The Common Lot

XII.

THE Phillipses had spent the winter in Europe. Mrs. Phillips was still adding to her collection for the new house, — Forest Manor as she had dubbed it. Leaving Venetia in Paris with some friends, she descended upon Italy, the rage for buying in her soul. There she gathered up the flotsam of the dealers, — marbles, furniture, stuffs, — a gold service in Naples, a vast bed in Milan, battered pictures in Florence. Mrs. Phillips was not a discriminating amateur; she troubled her soul little over the authenticity of her spoil. To San Giorgio, Simonetti, Richetti, and their brethren in the craft, she was a rich harvest, and they put up many a prayer for her return another season.

In March of that year, Jackson Hart, struggling with building strikes in Chicago, had a cablegram from the widow. “ Am buying wonderful marbles in Florence. Can you come over? ” The architect laughed as he handed the message to his wife. “ Some one ought to head her off ! She ’ll send over a shipload of fakes.” Helen, thinking that he needed the vacation, urged him generously to accept the invitation and get a few weeks in Italy. But it was no time just then for vacation : he was in the grip of business, and another child was coming to them.

From time to time Mrs. Phillips’s treasures arrived at Forest Park, and were stored in the great hall of her house. Then late in the spring the widow telephoned the architect.

“Yes! I am back,” came her brisk, metallic tones from the receiver. “ Glad to be home, of course, with all the dirt and the rest of it. How are you getting on ? I hear you are doing lots of things.

Maida Rainbow told me over there in Paris that you were building the Bushfields an immense house. I am so glad for you, — I hope you are coining money ! ”

“ Not quite that,” he laughed back.

“ I want you to see all the treasures I have bought. I’ve ruined myself and the children. However, you ’ll think it’s worth it, I’m sure. You must tell me what to do with them. Come over Sunday, can ’t you ? How is Mrs. Hart ? Bring her over, too, of course.”

Thus she gathered him up on her return, with that dexterous turn of the wrist which exasperated her righteous brother-in-law. On the Sunday, Jackson went to see the “ treasures,” but without Helen, who made an excuse of her mother’s weekly visit. He found the widow in the stable, directing the efforts of two men servants in unpacking some cases.

“ How are you ? ”

She extended a strong, flexible hand to Hart, and with the other motioned toward a marble that was slowly emerging from the packing straw.

“ Old copy of a Venus, the Syracuse one. It will be great in the hall, won’t it?”

“ It’s ripping! ” he exclaimed warmly. “ Where did you get that bench ? ”

“ You don’t like it ? ”

“ Looks to be pure fake.”

“Simonetti swore he knew the very room where it’s been for over a hundred years.”

“ Oh ! He probably slept on it! ”

“ Come into the house and see the other things. I have some splendid pictures.”

For an hour they examined the articles she had bought, and the architect was sufficiently approving to delight the widow. Neither one had a pure, reticent taste. Both were of the modern barbarian type that admires hungrily, and ravishes greedily from the treasure house of the Old World what it can get, what is left to get, piling the spoil helter-skelter into an up-to-date American house. Mediæval, Renaissance, Italian, French, Flemish, — it was all one ! They would turn Forest Manor into one of those bizarre, corrupt, baroque museums that our lavish plunderers love, — electric-lighted, telephoned, with gilded marble fireplaces, massive bronze candelabra, Persian rugs, Gothic choir stalls, French bronzes, — a house of barbarian spoil!

A servant brought in a tray of liquors and cigarettes; they sat in the midst of pictures and stuffs, and sipped and smoked.

“ Now,” Mrs. Phillips announced briskly, " I want to hear all about you.”

“ It’s only the old story, —more jobs and strikes, — the chase for the nimble dollar,” he answered lightly. " You have to run faster for it all the time.”

“ But you are making money?” she questioned directly.

“ I’m spending it! ”

He found it not difficult to tell her the state of his case. She nodded comprehendingly, while he let her see that his situation was not altogether as prosperous as it appeared on the surface. Payments on buildings were delayed on account of the strikes ; office expenses crept upwards ; and personal expenses mounted too. And there was the constant pressure of business, the fear of a cessation in orders.

“ We may have to move back to town. That Loring place is pretty large to swing. In town you can be poor in obscurity.”

“ Nonsense ! You must not go back. People will know that you have n’t money. You are going to get bigger things to do. And you are so young. My ! Not thirtyfive ! ”

Her sharp eyes examined the man frankly, sympathetically, approving him swiftly. His clay was like hers; he would succeed — in the end.

“ Come ! I have an idea. Why should n’t you build here, on my land ? Something pretty and artistic, — it would help you, of course. I know the very spot, just the other side of the ravine, — in the hickories. Do you remember it ? ”

In her enthusiasm she proposed to go at once to examine the site. Pinning a big hat on her head, she gathered up her long skirt, and they set forth, following a neat wood-path that led from the north terrace into the ravine, across a little brook, and up the other bank.

“ Now, here ! ” She pointed to a patch of hazel bushes. " See the lake over there! And my house is almost hid. You would be quite by yourselves.”

He hinted that to build even on this charming spot a certain amount of capital would be needed. She frowned and settled herself on the stump of a tree.

“ Why don’t you try that Harris man ? You know him. He made a heap of money for me once, — corn, I think. He knew just what was going to happen. He ’s awfully smart, and he ’s gone in with Rainbow, you know. I am sure he could make some money for you.”

“ Or lose it ? ”

She laughed scornfully at the idea of losing.

“ Of course you have got to risk something. I would n’t give a penny for a man who wouldn’t trust his luck. You take my advice and see Harris. Tell him I sent you.”

She laughed again, with the conviction of a successful gambler, and it became her to laugh, for it softened the lines of her mouth.

She was now forty-one years old, and she appeared to Jackson to be younger than when he had first gone to see her about the house. She had come back from Europe thinner than she had been for several years. Her hair was perfectly black, still undulled by age, and her features had not begun to sharpen noticeably. She had another ten years of active, selfish woman’s life before her, and she knew it.

Meantime he had grown older, so that they were much nearer together. She treated him quite as her equal in experience, and that flattered him.

“ Yes,” she continued, in love with her project, “there is n’t a nicer spot all along the shore. And you would be next door, so to say. You could pay for the land when you got ready.”

She gave him her arm to help her in descending the steep bank of the ravine, and she leaned heavily on him. The June sun lay warmly about the big house as they returned to it. The shrubbery had grown rankly around the terrace, doing its best in its summer verdancy to cover the naked walls. Beneath the bluff the lake lapped at the sandy shore in a summer drowse. The architect looked at the house he had built, with renewed pride. It was pretentious and ambitious, mixed in motive like this woman, like himself. He would have fitted into the place like a glove, if his uncle had done the right thing! Somewhat the same thought was in the widow’s mind.

“ It was a shame that old Powers treated you so shabbily ! It ought to have been yours.”

They stood for a moment on the terrace, looking at the house. Yes, it was like them both ! They loved equally the comforts and the luxuries and the powers of this our little life. And they were bold to snatch what they wanted from the general feast.

“ You must make Harris do something for you ! ” she mused. “ You can’t bury yourself in a stuffy flat.” Then in a few moments she added, “ How’s that handsome wife of yours ? I hear she’s going to have another child.” She continued with maternal, or, perhaps, Parisian, directness, — “ Two babies, and not on your feet yet! You must n’t have any more. These days children are no unmixed blessing, I can tell you. . . . Venetia ? I left her in the East with some friends. She’s too much for me, already. She needs a husband who can use the curb.”

When Jackson reported to Helen the widow’s offer, his wife said very quickly, “ I had rather go back to the city, Francis ! ”

“ Why ? ” he asked with some irritation.

“ Because, because ” —

She put her arms about his neck in her desire to make him feel what she could not say. But he was thinking of Mrs. Phillips’s advice to see the broker, and merely kissed her in reply to her caress. It was the year of the great bull market, when it seemed as if wealth hung low on every bough, and all that a bold man had to do to win a fortune was to pick his stock and make his stake. . . .

Forest Park was very gay that summer. There were perpetual dinners and house parties aud much polo at the Shoreham Club. The architect, who was very popular, went about more than ever, sometimes with his wife, and often alone, as her health did not permit much effort. Occasionally he played polo, taking the place of one of the regular team, and usually when there was a match he stopped at the club on his way from the city.

One of these polo Wednesdays, late in August, Helen strolled along the shorepath in the direction of the Phillipses’ place, with an idea of calling on Venetia Phillips, if her strength held out. The path followed the curves of the bluff in full view of the lake, from which rose a pleasant coolness like a strong odor. Back from the edge of the bluff, in the quiet of well - spaced trees, stood the houses. They seemed deserted on this midsummer afternoon ; those people who had the energy to stir had gone to the polo grounds. The Phillips house was asleep, but Helen finally roused a servant, who departed in search of Venetia. The silence of the long drawing-room, with its close array of dominating furniture, oppressed her. She moved about restlessly, then crossed the hall to an open window, where from the north the lake air was floating into the close house. Outside on the terrace there were voices.

The murmur of the voices was broken by a laugh which she knew to be her husband’s, and she started forward in surprise. Through the open window she could see the blue lake, and, nearer, a corner of the north terrace, where the luxuriant vines curtained a sheltered nook. Jackson and Mrs. Phillips were there, leaning slightly forward in the animation of their talk. The widow put her hand on the architect’s arm to emphasize her words, and it lay there while she looked into the man’s face with her vivacious, gleaming eyes. The odor of Jackson’s cigar floated up through the open window into Helen’s face.

It was nothing. She had no suspicion of wrong, or jealousy of this woman, who liked men, — all men. Yet some unfamiliar pain gripped her heart. Some mysterious and hostile force had entered her field, and she seemed to see it pictured, dramatized here before her in this little scene, a man and a woman with chairs pulled close together, their faces aglow with eager feelings ! The other part of her husband, that side she dimly felt and put from her with dread, was fed by this woman. And the wife hated her for it.

She lingered a moment, not listening, but trying to still her beating heart, not daring to trust herself to move. . . .

There was nothing evil, however, between those two on the terrace. The architect had come from town by an early train to see the polo, and there Mrs. Phillips had found him, and had brought him home in her automobile. She had just learned a piece of news that concerned the architect closely, and they were discussing it in the shade and quiet of the north terrace.

“ I know they ’re going to start soon. The judge let it out last night. He’s no friend of yours, of course, because I like you. You must get hold of your cousin and the other trustees.”

It was here that Mrs. Phillips laid her hand on the young man’s arm in her eagerness. Hart murmured his thanks, thinking less of the widow than of the trustees of the Powers Jackson bequest.

“ It ’ll be the biggest thing of its kind we have had in this city for years. It’s only right that you should have it, too. Can’t your wife win over the judge ? He ’s always talking about her.”

It was not strange that the man should take the woman’s hand in the end, and hold it while he expressed his gratitude for all her good offices to him. It was a pleasant hand to hold, and the woman was an agreeable woman to have in one’s confidence. Naturally, he could not know that she considered all men base, — emotionally treacherous and falsehearted. . . .

Venetia found Helen in the drawingroom, very white, her lips trembling, and beads of perspiration on her forehead.

“ It’s nothing,” the older woman protested. “ I should n’t have walked so far. And now I must go back at once, — yes, really I must. I ’m so sorry ! ”

“ Let me call Mr. Hart,” Venetia said, troubled by the woman’s face. “ I saw him come in with mamma a little while ago.”

“ No, no, I prefer not, please. It would worry him.”

Then Venetia drove her home, and left her calmer, more herself, but still cold. She kissed her, with a girl’s demonstrativeness, and the older woman burst into tears.

“ I am so weak and so silly ! I see things queerly,” she explained, endeavoring to smile.

After the girl had gone, Helen tried to recover her ordinary calm. She played with the little Francis, who was beginning to venture along the walls and chairs of his nursery, testing the power in his sturdy legs. This naïve manifestation of his masculine quality touched the mother strangely. She saw in this germ of manhood the future of the boy. What other of man’s instincts would he have ? Would he, too, fight for his share of the spoil of the world ?

The terrible hour of her woman’s agony was fast approaching, when she should put forth another being into the struggle with its mates. She did not shrink from the pain before her, although she began to wonder if it might not end her own life, having that dark foreboding common to sensitive women at this crisis.

If death came, now, what had she done with her life ? She would leave it like a meal scarce tasted, a task merely played with. This afternoon when she saw her husband, so remote from her, traveling another road, a bitter sense of the fruitlessness of all living had entered her heart. This husband, whom she had so passionately loved !

An hour later, as the architect was taking his leave of Mrs. Phillips, the butler brought him a telephone message from his house. His wife was suddenly taken ill. He raced home through the leafy avenues in the big touring car, which fortunately stood ready to take him. He found Helen white and exhausted, her eyes searching the vacant horizon of her bedroom.

“ Why, Nell ! Poor girl! ” he exclaimed, leaning over her, trying to kiss her. “Venetia said you were there this afternoon. Why did n’t you let me know ? ”

Her lips were cold and scarcely closed to his caress. She pushed him gently from her, wishing to be alone in her trial. But shortly, purging her heart of any suspicion or jealousy, — still haunted by that fear of death, — she drew him again to her.

“You were with Mrs. Phillips. I did n’t — It’s all right, Francis. I love you, dear! ”

XII.

Rumor had it that the Powers Jackson trust was about to be fulfilled. It had become known among the friends of the trustees that during these prosperous times the fund for the educational project had grown apace, and was now estimated to be from five to six millions of dollars. It was understood that certain trustees were in favor of handing over this munificent bequest to a large local university, with the stipulation that a part of the money should be devoted to some form of manual training or technological school on the West Side.

One morning Jackson Hart read from the newspaper an item to the effect that negotiations were under way with the university.

“ So that’s their game ! ” he exclaimed to Helen, seeing an unexpected check to his ambition. He went away to the train, trying to remember who were the influential trustees of the university, and wondering whether, after all, there would be any monumental building. He scarcely noticed his wife’s disgust over the news.

She was stirred unwontedly to think that already to this extent had the old man’s design become blurred !

“He did n’t care for universities or theoretical education,” she protested warmly the next time she met Judge Phillips on the Chicago train.

Pemberton, also one of the trustees, was sitting beside the judge. He listened gravely to Helen’s speech. The judge, who preferred to talk babies or shrubs with a pleasant young woman, admitted that there had been some negotiations with the university; but nothing had been decided.

“Mr. Hollister seems to be against it. You ’ll have to talk to Pemberton here. It was his idea ! ”

“ He would n’t have done it! ” Helen protested, looking at Pemberton. “We often used to talk over college education. He thought that colleges educated the leaders, the masters; and there would always be enough of that kind of institution. He wanted to do something with his money for the people ! ”

“ Yes, of course, it must be a technical school,” Pemberton replied dryly, “and it must be out there on the West Side.”

“ But for the people, the working people,” she insisted.

“ Naturally ! But we are all the ' people,’ are n’t we, Mrs. Hart ? I have n’t much sympathy with this talk nowadays about the ' people ’ as opposed to any other class.”

“ That’s the unions ! ” the judge nodded sagely. “ We are all the ‘ people ’! We want to offer the best kind of education for the poor boy or the rich boy. What was Powers himself ? His school must be a place to help boys such as he was.”

They were both completely at sea as to the donor’s real intentions, she felt sure, and she was eager to have them see the matter as she saw it. Suddenly ideas came to her, things she wished to say, things that seemed to her very important to say. She remembered talks that she had had with the old man, and certain remarks about college education which had dropped from him like sizzling metal.

“ But a technological school like the one in Boston,” — Pemberton had instanced this famous school as an example they should follow, — “ that’s a place to educate boys out of their class, to make them ambitious, to push them ahead of their mates into some higher class.”

“ Well ? ” asked Pemberton. " What’s the matter with that idea?”

“ Uncle wanted something so different ! He wanted to make boys good workmen, to give them something to be contented with when they had just labor before them, daily labor, in the factories and mills.”

The judge’s face was puckered in puzzle. He was of an older generation, and he could see life only in the light of competition. Free competition, that was his ideal. And the constant labor disputes in Chicago had thickened his prejudices against the working people as a class. He believed that their one aim was to get somebody’s money without working for it.

But the other man was more responsive. He felt that this woman had an idea, that she knew perhaps what the benefactor really wanted, and so they talked of the school until the train reached Chicago.

“ Well,” the judge said, as the people bustled to leave the car, " I hope we can get the thing settled pretty soon, and start on the building. I want to see something done before I die.”

“ Yes,” Helen assented. " I should think you would want to see the school go up. I hope Jackson will have the building of it.”

She expressed this hope very simply, without considering how it might strike the trustees. It was merely a bit of sentiment with her that her husband, who had got his education from Powers Jackson, might, as a pure labor of love, in gratitude, build this monument to the old man. It did not then enter her mind that there would be a very large profit in the undertaking. She assumed that the architect would do the work without pay!

But Pemberton’s thin lips closed coldly, and the judge’s reply made her face turn crimson for her indelicacy.

“ We have n’t got that far yet, Mrs. Hart. It’s probable that we shall have a competition of designs.”

The two men raised their hats and disappeared into the black flood pouring across the bridge, while she got into an omnibus. That remark of hers, she felt, might have undone all the good of the talk they had had about the old man’s plan. Her cheeks burned again as she thought of hinting for favors to her husband. It seemed a mean, personal seeking, when she had been thinking solely of something noble and pure.

This idea distressed her until she was engulfed in that mammoth caravansary where one half of Chicago shops and, incidentally, meets its acquaintances and gossips. She hurried hither and thither in this place in the nervous perturbation of buying. Finally, she had to mount to the third floor to have a correction made in her account. There, in the centre of the building, nearly an acre of floor space was railed off for the office force, the bookkeepers and tally clerks and cashiers. Near the aisle thirty or forty girls were engaged in stamping little yellow slips. Each had a computation machine before her and a pile of slips. Now and then some girl would glance up listlessly from her work, let her eyes wander vacantly over the vast shop, and perhaps settle for a moment on the face of the lady who was waiting before the cashier’s window. This store boasted of the excellent character of its employees. They were of a neater, more intelligent, more American class than those employed in other large retail stores. Even here, however, they had the characteristic marks of dull, wholesale labor.

Helen was hypnotized by the constant punch, click, and clatter of the computation machines, the repeated movements of the girls’ arms as they stretched out for fresh slips, inserted them in the machines, laid them aside. This was the labor of the great industrial world, — constant, rhythmic as a machine is rhythmic, deadening to soul and body. Standing there beside the railing, she could hear the vast clatter of our complex life, which is carried on by just such automata as these girls! What was the best education to offer them, and their brothers and fathers and lovers ? What would give them a little more sanity, more joy and humanity ? — that was the one great question of education. Not what would make them and their fellows into department managers or proprietors!

The receipted bill came, with a polite bow. She stuffed the change into her purse and hurried away, conscious that the girl nearest the railing was looking languidly at the back of her gown.

Before going to the Auditorium to meet some women who were to lunch with her there, she stopped at her husband’s office. The architect had moved lately to the top story of a large new building on Michigan Avenue, where his office had expanded. He had taken a partner, a pleasant, smooth-faced young man, Fred Stewart, who had excellent connections in the city, which were expected to bring business to the firm. Cook was still the head draughtsman, but there were three men and a stenographer under him now. His faith in Hart had been justified, and yet at times he shook his head over some of the work which passed through the office.

He recognized Helen when she entered the outer office, and opened the little wicket gate for her to step inside.

“ Your husband ’s busy just now, been shut up with a contractor most all the morning. Something important ’s on probably. Shall I call him ? ”

“ No,” she answered. “ I ’ll wait a while. Is this the new work ? ” She pointed in surprise to the sketches on the walls of the office. “ It’s so long since I have been in the office. I had no idea you had done so much.”

“ More ’n that, too ! There ’s some we don’t hang out here,” the draughtsman answered. “We’ve kept pretty busy ! ” He liked his boss’s wife. She had a perfectly simple, kindly manner with all the world, and a face that men love. The year before she had had Cook and his younger brother in the country over Sunday, and treated them like “ distinguished strangers,” as Cook expressed it.

“ That’s the Bushfields’ house, — you know it, perhaps ? This is Arnold Starr’s residence at Marathon Point, — Colonial style. That’s an Odd Fellows hall in Peoria. I did that myself.”

Helen said something pleasant about the blunt elevation of the Odd Fellows hall.

“ That’s the Graveland,” he continued, pointing to a dingy photograph that she recognized. “ It was called after the contractor’s name. We did that the first year.”

“Yes, I think I remember,” she murmured. That was the building her husband had done for the disreputable contractor, who had made it a mere lathand-plaster shell.

She kept on around the room, studying the photographs and sketches. Among the newer ones there were several rows of semi-detached houses that, in spite of the architect’s efforts, looked as if they had been carved out of the same piece of cake. Some of these were so brazen in their commonplaceness that she thought they must be the work of the Cooks. Probably Hart had got to that point of professional success where he merely “ criticised ” a good many of the less important sketches, leaving the men in the office to work them out.

She sat down to wait, her interest in the office sketches dulled. They were like the products of the great emporium that she had just left, — of all marketable kinds to suit all demands. The architect worked in all the “ styles,” —Gothic, early English, French château, etc. There was nothing sincere, honest, done because the man could do it that way and no other. It was clever contrivance.

Men came and went in the offices, the little doors fanning back and forth in an excitement of their own. The place hummed with business ; messengers and clerks came in from the elevators ; contractors exchanged words with the busy Cook; and through all sounded the incessant call of the telephone, the bang of the typewriter. A hive of industry ! It would have pleased the energetic soul of the manager of Steele’s emporium.

Meantime the wife was thinking, “ What does it mean to him ? ” When they began their married life in a flat on the North Side, Jackson had brought his sketches home ; they had kept a little closet-like room off the hall where he worked evenings. But from the time they had moved into the Loring house he had rarely brought home his work; he was too tired at night and felt the need for distraction. Had he lost his interest in the art side of his profession ? Was he turning it into a money-making business, like Steele’s ? She reproached herself as the spender and enjoyer, with the children, of this money, which came out of these ephemeral and gaudy buildings, whose pictures dotted the walls.

She was roused by the sound of her husband’s voice. He was coming through the inner door, and he spoke loudly, cheerily to his companion.

“ Well, then, it’s settled. Shall I have Nelson draw the papers ? ” A thick, cautious voice replied, " There ain’t any hurry, is there ? What in hell do we want of paper, anyway ? ”

Then they emerged into the outer office. The stranger’s square, heavy face, his grizzled beard, and thick eyebrows were not unknown to her.

“ Why ! You here ! ” the architect exclaimed, when he caught sight of his wife. " Why did n’t you let me know? Always tell Miss Fair to call me.”

He took her hand, and putting his other hand under her chin he gave her a little caress, like a busy, indulgent husband.

“ Who was that man, Francis ? ” she asked.

“ The one who came out with me ? That was a contractor, a fellow named Graves.”

She had it on her lips to say, “ And you promised me once that you would never have any more business with him.” But she was wise, and said simply, “ I came away this morning without enough money, and I have those women at luncheon, you know.”

“ Of course! Here! ” He rang a bell and pulled a little cheque book from a mass of papers, letters, memoranda that he carried in his pocket. He made out a cheque quickly with a fountain pen, still standing.

“There, Miss Fair!” He handed the cheque to the waiting stenographer.

“ Get that cashed at the bank downstairs and give the money to Mrs. Hart.”

When the young woman, with an impersonal glance at the husband and wife, had disappeared, the architect turned to Helen and pulled out his watch.

“ I may have to go to St. Louis tonight. If you don’t see me on the five two, you ’ll know I have gone. I ’ll be back Saturday, anyway. That’s when we dine with the Crawfords, don’t we ? ”

His mind gave her only a superficial attention, and yet he seemed happy in spite of the pressure of his affairs. The intoxication of mere activity, the excitement of “ doing,” so potent in our country, had got its grip on him. In his brown eyes there burned a fire of restless thoughts, schemes, combinations, which he was testing in his brain all the time. Yet he chatted courteously, while they waited for the stenographer to return.

“ By the way,” he remarked, “ I telephoned Everett this morning, and he says there’s nothing in that story about their giving the university the money. He says Hollister knows uncle would n’t have wanted it, and Hollister is dead set against it.”

“ Judge Phillips and Mr. Pemberton were on the train with me this morning, and they talked about it. They don’t seem altogether clear what the trustees will do. I hope they won’t do that. It would be too bad !”

“ I should say so! ” Jackson added warmly.

He accompanied his wife downstairs, and bought her some violets from the florist in the vestibule. They parted at the street corner. She watched him until he was swallowed up by the swift flowing stream on the walk, her heart a

little sad. He was admirable toward her in every way. And yet — and yet — she hated the bustle of the city that had caught up her husband, and set him turning in its titanic, heartless embrace. There rose before her the memory of those precious days on the sea when they had begun to love.

XIV.

Hart had lately bought a couple of hunters, and Sundays, when it was good weather, they often went over to the club stables to see the horses and the hounds. It was a pleasant spot of a fine summer morning. The close-cropped turf rolled gently westward to a large horizon of fields, where a few isolated trees, branching loftily, rose against a clear sky. The stables were hidden in a little hollow, and beyond was a paddock where a yelping pack of hounds was kept. Close at hand at one side crouched in their pen some captive foxes, listening sharp-eyed to the noisy dogs.

No sports of any kind were allowed on Sundays. The community was severely orthodox in regard to the observance of Sunday, as in other merely moral matters. But when the weather was good there were usually to be found about the stables a group of young men and women, preparing for tête-à-tête rides or practicing jumps at the stone wall beside the paddock. Later they would stroll back to the club veranda for a cool drink, and gossip until the church-going members returned from the morning service, and it was time to dress for luncheon.

Of the younger set Venetia Phillips was most often to be found down by the stone wall on a Sunday morning. She had come home from Europe this last time, handsome, tall, and fearless, thirsty for excitement of all sorts, and had made much talk in the soberer circles of suburban society. She was a great lover of dogs and horses, and went about followed by a troop of lolloping dogs, — an immense bull presented by an English admirer, and a wolf hound specially imported, being the leaders of the pack. She was one of the young women who still played golf, now that it was no longer fashionable, and on hot days she might be seen on the links, her brown arms bare to the shoulders, and a flood of blue-black hair hanging down her back. She rode to all the hunts, not excepting the early morning meets late in the season. It was said, also, that she drank too much champagne at the hunt dinners, and allowed a degree of familiarity to her admirers that shocked public opinion in a respectable and censorious society, which had found it hard to tolerate the mother.

Indeed, Mrs. Phillips could do nothing with her ; she even confided her troubles to Helen : “ My dear, the girl has had every chance over there abroad, — we had the very best introductions. She spoiled it all by her idiocy. Stanwood is making a fool of himself with a woman, too. Enjoy your children, now, while you can spank them when they are naughty ! ”

Helen, who had little enough sympathy with the domestic tribulations of the rich, remembered the widow’s words the next time she met Venetia at the stone wall by the club stables, watching Lane, who was trying a new hunter. Lane’s temper was notoriously bad ; the Kentucky horse was raw and nervous; he refused the jump, almost throwing his rider. Lane, too conscious of the spectators, his vanity touched, beat the horse savagely on the head.

“Low!” Venetia grumbled audibly, turning her back on the scene. “ Come ! ” she said to Helen, seizing her arm.

“ Have n’t you had enough of brutes for one morning ? Come up to the club and have a talk. That’s the man madame my mother thinks I am going to marry. Do you suppose he ’d use the whip on his wife ? ”

They had the club veranda to themselves at that mid-morning hour. Venetia flung herself into a chair, and flicked the tips of her boots with her whip. The small Francis, who had followed his mother, tumbled on the grass with the terrier Pete. Now and then Pete would hobble to the veranda and look at his mistress.

“You wouldn’t marry that person, would you? Well? You want to say something disagreeable. You have had it on your conscience for weeks. I could see it in your eye. Spit it out, as the boys say! ”

“ Yes, I have had something on my mind ! Why — why are you so ” —

“ You mean, why do I smoke ? drink champagne ? and let men kiss me?”

She laughed at the look of consternation on Helen’s face.

“ That’s what you mean, isn’t it? My sporting around generally, and drinking too much at that dinner last fall, and supplying these veranda tabbies with so much food for thought ? Why can’t I be the nice, sweet young woman you were before you were married, eh ? A comfort to Mrs. Phillips and an ornament to Forest Manor ! ”

“ You need n’t be all that, and yet strike a pleasanter note,” the older woman laughed back.

“ My dear gray mouse, I’m lots worse than that! Do you know where I was the other night when mamma was in such a temper because I had n’t come home, and telephoned all around to the neighbors ? ”

“ At the Bascoms’ ? ”

“ Of course, all sweetly tucked up in bed. Not a bit of it! A lot of us had dinner, and went to see a show, — that was all on the square. But afterwards Teddy Stewart and I did the Clark Street levee, at one in the morning, and quite by ourselves. We saw lots and lots, — it was very informing ; I could tell you heaps ; and it went all right until Teddy, like a little fool, got into trouble at one of the places. Some one said something to me not quite refined, and Ted was just enough elated to be on his dignity. If we had n’t had an awful piece of luck, there would have been a little paragraph in the paper the next morning. Would n’t that have made a noise ? ”

“ You little fool! ” groaned Helen.

“ Oh ! I don’t know,” Venetia continued imperturbably. “Just as I had hold of Ted and was trying to calm him down, somebody hit him, and there was a general scrap. He is n’t so much of a fool when he is all sober. Just then a man grabbed me, and I found myself on the street. It was— Well, no matter just now who it was. Then the man went back for Ted, and after a time he got him, rather the worse for his experience. We had to send him to a hotel, and then the man saw me home to the Bascoms’. My, what a talking he put up to me on the way to the North Side ! ”

She waited to see what effect she had produced, but as Helen said nothing she continued, —

“ I suppose you are thinking I am a regular little red devil. But you don’t know what girls do. I’ve seen a lot of girls all over. And most of ’em, if they travel in a certain class, do just as fool things as I do. On the quiet, you understand, and most of them don’t get into trouble, either. They marry all right in the end, and become quiet little mammas like you, dear. Sometimes when they are silly, or weak, or have bad luck, there’s trouble. Now, I am not talking loose, as Ted would say. I’ve known Baltimore girls, and New York girls, and Philadelphia girls, and Boston girls, — they ’re the worst ever!

“ Why should the women be so different from the men, anyway ? They are the same flesh and blood as their fathers and brothers, and other girls’ fathers and brothers, too. . . . Don’t make that face at me ! I’m nice, too, at least a little nice. Did n’t you ever sit here evenings, or over at the Eversley Club, and watch the nice little girls ? But perhaps you could n’t tell what it means. You ought to get a few points from me or some other girl who is next them. We could tell you what they’ve done ever since they left school, day by day.”

The small Francis was rolling over and over on the green turf, rejoicing in the pleasure of soiling his white suit. Beyond the polo field a couple on horseback were passing slowly along the curving road into the woods. The cicadas sang their piercing August song in the shrubs. It was a drowsy, decorous scene.

“ It is n’t all like that,” the older woman protested. “ Most of the men and women you know, here in Chicago” —

“ Oh yes! They ’re good out here, most of ’em, and dull, damn dull. They ’re afraid to take off their gloves for fear it is n’t the correct thing. A lot of ’em are n’t used to their good clothes, like that Mrs. Rainbow. As uncle says, ‘ Our best people are religious and moral.’ Chicago is too new to be real naughty, and too busy, but wait a few years. Meanwhile, there’s more going on than you dream of, gray mouse ! ”

“ You are too wise, Venetia ! ”

“ I ’ll tell you the reason why we sport. We ’re dull, and we are looking for some fun. The men get all the excitement they need, scrambling for money. Girls want to be sports, too, and they can’t do the money act. So they sport — otherwise. That’s the why.”

She rapped the floor with her whip, and laughed at Helen’s perplexity.

“ I want to be a real sport, and know what men are like, really, when they are off parade, as you nice women don’t know ’em.”

“Well, what are they like? ”

“ Some beasts, some cads, some good fellows,” Venetia pronounced definitively. “ Do you know why I let men kiss me sometimes ? To see if they will, if that sort of thing is all they want. And most of ’em do want just that, married or single. When a man has the chance, why, he goes back to the ape mighty quick.”

She nodded sagely when Helen laughed at her air of wisdom. Then she continued serenely, —

“ There are some of them now, coming up from the paddock. They have had their little Sunday stroll, and now they want a drink to make them feel cool and comfy, and some talk with the ladies. We must trot out our prettiest smiles and nicest talk, while they sit tight and are amused.”

“And so you think this is all, just these women and men you see here and in other places like this ? And the millions and millions of others who are trying to live decent lives, who work and struggle ? ”

“ I talk of those I know, dearie. What are the rest to me ? Just dull, ordinary people you never meet except on the street or in the train. We are the top of it all. ... I don’t care for books and all that sort of thing, or for slumming and playing with the poor. If you knew them, too, I guess you’d find much the same little game going on down there.”

“ What a horrid world ! ”

“ It is a bit empty,” the girl yawned. “ I suppose the only thing, after you have had your run, is to marry the decentest man you can find, who won’t get drunk, or spend your money, or beat you, and have a lot of children. Yours are awfully nice ! I’d like to have the kids without the husband, — only that would make such a row ! ”

“ And that would please your mother, to have you married ? ”

“ Oh, mother! I suppose it would please her to have me marry Mr. Stephen Lane,” Venetia answered coldly. “ One does n’t talk about one’s mother, or I’d like to tell you a thing or two on that head. She need n’t worry over me. She’s had her fun, and is taking what she can get now.”

The group of men and women drew near the clubhouse. Jackson stopped to speak to a man who had just driven up. Venetia pointed to him.

“ There! See Jackie, your good man ? He’s buzzing old Pemberton, that crusty pillar of society, because he’s got a little game to play with him. You must n’t look so haughty, dear wife. It’s your business, too, to be nice to old Pemberton. I shall leave you when he comes up, so that you can beguile him with your sweet ways. It’s money in thy husband’s purse, mouse, and hence in thy children’s mouths. Now, if we women could scramble for the dollars, — why, we should n’t want other kinds of mischief. I’d like to be a big broker, like Rainbow, and handle deals, and make the other fellows pay, pay, pay ! ”

She swung the small Francis over her head and tumbled him in the grass, to the delight of Pete, who hobbled about his mistress, yelping with joy.

There was something hard and final in the girl’s summary of her experience. Vigorous, hot-blooded, and daring, Venetia would have battled among men as an equal, and got from the fight for existence health, and sanity, and joy. As it was, she was rich enough to be protected in the struggle for existence, and was tied up by the prejudices of her class. She was bottled passion !

The architect still held Pemberton in conversation on the drive, and Venetia presently returned to Helen, smiling slyly into her face.

“ That doctor man was an amusing chap, was n’t he ? I mean Dr. Coburn, the one who mended up Pete when I was a young miss, and outraged mamma by sending her a receipted bill for two hundred and fifty dollars. He asks about you. Why did you drop him ? ”

“ Where have you seen him ? ”

“ Oh, here and there. Why not ? He was the man who helped me out of that scrape with Teddy. Wouldn’t Jackie let you have anything to do with him ? Jackie is an awful snob, you know.”

“ How is he ? ”

“ Just as always, — poor, down at the heel and all over, an out-and-out crank.”

“ How do you meet him ? ” Helen asked pointedly.

“ Sometimes at his hang-out, as he calls it. I’ve had supper there once or twice with Molly Bascom. You need n’t be alarmed. We talk science, and he abuses doctors. He trundled off to Paris or Vienna with that queer machine of his, and got some encouragement. You should hear him talk about Europe ! Now he’s crazy about some new scheme. He may not make good, but he has a great time thinking all by himself. He’d starve himself to do what he ’s after. That’s the real thing. I offered him money once! ”

“ Venetia! ”

“ Yes. I said, ‘ See here, friend, I’ve more of this than I want,’ which was a lie. But I was willing to sell a horse or two. ' Help yourself,’ I said. I put a cardcase I had with me on the table, stuffed of course. He took it up, took out what was in it, and put the case back. ‘ None of that,’ he said. ‘ I don’t take money from a woman,’ and he handed the money back. I was glad afterwards that he did, though he looked specially hard up. I suppose I might have taken a nicer way to do it, but I thought he would understand and treat me like a little girl, as he always has. . . . Well, there comes Jackson, at last.”

She gave the architect a hand, which he shook with mock impressiveness.

“ How do, Jackie ! I Ve been corrupting your angel.”

It was evident that she and Jackson understood each other very well.

XV.

The Harts were to dine at the Stewarts’, and Jackson Hart had considered this dinner of sufficient importance to bring him back to Chicago all the way from Indianapolis. Elisha Stewart made his money many years ago, when he commanded a vessel on the lakes, by getting control of valuable ore properties. The Elisha Stewarts had lived in Shoreham for many years, and were much considered, — very good people, indeed. Their rambling, old-fashioned white house, with a square cupola projecting from the roof, was one of the village landmarks. It was surrounded by a grove of firs set out by Elisha himself .when he built the house.

It was a large dinner, and most of the guests were already assembled in the long drawing-room when Helen and Jackson arrived. The people were all talking very earnestly about a common topic.

“ It’s the Crawfords,” Mrs. Stewart murmured asthmatically into Helen’s ear. “ You know they find everything in a frightful tangle. There won’t be much left.”

“ Indeed ! ” Jackson exclaimed sympathetically.

“ He was n’t all right, not fit for business for more than a year before he died,” Colonel Raymond was saying to the group. “ And he snarled things up pretty well by what I hear.”

“ That slide in copper last March must have squeezed him ! ”

“ Squeezed ? I should say it did.”

“ It was n’t only copper.”

“ No, no, it was n’t only copper,” assented several men.

With the women, the more personal application of the fact was openly made.

“Poor old Anthony! It must have troubled him to know there was n’t one of his family who could look out for himself. Morris was a pleasant fellow, but after he got out of Harvard he never seemed to do much. It will come hard on Linda.”

“ What has the youngest boy been up to lately ? ”

“ The same thing, I guess.”

“I heard he’d been doing better since he went on the ranch.”

“He couldn’t do very much else there.”

“ Is n’t there anything left ? ”

“ Oh, the widow will have a little. But the sons-in-law will have to hunt jobs. One is out in California, is n’t he? ”

The company could not get away from the topic. After they went out to dinner, it echoed to and fro around the table.

“ I say it’s a shame, a crime ! ” Mr. Buchanan pronounced. “ A man with that sort of family has no right to engage in speculative enterprises without settling a proper sum on his family first. There’s his eldest daughter married to an invalid, his youngest daughter engaged to be married to a parson, and neither of his sons showing any business ability.”

“ That’s a fact, Oliver,” Mr. Stewart nodded. “ But you know Anthony always loved deep water.”

“ And now his family have got to swim in it! ”

“ He was a most generous man,” Pemberton threw into the conversation. “ I hardly know of a man who’s done more first and last for this town.”

“ Seems to have looked after other people’s affairs better ’n his own. It’s a pity now the boys were n’t brought up to business.”

“ That is n’t the way nowadays.”

From time to time there were feeble efforts to move the talk out of the rut in which it had become fixed. But the minds of most about the table were fascinated by the spectacle of ruin so closely presented to them. The picture of a solid, worldly estate crumbling before their eyes stirred their deepest emotions. For the moment it crowded out that other great topic of the strike in the building trades. Everyone at the table held substantially the same views on both these matters, but the ruin of the Crawford fortune was more immediately dramatic than the evils of unionism.

“ When are you fellows going to start that school, judge ? ” some one asked at last.

“ Not until these strikes let up, and there’s no telling when that will be. If these labor unions only keep on long enough, they will succeed in killing every sort of enterprise.”

Pemberton, who was seated next to Helen, remarked to her, —

“ You will be glad to know, Mrs. Hart, that the trustees have decided not to hand the work over to any institution, at least for the present.”

“ I am so glad of that! ” she replied.

“ That’s as far as we have got! ”

Sensitively alive to her former blunder in expressing her wish that her husband might draw the plans for the school, she took this as a hint, and dropped the subject altogether, although she had a dozen questions to ask him about it.

She noticed that Jackson, who was seated between Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Phillips, was drinking a good deal of champagne. She thought that he was finding the dinner as intolerably dull as she found it, for he rarely drank champagne. When the women gathered in the drawing-room, the topic of the Crawfords’ disaster had reached the anecdotal stage.

“ Poor Linda! Do you remember how she hated Chicago ? She’s been living at Cannes this season, has n’t she ? I suppose she ’ll come straight home now. Does she own that place in the Berkshires ? ”

“ No, everything was in his name.”

“ He was one of the kind who would keep everything in his own hands.”

“Even that ranch does n’t belong to Ted.”

“My, what a tragedy it is ! ”

Helen sat limply in her chair. There seemed to be no end to the talk of the lost money. The leaden dullness of the dinner-talk, the dead propriety and conventionality of the service, the dishes, the guests, had never before so whelmed her spirit as they did to-night. These good people were stung into unusual animation because a man had died leaving his family, not poor, but within sight of poverty, for poverty is the deadliest spectre to haunt the bourgeois, at his lying down and at his uprising!

When the men returned, murmuring among themselves fragments of the same topic, she felt as though she might shriek out or laugh hysterically, and as soon as she could she clutched her husband as he was sitting down beside Mrs. Pemberton.

“Take me away, Francis. It’s awful,” she whispered.

“ What ’s the matter ? Don’t you feel well ? ”

“ Yes, yes, I am all right. But can’t we get away ? ”

As they got into their carriage, he demanded, “ What was the matter ? ”

“ Nothing, — just the awful dullness of it, — such people, — such talk, talk, talk about poor Mr. Crawford’s money ! ”

“ I thought the crowd was all right,” he grumbled. “ What better do you want ? ”

Then they were silent, and from the heat, fatigue, and champagne, he relapsed into a doze on the way home. But when they reached the house he woke up briskly enough, and began to talk of the dinner again : —

“ Nell, Mrs. Phillips was speaking to me about Venetia. She ’s worried to death over the girl. The men say pretty rough things about her. Little fool! She ’d better marry Lane and keep quiet.”

“ Like mother, like daughter,” Helen replied dryly.

“ What makes you say that ? Louise is all right; just likes to have her hand squeezed now and then.”

“ Phew ! ” Helen exclaimed impatiently.

There was something so short and hard in his wife’s voice that Jackson looked at her in surprise. They went to their dressing-room ; now that he had got his eyes open once more Jackson made no haste to go to bed. He lit a cigarette, and leaned back against the open window, through which the night air was drawing gently. After a little time he remarked, —

“ The judge was talking some about the school. They are getting ready to build as soon as the strikes let up. Has Everett said anything to you about it ? ”

“ Not lately. I have n’t seen him since we were at the Buchanans’. Why?”

“ Why ! I am counting on Everett, and the last time I saw him he seemed to me to be side-stepping. I ’ve seen Pemberton once or twice, but he avoided the subject. I asked him point blank to-night what their plans were, and he said the papers had everything that had been settled. He ’s a stiff one! I saw you were talking to him. Did he say anything about the school ? ”

Helen, who had been moving about the room here and there, preparing to undress, suddenly stood quite still. The memory of her remark to Pemberton that morning on the train swept over her again, coloring her cheeks. She answered the question after a moment of hesitation, —

“Yes, he spoke about their not giving the money to the university, but that was all.”

“ Oh ! ” Jackson murmured in a disappointed tone. “ You might have drawn him out. He ’s likely to have a good deal to say about what is done. The judge is down on me, never liked me since I built for Louise, — thinks I stuck her, I suppose. Was n’t his money, though ! Hollister is on the fence ; he ’ll do what Everett tells him. It rests on Pemberton, mostly.”

Helen turned toward where he was standing and asked swiftly, “ Why do you want them to give it to you so much ? ”

“ Why ? ” The architect opened his mouth in astonishment. “ Don’t you know the size of the thing ? They ’re going to spend a million or more, put up one large building or several smaller ones. It’s a chance that does n’t come every week, to do a great public building.”

She had begun to unhook her dress, and her nervous fingers tangled the lace about the hooks. Jackson, seeing her predicament, put down his cigarette and stepped forward to help her. But she swerved away from him unconsciously, tugging at the lace until it broke loose from the hook.

“Francis!” she exclaimed, with a kind of solemnity. “You would not do it for money, just like any ordinary building?”

“ And why not ? ” he asked, puzzled. “Am I drawing plans for fun these days ? I ’ll tell you what, Nell, I need the money, and I need it badly. Something must turn up and right away. Since the strikes began there has n’t been much new business coming into the office, of course, and it costs us a lot to live as we do. That ’s plain enough.”

“We can live differently.”

“ Yes, but I don’t want to. That’s nonsense! ”

They were silent for a little while before their unfinished thoughts. He broke the silence first: —

“ Perhaps I ought to tell you that I ’ve been caught in an — investment, some stocks I bought. A friend of mine advised me, a broker who is in with Rainbow. But the thing went wrong. I don’t believe those fellows know as much as the man outside ! Well, instead of making a good thing by it, I must find ten or fifteen thousand dollars and find it mighty quick. Now if I get this commission, I can borrow the money all right. I know who will let me have it. And then by the end of the year it will straighten out. And the next time I go to buy stocks, well ” —

“ But that building, — the school ? ” Helen interrupted. She pulled a thin dressing-sacque over her shoulders, and sat down on the edge of the bed, looking breathlessly into his face. What he had said about his losses in the stock market had made no impression on her. “ That work is uncle Powers’s gift, his legacy to the people. You can’t make money out of it! ”

“ Why not ? ” he demanded shortly, and then added, with a dry little laugh, “ I should say that building rather than any other ! I’d like to pick up a few crumbs from the old man’s cake. It’s only common justice, seeing he did me out of all the rest.”

She stared at him with bewildered eyes. Perhaps she was not a very quick woman, if after five years of daily contact with her husband she did not know his nature. But the conceptions she had cherished of him were too deep to be effaced at once. She could not yet understand what he meant.

“ ‘ Did you out of all the rest ’ ? ” she queried in a low voice.

“ Yes ! ” he exclaimed hardily. “ And I think the trustees should take it into consideration that I did n’t contest the will, when I had the best kind of case and could have given them no end of trouble. I was a fool to knuckle under so quickly. I might at least have had an agreement with them about this matter ! ”

“So,” she said, “you want to build the school to make up what you think uncle should have given you ? ”

“You need n’t put it just like that! But I need every cent I can make. The bigger the building the better for me ! And I can do it as well for them as anybody. They ’re probably thinking of having a competition, and having in a lot of fellows from New York and Boston. They ought to keep it in this city, anyway, and then the only man I’d hate to run up against would be Wright. He’s got some mighty clever new men in his office.”

He talked on as he stripped off his coat and waistcoat and hung them neatly on the clothes-tree, detailing all the consideration he had given to his chances for securing this big commission. Evidently he had been turning it over and over in his mind, and he was desperately nervous lest he might lose what he had counted on all along ever since his marriage. He refrained from telling his wife that he felt she had seconded him feebly in this matter ; for she knew the judge, and Pemberton, and Everett, too, in a way better than he did.

Helen said nothing. There was nothing in her surprised and grieved heart to be said. For the first time she knew clearly what manner of man her husband was. She knew how he felt about his uncle. He was vindictive about him, and seemed to welcome this job as a chance to get even with the old man for slighting him in his will. For some reason unknown to her he had not tried at the time of his death to break his will and show his ingratitude, and now he was sorry that he had displayed so much forbearance.

This sudden sight of the nakedness of the man she loved dulled her heart so that she could not view the thing simply. It was impossible for her to see that there was nothing very dreadful in his attitude, nothing more than a little ordinary human selfishness, sharpened by that admirable system of civilized selfinterest, which our philosophers and statesmen take such delight in praising ! She had been dreaming of her husband’s designing this great building as a testimonial, a monument of gratitude, to the man who had succored his youth, who had given him his education. Her sentiment turned rancid in her heart.

“Now, if Everett should say anything to you, give you a chance, you know what it means to me! ” Jackson remarked finally, as he put his boots outside the door for the man to get in the morning.

But she had already stepped back into the dressing-room, and did not hear him. When she returned her husband was already in bed, and his eyelids were closed in sleep. She placed herself beside him and turned out the light.

She lay there a long, long time, her open eyes staring upwards into the darkness, her arms stretched straight beside her, as she used to lie when she was a little child and her nurse had told her not to stir. Something strange had happened that day, something impalpable, unnamable, yet true, and of enormous importance to the woman. The man who lay there beside her, her husband, the indivisible part of her, had been suddenly cut from her soul, and was once more his own flesh, — some alien piece of clay, and ever so to be !

She did not cry or moan. She was stunned. All the little, petty manifestations of character, unobserved through those five years of marriage, were suddenly numbered and revealed to her. It was not a question of blame. They declared themselves to her as finalities, just as if she had suddenly discovered that her husband had four toes instead of five. He was of his kind, and she was of her kind. Being what she was, she could no longer worship him, being what he was. And her nature craved the privilege of worship. That thin, colorless protestantism of her fathers had faded into a nameless moralism. She had no Christ before whom she could pour her adoration and love ! Instead, she had taken to herself a man ; and now the clay of his being was crumbling in her hands. . . .

Outside the room the lake began to clamor on the sands beneath the bluff. It called her by its insistent moan. She left her bed and stepped out upon the little balcony that looked eastward from their bedroom. The warm night was filled with a damp mist that swathed the tree trunks to their branches, and covered the slow moving waves of the lake. Through this earth fog there was moving a current from some distant point, touching the sleeping village.

She held her arms out to the mist, vaguely, blindly, — demanding some compensation for living, some justification that she knew not of. And there in the vigil of the misty night the woman was born. From a soft, yielding, dreaming, feminine thing, there was born a new soul, — definite, hard, and precise in its judgment of men and life. . . .

In the house behind her slept her husband and her two boys. Her children and his ! But only in the words of the sentimentalists are children a sufficient joy to woman’s heart. Loving as she was by nature, she asked more of life than her two boys, whose little lives no longer clung to hers by the bonds of extreme infancy. They were growing to become men; they, too, like her husband, would descend into the market for the game which all men play. The fear of it gripped her heart!

And at last she wept, miserably, for the forlorn wreck of her worship, thinking of the glorious man she had once adored.

The next morning she said to her husband, —

“ Francis, I want to live in the city this winter.”

“ Well, — there’s time to think of it, — you may change your mind by the fall.”

She said no more, but the first step had been taken.

Robert Herrick.

(To be continued.)