Philip and His Wife

XXX.

WHEN Roger Carey awoke the next morning, he did not, for a moment, understand the void of dismay in his mind.

Then it all cleared, and his intolerable self-knowledge surged back upon him. Like some insulting hand, his shame struck him again and again in the face, while, with set teeth biting through a cigar which he had forgotten to light, he moved about the room, getting his things together for his departure.

For of course he was going away. There was nothing else for him to do, — nothing except to write the letter which must be sent up the hill. The brutality of such a course made him shiver ; but what else could he do ?

He looked at his watch to see how much time he had before the stage went, and discovered with dismay that it had gone. Under his breath he cursed his luck. To lose the stage meant that he could not leave Old Chester until afternoon, unless, by good fortune, he could hire a vehicle, and a driver willing to face the heavy rain which had begun to fall since dawn.

Here he was, in this primitive little tavern, pulled every moment by soft, invisible cords, in the midst of surroundings which stabbed him at every glance, with the steady rain shutting out the river and the hills, but revealing the dreary street, the drearier barnyard ; how could he endure it until four o’clock ? Suppose he should see Lyssie ? She did not mind the rain, he remembered.

“ I ’ll walk before I stay here till four! ” he said to himself; and then he drew a small, painted pine table up to the window, and sat down, a sheet of the tavern note paper and a bottle of watery ink before him.

He must write that letter even before he sought for means to escape from Old Chester.

He thrust his hands down into his pockets, and stretched his feet out under the table, and stared at the blue wool mat on the bureau. Then he lifted his pen, looked at it critically, and put it down with a fling. “ My God ! ” he said.

It was hideously ludicrous, the incongruousness of the words she had heard him speak the night before with those which he was about to write on this thin bluish sheet ruled in pink lines, with a picture in the upper left-hand corner of a bird sitting on a fence rail.

He put his hands in his pockets again, and looked out at two dripping hens who had sought shelter under an empty cart. The rain fell with an increasing pour. The spout from the eaves above his window gurgled and chuckled, and there was a gush of water into the pebbly gutter below. “ And of course I have n’t an umbrella,” he thought, absently. “ Curse this rain ! ” He took up the pen and stabbed it into the ink bottle; then he looked out of the window again. He felt a sullen envy of a hostler, who, his hands in his pockets, stood chewing a straw at the stable door ; suddenly the man buttoned up his jacket, bent his head against the rain, and went running across the yard to the house, to sit for the rest of the idle morning, with steaming clothes, by the kitchen fire, if that red-faced, good-humored fellow caught one of the plump maidservants about the waist and gave her a smacking kiss, once in a while, it was as natural as eating, and just as unmoral. “ What a row we make about nothing ! ” Roger thought, looking with savage resentment at the blank sheet of paper.

A dog, with a dripping coat, trotted across the overflowing wheel ruts of the road. A sulky came jogging down the street, and drew up before the tavern door.

The recollection of the last rainy day when he had seen Dr. Lavendar’s sulky pierced Roger Carey’s heart; he got up impetuously, nearly overturning the table, and flung himself away from the window. So it happened that he did not see the old clergyman emerge from under the streaming rubber apron, or hear him say, What, upstairs ? I ’ll just come in, then, for a minute.”

But that stab of memory, that vision of the fresh and wholesome past, — the rainy day, the old clergyman and his little blind horse, and — and Lyssie, — made the sheet of thin paper, and the words of renunciation which he was arranging in his mind, seem melodramatic and disgusting. After all, he had been a fool; that was the amount of it. “ There’s no use palavering! ” he told himself. He pulled out one of his cards, and wrote on it, with that fierce haste which fears to be overtaken by a change of mind, “ I must not see you again. Forgive me if you can. But I will never see you again.”

He loathed himself ; he said between his teeth that he was a brute and a coward; but he slipped the card into an envelope and sealed it. pounding it with his fist until the little table shook. He did not hear Dr. Lavendar’s step upon the stairs, and leaped back, as though detected in some shameful deed, when, under a thundering rap, the door flew open with such suddenness that the old clergyman pitched forward into the room.

“ Dear me ! ” said Dr. Lavendar, “ I thought that door was shut! Well, sir, this is first rate.” His face beamed with pleasure. “ Van Horn told me you were up here, and I thought he’d lost his wits. But I never heard better news, sir. Come, now ! the boy’s writing a sonnet to her eyebrow. Well, that’s right, that’s right. Young things will have their quarrels, being young. But they make up, when they ’re good for anything. They kiss and are friends, as the children say. Well, sir, have you kissed ? ”

“ It’s very good in you to hunt me up,” Roger stammered. I ’m just packing, just leaving. I ” —

“ What ! ” interrupted Dr. Lavendar, sobering. “ You don’t mean that little Lyssie would n’t ? ” He unbuttoned his great-coat, on which the mist stood in line drops, and sat down on one of the lean, unsteady chairs. “ She’s a most superior young woman, sir ! ”

Roger murmured an assent. He looked desperately about the room for means of escape.

“ Most superior ; and therefore, if she wouldn’t kiss, it’s because you didn’t go about it in the right way. Now, I tell you, young man, it don’t do to be proud. Tell her you were a fool! Of course you were ? ”

“ Oh yes, yes.”

“ And ask her to forgive you, like a man, sir ! ”

You ’re very good, I ’m sure,” Roger said hurriedly, “ but I came down here on business. I have not seen—Miss Drayton. Mrs. Philip Shore wished some advice; legal advice.” His voice shrank, and fell; but Dr. Lavendar did not notice it.

“ Oh, is that all ? Not but what I ’m glad for you to try and bring those two mad people to their senses ; but I hoped — I would n’t have spoken if I had n’t supposed you had come down on — another matter.”

“ Do you think I can hire anybody to drive me over to Mercer in this storm, Dr. Lavendar ? ” Roger said, shutting his portmanteau with a snap, his back to his guest.

“ Oh, don’t hurry,” commanded the other. “ Now you ’re here, stay over till the afternoon. Perhaps you can make it worth your while ! ” he insisted with vast significance, his eyes twinkling very much, and feeling himself to be exceedingly subtle.

“ I’m obliged to be back in town tomorrow, thank you,” Roger answered stiffly.

Dr. Lavendar sighed. “Well; tell me about Philip, then. Could you persuade Cecil to go back to him ? ”

“ I hope she will,” answered Roger Carey; behind his shut teeth he was swearing softly. “ I’m afraid I ’ll have to leave you now, sir. I’ve got to go down and see Van Horn, and get him to hunt up some sort of conveyance for me.”

Dr. Lavendar was silent. He got up from his chair and tramped over to the window, and stood Staring out at the steady downpour : then he turned around. “ Look here, my boy. Don’t.”

“ Don’t what ? ”

“ Go away without seeing her.”

“ My dear Dr. Lavendar, it’s perfectly impossible ! You don’t understand. It was all my fault.”

“ Why, then go and tell her it was your fault ! ” The old sentimentalist came and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “ My dear boy, you are young. I ’m an old fellow, but I was young once, too. And I was a fool — just like you. We fell out, and I could n’t make up my mind to eat humble pie. Well, she married somebody else. And every tear that girl shed — and she shed enough of ’em ! — was my fault. Don’t you see ? It was just because my wicked pride kept me from telling her I ’d been a fool. Now don’t you do that, Carey ; don’t you do it, boy ! ”

“ Good Lord ! ” Roger burst out, and then begged pardon. “ You are very kind, sir, but I must not intrude upon Miss Drayton.”

“ Well; ” said the old man, and sighed. “ I suppose you know your own business. I won’t say anything more. I hope I have n’t offended you ? But you ’re wrong, you ’re wrong.”

“ Yes, I’m wrong.”

Dr. Lavendar looked as though he would like to make one more plea ; but he closed his lips, and silently followed Roger downstairs. He heard him arrange for a carriage, and watched him give a note to the landlord, with instructions to have it sent at once to Mrs. Shore. “ These lawyers have no feelings,” he thought indignantly, for Roger stood staring at the note, even after it was in Van Horn’s hands, as though he could think of nothing else. “ Absorbed in his everlasting legal quibbles, and that poor child crying her eyes out! Well, I don’t know ; I believe she ’s well rid of him ! ” He said good-by to Roger rather coldly.

“Joey is not showing intelligence in his choice,” he thought, as he climbed into his gig, “ but I’d rather have him have some heart than be as intelligent as this young man.”

Dr. Lavendar was distinctly gentler to his brother, when, in all the rain, Mr. Joseph arrived by the morning stage. At dinner he told him of his talk with that cold-blooded young jackanapes, Carey, and he declared that Lyssie Drayton was well rid of him.

“ Most superior girl; really intelligent,” he said.

Mr. Joseph nodded, and agreed; but there was a look of absent melancholy in his mild face. Joseph Lavendar had had a blow ; he had learned, beyond any shadow of doubt, the particulars of the late Mr. Pendleton’s will.

The information had come to him casually, but it was not the less deadly. Coming down from Mercer, a passenger on the coach announced himself as the man of business of a lady who resided in the charming village of Old Chester, — a Mrs. Pendleton. Did his fellow-traveler chance to know her ? He had to get her signature to some papers, he said, and he had come to Old Chester for that purpose. Then, with a generosity ill befitting a man of business, he gossiped most entertainingly about his employer. Mr. Lavendar, thirsting for one particular bit of information, tried, faintly, to stop him, but held his breath at the reference to “ Pendleton ” and his will.

“ If she marries, she loses every cent. But I guess she won’t marry. That kind of thing works both ways : it keeps the widow from marrying a poor man, and it keeps a rich man from marrying her,” and the man of business laughed very much.

Mr. Joseph felt sore and bewildered. He thought that it would be generous to tell James this melancholy news ; James would be so relieved to hear it. But he could not, just yet. He must think it over a little longer. He thought about it all that afternoon. It was in his mind when he climbed listlessly into the organ loft for the choir-practicing.

Feeling that blank which comes to a man deprived of an interest, — a blank which may easily be mistaken for grief, it was a relief to him that Mrs. Pendleton was not present. “ She’s afraid of the rain, I suppose,” said Susan Carr, with a curl of her lip. It seemed to Mr. Lavendar that Susan Carr’s voice, of late so unsympathetic, was kinder; so he could not help being kinder himself, and resolving to overlook that officiousness which had so annoyed him. He told her, while they picked out the voluntary, several bits of news, and he asked her advice about a new chant with all his old simple friendliness.

Miss Susan answered politely, but somewhat at random ; in fact, they were both preoccupied. “ James will be glad,” Mr. Lavendar was saying to himself, sadly ; and Susan Carr, her cheeks hot, her eyes happy, was thinking that Mr. Joseph would walk home with her, as Mrs. Pendleton was not there. “ I ought to have arranged something so that he should n’t have such an opportunity,” Susan Carr said to herself, severely, her eyes shining with content.

The practicing had never seemed so long. When it was over, Lyssie hurried out into the rain, and Mr. Tommy ran after her, to beg to hold his umbrella over her head ; but Miss Susan found several things to detain her.

She picked up two Prayer Books from the floor, and said that it was a bad day. She wished that she knew how to say to Joseph that she was sorry she had been disagreeable ; then, if he should press it again — At that a sudden fear touched her like a cold finger : suppose he should not press it ? Suppose her systematic snubbing had discouraged him so that he was not able to recognize her contrition ? Susan Carr drew in her breath and set her white teeth on her lip, and said to herself that she was not a silly girl, but a middle-aged woman; she and Joseph had known each other all their lives, and if he did not understand, if he should be afraid to speak, why, then, she must just say — something friendly !

“I wish it was n’t raining so hard,” she announced, in a fluttered voice, listening to the persistent sweep of the rain on the roof.

Mr. Joseph agreed absently. The trouble in his face brought a remorseful mist into Susan Carr’s eyes. Oh, how unhappy she had made him ! Well, it should stop now; yes, if she had to say plump out, “Joseph, I was a fool. I did n’t know my own mind. But I do now. And— and ” — Miss Susan beat the two Prayer Books together, and said, tremulously, that they were shamefully dusty, “ I think your touch grows finer every year, Mr. Joseph,”she continued, with much agitation for so simple a remark.

“ You ’re very good to say so, ma’am,” he answered, with a melancholy air, shaking some loose sheets of music evenly together on his brown broadcloth knees.

“ I don’t know what St. John’s would do without you. I’ve often been afraid you would have an offer from some great city church.” She bent down to put on her overshoes, and her voice was muffled and breathless.

Mr. Lavendar shook his head. “ You ’re very good. I don’t know ; sometimes I’ve thought it might be well to stay away for a while.”

“ Oh no !” she burst out, stamping down into her rubbers, her face scarlet; "no, indeed, Mr. Joseph.”

Mr. Joseph did not insist; he sighed, and peered over the rail of the loft down into the church.

“ How early it gets dark now! It seems to me that when I was a boy it did n’t get dark so early in the afternoon in November.” Then he opened the loft door politely, and Miss Susan started down the narrow circular flight of stairs. Her breath came fast; she stopped abruptly by the narrow window, where, through the mat of ivy stems, the gray light struggled in.

“We’d better shut this,” she said, pulling at the cord of the little swinging sash. It was quite dark here on the stairs, and Joseph was behind her.

“Mr. Joseph, I’ve been wanting to say to you — I’ve been wanting to tell you, that I’ve thought over — what you tried to tell me. Oh — you know ? ” she ended faintly, tying down the window cord in a series of bewildering knots.

She could say no more. The tears were in her eyes from the effort of her words. Joseph Lavendar was quick to feel the frankness of her repentance for her hardness.

“ You are just as kind as you can be, Miss Susan,” he said, looking down at the top of her bonnet from his height of three stairs above her, “ but I had n’t any right to trouble you in the first place.”

“ Oh yes, yes, you had! and I did appreciate it. I felt it was a great honor ; only, I had never thought of such a thing, and — and it did n’t seem right.”

“ I quite understand, ma’am,” he said, the wrinkles deepening on his high forehead. He felt no bitterness, even though Susan Carr put into words his own scruple. Her sincere friendliness was too apparent for offense. “ No, it was n’t right ; and you were kind to try to hold me back. And I realize myself that I’m a poor man. I’ve only my small earnings. I had no right to ask ” —

She turned around quickly and looked up at him; even in the dusk he could see that her straightforward eyes were full of tears, and there was a deeper color on her cheeks. She made a quick gesture. “Oh, how could you think such a thing ? I never thought about money ! It was— Donald. And I did n’t know my own mind. But I do — now.” Then, with great energy, she tied another knot in the window cord, and went on down the little dark winding stairs.

Joseph Lavendar, with his mouth open, looked after her. He grew pale, and then red. He said something under his breath, violently, and turned, with two skipping steps, as though to flee for shelter back to the organ loft. Then he stood still, palpitating.

“Miss Susan ! ” he called faintly, and went stumbling after her. “ Miss Susan,

I ’m afraid you — I’m afraid there’s some misunderstanding ; you are so kind — I’m afraid ” —

“No.” she said boldly, smiling, but with her eyes full of tears. “ no; it’s only that I know my own mind now.

I did n’t let you speak because I thought I could n’t return it. But now I know my own mind. And so — I ve told you.

It is n’t as if we were young things. We are such matter-of-fact, middle-aged people, not two young things — I thought I could tell you ? ”

Joseph Lavendar gasped; he rubbed his hands together, and opened and closed his lips.

All Susan Carr’s strength and force had melted into shyness. “ I hope you did n’t think I was forward,” she murmured.

Mr. Lavendar swallowed once; then his face grew very gentle and noble.

“ Take my arm, my dear Susan,” he said. “I hope I may be worthy of the honor you have done me.”

XXXI.

All that day the rain fell steadily. Roger Carey, his face bent against the wind, driving in an open wagon across the hills, was following in his mind, with deadly humiliation, his letter to his friend’s wife. In imagination, he saw John receiving it at the door ; carrying it upstairs on his tray ; fingering it, perhaps, with the supercilious curiosity of his kind, but handing it to his mistress with his usual immobility. Probably she would be in that very room where — Roger’s hands tightened upon the reins, and his teeth set.

Well, she would take it; open it, perhaps with that silver dagger on her desk ; read it! He reached forward for the whip, and struck the horse viciously.

“ This confounded beast never goes out of a walk,” he told the boy on the seat beside him.

Yes; she would read it; he tried to remember what he had said : —

“ I must not see yon again. Forgive me if you can. But I will never ” — Was it “ will never ” or “ must never,” in that last sentence ? Why had he not made some excuse ? “ Unexpectedly summoned to town—will write” — Anything, rather than that confession of fright, and shame, and remorse. For the moment, all his self-loathing was concentrated on his gaucherie : —

“ I must not see you again. Forgive ” — “ Good Lord ! ” groaned the young man ; and the boy beside him said, “ Sur ? ”

“ I could walk faster than this brute ! “ his fare told him, angrily.

But the note did not reach its destination quite as early as it should have done. Van Horn said it was a shame to send a “human critter” out in such a rain just for a letter ; he would wait till he saw some one driving up that way. He waited until nearly noon; then John came down to the post office for the morning mail, and stopped at the tavern for a chat, and there was Van Horn’s opportunity. Mr. Carey’s dollar for immediate delivery went towards paying for the extra oil which that young man had burned. “ Fer I give you my word,” said Van Horn in confidence to John, “that young feller burned the lamp all night; it was burning there this morning when my wife went in to red up after him.”

So it happened that when Cecil Shore read Roger’s card, twelve hours had passed since, with that terror-stricken look, he had left her; twelve hours of reality. When she heard the door bang behind him, it was like some frightful awakening; she stood, gasping, staring about the empty room ; then sank down, cowering, and hiding her face. She shut her eyes, quivering and crouching, as though she still felt the storm of his presence. He loved her! And he had gone — at such a moment! Her heart rose in passionate exultation at his strength. But he loved her. “When I am free! When I am free! ” she repeated in a whisper.

She got up, and walked hurriedly up and down, her breath broken, the tears wet upon her face,

“ I love him ! ” she said to herself, and covered her face with her hands; then, standing still, swaying back and forth, she burst suddenly into dreadful crying.

“ I love him,” she said again.

As she spoke, her eyes fell on some little scraps of paper which he had torn with nervous fingers as he talked to her; and she stooped over and brushed them into her hand and kissed them, — once, twice. Then she stood still, trembling for a moment, before, with violent haste, she went to the window and flung it open. As she leaned out, the cold air struck on her neck and face, and the spasm in her throat stopped ; it had seemed as if she could not breathe. Touched, for the first time in her life, by the great Human Experience, her whole body answered to the summons of the soul.

But she had no consciousness of morality, she had no thought of self; she had forgotten that she was Philip’s wife ; or that Roger had been Alicia’s lover.

A great experience transcends morality, because it bursts the shell of personality ; and in the empty moment which follows it identity seems lost, swept out on the surge of those eternal currents we call Life. At such a moment a soul knows all things but itself; it apprehends the knowledge of beasts, it feels the thrill of the stars shining ; it understands the color of crimson in the sun ; it is acquainted with grief ; maternity belongs to it, and death. It is a moment of terror and magnificence ; it is the moment of Moses on Sinai ; but whether it be for good or evil, only that discarded personality can say.

When Cecil drew back and shut the window, her face had curiously changed. Living was stamped upon it. Eagerness, fear, desire, all those emotions from which her satisfied life had shut her out, began to dawn and deepen in it. She paced up and down, her lips tightened upon each other; but her eyes softening, and glowing, and dimming. She had decided swiftly not to see him in the morning; she, too, would be strong. No ; they must both wait: “ and he must have nothing to do with the case,” she thought: “ we must not speak, we must not look, until I am free! He said, ‘ when you are free !' Oh, how few men could have turned back when he did ! ” An adoring tenderness shone in her eyes ; she smiled, her lip quivering, as she stood looking over at the spot where he had repulsed her.

She watched the dawn come cold over the hills; the candles in the sconces sputtered and guttered, and went out, and the lamps burned with a sickly light. She walked softly about her room : “ He stood there. He looked at that picture. He touched this book.” But over and over she came back to that one moment of renunciation when he had left her, —when it seemed as though he dragged her heart out of her body. She wanted to protest, to demand, to compel; but instead, she exulted.

And so the morning broke, gray with sweeping rain ; the wind rumbled sometimes in the chimney, and a chill crept into the room, for the fire had burned out.

“ He will be here soon,” she thought, a deep color burning in her face, and her breath quickening. She would hear his voice asking for her ; hear him being sent away. Well, thank Heaven, he would understand; he would even care more for her because she would not see him ; because she would meet him on his own level! For, with this first appreciation of anything but herself, such mere decency of life seemed high to this poor soul.

She had had her coffee, and put on a charming gown of some soft silk ; her face was full of delicate color. Though she did not mean to see him, she felt the impulse to he beautiful just because he would come and stand in the doorway downstairs, even though it was only to be told that he must go away.

And so she waited.

The day darkened as the morning passed ; the rain shut her in upon the passionate centre of herself.

But it was curious that he did not come.

Somehow or other, the morning wore on. Molly clamored at the door, and came in to play with her paper dolls on the rug before the fire. The cook wanted instructions for dinner ; Cecil gave them carefully, speculating a little as to whether a certain white soup could he made with this sort of stock or that; she stopped once abruptly, as she was speaking, and listened. Then she said dully,

“ Yes, try it, Jane ; but don’t put in too much wine ; ” and listened again.

By noon she had begun to pace up and down, up and down. She sent Molly away, telling her sharply that she was a perfect nuisance with her dolls. She stood with her hands behind her at the window ; her mouth rigid, her eyes troubled and wandering.

Very likely he had gone back to town at once. How like him ! how superb in him! But he ought to have sent a line ; and, though he might have known she would not see him, it would only have been civil to come — under the circumstances.

At noon his note came. She grew white as she read it, and sat down, trembling. Then she dashed it from her, and flew to the door, bolting it and clinging to the doorknob, her teeth grinding down upon her lip, her eyes furious.

“ So : it was an insult.”

The color surged into her face, and left it white again. She raged back and forth across her room, breathing hard.

“How dared he ! ” Her hands gripped and twisted upon each other as though they would tear the life from the throat of the man who had kissed them, and kissed them.

He had dared—and then gone !

“ The insult, the insult, the insult! ”

She was suffocated by hate. Standing with clenched hands, she ground her heel into the floor. “ I wish it were his face ! ” she whispered, quivering all over. The card was lying where she had thrown it on the rug before the fire. “I despise him ! ” she said, and stooped to pick it up, crumpling it furiously in her hand.

Then, suddenly, she carried it to her lips, and burst into tears.

“ Oh, why do I love him, when I hate him so ? ”

It was late in the afternoon that, very curiously, she went and looked in the glass. She sat before her dressing-table for a long time, leaning forward, staring into the mirror with miserable, hopeless eyes. It was as though her soul looked out of the windows of its prison. Yet it was only now that she had recognized that it was a prison, this ruthless body of hers that dragged her into all its dreadful delights ; this body, with its love of sloth, its sensual droop of the lip, its cruel indifference to anything but itself.

“ No ; I shall never be good,” she said aloud. “I’ll get over this in a week, and I shall see how amusing it is.”

The consciousness of this ultimateness of the environment of the body is very horrible. Some time in our lives every man and woman of us, putting out our hands towards the stars, touches on either side our prison walls, the immutable limitations of temperament. “ I can never be good,” she said hopelessly, watching her heavy, tear-stained face in the mirror ; “ and perhaps I should n’t like it if I were. No, I ’ll get over this, and then I ’ll want to kill him ! — I know.”

But she was wrong. Cecil Shore’s was not one of those fluid souls which slip, quicksilver-like, between the fingers of circumstances, returning always to the unimpressionable sphere of self. This experience was moulding her as molten steel is moulded. She would never think of it with amusement; she would always he a better woman, no matter how bad she might become, because of this one shuddering glimpse of righteousness.

She held the crumpled card in her hand, and looked at it now and then. “I must not see you again.Forgive me if you can. I will never see you again.”

“ He does n’t care,” she said to herself; “it wasn’t love. What must he think of me ? ” Her face scorched under the slow tears ; she could not bear the shame of it; and yet — and yet —

“ I ’m not good enough for him,” she thought piteously. “ I was wicked. He belonged to Lyssie. I was wicked.” She groaned as she spoke. The soul is not born without agony; this beginning of the moral consciousness knew the throes of birth.

He had told her that she was not good enough to take care of her own child. Well, he was right. She saw herself in Europe, living the lazy, easy, suffocating life that she loved. He was right; such a life would be dreadful for Molly ; it meant meanness, selfishness, unrestrained impulses, sloth; it meant all that intellectual enjoyment of materialism which is a sensuality of the mind. But it could not be helped, unless — unless she gave Molly up.

“If I have her, she will be as bad as I am,” she thought dully. She wished passionately that she were dead, so that Molly would be safe.

“ Oh, she ought not to be with me,” she said, with a wail. “ I ’m no woman to be trusted with a child ; he said so. He was right. He knows what my life is.”

Molly ought not to know such a life; Molly ought to be good.

“ Not like me ! Not like me! ” she said, dropping her head down on her arms crossed upon the dressing-table.

It was nearly a week later that she wrote to him : —

“ Of course I did not take you seriously ; nor you me, I hope. So go back to Lyssie — some time. For me, I’m going away. Perhaps you are right about Molly. Anyhow, I shall leave her with her father. I hope he will give an occasional thought to her soul, in intervals of saving his own. Will you tell him so from me ? I will never see him again; nor you. Well, this is the end ; is n’t it all queer ? C.”

XXXII.

“ Shore, are you at liberty ? I want to see you.”

Philip put down his pen, and stretched out his hand. “ Why, hello, Carey ! Look out, don’t tumble over that waste basket. It ’s so dark in here, I did n’t know you for a minute.”

The afternoon dusk was rising like a tide in the small office, and the pale sunshine was climbing the wall to escape it; climbing the wall, creeping across the papers on Philip Shore’s desk, breaking into rippling shadows on the ceiling, as a flag on an opposite building blew taut and strong, or swerved and clung to its mast, and then whipped out again in the high wind.

“You are just the man I wanted to see,” Philip said. “I did n’t know you were in town.”

“ I ’m not. At least, I only came this moment. I was in Old Chester last week; and I’ve come now to see you.”

“ Ah,” said Philip. “ Well ? ” His caller, it appeared, was his wife’s legal adviser, rather than his old friend or Lyssie’s lover, — he had not heard of the broken engagement; so with some formality he offered Roger a chair, and braced himself for a conflict of words about the situation. He had expected a fierce and friendly remonstrance, such as this which he thought he saw in Roger’s eyes, before Carey should assume his professional character, and betake himself to the attorney in whose hands Philip had placed his affairs; or rather, to whom he had stated his position and his wishes about Molly. For Philip, having given up the management of his wife’s money, had in fact no “ affairs ” of his own. Indeed, when Roger entered, he had been engaged in adding up columns of figures, and subtracting the smallest possible living expenses from the sum total of his probable assets, and he was aware of that curious mixture of poignant anxiety and absurd humor which can be felt only by the man who, never having known the necessity of work, finds suddenly that if he does not work, neither may he eat.

“ I can’t even be a brick-layer. I’ve had no experience,” he thought, morosely amused, He had meant to consult Roger Carey, for the fact that Cecil had put her business matters in his hands had no bearing, in Philip’s mind, upon their friendship. But in the younger man’s set face, as he stood beside his desk, Philip instantly read the impossibility of this.

“ Well?” he said, curtly, again.

“ I’ve come to see you on — Mrs. Shore’s behalf.”

“ So I supposed. I knew that she had asked you to look after her affairs, I ’m very glad of it, Carey.”

Roger sat down, bending his stick across his knees in a fierce, unconscious grip ; his face was pale, and had in it a suggestion of struggle, —a struggle which had burned something out of it, and left it strangely refined, but almost haggard.

Philip said, impulsively, “ Are you under the weather, old man ? ”

Roger did not even notice the question ; his hands tightened upon his stick until the knuckles whitened.

“I’m not here in any professional way ” —

“ My dear fellow, that is the reason that I appreciate the professional part of it,” Philip began warmly. “ I know what your friendship is, and “ —

“Yes. Well, never mind that; I’ve come to ask you to go back to her.”

“ What ! ”

“ I want you to go back to your wife.”

“ Did she send you here with that message ? ” said Philip.

“ She send me ! Don’t you know her better than that ? No, I ’m here on my own account. This plan of yours is so incredible to me that I — I can’t believe it! You cannot be aware of what you are doing.”

Philip sighed, and seemed to draw himself together. “We don’t agree on this subject of divorce and separation, so what is the use of discussing it? Although I appreciate your motive in wishing to discuss it.”

“ You do, do you? ”

A thread of anger in his voice made Philip look at him, but Roger went on, calmly : —

“ No ; of course there is no use in discussing your theories. I don’t believe in divorce. I think I told you that some time ago. I — I still don’t believe in it.”

“ So far as I am concerned, there should be no question of divorce in this matter,” Philip said.

“ I know ; you want to separate. And I believe you put it on the ground of morality! ”

“ Absolutely,” the other answered, with a surprised look. “ Why, Carey, look here; put the personal equation out of this for a moment. What makes marriage ? A priest’s gibberish, or a legal decree, or the tyranny of public opinion, which holds a man and woman together who are separated in every thought and impulse and belief ? They are husband and wife by a Law that transcends all these things; or else — they are not husband and wife ! ”

“ If you don’t mind, I ’d rather not go into that kind of thing,” Roger said. “The duties of a citizen, I can understand ; but when you come to ‘ higher laws,’I’m all off. Common law’s good enough for me. But what I’m here for is not to discuss the abstract; it is to ask you to go back to your wife.”

“ Apparently you are not speaking for Mrs. Shore,” Philip answered, frowning; “and as we don’t agree as to the principle, what’s the use of talking about it ? ”

Roger was silent for a moment ; then he said quietly, “ I have a message for you, Philip, from — your wife. She is going abroad (unless I can persuade you to prevent it), and she has decided to leave Molly with you.”

Philip Shore half rose. “ Leave Molly ? “ he repeated, in a dazed way.

“Yes.”

“ I don’t understand. She told Woodhouse — I thought she meant to bring suit, and get possession of the child ? Carey, what do you mean ? ”

“ What I say. If this theory of yours is carried out, and she goes away, she proposes to leave Molly with you. She has also given me certain instructions as to money matters in relation to Molly. But I don’t want to go into that now. I hope it may never be necessary to go into it. I hope you will go back to her.”

Philip’s face was sunk in his hands ; he was silent for several moments. Then, in a low voice, “ What are Mrs. Shore’s reasons for this decision?”

“ Do you think,” answered the other, “ that you have any right to ask Mrs. Shore’s reasons ? ”

Philip got up and went over to the fireplace ; he leaned his forehead upon his arm along the mantelpiece, and looked down at a little fire that was shrinking and creeping back into the narrow grate. Roger watched him silently.

“ No; I’ve no right to ask her reasons.”

“ I suppose,” said the younger man, in a hard voice, “ that you are perfectly willing to let your wife make this sacrifice ? ”

Philip turned upon him savagely. “ Is this a time to say whether it is agreeable to me to accept a sacrifice ? I’ve got to think of Molly ! You know she ought not to be with her mother.”

“ So you ’ll accept the sacrifice ? ” Roger insisted, with contempt that was like a blow.

“ I accept my child ! ” said Philip Shore hoarsely. “You can’t understand this thing, Carey ” —

“ You ’re right. I can’t.”

— “ But the humiliation to me of letting Cecil give up is not to be considered. Good God, do you suppose, if it were just myself, that I would let her do it?”

“ I can’t say, I ’m sure. You ’re letting her do a good deal.”

“ I don’t know what you mean.”

“You are letting her take advantage of a theory which you consider essential to your personal integrity, whether it is for her welfare or not.”

“ It is for her welfare.”

“ Is that why you are doing it ? I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that salvation can cost too dear! ”

“ I don’t understand you,” Philip answered impatiently.

“I mean that the pursuit of righteousness for personal ends is just a yielding to a spiritual appetite; and it may be as demoralizing and debauching as — as the yielding to a physical appetite ! ”

Roger Carey’s stick broke suddenly across his knee ; his hands trembled.

“ Race regeneration begins with the individual,” Philip began.

But Roger broke in with a sort of groan: “Who is going to be regenerated, in this case — beside yourself ? That part of the race included in your immediate family ? Your—your wife, for instance ? ”

Again in the darkening room a note in his voice made Philip stare at him.

“ Let’s look at the value of this sort of regeneration : suppose every man who got tired of his bargain ” —

“ Carey, you go too far ! ”

— “ every man who thought the preservation of his own precious integrity depended on it, should throw over his wife ” —

“ What the devil is the matter with you ? ”

“ I want to make an illustration,” Roger said between his teeth. “ Suppose he left his wife, feeling that the honor of marriage and the salvation of his own soul depended on it, —you see,

I am granting absolute integrity of purpose.”

The blood came up into Philip Shore’s face as if at the touch of a whip lash.

“ Of course,” Roger went on. “ it is conceivable that the woman being left, some other man might be attracted ; and — but I needn’t go into all that. You see what possibilities it opens up ? ”

“Yes,” Philip agreed; “ and why not ? ”

“Why not?” Roger stammered, recoiling. “ Why, because public morals are to be considered ! ”

“Public morals will not suffer by private virtue,” Philip said contemptuously.

“ I maintain that a loveless marriage is n’t a marriage. The question of absolute divorce is n’t a question of re-marriage, but of marrying at all. The first relationship isn’t marriage, it is legalized prostitution ; but we are not ready, yet, to make the results of such a mistake permanent, so the right to marry righteously, decently, is necessary. It’s a concession to human nature, I grant, but it’s perfectly reasonable and proper, even though one may repudiate it for one’s self.”

Roger said something under his breath, looking at Cecil Shore’s husband with a sort of terror.

“ Of course,” Philip went on, “ I realize the possible abuses of freer divorce, but I do not believe such abuses are inherent in divorce. And beside, other people’s weakness or wickedness does not affect individual duty.”

“ There’s no duty that makes other people either weak or wicked,”Roger burst out. “ ‘ If meat cause my brother to offend, then will I eat no meat.’ ”

“ My brother’s offending is his own business. Beside, meat-eating is not a necessity. Purity, honor, decency even, are necessities.”

“ Shore,” the other answered, his voice trembling, “ hell might be a necessity, if you went there to keep somebody else out; it’s the old idea, to lose one’s life for somebody else’s sake is to find it. I can’t talk religion, but that’s the way it seems to me.”

He was profoundly agitated. He got up and walked over to the window, and stood looking through the glass grimed with the smoke from innumerable chimneys below; far off, beyond the crowding, huddling roofs covered with streaked and dirty snow, he could see a yellow line of sunset; his anger and his shame fighting for words left him silent. He came back and sat down again by Philip’s desk.

“Shore, I ’ll take your motives for granted. I will believe that you believe in them; but go back, go back ! ”

Philip was silent for a moment; he watched Roger closely ; then he said quietly, “ There’s no use prolonging this. You don’t understand the situation. Mrs. Shore wishes to leave me.”

Then the rein broke. “ You know the proposition was yours. For God’s sake don’t be a Jesuit; it’s bad enough to be a saint! And you are willing to accept your freedom at any cost to her ? You’d go over dead bodies or dead souls to save yourself! damn you, you’re not worth saving! ”

“You’re mad, or else you’re drunk. There’s the door.”

“ You ’ll listen to what I have to say first. The Lord knows I ’m not anxious to talk to you, but you’ve got to listen, — and I’ve got to speak ! What about your wife, if you leave her? and what about the fellow you dig a pit for when you send her out into the world ?”

“ Your words are an offense. I on will speak with respect of Mrs. Shore in my presence or I ’ll put you out of it!”

The two men were standing. Philip was trembling with rage. Roger’s hand was clenched on the edge of the desk ; there was a solemn frown in his face which made it almost beautiful and strangely devoid of self. The sunset, loitering and lifting on the wall, had been swallowed by the rising tide of gray, and the room was quite dark.

“You’ve got to hear, Philip,” Roger said. Then, lifted far above self-consciousness, using, as it were, his own sin as an instrument of salvation, he leaned forward and touched him on the shoulder.

“ I love her.”

There was no answer.

“Well, what’s the matter? ‘Why not ? ’ as you said yourself. I love her. How do you like that ? I held her in my arms. I Held your wife in my arms. I— Keep back, keep back ! You’ve no right to resent one word I ’ve said ! You throw her over, I take her ” —

Philip’s hands leaped at his throat. There was no resistance. Flung neck and crop like a dog out into the narrow entry, Roger Carey leaned, breathless and ghastly, against the whitewashed wall. His face was full of exultation ; it was as though some mighty hand of justice and insolence and insult hail wiped shame out of it.

XXXIII.

The grimy sunshine, lifting and lifting in Philip Shore’s office in the city, resting on crowded roofs, gilding with sudden pallid glory the edge of a chimney, or striking a red shine on smoky windows, was lying in an ebbing tide of placid light on the white hills around Old Chester. It crept across Cecil Shore’s leafless garden, and up the west front of the house, touching the closed shutters, and peering for a fading instant into the open doorway of the hall, where everything was confusion and haste.

“ The stage and baggage wagon will be here at five,” said Mrs. Shore, fastening her long glove as she came slowly downstairs. “Just see that everything is put on, John ; then tell Jonas to drive down to the rectory for me. Come, Polly, come along with mamma.”

“Will Eric come with John ? Can’t he come to say good-by to Dr. Lavendar, too ? Shall we say good-by to aunt Lyssie and grandmamma over again ? ” Molly chattered, as they went down the steps.

“ Come, hurry,” Cecil said crossly. “What did you bring that dog for? He ’ll fight Danny.” She looked down at the child running to keep up with her, and drew in her breath in a sob. Molly was full of questions: Where was father ? What made the moon so thin ? Had the sun bitten a piece out of it ? Should they see father to-morrow in town ?

“ Do you want to see your father?” Cecil asked, her voice strained and harsh.

“ I don’t mind,” Molly answered cheerfully. “ I’d like to see Mr. Carey. He loves Eric.”

“ Is that why you like Mr. Carey ? ”

Molly shook her head, and took two little skipping steps. “ I don’t like him very much. He laughed at my tooth. I like father better. Don’t you like father better? Mamma, when shall we go on the ship ? ”

They bad come to the iron gates at the bottom of the garden, and Cecil lifted the great rusted latch ; but when they closed behind her with a clang, she stopped, shivering, and looked back at the garden, leaning her forehead against the bars.

“ I ’d better say good-by to her here ; ” and she called the child, who had run on a little distance ahead. Yet when, with laggard obedience, Molly came, her mother only said, with a curious breathlessness, “Take mamma’s hand. Don’t run ahead that way. (No. I can’t yet; I can’t yet! ”) she told herself.

As they walked down the lane in the gray twilight, she kept putting off those last words ; she talked constantly, but so entirely at random that once Molly said, in a puzzled way, “ But, mamma, you told me ‘yes,’ and now you tell me ‘no.’ I don’t know what to do! ”

“ Molly, you will be a good girl ? ” Cecil said feverishly, as though insisting upon something to herself. “You must be good. That’s the main thing. Promise mamma you ’ll be good ? ”

Her voice frightened the child, whose face puckered into a sort of whimper. “ I’m not a naughty girl! ”

“Oh, I know, darling, I know! But promise mamma you ’ll try and be good. (I ’ll wait until I get to the rectory,”) she thought, gripping the child’s hand until Molly cried out, and pulled it away from her.

They came along the narrow path to the sunken door of the rectory. The shades were not down, and they had a glimpse of Dr. Lavendar sitting in his shabby dressing-gown by the hearth. The little dusky room was full of lurching firelight, brightening and fading, and brightening again. This was his free hour, and he was sitting by himself, his pipe between his lips, thinking of many things. With one hand he rubbed Danny’s gray head, and the other was fumbling in the pocket of his dressing-gown with some uncut topazes. Once he pulled out a handful of them, and held them close to his eyes, gloating over them with the greatest satisfaction ; then he thrust them deep down into his pocket again. He was trying to decide a matter of taste: was it better to preach on the Yew Jerusalem descending out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband, her walls of chalcedony, jacinth, amethyst, and jasper, the Sunday before Joey and Susan were married, or the Sunday after ?

“That match,” he was saying to himself, “was about as good a thing as I ever accomplished in my life ! ”

As they drew near the house, Cecil stopped and looked in at the tranquil scene. “ I ’ll wait till I have spoken to Dr. Lavendar,” she thought, shivering. “Molly,” she said hoarsely, “give me a kiss before we go in.” The street was deserted and nearly dark; no one saw her crush the child against her breast, kissing her until Molly, out of breath, laughed and struggled, and tried to wriggle out of her arms.

(“ I ’ll say it the last thing ; the last thing.) Oh, Molly, you will be good ? That is all I want. Promise me you will be good! Come, we must go in.”

Then she pushed the door open and went down the little narrow hall to the library.

She came in, wrapped in her great crimson cloak, and smiling, in the firelit dusk; yet for an instant, until she spoke, the old clergyman felt the grip of actual terror upon his heart.

“ I came to say good-by, Dr. Lavendar ” — She stopped and caught her breath. “ The stage is to come here for me. I felt that I must have the blessing of the Church before I left the home of my childhood for good ! ”

“ Left for good ? ” he stammered, but she interrupted him.

“ It may be for bad. But it’s leaving, anyhow. May I sit down ? Polly, don’t drag at mamma’s cloak. Dr. Lavendar. I want you to do something for me.”

“ Sit down, Cecilia, sit down,” he said, waving his pipe at her. “I am glad to see you : I ve something to say to you. I’ve been four times to your door, Cecilia, but was not admitted.”

“ Oh, not really ? ” she said absently, her eyes fastened upon Molly.

“ The person who opened the door,” proceeded the old man, “ said you were not at home. But I heard your voice, Cecilia! ”

“ Really ? ” Cecil answered, vaguely ; and then suddenly laughed, as if at first she had not heard him.

“ I fear he is an untruthful person ; but that was not why I wished to speak to you. though I do feel that you are responsible for the morals of your servants ” —

“ My dear Dr. Lavendar, my own morals are more than I can attend to properly,” she said, smiling, “ and I have only five minutes ; the stage will be here, and I must speak to you.”

“ Send the child away, for I must speak to you,” he began, sternly; but Cecil shook her head.

“ Oh no, please don’t. In fact, you can t, before Molly,” she reminded him maliciously. “ Beside, it’s no use; everything is settled. But I’ve come (I ’m so glad you are at home) to ask you to give Philip a message from me.”

“ Mamma, are we going to see father to-morrow ? ” Molly asked fretfully.

“ You will, Kitty, in a day or two. There ! don’t you want to go and play with Danny ? Dr. Lavendar, I am going away. I am going to sail for Europe on Saturday.”

His bushy eyebrows twitched with angry anxiety; “ I can’t believe that you will do any such wicked thing ! I went to implore you not to, those four times that I called. My child, you can’t do such a thing ! I have written to Philip—I think you are both beside yourselves,”he ended incoherently.

Cecil sighed impatiently. “ Dr. Lavendar ” — But he interrupted her.

“ Lyssie, poor child, is heart-broken about it; she sat here yesterday and cried until she could n’t see! ”

Cecil started, frowning. "If I’ve given Lyssie any grief, the sooner I get away the better. Yes, she ’ll be happier when I’m gone. That’s one reason I’m going. Oh, please don’t talk to me ; there s no use. Listen to what I want to say: I ’m going away, and I ’m going to enjoy life. I want that distinctly understood. I ’m going to enjoy life. Only, I’ve thought it all over, and I won’t take Molly. She would be — she would he in the way. But I want you to tell Philip Shore one thing : say, ‘Cecil says. You saved yourself, so you could not save any one else.' Possibly he will understand. Yes, I think he will understand. ‘ You saved yourself, so you could not save anyone else.’ Will you remember? You might add that, having saved his life, he may lose it; but no ; he ’ll find that out for himself, perhaps.” She rose and pulled the crimson cloak about her, shivering a little.

“ I know what you mean,” he said tremulously, “ but Cecilia, my dear child, just let me make one plea ; not for yourself, not even for the child. Listen to me, my dear. There is nothing in the world so awful as the knowledge that you have injured a soul. If you go away, Philip will understand that. Yes, you will grow harder to reach, Cecilia, and it will be his fault. He will have injured your soul; there is no anguish so dreadful as such a realization ! Can’t you spare him ? Are n’t you generous enough to spare him?”

It was a high appeal.

She turned and looked at him, and laughed, drawing in her breath between her shut teeth.

“ I hope the thought of it may take him down to hell. I should he willing to go there, if it would make him suffer ! ”

As she spoke there was a trampling at the gate, and the rattle of harness chains, and the scraping of a wheel against the gatepost. “ Here’s the stage,” she said lightly, her face white to the lips. “ I’ve arranged that Molly is to go to Lyssie, until her father comes for her. Come, Polly, you are to stay all night with aunt Lyssie ; shall you like that ? ”

“ And Eric, too ? ” clamored Molly.

“ I told Lyssie I would send her over by Rosa at half past five : I did n’t want to make my adieus under Mrs. Drayton’s windows. Good-by, Dr. Lavendar.” She held out her hand carelessly, as she went into the hall; the front door was open, and the stage loomed up in the dusk, with its lamps glimmering through the evening fog.

“ Molly ! Come here ! ” Cecil said, sharply.

Dr. Lavendar had followed them into the hall ; Rosa was standing in the doorway ; the stage driver was leaning down from his seat, tapping the wheel with his whip; John had come up the path to ask some question. Cecil looked about her like a hunted creature.

“Jonas is in a hurry, ma’am.” John ventured.

“ I ’m coming, I’m coming,” Cecil said breathlessly. “ Have you got everything, John ? Is Rosa here? Rosa, take Molly right over to Miss Lyssie’s ” —

“ Mamma ! ” Molly began, half frightened.

Cecil looked at her, and then suddenly knelt down in front of her. “ Kiss me ! Kiss me ! ” she whispered, and hid her face in the child’s bosom ; then she rose, brushing past the little girl as though she did not see her.

“ I ’ll miss the train at Mercer if I don’t hurry. Dr. Lavendar, congratulate Mr. Joseph for me. At least his choice has not been impulsive ; they have known each other all their lives, have n’t they ? ”

Then, smiling out of the coach, she kissed her hand to Molly. “ There, Kitty, don’t cry ; you are going over to grandmamma’s to stay all night.” She pulled the stage door in with a bang. “ Tell them to start,” she said hoarsely. “ Why don’t they start ? Oh, hurry, hurry ! Good heavens, are they never going to start ? ”

XXXIV.

In April, in southern Pennsylvania, there comes one day when the brown fields dim suddenly with green, as though a warm breath passed over them. The full, white clouds hang low, but part now and then, and bursts of sunshine move swiftly over the meadows and up the hillsides; the little runs brim and bubble in their narrow beds, and the larger streams whirl against the big stones in their paths, and hurry on, streaked with foam and chattering loudly. In the orchards threads of water gush out from under tussocks of winter-bleached grass, or spurt up under a footstep, and when those sunbursts travel swiftly over the countryside, all the fields are agleam with these innumerable springs. The air has been warmed through and through by the sunshine behind the clouds, yet it has a cool edge that comes from its touch upon patches of melting snow up in the northern hollows of the hills. The buds have hardly begun to open, but it seems as if there were a faint green smoke in the woods ; and the stems of the willows are reddening as though some mysterious wine were rising in them.

Such a day is fidl of peace and promise ; one feels a springing joy that reason does not explain. No doubt the grief of the world is just the same ; the grave is still new in the churchyard, perhaps ; faiths have been broken ; the soul has earned its own inviolable solitude ; nay, the sordid anxieties of life and living are all unchanged ; — yet on such an April day of sunshine moving over brown fields, of brimming brooks, of greening hillsides, the heart rises, the feet dance, and a song comes bubbling to the lips.

Alicia Drayton felt this unreasoning joy as she walked slowly up the long hill on her way back from the upper village. Far down the road, behind her, the stage came tugging along. She had meant to hail it at the cross-roads, and spare herself a half hour’s walk ; but she had not waited for it, and had walked on absently, yet with this April joyousness nestling warmly at her heart. Once she stopped to look back at the stage crawling up the long slope, and saw a great stretch of sunshine flood all the valley, and move swiftly up the bill. Hie fields looked greener for its touch, Lyssie thought. She drew a long breath and trudged on, saying to herself that It was pleasant to be alive.

This was a new feeling to little Lyssie. It had been a hard winter for her.

First there had been the bewildering grief about Philip and Cecil; then the interest and beauty of life had seemed to go out on the day that Roger Carey slammed the door behind him and went off into the rain ; and, while that pain was still new, the filial instinct had been killed in her : Alicia Drayton had learned to know her mother.

With such knowing had come the tenderest love and pity ; but the reverence of the child for the parent, that noble reverence which makes life deep and beautiful, was dead.

This grief had come to the girl in midwinter. A letter had arrived from Mr. Drayton announcing his immediate and final return to Old Chester ; and there was a dreadful scene when his wife, in the miserable fright of a selfish woman, had had no decent reserves before Lyssie. The dignity and sacredness of marriage were insulted before the child’s eyes : her mother had cried and screamed with disappointment and passion; she had revealed her hatred of her husband, and her fear of his interference with her comfort. Afterwards, there was the simpering smile to her little public; her upraised eyes ; her “ heartfelt gratitude for her heavenly Father’s goodness in thus blessing her by her dear William’s restoration to health.”

It turned Alicia sick. The instinct of the child for the mother agonized and died; and with it went the divine and beautiful believing of youth. But she went on loving. Other knowledge had come to Lyssie in connection with this same experience: Mr. William Drayton had come back looking very broken; his health was just the same, he said curtly ; he had returned because he had lost a — a friend by death, so he did not care to live abroad any longer.

“ At least it must he a comfort to feel that he is at rest in heaven,” Mrs. Drayton said. “ Who was he, dear William ? ”

“ You would n’t be any wiser if I mentioned the name,” he said slowly; “ and I don’t care to talk about it, please.”

Perhaps the look in his face suddenly instructed Alicia Drayton as to what that friendship was. She grew deadly pale, shamed to her very soul. The somewhat conventional affection with which she had welcomed him went out in swift indignation. For a long time it was an effort to speak to him ; she shrank from his touch, and his commonplace questions and comments were answered almost curtly. But that did not last: she knew her mother. So pity, in spito of shame, began to take the place of anger. At first she was sorry for him, then, after a while, came a sort of friendliness. That she could make excuses for him was a sad commentary on the child’s loss of youth. She thought about him now, as she walked up the hill in the scudding sunshine, and noticed, with a pang of joy, a bluebird balancing on a rail, and the sliaiq) greenness of the grass in the sheltered triangle of the zigzag fence. “ If only he had come sooner,” she said to herself, “ I need n’t have said three years ; and it would all be different now, perhaps.”

Mr. Drayton had been told of the broken engagement, and had called Lyssie to him one day, and said quietly, “Tell me why it was, child.” She had told him, simply enough, He had listened, and nodded, and looked at the end of his cigar, and told her to bring him another light. That was all ; but he had pulled her ears at tea - time, and called her his little monkey ; and it was after that, that this silent friendship grew up. There were no explanations ; they were sorry for each other, and understood ; and one forgave.

“ But if he had been here, it would have been different,” she thought, and stopped to look back at the stage; she did not reproach her father, even in her mind.

Alicia had had a swift hope that his return would mean some way out of the distress and grief and shame that had come to Philip and Cecil. But such hope had quickly died. Mr. Drayton showed no inclination to interfere. He listened to the story, drowsing through Mrs. Drayton’s excited and pious embellishments of it, and then he took his cigar from between his lips and knocked off the ashes.

£t They know their own business,” he said, in his slow, dull voice. “ I ’m glad there was no scandal. I ’m glad everything was done decently and in order ; ” there was a flicker of humor in his halfshut eyes at Mrs. Drayton’s disappointment at his indifference. “ And on the whole, I think they were very sensible ; it ’s better to be open and above-board.”

“ I do not know what you mean, dear William,” said Mrs. Drayton.

Her husband smoked on, stolidly. “ No, I don’t suppose you do.”

“ But,” sighed Lyssie to herself, beginning to go down the hill into the village, “ it was too late, anyhow ; nothing could have been done ; Cecil would never have gone back to Philip.”

She was quite right. The tragedy of human selfishness destroys the fabric of life beyond repair. Yet Lyssie had tried to repair it. When Philip, with passionate haste, came down to Old Chester, only to be confronted by the dark silence of the empty house, — Alicia had done her best.

“Oh, Philip, did you mean to come back? Philip, Philip, hurry! go after her ; you may catch her before she sails ! Oh, perhaps she will forgive you !

He was very gentle with her, but he silenced her.

He had come to accept Molly from her mother’s hands ; to let gratitude overcome his humiliation ; to defer to Cecil in every possible way, — but that was all. The citadel of his spirituality, where Self had entrenched herself, was absolutely fast.

“If Philip and Cecil would not listen to — Roger, there was no use for me to talk,” she thought, as she stopped a moment on the bridge, and looked down into the water. And then the stage drew up behind her, and some one got down, and came and stood beside her.

“ Lyssie, will you please — speak to me ? ”

And she turned and saw him ; older, graver, his face quivering, his eyes imploring her.

There was not much explanation ; to talk over a quarrel, with its inevitable accompaniment of self-justification, is too much like handling cobwebs to be very successful. Roger said “Forgive me,” and Lyssie said “ Forgive me,” and that was about all there was to it. Of course Roger had to shake hands with Mr. Drayton, and be forgiven by Mrs. Drayton, and dine with the family, and feel exceedingly like a whipped puppy ; which, after all, was perfectly right and just.

Late in the afternoon, they went out to walk ; and somehow Roger fell silent, and Lyssie did all the talking. She said, softly, “ Cecil will he glad. I will write and tell her.”

Roger stared down the road.

“ Do you hear from Mrs. Shore often ? ”

“ Not as often as I should like to,” she answered sadly ; “ she is so busy ; she is very gay. But, oh, Roger, she is n’t happy ; though she doesn’t seem to miss Molly much, she hardly speaks of her. Only. I know she is n’t really contented ; and I am so happy ! — it does n’t seem fair. Did you see her before she went away ?”

Roger shook his head.

“ Well, then, you don’t know how dreadful things were. I heard afterwards that you came down, just before the end of it all, to try to reconcile them. It must have seemed strange to he here, and not see me. Did you think of me, Roger ? ”

He pulled a budded maple twig, and twisted it between his fingers.

“ Yes. I —thought of you.”

“ What did you think ? ”

“ I ’ll tell you — another time.” “ Philip came down for Molly,” Lyssie went on, telling her little story, “ and I said everything I could. But it was n’t any use. But there was one thing that happened I want you to know about. Just as he was going away, he came back and took my hands, and he said—oh, Roger, he said, ‘ Lyssie, if he comes back, forgive him. He is a good man.' He meant you, Roger. (Of course, Philip did n’t understand, or he would n’t have said ‘ forgive.' ”)

The twig snapped between the young man’s fingers, and he looked away from her.

“ What did you say ? ” she asked him softly.

Nothing; nothing. Do you forgive me, Lyssie ? ”

Her look told him.

“ Oh, I don’t deserve it,” he said brokenly. It was growing cold as the twilight fell upon the river road ; they stood quite silently, with a little sadness in their joy which they had never known when they had loved each other less.

“ You ought n’t to he standing here,” he told her suddenly, but I ”ve got to say something ; I ”ve got something to confess, Lyssie.” They were standing under a little dogwood tree, its shelving branches white with blossoms; it was very still in the soft spring dusk. Roger looked up and down the deserted road; then he said, “ Will you kiss me just once, first ? Perhaps you won’t forgive me when I’ve told you.”

There was something in his voice that sent the color out of her face. “ There is nothing you could tell me that is not forgiven already ; so — don’t tell me.

“ Yes, I must tell you,” he said ; but turned away from her, and stood staring into the dusk for a little while. “ Lyssie, I do love you. I’ve loved you more every minute since we ” —

“ Yes, I understand,” she murmured, “ since we ” — But neither of them spoke the cruel word.

“ I’ve loved you all the time. But once — you will never understand ! hut I’ve got to tell you ; once 1 thought I loved — your sister.”

She started and shivered, her hands tightening on each other ; but she did not speak.

“It was that Friday night I came down. I” —

But she stopped him, tenderly, though truly with no understanding of what he meant; with only love — love — love. She took both his hands and pressed them against her bosom in ineffable tenderness.

“ Oh, Lyssie, do you forgive me ?”

“There is no talk of forgiveness between us.”

And then he said passionately, “ I love you ! ” and dared not kiss her, even.

Afterwards they talked of other things, and Roger, square with liis conscience, was able to forget that he had had cause to he forgiven, but Alicia was a little absent; until she said, suddenly, tremulously, “ I just want to ask you one thing, and then we ’ll not think of it again : I want to know if — if she cared ? ”

There was no pause between her question and Roger’s instant and generous lie ; but her lover was quiet for a while afterwards. It was a pity that she had asked him; but a woman in love rarely knows the value of ignorance.

After a while, as they walked home, Roger began, timidly, to say that he would wait as long — as long as she wished. But she interrupted him.

“ There is n’t any need to — wait — very long.”

Margaret Deland.