MADAME ARVILLA had a great reputation in the gay seaside city. All day long her patrons walked in and out of her little office on the Board Walk. A tiny place it was, for rents were high; a narrow room — if indeed it could be called a room; a booth, rather, just wide enough to afford space for a person to walk carefully between the chairs on each side; only half a dozen chairs in all, for the space was short as well as narrow, and the farther end was cut off by a screen. Pushing past the screen, one came to the inner sanctum where Madame was accustomed to sit, in a low chair with a small table in front of her. A similar chair on the opposite side accommodated the customer. Palmistry was Madame Arvilla’s specialty. Of the mysteries of clairvoyance she maintained that she knew nothing; yet there were those who came away declaring that only clairvoyance could explain the remarkable things which she had told them.

There was nothing of the conventional sorceress in her appearance. She was a stoutish, middle-aged woman of benign aspect, who looked like some good, motherly soul from the rural districts. There was about her a wholesome homeliness, and in her speech a certain terseness and directness, although in accent and language she showed herself to be a person of some education. As a fortune-teller on the Board Walk she was an anomaly. But her gray eyes were extraordinarily keen and her manner was businesslike; and, for that matter, the Board Walk holds many anomalies.

There she sat, month in and month out, reading hands at a dollar a sitting. In the winter and spring her clientele was mostly respectable; in the summer it was quite likely to be the reverse; for thus the hotel population varied with the changing seasons. To her, seated behind her little table, her visitors broadly resolved themselves into two classes: those who wanted her to tell them all that she saw or fancied she saw in their hands, and those who desired her to use a certain discretion. As she was wont to express it: “In April and May they mostly want me to tell them the truth, but along in July and August they want me to be careful what I say.” But respectable or disreputable, she was interested in them all, for the study of human nature was not only her livelihood, but her unfailing entertainment — her dissipation indeed, as she sometimes said to herself. Usually, with an eye to business, she made her diagnosis as flattering as might be. That is, she avoided mentioning some unpleasant things which she saw or divined; yet she had been known to tell startling home truths, to utter warnings and to give good, practical advice. There had even been occasions when she had not belied the impression which her appearance gave of a person to whom one might appeal in trouble; but in those rare cases she scarcely let her left hand know what her right hand did; for, after all, she had her living to make, and benevolence is not business.

Her benevolence had never before carried her so far as on the occasion when, locking up her office and foregoing two days’ profits, she took Christine home to her father. In fact, when she found herself on the railway train she wondered at her own impulsiveness and was inclined to call herself a fool. But certainly Henry Barton’s daughter had a peculiar claim on her. Christine had visited her only twice, the first time accompanied by Rossiter. Madame Arvilla never forgot the astonishing vision of radiant, youthful beauty which she presented as, pushing aside the screen, she entered the dusky little office and seated herself in the low chair, laughing lightly — a laugh as care-free and irresponsible as a child’s. Madame Arvilla disliked Rossiter at first sight, and although at that time she knew nothing about either of them, she tried, while studying the lines of the girl’s hands, to warn her of the dangers to which her temperament as well as her beauty exposed her; a warning which was received with entire carelessness. It bore unexpected fruit, however, for when the moment of danger and perplexity came, the palmist was the only person to whom Christine ventured to turn.

“Well,” she said, as, entering the office, she seated herself once more in the low chair, “ some of your horrid things came true and I almost feel as if you had made them come true by saying them. So now perhaps you can tell me what to do next.” Her words were flippant, but her cheeks were deeply flushed and tears came to her eyes.

“It was the man ? ” asked Madame Arvilla.

“ Oh, yes, it was the man. He was dreadful.” She laid her hands, palms upward, on the table. “ Can’t you see what is going to become of me now? ” she asked.

Madame Arvilla smiled. “ There are limits to what I can see,” she said. “ You had better tell me about it, I think.”

For a moment it seemed difficult for Christine to find the right words. “ Oh,” she said at last, “he likes me very much too much, and of course his wife does n’t like it. She made it impossible for me to stay. And then he proposed horrid things that of course I could n’t do, so I thought I’d better run away. I don’t know what to do next and I thought of you. I don’t know another soul here. And you told me so much that I thought perhaps you could tell me more.”

Having delivered herself of this explanation, she wiped her eyes and leaned back, with the disengaged air of one who has to a certain extent divested herself of responsibility.

Madame Arvilla gazed at her with mingled dismay and curiosity. “ Were n’t you frightened when he proposed things that you could n’t do ? ” she asked.

“ Why, I did n’t have to do them,” said the girl ingenuously. “ And he is awfully fond of me,” she added indulgently.

“ And you were staying with them ? ”

“ Oh, I came as the children’s governess. Mrs. Rossiter and I were great friends. She spent a summer in the towm where I lived — and it was the only way I could get away from home.”

“ And you had to leave home? ”

“ Oh, I could n’t stand it! ” exclaimed the girl. “ Such a hateful little country town, and my father thinks everything nice is wicked. He’s a minister, you know. Every minute I spent there was a waste of time. I had to get away.”

“ And now the only thing to do is to go back,” said Madame Arvilla. “ That is as.simple as can be.”

“ Not at all,” said the girl. “ I don’t suppose my father will have me. He said that I should n’t leave, you see, so I ran away. He wrote me one letter that I thought very unkind, and since then we have n’t had anything to do with each other.”

“ And have you no mother ? ”

“ She died when I was a baby.”

This, reflected Madame Arvilla, was one of the cases where she was called upon to act, and she had decided to see that the girl was restored to her father even before further questioning had elicited the fact that Christine was the daughter of Henry Barton, and that the “ hateful little town ” was her own native place: the place associated with the recollections of her childhood and with the romance of her youth; the place of all others which she remembered with affection and revisited in her dreams.

As for Christine, she thought it odd that Madame Arvilla should have known her father, and very good of her to take so much trouble; but for her part, she was sorry to go back. “ Is n’t there anything else I can do? ” she asked plaintively.

“ You can’t possibly do anything else,” replied Madame Arvilla.

“ How dreadfully decided you are,” remonstrated Christine. Then she laughed her light laugh. “ At any rate Mr. Rossiter will be surprised. He won’t know what has become of me and I hope they’ll both worry.”

“ What an astonishing child for Henry Barton to have! ” was Arvilla’s mental comment.

When they looked out of the car window in the morning, a smiling landscape met their view: low, undulating hills checkered with parti-colored fields, some vividly green, others still showing brown between the furrows; here and there a patch of woodland or a group of fine trees. A tame landscape certainly; but Madame Arvilla gazed at it with the swelling heart of the home-coming exile. As they drew near the village and she noted one familiar landmark after another, her eyes filled. Looking at Christine through a mist, she saw that the girl was wiping away tears. “ After all, she has some natural feeling,” thought the woman, and leaning forward, she laid her hand gently on the girl’s hand. At this mark of sympathy Christine sniffed audibly.

“ Is n’t it too horrid ? ” she said. “ Oh, how I do hate this place! And you’ve made me come back to it. Why could n’t I stay with you, Madame Arvilla, and learn to tell fortunes ? ”

Madame Arvilla laughed as she wiped her eyes surreptitiously. “ By the way,” she said, “ you can call me Mrs. Simpson now. Not but what Arvilla is my name too. It’s my Christian name, and I thought it answered better for my profession.”

“ Much better,” agreed Christine. “ We’d better not say anything about the palmistry before father,” she added. “ He is n’t very broad-minded, you know.”

Arvilla winced a little even while she smiled, and there was a silence, broken at length by the girl.

“ I suppose I shall marry Geoffrey,” she said discontentedly, “ and goodness knows I don’t want to.”

“ And who is Geoffrey? ”

The girl’s face dimpled. “ He’s just Solid Worth in every sense of the word. He bores me, and his family bore me, and father would be delighted.”

“ Go on,” said Madame Arvilla, glad to be diverted from her own thoughts. “ Tell me all about Geoffrey.”

“ Oh, well, he and his relations are the pillars of my father’s church. They think most things are wicked. They have heaps of money and don’t spend it— except a little on missionaries. I’d have to go to church on Sundays in a nice thick silk dress, and to prayer-meetings on weekday evenings in second-best. I’d never be allowed to dance or play cards any more than I am now, but I’d make calls — lots of them. And dinner at one and tea at six all the rest of my life.”

“ Then why marry him ? ”

“ Now do you really suppose I can keep quiet and not do anything at all ? ” asked the girl with exasperation.

“ No, I certainly don’t,” said Madame Arvilla.

“ Besides, Geoffrey is rather nice himself, and he cares for me a great deal. And if I have n’t anything else to do I1 ’m afraid I might forget his surroundings long enough to marry him. But I’d certainly find I had married his surroundings too, for he is n’t his own master, poor Geoffrey.”

“ But don’t be in such a hurry. You need n’t settle your whole life to-day. Do try to believe that to-morrow is coming — and more to-morrows after it.”

“ If I could stay with you,” declared Christine, “ perhaps I could behave. You are not so terribly serious.”

Meantime the train was drawing up to the station. “ Here we are! ” exclaimed Arvilla. “ And Christine, I’m sure your father will be glad to see you. Do be a little glad to see him.”

Christine shrugged her shoulders. “ I could be,” she said, “ but I know him better than you do.”

When Henry Barton held out his arms to his daughter his agitation would have touched her more if it had not overwhelmed her with embarrassment. As it was, she experienced a shame-faced emotion, and when released from his embrace made all haste to fly to her room, where, to her great surprise, she at once burst into tears.

At first sight, Arvilla thought him little changed. The slight stoop, the thinning of the hair on his temples, and the lines on his face merely accentuated his type, which had always been that of the refined, ascetic Puritan parson of the old school. On the other hand, it was at first somewhat difficult for him to recognize in her the Arvilla of the old days, until her voice bridged the chasm, when he presently forgot that he had noticed any great change. She had dreaded the moment of explanation, but Henry, apprehensive though he might be of the allurements of the world, the flesh and the Devil, was, after all, not of a suspicious nature, and was too unversed in the ways of the world to picture its dangers except in a large and general way. So she told him only as much of Christine’s adventures as she thought best; and if he fancied that his child’s heart had turned to him and that she had come back of her own accord, why, so much the better, thought Arvilla.

On his part, warmed by gratitude to her and encouraged by her sympathy, he was moved, for the first time since he had known the doubtful joys and heavy responsibilities of fatherhood, to unburden his heart of all his anxieties and perplexities. Evidently he had been a painfully conscientious parent, stifling his affection and giving his sense of duty free play. And now he was wondering where he had failed.

“ She has a light nature,” he said, “ but I have labored over her without ceasing.”

“Poor Christine!” was Arvilla’s mental ejaculation. Aloud she said, “ You have taken her too seriously. That is just the trouble.”

“ Can one take an immortal soul too seriously? ” he asked reproachfully.

“ You must fit your tools to your material. If she is a butterfly, you must handle her as a butterfly.”

He only sighed and shook his head in a discouraged way. Arvilla had already realized that he was more changed than she had at first supposed. Narrow, prejudiced, and dogmatic he had always been; but ardent, a fiery combatant, ready to defend his position, good or bad, with vehemence. Now there seemed hardly a glow left in the ashes, so subdued and weary was his aspect. He had gained in tolerance, perhaps, but it was at the cost of all his old enthusiasm. Her suggestion that he should try to provide some amusement for the girl, he met helplessly. “ A girl is so hard to understand,” he said.

Arvilla had intended to leave in the afternoon, but Henry begged her to spend at least one night under his roof, and she yielded. She always looked back to this as the strangest day she had ever spent. This was the parsonage where he and she had expected to live. There on the marble-topped centre-table in the stiff little parlor was the alabaster model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which some one had given Henry and which they used to say was the first, thing they had toward housekeeping. When she went into the dining-room she recalled the tablecloths and napkins which she had hemmed; and there was the bay window which had been built for them and which she had planned to keep filled with blossoming plants. There were plants in it now, tended by the minister’s old servant. But when she saw Christine’s bedroom she thought, “ My child’s room would have been prettier.”

It was not until evening that she went into the minister’s study. Geoffrey had come to see Christine, and the parlor was left to the young people, in country fashion. The night was chilly, and in the study a fire had been kindled on the hearth and two armchairs were drawn up before it. Arvilla looked about the room. This, then, was Henry’s study, the place where he really lived. Her glance lingered on the bookshelves, filled with serious volumes, on the old writing table, shabby in its appointments, but neat in its arrangement, and on the leather-seated chair in front of it. They sat down before the fire and at first were somewhat silent. They had already exchanged such confidences as are usual on the meeting of old friends — with, to be sure, important omissions on Arvilla’s part; for she knew his point of view, and why should she spoil the comfort of one short day ? For the moment it was pleasant to sit without talking.

As of old, his mood had lightened in the comfortable atmosphere of her cheerful and equable temperament, until now he seemed somewhat more like his former self, but gentler than he had been in the old days. It was of course impossible that both should not be struck by this phantasmal fulfillment of their early visions of fireside companionship; but whereas Arvilla thought of it half humorously, half tenderly, as a mere curious episode, Henry found a strange new hope springing up in his heart. His familiar room had taken on an unaccustomed aspect of homelikeness with Arvilla sitting opposite him, and now that he had seen her there he thought that it would never again seem like home without her. The old disagreements looked inexpressibly unimportant to him, and his former attitude toward them now seemed petty and obstinate. He thought of his child, whose heart, always closed to him, had opened to her at a touch; he thought of his people, with whom he found it more and more difficult to get on a footing of confidence. In Arvilla he found the solution of all his difficulties, all his enigmas. Possibilities of a new life opened before him.

Arvilla was too versed in the study of human nature to remain unconscious of what was passing in his mind. “ Poor Henry,” she said to herself, “ he is beginning to care for me again.”

A woman is never too old to be touched by the faithfulness of an old lover, and Henry had been her first love, as she had been his. She regarded him with tenderness, though without illusions; and to her surprise, she found herself tempted. What warmth of comfort and affection she could bring into his lonely and colorless life. How successful a stepmother she could be to Christine, and how she would enjoy it. And, yes, what happiness for herself in the satisfaction of her innate longing for the peaceful joys of the domestic hearth. Viewed by the light of the study fire, the office on the Board Walk seemed a cheerless place, and she found herself suddenly tired of the study of unresponsive humanity. The pastor’s flock would be a welcome exchange for her clients. Her old contentment was broken up. Then she pulled herself up sharply. She had no mind to deceive Henry, even if it were possible to do so for long; and she knew that her profession would be anathema maranatha to him.

But meantime Henry had made his resolution. His fear lest she should vanish once more into a world where perhaps he might lose her, overcame the principle which he had laid down for himself in earlier years as a bulwark against his impetuous impulses, of prefacing any important action by a season of prayer and meditation. He found delay unbearable, and it was with something of his old ardor that he asked her to marry him. The suddenness of it took her by surprise, and she hesitated. She was aware that the judicious course would be to refuse him without explanation, but for once she did not feel capable of being judicious. She was possessed by a desire to have it out with him and see what would come of it.

“ You know very little about me of late years,” she said.

“ No, but I can see what the years have done for you,” he answered.

“ I told you that I made my own living.”

“ Yes, and I respect you for it. You need not think that I care how humble your calling may have been. It has been blessed to you. When I see you, after all your trials, brave, cheerful, free from bitterness, I blush to remember the superior attitude which I assumed in the old days.”

This was a tribute indeed, and appealed to her sense of humor at the same time that it touched her. “Wait! ” she said. “ My business has n’t been so dreadfully humble, but I’m afraid you have a prejudice against it.”

“ What is it then ? ”

“ I am a palmist.”

“ A — what ? ”

“ You might call it a branch of psychology. I read the lines of the hand.”

“ Arvilla! Don’t jest with me now.” He stared at her in bewildered dismay.

“ I should n’t dream of jesting. I make my living that way.”

“ I don’t think I understand you. You surely are not telling me that you are a mere fortune-teller — you ! ”

“ Perhaps you would call it that.”

“ And that you make your living by trading on the credulity of fools? ” His bewilderment was giving way to the deep indignation of the man who feels himself betrayed.

“ Not quite so fast! ” said Arvilla, flushing. Then she sighed. “ Perhaps I ought to have explained in the very beginning,” she said, “ but I could hardly hope to make you understand — and I never expected to see you again after today. Now I am going to tell you the whole story. I was very poor when my husband died. I was alone in a big town — we had just moved there — and I had two little children to support. I tried everything I could get — do you suppose I cared how humble it was ? But I could n’t earn enough to make them comfortable. There were times when I had to see them go hungry. Then one day this came into my head. I had once studied palmistry enough to play the gypsy at fairs, and people used to say jokingly that I might make my fortune that way. It was the last resort — and it succeeded. Then, when the children died and I felt as if I had no interest in life, it gave me an interest, and so I went on—and of course it was my livelihood too.”

The minister looked deeply distressed. “ How, after that, could you possibly continue to keep up the imposture? ” he asked.

“ But it is n’t imposture. I want you to understand that. I keep my share of the bargain. I tell them all that I undertake to tell them.”

“ What can you tell them ? ”

“ Their peculiarities; things that have happened to them — people love to be told what they know already if it’s about themselves; and of course, future possibilities, dangers to avoid, things to hope for, warnings and advice — even sometimes something like prophecy.”

“ You ask me to believe this? ”

“ I am telling you the truth.”

“ You can’t possibly believe in it yourself ? ”

“ I suppose you would say, if I don’t, it is fraud; and if I do, it’s the Devil. Well, I’m not a Witch of Endor, but I do believe in it, though I hardly know how I do it. There really is something in the lines of the hand — however you may shake your head. And then people tell me more than they think, with their faces and gestures and the words they let drop. And sometimes when I take a person’s hand in mine, things seem to come to me in a queer way — I’m sure I don’t know how. Perhaps the chief thing is that people interest me so. Don’t you remember how fond I always was of just mere human beings, and how we used to say what a useful trait it would be in a minister’s wife? ”

“ I remember.” The minister’s voice vibrated with an emotion which Arvilla did not stop to analyze.

“ I try to do some good in the world,” she went on, “ and I have more opportunities than you would think. Sometimes it’s a girl or a boy in trouble, and a little advice helps — and sometimes — well, I suppose there is n’t a wickeder place in the United States than the Board Walk in summer, and when I think it’s worth while I speak out plainly. And when it comes to scaring them about their sins, why, Henry, you’re not in it with me. You preach the wrath to come, but after all, preaching is pretty general. The thing that tells is to go into detail. When I, an utter stranger, look into a person’s hand and say, ‘You’ve done this or that,’ — something they think nobody knows but themselves,— ‘and if you don’t look out you ’re going to do something worse ’ — and tell them what it is they’re going to do —I can tell you, it gives them a turn. Perhaps it does n’t do any good, but who knows ? ”

She spoke with evident conviction, and the minister, who had listened with his eyes intently fixed on her, now rose to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. How often had she seen him jump up and pace the floor in the heat of discussion! She felt that the old fire was rekindled, and that anything she could say would be futile; but she could not forbear a last word.

“ Of course I knew pretty well how you would feel about it,” she said, “ but I have a clear conscience. I feel myself to be no worse a woman — perhaps better — than if I had earned my bread as a washerwoman, for instance — though I would have done that too, for the children, if I could have got it to do.”

He paused in front of her and again fixed on her the gaze of his deep-set eyes, in whose sombre depths a new fire was now burning. She looked at him reflectively and with something of her habitual humorous expression. “ Well, I suppose we are going to say good-by,” she said, “ and I don’t imagine we shall ever meet again. But now, as between you and me, Henry, do you really think so badly of me ? I am the same woman you praised a little while ago, and whatever was true of me then is just as true of me now.”

She waited a moment for his answer. Then he spoke. “ Yes, you are the same woman,” he said. “ For you it seems possible to lead a Christian life even when engaged in an unchristian business. Truly, to the pure all things are pure. Your palmistry — I don’t believe in it. It is detestable. But I see how you have made it serve you — as you would have made anything else serve you in doing good. But you say it is good-by. Is that the answer you give me? ”

“ Do you want any other answer ? When I said it I thought you disapproved of me too much to care to have anything more to do with me.”

“ I want you to marry me,” he said vehemently. “ I want you to go out into the world with me and show me how to work for humanity! ”

“ You mean that you would leave this place ? ”

“ I have stayed here too long. I and my people have stagnated together. Once it seemed to me that I could ask nothing better than to spend my life in the service of my own people whom I have known from my youth up. There was a time when I had calls to other churches, but I refused them. Now I know that another man might serve my people better. I make no impression on them. Nothing that I can say goes home. Oh, they like me to be impassioned; it is all part of the Sunday entertainment — and I can no longer speak to them with force. For I am tired. I am tired of beating against a dead wall. I am tired of the measured thrift with which prosperous men provide for their souls’ salvation. I am tired of the women and their church sociables. I am sure they are better Christians than I am, but I see so much of them! And I am ashamed of myself that I have not sooner resigned my place to some man who could fill it better. I seemed stupefied until you came, and I did not know how to break away from the tyranny of old habit. Now I am alive again.”

Poor Henry, thought Arvilla, how bored he has been. And yet he cannot understand Christine.

’I want to go to a great city,” he went on. “I want to labor among the poor, the wretched, the degraded. I want to go where I can feel the beating of men’s hearts. It is you who have waked me up — you, with your great love and understanding of humanity. For a long time I seem to have been paralyzed. All freshness of feeling seemed gone forever and I have gone on using mere phrases — speaking the language which I had been taught, but without realizing its meaning. I began to think that my God had forsaken me.”

He stopped speaking and resumed his walk up and down the room. Arvilla’s eyes followed him. This indeed was the Henry of her youth — this impetuous man with the fiery eyes. The years seemed to fall from him as he straightened his shoulders and held his head erect. He was some few years her senior, but she, sitting back in her easy chair, felt immensely older than he. She looked about the room with a rueful smile. For her part, she was tired of the turmoil of the world. She longed for the sheltered quiet of the country parsonage, the very parsonage where she and Henry had expected to begin life together. She was not afraid of being bored by the congregation. Human nature was as interesting here as elsewhere; and it would be sweet to end her days in her own native place. How had it happened that she of all people had so stirred Henry up?

He came and stood before her again. “ I am not altogether visionary,” he said. “ I have a little money which my father left me. I can take care of you and Christine.”

Arvilla reflected comfortably that she too had a little money. Well — at least she would rather work in the slums with Henry and make a home for him and Christine, than go back to the loneliness of the office on the Board Walk. And if Henry seemed to be thinking more of the interest of a fresh field of work than of her personally, why, perhaps she had thought almost as much of the old parsonage and the little town — and Christine — as she had of him. It was as broad as it was long — and after all, they were neither of them as young as they had been.

She looked up into his face as he stood before her, “ Yes, Henry, I will marry you,” she said. “ And I hope I shall make you even a little happier than you expect.”

After all, she was mistaken in thinking that his ardor was all for his work. He stooped and kissed her with surprisingly little embarrassment — considering that they were neither of them as young as they had been.