Catherine's eyes
were actually touching her in the murky light.

"Perhaps we've gone so far we're coming clear round on the other side
again--if you're right about it's being fashionable to want a home."

There was a faint noise as if Catherine were laughing. "I'm not
accusing _you_ of any such weakness, but Nan would like it. There have
been times when Nan has been perfectly frank about it, and I recognize
the symptoms coming on. Besides--Philip wants one--and Nan would do
anything for--'Philly.'"

"I don't believe that Philip really wants a home."

"Don't you? Perhaps you're right. It would be tragic, wouldn't
it--if he meant all he says about a home--because there's something
undeveloped and silly about Philip that would keep--any woman whom he
might care about from caring for him."

"I don't think that Philip is silly," Jean said quietly.

"Perhaps not. But he makes a good bluff at it then."

In spite of the darkness, Jean felt something moving between them,
just as she had felt it, without understanding, on the night she had
hooked Catherine before the concert.

"Perhaps he does. But then, I think that men, as often as women, make
pretenses and--hide behind them."

"I don't doubt that, but they don't put it over--any better than most
women do."

As Catherine passed and went quickly out of the room, Jean wished that
she had not forced her to that last. Catherine's voice had trembled so.

The next morning when Jean came down, the maid said that Miss Lee had
gone on her vacation.

On Friday Jean had her things taken from storage and by Saturday night,
her new home was in order. Jean cooked her own dinner and ate it on a
small table in the shadow of the house, where she could watch the sun
sink over the Jersey hills.




                             CHAPTER FIFTY


The evenings from early dusk until late, Jean spent upon the roof, and
her first feeling, of being high and safe from all turmoil, deepened.
Its peace was tangible. Something within herself reached out to meet
it, as something within had reached toward the spirit of the hills and
sea in the blue days with Herrick. Something within herself was part of
a universal spirit, and here upon her roof, the spirit was one of peace.

On Friday a note was forwarded from Alice. The wedding was to be on
Saturday afternoon at four o'clock. "Don't forget, four means four
because we have to catch the seven boat," Alice wrote, as if she were
inviting Jean to a tennis match and four o'clock marked the limit of
the entries.

Jerome must have returned. The wedding was to take place. Things were
going to be as they had been, untangled and proceeding logically.
Jean was happy. The last miserable days on Grove Street, dimmed by
this wonderful week, high on her quiet roof, faded to sincere pity
for Catherine, bitter, caustic, and slyly watching from windows; and
Philip, weak, servile, lonely Philip.

On Saturday, a little before four, Jean entered the Stuart living-room,
and then stood wondering whether, after all, she had not mistaken the
hour and the ceremony was not over. Alice, in a pale yellow dress, a
favorite of Jerome's, was laughing with the minister, a venerable,
white haired person with twinkling, merry eyes. Sidney and two friends
were moving a victrola and Jean caught Jerome's voice arguing with
Malone about the supper seating. The next moment, Alice caught sight
of her and hurried over.

"Awfully glad you made it. We're just about to begin."

"I'm glad it's not over."

"It would have been only Sid forgot to tell the minister and so we had
to scratch round and get old Dr. Gillet. Isn't he a dream?"

"Made for the part."

"Looks like one of the Prophets after a good dinner, doesn't he? The
old duck!"

Just then Sidney joined them.

"Ready, dear?"

"Yes. If dad's through. Oh, there he is. All right, come on."

Passing through the French window Jerome saw Jean standing a little
apart, the smile at Alice's flippancy touched with sadness at the
thought of what Martha would have felt at having to "scratch round"
for another minister who looked "like one of the Prophets after a good
dinner."

In the six weeks of absence, Jerome had settled the matter of the
concert night to his own satisfaction. Away from Jean, he had analyzed
it thoroughly and was glad, by the time he had put a few hundred miles
between them, that it had happened as it had. It would never happen
again and it had taught him much. Now, as he saw her standing, a
little lonely it seemed to him, with that look of mingled amusement
and sadness on her face, he felt a deep tenderness, almost as if she
were Alice, a tenderness which had in it no room for passion. He was
crossing the room to stand beside her--Alice absolutely forbade being
given away--when the minister opened his book and the short service
of the Episcopal Church began. Jerome stood where he was, and after a
moment forgot Jean.

Standing aside from the group of young people, all strangers, Jean
listened and, as she listened, the room faded into the walls of the
little western church at the foot of the Berkeley Hills. In the pew
behind, Martha stifled her sobs and Elsie dabbed with surreptitious
slaps at the fidgeting Tommykins.

What a dreary affair it had been. Jean felt again her rebellion and
shame at the sordid ugliness of Martha's sobs and Elsie's whispered
rebukes.

"Do you, Alice, take this man, to be your wedded husband ... to love,
honor and obey, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

"I do."

She, too, had promised, firm in belief of herself, of Herrick, of any
test the future might hold. And she had understood nothing, nothing at
all. It was a terrible promise to make in one's youth, untried.

"Do you, Sidney, take this woman, to be your wedded wife ... succor and
cherish in sickness and in health, until death do you part?"

Franklin had promised, just as clearly, and she had thrilled with the
safety of his protection. How awed she had been, almost grateful, for
this opportunity to build a life together, not a life with all beauty
drugged to nagging duty, but a free life, brimming with opportunity,
overflowing with beauty. And even while he promised--she knew now what
had been Franklin's mood as he stood beside her--desire, throttled to
control until the effort whitened and sharpened his face to the Galahad
look.

Jean's head drooped.

And with Gregory, no open honesty like this, but smothering secrecy
that she had tried to glorify.

To love, honor and obey, till Death do you part.

To seal the truth openly before all, as Alice was doing. In all her
life she would never have a memory as this would be to Alice.

"In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, I
pronounce you man and wife."

There was a moment of deep silence, in which it seemed to Jean that
these two people as individuals, were effaced in this Thing they had
just done, and that, never till the end of time could they again be two.

Then every one was crowding about, laughing and talking and trying to
kiss the bride. But Alice fended them all off and Jerome took her in
his arms. Jean saw his face twitch as he let her go.

"How he is going to miss her," Jean thought and then Jerome was
crossing the room to her.

"Well, I thought you had decided to live in St. Louis. How did the
conference go? I'm dying to hear."

With this flippant greeting, Jean pushed memory from her.

"Great. And I'm dying to tell about it. I tried to get over to the
office this morning, but Alice discovered me. You haven't any idea what
a lot of people and how much effort it takes to keep a wedding simple.
I saw only the tag end of proceedings but if I had another daughter she
should have everything from organ march to flower girls. It's a lot
easier."

While he spoke he looked about for a quiet spot in which to tell Jean
of the conference. The garden offered the only chance and he was just
going to suggest it when Alice swooped down upon him.

"No, you don't, Dad Stuart. This is _my_ party. Look over there at Mrs.
Cather. Belle said she couldn't vouch for her mother not crying and
she's just about ready to begin. Beat it. I will not have a single weep
at this wedding."

"Can't I wait till she begins? I haven't seen--I want to tell Mrs.
Herrick----"

"Run along. She _is_ beginning."

Alice watched until he was safely landed by Mrs. Cather. When she
turned back, Jean saw with surprise that the blue eyes were misty.

"Do you know, Mrs. Herrick, that's the only spot that hurts in the
whole business, having to leave Dad. He's going to be lonesome, whether
he knows it or not."

"I'm afraid he is."

"He'll just stay over here by himself and putter with bulbs and things
and get into a rut. I know he'll never go to a place except to the
office when I'm not here to prod him."

"Well, the office is a pretty absorbing thing."

"Yes, I know it, but--don't you think that as people get older their
work just kind of goes along without all of them that there is, and the
rest gets into a groove?"

"Good gracious, what an uncomfortable thought!"

"He's gotten used to me in a whole lot of little ways he doesn't know
anything about, and I'm afraid," she hesitated, took a quick summary
of Jean and added hastily as she saw Sidney coming to her, "Would you
mind, sometimes, just prodding him along a bit, Mrs. Herrick, till it
all settles down again?"

"I'll prod to the best of my ability, but I'm afraid it isn't promising
much."

"Oh, it's only for a little while. I'll be back in October to tend to
the matter myself."

"Till then, perhaps I can manage it." Jean laughed, too, but she had a
tenderness for this big girl who was afraid that Jerome Stuart would
get into a rut.

In spite of the pleasant informality of the supper, it seemed a
long-drawn-out affair to Jean, and try as she would, she could not
share the gayety. With the exception of Mrs. Cather and Sidney's aunt,
the rest were Alice's age, and there was a feeling of perfect assurance
and untried strength in the air, that made Jean feel old. Seated
between a young man interested in subnormal children and a girl cubist,
who was advancing an intricate argument from which Jean could not
gather whether Cubism was subnormal, or subnormality was misunderstood
Cubism, Jean struggled to give her attention, but her thoughts drifted
farther and farther away, and at last withdrew from the discussion
altogether.

From his end of the table, Jerome snatched glances at Jean, and it was
only the necessity of keeping Mrs. Cather amused that prevented Jerome,
too, from sinking into a like silence, but he felt the mood, a strong
wire, binding them together. He was as relieved as Jean when supper
was over, and while the girls struggled with Alice to let them "do the
thing as it ought to be done" and the young men began clearing the room
and the veranda for a dance, he sought Jean again. As he reached her,
Alice's clear voice rose above the laughter.

"Now quit it, Belle. I wasn't decorated for the sacrifice, and I'm
_not_ going to be 'started on life's journey.' I'm going to wear that
tan raw-silk you've all seen a dozen times, and it would be idiotic to
help me get into that. Besides, the snappers are almost all off, and
nobody but myself knows the trick of pretending they're not."

Jerome smiled. "This generation's a scream, isn't it?"

"I was just thinking--do you suppose it is or that we're just older?"

"No. It _is_ different."

"Yes, I suppose it is." Jean looked about at the young men clearing
the furniture to the veranda and the girls grouped about the victrola,
choosing records. "But I don't think I ever realized before, quite so
clearly, anyhow, that there is a 'this generation.' I always feel as if
_I_ am this generation, and children like Tony are the future."

"Delusion, terrible delusion. But, then, you haven't a daughter
Alice's age, who discusses her own children even before her marriage."

"Frightful," Jean agreed, pushing away a strange, new wish that she
did have a daughter like Alice. "To be menaced with two generations at
once--that would take the pep out of me."

Alice was back now, ready to leave. She sent Sidney on an errand, and
joined the girls round the victrola.

"They're so terribly afraid of not being reasonable, or being
sentimental, and they go to such lengths to prove their independence.
Why, Alice would rather die than blush, even if she could accomplish
that feat. She would think it was indecent."

"Maybe it is," Jean said lightly, hoping to keep the talk from dropping
altogether to the depth of her own seriousness. For this wedding was
full of intruding revelations that wearied and saddened her.

A daughter like Alice. If she had had a child. A child of Herrick's.
It might have been ten or eleven years old, now. It was very strange
to think of a child of Herrick's. She had never wanted a child of his,
never for an instant. She remembered, vividly, the Sunday she had lain
under the trees and thought of the possibility of a child that would
have Herrick's high laugh. How queer it had made her feel! That was the
same day she had asked her mother about the scene in the old Webster
Street house, and Martha had let the match burn her fingers.

And Gregory's child. It would have been a little thing, scarcely more
than a baby yet, not nearly as old as Puck the day she had told Puck
stories and waited for Margaret to come home.

Franklin's child. Gregory's child.

For the first time Jean linked the two in the possibility of their
fatherhood of her child. And for the first time, a child stood out as
a separate entity, a distinct individual, owning its own existence.
Her child. A part of herself, yet more its own self. A unit of "this
generation," the generation in which she had felt, until this moment,
that she herself belonged.

But she did not belong. She had no part in it. There was a chasm
between it and herself. Forward across the chasm there was nothing.
Back, there was Martha's grave.

"What do you think Alice told me?" The intonation caught Jean's
attention and brought it to the man beside her. "I suggested that if
she wanted to be really logical, she should have no ceremony at all.
She said it was so inconvenient when you went to hotels, or among
people who didn't understand. Imagine! Advancing that as a reason. I
suggested that, under such pressure, she might lie about it, and she
said, 'Lying always smothers things up. It isn't clean.'"

"She's right."

"Of course she's right. But how modern it is! She doesn't logically
believe in a ceremony. She doesn't believe that marriage has anything
to do with religion and she thinks, or thinks she thinks, that in time
even the civil ceremony will vanish."

"It will."

"Of course it will. But nothing would induce Alice, or any of the
young people here, to say honestly that they are afraid. Fear is a
terrible bugaboo. They're too young to know that it is the deepest
rooted instinct in the race. And so they wiggle out of the dilemma by
an exaltation of--cleanliness. Terribly modern, like cold baths and
exposed plumbing."

"I don't know that that's it," Jean said thoughtfully. "I feel, at the
present moment, as if I could put up a perfectly sound argument on
either side. That's the trouble with analyzing too hard, you always
come clear round the circle and end in conservatism again. When they
stood there, before the God in whom they do not believe, and promised
in the old, narrow way, in the form for which they have no respect, to
love, honor, and obey, till death does them part, it _did_ seem to be
more than a ceremony. For a moment it did seem to reach down below any
passing desire, down into an eternal reality. I suppose it's because
we have no substitute yet for the old-fashioned God, and so, in big
moments, we still stand up and promise things out loud, as we used to
do, when we were children, to our parents." She turned suddenly to
Jerome. "Would you have liked Alice to go away without _any_ ceremony,
the useless ceremony that some day will be done away with?"

"No," Jerome answered slowly, "I don't believe that I would. No, to
be honest, I would not. We haven't eliminated it yet and till then
it's--safe."

"Safety--and weakness--and a fear-filled age."

"Don't! You make me feel like Methuselah in his last illness."

Jean laughed, but she was glad that Alice appeared just then. As she
took the girl's hand in hers, she answered the signal that Alice sent,
and her lips motioned, "Don't worry about that. I'll prod."

Then Alice put both arms about her father's neck and toned down the
strain of the moment by instructions concerning the management of
Malone.

"If it's any comfort, remember that I managed several housekeepers
while you were in pinafores."

"I suppose you did. But maybe you've gotten out of practice." Alice
gave him a last swift kiss, Sidney shook hands without saying anything,
and, with a general good-by thrown among the guests as if they were
going on an errand next door, Alice and Sidney were gone.

In the confusion of starting the dance that followed, Jean slipped
away and got her things. She had intended to go unnoticed, but Jerome
was waiting and walked to the gate. He looked grave now, as if the
forced gayety of parting had taxed his pretense. Nor could Jean throw
aside the seriousness of her own mood. The wedding had saddened her;
against all the logic of her beliefs, against what she knew were her
fixed deductions, something persisted, a fine, thin thread of regret, a
sense of waste, of loss. A terrible clarity seemed to possess her, as
if she could see the indestructible skeleton of all human dependence
and weakness, under the conventions and forms with which society had
clothed it. And Jean wanted the healing solitude of her roof.

They stood looking out over the empty field before them, each full of
suppressed thoughts, each conscious of the other's absorption, very
near in their understanding.

"Good-night." Jean opened the gate before he could do it for her and
passed out.

"Good-night." Jerome watched her swing away, fainter and fainter
through the dusk.

He did not go back again to the house, but to the farthest corner of
the garden, beyond reach of the noise and lights. Here it was still
and peaceful among the growing things, so still, that he seemed to be
the only thing in motion on the earth, poised in ether. Time took on a
quality of space, and incidents, some quite forgotten, rose near, like
objects close to hand. He could see through time, all about him, back
down the years, to his own wedding night. And, as he had not been since
then, he was alone again with Helen.

How adorably clinging and frightened she had been, trusting in his
wisdom, so little more than her own. What wild emotions had gripped
him, almost as frightened as she, what longing and what desire and
what denial all bound into a wonderful exaltation to make Helen happy
always, to keep her trust! To hold her safe in the great love that
throbbed and beat in him almost beyond his power to calm to the degree
of Helen's white shyness.

He had done his best, even when the exaltation had gone, and only deep
affection and tender loyalty were left for the clinging little thing
who had remained to the end, the least reluctant and fearful.

The day when Alice had been laid in his arms. He had scarcely noticed
her, because Helen was slipping so quietly away. And the months
afterwards, stabbing remorse as if he had killed Helen, and long
periods when he had forgotten her altogether, been quite absorbed in
his work, Alice, and the wonderful fact of living.

Years since then. Happy years full of work and Alice.... Now Alice
had gone and Sidney was only another man like himself, with all the
weakness and hidden places in every man.

Then he thought of Jean, as she had looked at supper. She, too, was
full of hidden places and contradictions. There was nothing simple, no
absolute unity anywhere. Suddenly Jerome felt chilly. He looked at his
watch. It was a quarter past one. He stopped and listened. The house
was silent. They had all gone, then, while he walked in the garden.

Jerome went back. The victrola was in the middle of the floor, the
records scattered about on top of the piano. The room was littered with
scraps of bonbons and crushed flowers; dirty saucers, half filled with
sherbet, marked a second supper.

Jerome turned out the lights and closed the door. Life was a little
like the room, he felt, filled with the tag ends of others' leavings.




                           CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE


On the Monday morning following the wedding, Jerome was at the office
earlier than usual. After the lonely Sunday behind him, the day ahead
was filled with expectation. First, he would tell Jean about the trip.
There were many things he wanted to tell her, things that no one else
would quite get. And then they would lay out the program for the piers.

The morning passed quickly, with only a few lulls in which Jerome
leaned back in his chair, smoked a cigar, made notes and tried not to
listen too closely for sounds across the hall. As soon as she was free
she would probably come in.

But by mid-afternoon it was not so easy to keep from listening. For one
thing, it was suffocatingly hot, and for another, he was not sure that
Jean had been in all day. He had not heard her come or leave for lunch,
and usually her hours were punctual. At three o'clock Jerome closed the
transom. It made him nervous to sit listening for sounds from Jean's
office. As soon as she was free she would come in. It was the kind of
thing Jean did.

But Jean did not come.

Neither on Tuesday nor on Wednesday. Thursday morning, Jerome crossed
the hall almost to Jean's door, and came back. If Jean were so busy
that she had not a moment for him he did not wish to intrude. And if
Jean had lost her interest in the conference, or had only pretended
one, still less did he wish to force her. Besides there were the piers.
Jean had been as eager as he and it had been understood that they
would begin as soon as the wedding was over.

On Friday afternoon, Jerome opened the transom. Jean Herrick could come
or not, exactly as she liked. He would not mention the conference and
if she felt obliged to inquire he would cut her short as gracefully as
he could. As for the piers, if it suited his convenience by the time
she strolled round, he would do them, and if it did not, she could do
them alone.

On Saturday he did not go to the office at all, but stayed home and
worked in the garden. He pulled down a summer house that had really
been a charming place to sit, and finished pruning and clipping every
shrub that had escaped in the long, empty evenings of the past week.

On Sunday he took Pips, and set out for a long tramp right after lunch.
But he had lost the habit of tramping alone ever since Alice had been
old enough to go with him; so, although he had intended to stay out
until evening, at three he turned back. The heat was at its apex, but
under pretense that it was really getting cooler, Jerome increased his
pace, until Pips suddenly dropped panting under a tree and refused to
budge.

"All right, old man, have it your own way."

Jerome stretched beside him. Pips snapped languidly at a few gnats and
went to sleep. But Jerome could not sleep. His head felt hot and empty,
and although he had accomplished nothing all day, he was exhausted with
the effort of getting rid of the hours. He tried to find something
interesting to think about, but there seemed to be nothing worth
wasting a thought upon. The week ahead stretched as flat and monotonous
before him as the week behind. There was nothing, except the problem of
Jean's inexplicable behavior.

She had not gone on a vacation because she had told him half a dozen
times she did not intend to take one. Summer, everywhere, was dull and
he could imagine no work that would call her out of town. No. Jean was
following some whim of her own, with no consideration of upsetting him.

That was the trouble with women who had brains, especially after they
had passed their first youth; they got so set in their habits, that
consideration for others never occurred to them. No doubt, Jean was
quite unconscious of causing him any inconvenience.

And there he was wondering about Jean when he had definitely put her
out of his thoughts a dozen times that week.

Queer how a thought persisted against one's wish.

A thought ought to be the easiest thing in the world to keep where you
wanted it. A person could intrude, or an extraneous body inject itself
into your cosmos, but a thought didn't exist apart from yourself, and
if you didn't want it there, why did it come?

Interesting business, Thought, like a demon, dwelling inside and
ordering you about at its will. Fascinating, if you got to really
thinking about Thought. Jerome gripped the idea of Thought, dragged
it along with him like a companion over the field of the Will and the
Subconscious, until he brought up in a conversation he had had a few
days before with the psycho-analyst he had corralled for Tony's tea.

But now, as soon as he thought of him in relation to the tea, Jean rose
from nowhere, drove out the psycho-analyst and usurped his place. Jean
as she had looked when he came in through the glass door, amused and a
little sad; Jean at the gate: dimming in the dusk; as she had looked
when they first talked of the piers, eager and alive in every nerve;
standing close while Tony played, in the candle lighted room, with the
thick, heavy odor of hothouse plants; as merry and teasing as Alice, at
supper afterwards, in "the little joint"; at the concert--

Jerome jumped up. "Here, boy. It must be almost six."

He took a short cut back across the fields and entered the kitchen
just as the clock struck five. On a table, covered by a white cloth,
mysterious humps disclosed Malone's provision for his supper. It made
him think of a country undertaker's, with grewsome appurtenances of
death concealed under the cloth. Jerome lifted the edge and discovered
cold meat and Malone's tragic efforts at a cake.

Now that he saw his unappetizing meal, he realized that he was hungry.
But he certainly couldn't eat there in the kitchen, although it was
arranged exactly as he had instructed Malone. In the living-room it
might be better, but by the time he had partly cleared the litter of
books and papers from the table the dimensions of the effort annoyed
him and he threw them back in a worse jumble than before. There was a
card table somewhere; that would be just the thing to set on the porch
under the honeysuckle. Jerome went all over the house looking for the
card table until he remembered that it was in the cellar. The cellar
was unlit and he had another hunt for a lamp. He found it at last on
the top shelf of the pantry, with just enough oil to make a feeble
splutter and a very decided and unpleasant odor. The cellar steps led
down from the kitchen, and if the kitchen was cheerless, the cellar was
a vault. Clammy damp enveloped him, and the mystery and loneliness of
unused places stored with unused things. It was like a deserted house
from which the inhabitants had fled at a plague. Jerome located the
table under the slats of what had been Alice's baby bed and a broken
pedestal. He got it out with difficulty, covered himself with dust and
found that the hinge had been broken and it wouldn't stand.

Jerome threw the table down and went back into the kitchen. He jerked
the shroud from the humps and ate an unappetizing sandwich of cold
beef cut too thick and bread too thin. The cake he had just mashed
into Pips' food when he remembered some jam of Alice's. He found a
single glass and spread it thick on the remaining crumbs. The cake was
possible this way, but now it was all gone in the mash for Pips. While
he watched Pips gobbling it up, the clock struck six. And there were
four hours yet until the earliest possible bed-time.

Jerome lit a cigar and went out into the garden, but the seclusion
and privacy were gone. Through what had been a luxuriant privet hedge
he could see the lights of the next house half a block away. At the
other end of the garden it was worse. Here he had cut back a wall of
hollyhocks, to give more sun to the pansies below and then left the
hose running full force until it had washed out the pansy plants, and
now a mournful row of bare stems guarded the empty plot.

After all, a garden was an unsatisfactory thing. It was only in the
making that the thing had any power of absorption. Once it was made you
never knew how much of it you would see. Last year bugs had eaten the
roses, and the year before scale had destroyed the apple trees. If the
shrubs got along well, then something happened to the flowers, and if
the flowers acted on schedule, then the trees didn't.

Spring hit you before you had made up your mind what bulbs you wanted
in; or hung back so late that you had no time to plant anything before
summer scorched what little you did have. And if spring and summer
acted rationally, just about the time you began to get some comfort
out of the shaded spots and the smell of things, along came autumn
and stripped it bare. There was always a senseless rush and change,
nothing permanent accomplished, just stupid repetition over and over,
rubbing in the analogy to the impermanent accomplishment of one's own
effort. After forty, a man ought to live in a climate the same all the
year round, where the futility of accomplishment wasn't always being
preached by this eternal leafing and blossoming and dying, round and
round in a purposeless circle.

Jerome stopped under a great lilac, primed to nakedness, and glared at
its hideous tidiness.

"What do you think you get out of it, anyhow? A few weeks ago you were
as bare as you will be again in another few weeks. And you've been
doing it to my knowledge for the last fifteen years. You've never
really been young or old. You just go on and on. And the little you
do do, you can't help, although every spring you look as if you had
chosen to be a lilac and had it all your own way. You can't help being
a lilac. It was settled for you ages ago in a little brown seed. You
can't even prolong your blooming a week beyond the law. You're...."

Suddenly the lilac reminded him of Jean. It was so strong, untrimmed,
and indifferent to his tirade. Jerome shrugged and went back into the
house. The silence was oppressive. Malone had not returned. There was
no reason that she should be in, but it annoyed him that she was out.

At nine o'clock he went to bed.




                           CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO


And the next morning, when Jerome came into the office, Jean stood
waiting for him.

"Well, when are we going to begin the piers?"

Jerome hung up his hat and sat down at the desk. He knew that Jean had
asked him something and was waiting for an answer. While he shuffled
his mail, he knew that the welcoming smile in her eyes was quickly
hardening to surprise. He did not care. His relation with Jean Herrick
was no longer the untangled thing it had been. For eight days he had
thought of scarcely anything but this annoying, self-centered woman. He
had destroyed a perfectly good garden and acted like a school-boy. And
there she stood wanting to know when _he_ was going to begin the piers.

"I thought you had forgotten them," he said at length, still fumbling
the mail as if Jean were detaining him from far more important matters.

"I don't see how you could have thought that."

"It didn't take such a stretch of imagination. We had the first
scheduled for the day after the wedding--you may remember."

"Didn't you get my message?" She might have been speaking to a peevish
child, so forced was the restraint of her patience.

"No. Did you leave one?"

"I told Minnie to tell you, but I suppose she forgot. Those up-state
towns suddenly changed about waiting till fall to organize Consumers'
Leagues. It took longer than I thought."

Jerome did not look up. Jean added no personal regret for the
inconvenience she might have caused, but moved away toward the door.

"You still wish to do them then?"

"Of course. Don't _you_?" Jean wanted to add that if he were going to
continue in this mood she hoped he didn't.

"Certainly, I do. How about to-night?"

"All right for me. I kept it free on purpose."

There it was, the high-handed assurance that her plans would suit
others. But he himself had suggested to-night and he would have to
comply.

"It won't be any use starting before nine, do you think?"

"No. Not unless we cover two in the same evening."

"I don't believe I feel strenuous enough for that. One will do. I'll
call for you then, about half past eight?"

He swung round in his chair and Jean suddenly noticed that he looked
tired, not so much physically, but as if something had gone from
within. He was desperately lonely and his loneliness had escaped in
irritation toward herself, because she happened to be the only outlet
at hand. It was what Martha had called "a man's nature cropping out."
It made Jean feel unaccountably tender. And besides she had promised
Alice to look out for Jerome.

"I tell you, suppose you come and have supper with me. I've moved, and
am keeping house now over in Old Chelsea. Cooking is not my forte and I
won't promise anything but delicatessen. Will you be my first guest?"

Jerome did not answer instantly and when he did, said, with no
perceptible change of tone:

"Thank you. I should like to very much."

"We'll quit punctually and gather up the food as we go. Till six,
then."

Jerome continued to look at the closed door several moments after he
heard Jean's shut. Then he crossed to the filing cabinet, realized
after he had searched through three drawers, that what he wanted was at
home, came back to the desk and sat down.

Suddenly he laughed out loud and began to work.

At six he locked the desk, thoroughly satisfied with the day's
accomplishment. He found Jean just closing hers, and a few moments
later they were going from shop to shop, collecting supper, with much
happy, foolish comment on each other's preferences in cold meats and
pickles.

Jean remembered the many times she had done this with Gregory, and now,
that memory no longer stung, it brought Jerome near, extended their
friendship far beyond the year she had known him, linked him closely
with the past. So that it seemed to Jean that each little separate
interlude of happiness in life was not really separate, but, by some
hidden spiritual chemistry, was only an element in the larger, complex
solution of all possible happiness.

And when, half an hour later, they stood together silent on the
farthest edge of the roof, and watched the sun slipping over the rim
of the West, Jean felt nearer to the man beside her than she had ever
thought to feel to any one again. Nearer, in some ways, than she
had felt to Gregory, for never, with him, had she for a moment been
unconscious of her love. She had never for an instant been unaware of
Gregory as the man she loved. He had always been stronger than any
moment or any place. The deepest peace had held always, within itself,
the power of its own destruction. But there was no personal claim in
this silence with Jerome. In their mutual understanding of life's
lonely hours, they shared the peace of the roof.

"It's another world--absolutely another world," Jerome said quietly.

Jean nodded. "Nothing's the same up here. Stillness is not empty and
color's really sound. Sunrise and sunset are like tremendous chords on
a great organ. Sometimes I feel that some day I am going to hear it,
actually hear the old music of the spheres."

"It's like a garden, in that still space before the dawn."

"Sometimes it's almost terrible up here, then. As if the night were
some indescribable vengeance that had blotted all life from the world,
and as if everything were being created anew without any memory of
death or pain. I have never seen anything, except the sea, wake like
the city does to a new life. A new life, every twenty-four hours. And
no matter how many you spoil, there's another waiting, and you can drop
the spoiled one into the night."

The gold and scarlet were fading to saffron and silver. A star peeped
from the edge of a pale green pool.

"It would do that--or else make you feel there was no use in anything."

"I don't think it would ever make you feel like that really, not for
long anyhow. The rhythm in it is so evidently a law--you've _got_ to be
a part. There's nothing else for you to be."

"An absolutely materialistic logic doesn't seem to fit, exactly, does
it?"

"No, it doesn't. A few dawns and sunsets shake it terribly. They make
you feel like a child, listening to a fairy story, that you _know_ is
true, no matter how much the grown-ups scoff."

"May I come sometimes and listen to the fairy story, too?" Jerome asked
so simply, so like a child, that Jean felt her threat tighten.

"Whenever you want to. Don't bother to let me know. Just come--whenever
you're blue or lonely--or just logical and materialistic."

Jerome laughed and, on the lighter note, they began to get supper.
When it was ready, Jean spread the small table outside, where space
opened most widely to the Jersey shore. As they ate, and Jean told
of the "kind ladies" to whom a Consumers' League was still a form of
charity to the workers, the last shreds of color faded from the sky.
Shy stars ventured boldly out and the gray deepened to night-blue.

Gradually they fell silent. Jerome felt the peace close about him, the
tangible, unfathomable peace that Jean felt. They smoked and forgot
each other, looking into the night.

At last Jerome spoke, softly, as if he were interpreting something
whispered to him in the stillness.

"What a lot of useless pain there is in the world. One feels it in a
place like this, almost as if we chose needlessly to be unhappy."

"Do you feel that, too? Sometimes I'm afraid all my standards are
going to be upset here. Sometimes I feel as if I had gotten everything
twisted a long way back and that it was struggling to get right again."

"And that process itself can hurt terribly."

Jean smiled, a little wistfully. "I am beginning to suspect that it
can. It used to make me furious when I was growing up to be told that
all pain was 'for the best.' But, now, I believe it was only the
wording of it, the tight, prim smugness of the assurance that rasped.
It's not that pain is for the best, but it's simply that it doesn't
matter. It's part of a whole, and, unless we can make a new whole, with
no so-called pain in it, there's no credit to a deeper insight in just
kicking."

"I suppose it's because action of any kind always seems the stronger
part. Rebellion, in some way, seems bigger than acceptance."

"Perhaps it is. The way an agnostic always seems to be a more
independent thinker than the believer in a higher power, a God, or
a Spirit, or any Force, you can't prove by logic. It seems as if a
believer must have inherited his beliefs ready-made, as if he could not
possibly have come to them by any real intellectual effort of his own."

"But the world is swinging back, it seems to me. Perhaps æons and æons
ago we thought ourselves out of simplicity and now we're thinking
ourselves back. Physicists are beginning to reduce all force to one
energy and philosophers seem to be working round to the one spiritual
impulse, love. I wonder whether after all we've left Christ and
Confucius and Buddha far behind, or whether we haven't caught up."

"I wonder," Jean said thoughtfully. "And I suppose, till the end of
time, we'll go on struggling to find out whether it's an impulse
pushing up from within or whether it's a condition imposed from
without; whether brotherly love is an ideal we can't quite attain or
whether it's a law we can't escape."

"And then, perhaps, we'll begin all over again."

"No doubt we will." Jean pushed back her chair, and leaning for a
moment with both palms spread on the table edge, smiled down at Jerome.
"In the meantime, there are the piers."

Jerome did not move. "Let's not do them to-night. It's wonderful up
here and 'a long, long time' the piers shall last."

"But I haven't another evening this week. And you go on your vacation
the fifteenth, don't you? It would be great to cover them all by then."

Jerome frowned. "I suppose it would."

The mood was gone now, anyhow.




                          CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE


As they went through the small side door, the band at the far end of
the pier was just tuning up. Two powerful arc lamps shed their hard
white light on the men, and the rows of already filled chairs about
the bandstand. The place smelled of rope and tar and dust, but the
lower end of the great shed was open and a faint coolness from the
water penetrated for a short distance. Through the opening, the red and
green lanterns of docked ships winked enticingly and at the next pier
a great steamer creaked on her hawsers, as the water, washing against
her sides, whispered of distant lands. Beyond the range of white light,
boys and girls sauntered hand in hand, while, in still darker corners,
couples stood whispering or silent.

"This--after ten hours a day with your eyes glued to your machine,
afraid to move in case the needle pins you to it forever! A blinding
web of machinery and then a few little hours for all your suppressed
youth and longing to bubble and boil, here in the darkness, a dark full
of lapping water and the breath of far-away lands. Is there anything
here about sticking to your job and repressing and repressing and
repressing, until you grow too dull to care?"

Jerome did not answer. His eyes followed Jean's to a thin, rouged girl
and a narrow-chested, ferret-eyed boy vanishing into the farthest
shadow. They stopped beside a tower of bales and the boy took both
the girl's hands in his. The great steamer strained impatiently like
a strong lover resenting the whimpering little waves, eager for the
billows beyond. Jerome suddenly felt the heat like hot fingers on his
body.

"A tenement room with people everywhere and crying babies, no spot not
filled with some human, crowding body. No coolness, no privacy, or
this--for a few scorching weeks when you're young--and all the weary
years afterwards to make up."

"Oh, please," Jerome begged with a quiver that would not stay under the
forced laugh with which he tried to cover it, "don't delve down into
the instincts of the whole race for this little job of ours. You make
me feel as if we had undertaken to save humanity."

Jean was still looking toward the thin, rouged girl, drawn deeper into
the shadow now. "But the instincts of the race _are_ what we're after."

"Well, please stay on the surface a bit more or--you'll make me want to
slip away to the Spice Islands too." He had not meant to say it, but
if Jean heard she took no notice. The girl's hands were gripped in the
boy's now as he drew her to him behind the bales. The next moment the
band started and the girl came from behind the bales, rearranging her
elaborately puffed hair and giggling as she passed.

The band crashed mechanically through its cheap selections, and was
applauded dully, until the director hung up the fourth placard,
announcing a waltz. Instantly a kind of shiver ran through the crowd.
Boys and girls jumped to their feet, crushing each other in their
haste, so that, before the band had played a dozen bars, a mass of
moving bodies was gliding and swaying in the rising dust. Round and
round they went, the dust rising thicker about them, the tapping of the
girls' high heels and the shuffle of men's thick shoes drowning the
ripple of the water on the piles beneath and the straining of the ship
at her hawsers. The waltz ended but the dancers stood linked, furiously
demanding an encore. The music began again. The settling dust rose in
a fresh cloud. The girls relaxed in their partners' arms, and the boys
held them hungrily as if, with the certainty of its short duration,
they must wrest from this bodily contact every thrill concealed in it.

Jerome shifted in his chair. He wanted to get up and go back to the
peace of the roof with Jean. He could not look at her and yet he wanted
to make some comment, say something that would drag these close-locked
bodies and gleaming eyes back to the level of a civic problem.

Again and again the band yielded in its indifference to what it played
so long as it filled the requisite hours. The partners rarely changed,
and again and again the thin girl and the ferret-eyed boy passed
near, dancing a little apart from the others. Suddenly the boy said
something, the girl tossed her head, jerked herself from his hold and
came to sit down a few seats away. The boy's eyes were evil in their
rage. He took a step toward the girl, stopped, shrugged his narrow
shoulders and came directly over to Jean.

"Say, don't yuh wanter dance?"

Instinctively Jerome moved to interpose, but Jean was smiling up into
the pimply face and bold eyes, defiant of inequality.

"But I can't dance, really, not a step."

"Say, yuh're kiddin'. Why anybody kin dance. It's as easy as rollin'
off a log."

"Not for me."

"Aw come on, git up anyhow. Yuh can't help dancin' wid me. Jes' listen
to de music. One, two, t'ree, tra la la, it gits yuh by itself. Come
on."

To Jerome's amazement Jean rose. The boy took a heavily scented and
soiled handkerchief from his pocket, adjusted it between Jean's
shoulderblades, clamped it fast with his grimy hand, and standing at a
distance that marked his knowledge of Jean's difference, swung her into
step. Jerome rose, shook his body as if freeing it from a net, and
walked to the space beyond the last row of chairs.

In the moving mass he caught Jean's face. She stood a head above the
pimply face smiling up to her. She was smiling, too. Jerome drew deeper
into the shadow. He lost Jean in the crowd, then she glided again into
his line of sight. She was still smiling, apparently unconscious of
that disgusting hand on her back, and the red, pimply face below her
own. The thin, rouged girl was crying now. Jerome stepped further into
the shadow to escape the circle closing about Jean, the ferret-eyed boy
and sobbing girl.

He tried to drag himself back to the first moments of the evening,
alone on the roof with Jean, but he could not do it. Something within
was pushing to the surface, dragging up from the years memories of his
own youth, hours that did not concern Jean at all, moments of need
baffled by Helen's fragile strength, her misunderstanding and colorless
desire. And then, of Jean's white neck and arms and the thick, soft
whiteness of her flesh.

The music stopped. Jean was on the edge of the dancers looking for him.
He went slowly forward. When the boy saw Jerome coming, he sidled away
with a grin.

"Why did you do that?"

"Why did I do it?"

"Yes. Why?" Jerome saw the surprise in Jean's eyes but his need to know
drove him on. "Yes. Why?"

"Because I wanted to feel for myself what there is in it. I wanted to
see what there is in sheer motion that makes it worth while to add to
ten hours a day, three more of real, physical effort."

"Do you know, now?" Why didn't she move farther away? Jerome felt as
if she were touching him, and, at the same time, as if his body were
formed of the hot dust. "Do you?"

"You would have to try it for yourself," Jean answered coldly,
annoyed at this fastidity of objection. "It _does_ get you. There's
something----"

"So it seems. Does the success of the experiment demand further
investigation?"

"Let's go."

Without another word, they walked the length of the pier and out
again through the small door. As they walked in silence back to the
apartment, through the chaos in Jerome, a little thread of shame and
regret drew him almost to the point of speech. What must Jean be
thinking? He could not part from her like this? And yet, when he tried
to grasp and hold a thought in words, it burst like a rocket from his
control, in a shower of scorching sparks, looks, the feel of Jean's
cool fingers, the maddening composure of her clear, gray eyes.

They reached the door with the silence unbroken.

"Good-night." Jean made no conciliatory reference to the next
appointment, as she turned to the vestibule with an impersonal smile
that did not touch her eyes.

In another second she would be up there alone in the inhuman detachment
of her roof.

"Good-night." He held out his hand and, for a moment, hers lay in it,
strong, cool, and burning the whole surface of his palm. He almost
flung it from him. "Good-night," he repeated thickly and was gone.

After a few moments, Jean began to move slowly along through the lower
hall and up the stairs. She walked with strange deliberation, holding
her mind to the physical motions of her body by force. At the roof door
she stopped, as if afraid of what lay beyond it. And when at last she
turned the handle and stepped into the full moonlight of the graveled
roof, her whole body was trembling. She went and sat down on the corner
of the coping farthest from the spot where she and Jerome had stood to
watch the death of the day.

She understood. And the past, by which she understood, rushed down upon
her: the night in the studio when Herrick had asked her to marry him:
the night she had stood on the dark street with Gregory, and then, so
quietly and inevitably gotten into the taxi: and the night when Philip
Fletcher had cried and squeaked in his angry pain.

Jean covered her face with her hands. She seemed to be on the edge of
a dark and dangerous place. Suddenly the blackness was pricked with
points of light. They forced themselves between her locked fingers,
until her hands dropped into her lap, and she sat very still looking
into the future.

Years of companionship and shared interests. Work and understanding and
tenderness. The need of being needed. The future opened about her, and
Jean cried.




                          CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR


"IT'S impossible. I'm almost fifty--and there is Alice."

Whenever Jerome could grasp the fact of Alice, the night's madness
dulled to acceptance of conditions. Alice was married. She would
have children of her own. He would be a grandfather. Only ten or
fifteen years of real usefulness lay ahead. A quarter of a century of
comfortable security, uncomplicated by emotion, stretched backward.

Three o'clock. Half past. A dog barked. A distant rooster crowed.
Jerome was glad of the sounds. Soon the "terrific stillness" before
the dawn would be all shot through with these safe, pleasant sounds of
every day. The sun would come up. Milk wagons would rattle down the
lanes. Malone would clump about in the kitchen. She would call him to
breakfast and he would eat it while he read the morning paper, propped
against the sugar-bowl. Then he would take the eight o'clock boat, as
he had for fifteen years, and go to the office.

And there he would sit waiting and listening for sounds across the
hall, inventing reasons to consult with Jean. He had done it for
months, incredibly ignorant of his own reactions. But now he was not
ignorant. That moment on the sidewalk, had flared into the deepest
corners, burned away the ridiculous tangle of logic by which he had
convinced himself, the night of the concert, that his emotion had been
"biological." Good God, he had called it that, a momentary spark,
struck from the cold past, by the unexpected beauty of Jean's flesh!

It was no momentary spark. He did not want to take Jean in his arms and
kiss her once, as he had wanted to do that night. He wanted her for
always, day and night, to share with her the years before them.

And he was almost fifty. A thousand little habits, acquired through
years, locked him fast. Alice and he had walked happily side by
side. Jean's path would not run parallel to his. It would cross and
crisscross.

She was strong. She pulsed with life. She might want a child. He and
Jean and their child. And Alice and Sidney and Sidney, Junior. Like
an immigrant family with the generations overlapping. Sidney Junior
grinned and gurgled at him.

The sun rose. The night dew melted. The earth awoke refreshed and
younger than the youngest human thing upon it. Jerome went wearily back
into the house. He felt old and confused with the night's thinking,
hours of balancing between--fifty and thirty. Aching with a body-hunger
his brain could not appease, blind in this storm of desire, lit with
lightning flashes of self-ridicule, with amazement of the thing, with
disbelief in its possibility, with the gurgling of Sidney, Junior, with
strange reluctance and anger.

Milk wagons rattled down the lane. The sun rose full over the hilltops.
A new day was begun, one of those new days, one of those "twenty-four
hours to make into what you will." Jerome smiled feebly.

"Another twenty-four hours like this and there'll be nothing left of me
to do anything with."

Malone banged about in the kitchen. At last she called him to
breakfast. He sugared the cereal she set before him, arranged the paper
against the sugar-bowl, and stared at the headlines.

When she thought he was ready she brought the first helping of hot
waffles. He saw her look at the untouched bowl and with difficulty
made her understand that he did not want it. He buttered the waffles
and poured the honey on them, stacking the crisp quarters one upon the
other as he always did. And there they were when Malone came with the
second plate. She stood holding the covered plate until Jerome told
her impatiently to stop baking them. He felt that in this unreasonable
world, Malone might go on baking waffles all day.

At a quarter to eight as always, Jerome pushed back his chair. He
looked at the paper still folded to the front page and the crust of the
single slice of toast he had attempted to eat.

"It's fifty all right--or I would have eaten it--and not known what it
was."

Then he went into the living-room. He wrote two notes, one to the
office and one to Jean. He was called out of town most unexpectedly.
The business would take several days, and as he would be in the
northern part of the State, he had decided to go on for his vacation,
without returning. The notes were brief and almost duplicates, except
that he added to Jean's a regret that they would not be able to finish
the piers together. He sent the notes by messenger and packed his trunk.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jean took the note from the boy and laid it unopened on the desk.
Twice she picked it up and put it down again uncut. It was a scorching
morning but her hands were cold and although all the windows were open,
she felt that the room was airless. She crossed to the window and
leaned out a little way. Below, the city, like the sea beating against
a cliff, washed the base of the building, where, in a high, safe niche,
she stood alone with the note from Jerome Stuart. In a moment she
would open it and make a decision, although she knew that when she did
open, the decision would have been already made.

Jean went back to the desk and opened the envelope. She read the half
sheet and tore it slowly into bits. Her body scorched, but her fingers
were icy to her own touch.

Jerome Stuart had run away. There was no love in his desire. He did not
want to want her. She had disturbed his peace against his will and he
had gone as he might have gone to escape the contagion of an illness.
And last night she had sat for hours on the roof, almost afraid to
think, because of the small, eager fear that had come upon her!

When Minnie came for the morning's dictation, Jean felt that she
had been sitting at her desk for weeks. Only years of habit made it
possible to pick up the day's routine, but early in the afternoon, Jean
left the office and went home.

The sun beat fiercely upon the asphalted gravel. Jersey was hidden
under its pall of smoke. Nearer at hand, huge chimneys belched their
blackness into the quivering heat. The day was still roaring at its
task.

Jean went into the little living-room and lowered the blinds to a
kindly softness. Then, as in the old days, before a problem, she began
to walk up and down.

But the day roared to its completion, the huge chimneys ceased to send
forth their black columns, the lowering sun thinned the black pall to
gold-shot gray, and still Jean walked up and down.

The thing that Philip Fletcher had found, "the call of a woman to a
man," Jerome Stuart had felt. That quiet man who understood so many
things. He understood himself and he had gone away.

And she had not wanted him to go. She had no passion for Jerome Stuart.
His nearness left her cold. She did not long to help him as she had
longed to help Franklin. But she had not wanted him to go.

What tangled threads of instinct and of need bound her? The age-old
woman's need of being needed? But Jerome did not need her. He had run
away.

It was her own need, not Jerome's. Her need of what? Something nearer
than lives she never touched? Something of her own?

It was cool now and Jean went out to the roof. Far down in the street
dwarfed figures hurried by. They had finished the day's work. They were
going home.

Long after the dwarfed black figures were gone, Jean sat, staring down.

As the days passed, Jean came to wish, more and more deeply, that she
had never seen Jerome Stuart. The thought of him filled her waking
hours, and at night she often dreamed of the moment on the sidewalk,
only, in the dreams, Jerome always came up to the roof again. And
in the evenings when she tried to read, in the once peace-filled
stillness, he was there across the room, his shoulders, with their
student stoop, bent over a book. He stopped and read her bits and
they laughed together, or she saw his anger against social injustice
crackling like a fire in his gray eyes.

Three times in her life, Jean had felt the old landmarks slip away.
Three times in her life she had felt the old Jean die and another
woman take the place: when she had left Herrick, when she had received
Gregory's letter, and when she had come home to find Martha dead.
Each time she had felt as if no future experience could ever reveal
unguessed depths in herself. And now, at thirty-nine, because a man
whom she did not love, had desired her for a moment against his own
will, she felt.... What was it that she felt? Not the ending of all
things, as she had felt at Gregory's going. Not the loneliness that
followed Martha's. These had been like sudden death in the midst of
life. Now she was not dead. She was outside life, watching it go by.
And, like the old people, whom she had watched with Gregory, following
the sun about the Almshouse walls, she did not want it to go.

"For a few years yet you will be a woman."

Jean went slowly across the roof, through the living-room, to the small
blue and white bedroom. She turned on the light above the mirror and
looked calmly into it. In the last two years the band of gray above
her ears had thickened. There were faint lines, very faint, at the
corners of her eyes. The eyes themselves were clear and young, but now
that Jean looked steadily into their frank depths, something rose from
beneath the surface, an intangible record of the years.

Jean turned, getting almost the full view of her body in the mirror. It
was wonderfully strong and straight. The throat and breasts were firm
and the flesh soft. Jean remembered how soft and white her mother's
body had been when she had covered it against the draught.

Her own, perhaps, would keep its youth, too, a mockery of the lessening
power within. In spite of all her efforts, her enthusiasm would decay,
more quickly now that she had recognized her need to keep it. Her
body more quickly, her brain more slowly, would obey the law. She
would sink, with tragic unconsciousness of the process, into benumbed
indifference. No more stress, no more impatience, no longing, no
regret. Patient acceptance.

Jean snapped off the light and went out to the roof again.

Jerome Stuart had gone away. But he would come back.




                          CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE


Jerome Stuart grinned at the red-cap who rushed forward for his bag, at
the transfer man to whom he gave his checks, to the taxi driver whom he
beckoned, and finally, when he found himself sitting on the very edge
of the seat as if, by so doing, he could force the vehicle more quickly
through the traffic, at himself.

For a little over two weeks he had managed to stay away. And, although
from the moment he had entered the train to return, he could not have
told why he ever went, still less why he had stayed, he was proud of
the achievement. He felt that he had acquired a power of self-control
that no emergency of life could ever shake. He had fished and tramped
and played tennis and, one evening, alone in his room, he had even
tried to do some serious reading. At the memory of that evening, Jerome
leaned against the cushions and laughed aloud.

"You poor, besotted idiot."

He might be fifty, sixty, a hundred. He might have a dozen daughters
and a score of grandchildren. None of it had anything to do with his
love for Jean Herrick. He had run away in a kind of perverted modesty,
just as a child might refuse a longed-for present beyond its just
expectations,

"It would serve you right if she had gone away and you couldn't find
her."

But at the thought, Jerome perched on the edge of the seat again.

"Steady, old top, steady. If you go at things like this, you'll bungle
the whole business. And then you will be in a fix. Besides, you know,
you can't dash in and ask a lady to marry you, when she hasn't even the
least idea you're in love. Cool down, grandpa, cool down."

Nevertheless when the elevator did not instantly answer his summons,
Jerome ran up the four flights to his office.

In the middle of her dictation to Minnie, Jean heard his step and
stopped. She sat, arrested, for what seemed an endless time, while
Minnie chewed her pencil and stared at her own new patent leather pumps.

"The usual ending--to those three last--and that will be all for the
present."

"Yes'm." Still chewing, Minnie went.

Jerome Stuart was back. In a few moments perhaps he would come in. He
would come in with no memory of that last moment on the sidewalk in
his manner, because that was the only way the old relations could go
on. And she would meet him, with careless surprise at this return, two
weeks sooner than he had expected. He would tell her of his vacation
and she would report the lack of any exciting developments while he had
been away. Perhaps he would suggest finishing the piers.

He would sit in that chair where she would have to face him, unless
she deliberately turned her back. She would listen while he talked.
Outwardly they would be the good comrades they had always been. But the
man who had desired her would be there, too, and the woman who had sat
on the roof and cried, who had appraised her flesh and estimated her
power to rouse again his desire, would be there, too. Jean shuddered.
She wished he would come now, instantly, and then decided to go before
he could.

She had changed her mind for the tenth time, when Jerome's door opened,
and her choice was gone. He was in the outer office, saying good
morning to Minnie. He knocked and Jean rose, forced by some inner need,
to meet him standing. "Come in."

"Back on the job, you see. How's the world got along in my absence?"

He was coming towards her, the outer man and the other, shifting places
dizzily, coming straight towards her, lit by the glare of those moments
when she had considered living with him in closest intimacy.

"You certainly do look like all outdoors." She had managed to say it.

"I feel like it. I'm afraid to breathe in case I use up all the air in
poor old Manhattan at one swoop."

He took his usual place without offering to shake hands. Jean continued
to stand. If she relaxed her muscles, the poise she had summoned would
relax too, and Jerome Stuart would know that she had weighed her power
to waken again his momentary passion.

Jerome wished that Jean would sit down. It made him feel that he had
interrupted her in an important piece of work and that she was waiting
for him to go. Besides, standing so, the strong sweep of body disturbed
him, and his resolve to proceed slowly and carefully was shaken almost
beyond control.

"So you haven't taken a vacation at all. Don't you intend to?"

"I don't know. I may." Jean looked away to her desk, covered with
papers.

The first impression that she had given of pleasure at his return was
gone. She was frowning slightly as if she found it a little difficult
to accept this interruption.

She was so strong and self-reliant. She needed no one. The thing he had
felt in her had been of his own imagining, it was a projection from
within. This big woman, impatient to get at her work, had no need
within her. The white softness of her flesh was a lie. She was alive in
her brain only.

And he, in two short weeks had lived a lifetime.

For twenty-three years he had thought of himself as Alice's father.
He had touched emotion only in relation to his child and her life. He
had lived in the reflected glow of others' more intense emotions. And
this woman, with her ill-concealed impatience for him to be gone, had
dragged him down, in two weeks, in less, in one night, down into the
rushing current, back to the very Purpose of Life. There she stood,
waiting for him to go.

Jerome rose. If he stayed another minute he would tell her that he
loved her. Or strike her. He did not know which.

"I'm afraid you're busy and I'm keeping you."

"No. I'm not busy--not specially. You're not keeping me."

If Jerome Stuart went before she had mastered the situation, it would
forever hold its whip over her.

Jean sat down but Jerome stood where he was. This reversal of position
brought him nearer, so that now he was close, looking down upon her.

"The Adirondacks must be lovely now."

"They are."

"You're back earlier than you intended, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Jean was smiling up at him.

Had Jerome Stuart always looked like that, or was it some quality the
had brought back from the open? His gray eyes glowed with the same
light that heralded dawn. His body radiated a spiritual fire which,
Jean felt, would consume any obstruction upon which he chose to direct
it. It was the Galahad quality she had imagined in Herrick, made
manifest; the courage she had overestimated in Gregory, raised to the
limit of human possibility. Jean began to tremble.

"I--I _am_ rather busy this morning--only it didn't seem exactly
courteous to say so."

"Please don't be insincere--ever--with me, even in things that don't
matter at all."

Jean rose. "Well then--I won't. Will you please--go?"

But Jean was too near. He could feel her in his arms as he had felt her
every night, alone in the mountains.

"You're so hard--so terribly un-needing--and I need you so."

Jean's hands gripped the desk-edge, but she still managed to keep the
smile in her eyes. She could hear Minnie typing in the next room and
out in the hall the elevator clanked. It had been so still in the
studio the night Herrick asked her to marry him. And the night that she
and Gregory had stood silent, the air had been touched with frost and
the stars had been so bright. It was hot now and the glaring August sun
beat in under the awnings. The city roared away to vast distances, and
even the small spot where she stood was filled with little clickings
and bangings.

"Don't look like that, please. Forgive me. I won't offend again."

The words drew Jean back to the moment.

"Don't you mean--that you love me? That--you want--to marry me?"

"Mean it! Of course I mean it. More than I ever meant anything in all
my life. Jean! Do you? Do you care too?"

His hands were on her now, holding her with assured possession. And
suddenly Jean's eyes filled with tears.

"I don't know. I don't know what I feel. I want to care. I want
you to love me. When you went away like that I was angry--and
disappointed--and I thought of how I could _make_ you care enough but
something inside----"

Jerome's hands dropped. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

The tears ran down Jean's cheeks. "Something inside is dead. I do
care--every way--but that."

"Then you don't care at all. You're not a child. Don't you know what
love means?"

Jean's head dropped until he could see only her quivering lips.

"Yes--I know."

After a long silence, Jerome said quietly: "Then, there's nothing else
to say." He turned away.

He was going. In another moment there would be no bridge to the empty
years ahead.

"Wouldn't it be enough--the rest, everything, friendship--interest----"

Jerome swung round. "Would those have been enough before--when you
cared?" he demanded.

She stopped, almost touching him. "No, they wouldn't have been enough,
then. I didn't know their value."

Her eyes were very gentle. Jerome turned away again and walked slowly
over to the window. Jean stood where she was, waiting.

Could he take less? Could he? Know that there had been more, sense
it in a thousand small, intimate ways that made his blood run hot at
the thought. To feel it and never to share it. Or worse, to know it
corpse-like, forever beyond his reach. That, or nothing of Jean at all.

He spoke without turning. "I don't know. Truly, I don't know. It
doesn't seem as if I could. And yet--when I try to think of going on
without you----"

He did not speak again or move, but stood with his shoulders hunched,
his hands in his pockets. At last Jean went to him. At her touch on his
arm, he looked up. His face was so white and fixed that Jean's hand
dropped. It would have to be all or nothing to him.

"I--I hoped it would be enough."

"Why? You don't love me."

"I don't know why--only that I did hope."

Jerome's face quivered. "Why did you tell me, Jean, that you know what
love is? If you hadn't--but now I will always know that you know. Why
did I have to know?"

"Because," Jean said slowly, "I do care and I want your love, very,
very much."

It was a long time before Jerome turned from the window again.

They stood so, looking quietly at each other and then Jean said, with a
wistful smile:

"Shall we try it?"

After a moment an answering smile flickered in Jerome's eyes.

"I suppose this terrible knowledge of values is the price we have to
pay for feeling at all--at our age."

"Perhaps it is worth it. I feel somehow--that it is."

"Do you, Jean? Do you really?"

Jean nodded. "I almost know it is," she whispered as Jerome drew her
gently to him.


                               THE END.





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