Chapter VII: Part 7

“He was. It was one of those curious cases where a man is seized with panic. It may be as much physical as moral. Practically speaking, he had lost his mind. He was of no more use than a frightened child. When he first told me, I thought it was one of the most cowardly things I’d ever heard of; but he’s suffered for it--he’s suffered the tortures of the damned!”

Overton was silent. He did not say he pitied Faunce. In fact, he was grimly recalling that terrific moment when he had been abandoned to die. Like Faunce, he visioned the polar wastes, and, unlike Faunce, he felt the drowsy approach of a frozen death again steal over him.

“I suppose there’s no reason,” he said, hesitating, “why I shouldn’t go to see Judge Herford?”

“You’re the best judge of that.”

Overton looked up.

“I see no reason why I shouldn’t, unless--unless you think she--she would rather I didn’t go.”

A quizzical light showed in the doctor’s eyes.

“Are you still in love with her, my son? Are you going there to--help matters along?”

“I’m still in love with her,” Overton replied, coloring deeply. “I told her so when we met. That’s the worst of it! I had no idea she was married; and she let me know she didn’t care for me.”

“Because she was married?”

Overton thought deeply.

“I’m afraid it was because she couldn’t.”

“Then I should think you have no reason to stay away--if the judge wants to see you.”

“I want to see him, but I want to see her more--that’s the truth! It’s an infatuation, of course--without excuse, too. She let me know that when I saw her in the mountains.”

The doctor sat up in his chair.

“She saw you just before she left him?”

“Yes.”

The two men looked at each other for a moment, and the older one smiled grimly.

“Then it seems to me that you can cry quits with Faunce,” Dr. Gerry said. “You’ve hurt him nearly as badly as he hurt you. You’ve made his wife see the truth about him.”

“You know I should scorn to do that!”

“You couldn’t help it. You can tell her all about it after the divorce.”

“I don’t see what you mean!”

The doctor smiled enigmatically this time.

“The judge is so angry that he’ll probably blazon the whole story out anyway, and ruin Faunce.”

Overton rose abruptly to his feet.

“That won’t do! It’s useless. Besides, it would be like--like vengeance on my part, as if I had come home to ruin him.”

“You can’t shoulder the blame of it; you’ve nothing to do with the judge.”

“I’ve got this much to do--I’ve come back!”

The old man eyed him thoughtfully.

“I see! You’re taking up the load because you were disobliging enough to live to contradict Faunce. That’s a new way to look at it, my son!”

Overton glanced kindly at the old doctor. The familiar address fell pleasantly on his ear, for at the moment he felt peculiarly desolate.

“It’s the only way to shield her. I’ve got it arranged; but I shall have to see the judge.”

The doctor nodded.

“That’s right--I advise you to see him. He’s as hard to manage as a bull in a china-shop--always was; but you’re right, it’ll shield her. As for Arthur Faunce--well, he’s paying!”

“He’s paying--what?”

Overton stopped with his hand on the door, looking back at the old figure in the armchair.

“The piper!” The doctor laid down his pipe. “He’s paying with his heart’s blood, Simon, and I don’t know that he can do anything more than that. It’s the way some men pay a debt of honor, isn’t it?”

“Brave men!”

Gerry nodded his head slowly.

“Of course, he’s a coward,” he admitted slowly. “Judge Herford calls him a damned coward.”

“I don’t intend to bring up that subject. I’m simply going to ask the judge to let matters stand as I’ve fixed them. Faunce keeps the command and the story--my story is never known.”

“You’re going to tell him that you give up the command to Faunce?”

“Of course!”

“That’s right, my boy, that’s right; but Faunce is giving up Diane.”

Overton, aware of something at work in the back of the old man’s mind, looked at him curiously.

“I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

The doctor got up and went down the hall to the front door with Overton, one arm flung affectionately across the younger man’s shoulders.

“I’m not driving at anything, Simon. I was weighing it--that’s all. You were immeasurably ahead of him in the race when you forgave him and gave up the command to shield him; but now, when he’s ready to give his wife her freedom--well, he’s almost caught up with you, hasn’t he? As I said, my boy, it’s his heart’s blood, and he’s offering it as bravely as a brave man might. Let’s give the devil his due--he’s paying up!”

XXIX

IT was dark by this time, and Overton consulted his watch, to be sure that it was not too near the judge’s dinner-hour for his errand. He was astonished to find that it was almost half-past eight. He had not felt the need of food. He dismissed it entirely from his calculations, and tramped steadily on in the moonlit mist. Through it he could see the lights twinkling in distant houses, while the trees loomed up in feathery, indistinct outlines, downy with foliage. Something in the effect--the weird brightness of the white sky and the elusive lights--reminded him of the mirage that had so often mocked him in his polar quest. He recalled it with a keen recollection of Faunce’s receding figure, and he thought grimly of the task that lay before him--the task of persuading Judge Herford to spare his own son-in-law for his daughter’s sake.

But the thought uppermost in Overton’s mind, as he opened the old gate that had stood for so much in his life, was the prospect of seeing Diane again. No matter how she regarded his return, even if she felt that it was his hand that had destroyed her house of cards, his heart leaped up with hope. The insistent demand for personal happiness is not only a primal instinct of human nature, and as much a constituent part of it as the flowers and birds and bees are evidences of springtime and summer, but it is also the hardest aspiration to kill, surviving blows that would destroy the strongest impulse of endeavor or ambition.

In the words of the sage, “the veriest whipster of us all desires happiness.” Overton, who had actually stood upon the bourn of the undiscovered country, craved it the more keenly because of his long starvation.

He noticed every familiar object as he walked up the path. The old cedar was there, where he had put up the squirrel-house for Diane when she was a child in short skirts and pigtails. There, too, was the old worn seat around the oak, where they had read Tennyson together. He remembered with a smile Diane’s cry to him that he must go in quest of the Holy Grail. Had her insistence, her inspiration, indeed, sent him on that quest which had led to this fatal climax?

He went slowly up the steps, rang, and stood waiting, almost expecting that she would open the door with the same inspired look she used to wear, the same mystic charm of girlhood and dream-land which had always clothed her, to his imagination, in a beauty more spiritual than mundane.

But she did not come. A servant ushered him in, and, after a moment’s delay, conducted him to the judge’s library.

The room was vacant when he entered, and he had an opportunity to look about him, to recall the familiar objects, the rich old bindings, and the glow of the ancient bronzes. The fireplace was not empty to-night; a large porcelain jar stood inside the fender, filled with a profusion of blossoms, their pink and white sprayed delicately against the dark chimney-place, and their fragrance, subtle and sweet, pervading the room. The old reading-lamp was burning on the table, and the judge’s big shell-rimmed spectacles lay on the open pages of the “Eumenides.”

Overton stood still, keenly moved by a rush of recollections. He might have left the room yesterday, it was so unchanged; yet, between his last sight of it and now, the whole world had changed to him. The interval had been filled to the brim with suffering and emotion; the gap was not even bridged. On one side of it stood Diane; on the other he found himself condemned to wait in the uncertain ground, no longer possessing a right to cross over and resume his old place at the fireside.

Presently he heard a heavy step outside, and the judge opened the door. He seemed to Overton much changed. His face was grim; his gray hair showed more white. His eyes, however, retained their intense warmth--the inner flame which at a word might flash up into a conflagration. He held out his hand with a grim smile.

“It’s good to see you again, Simon Overton,” he said in his deep voice; “and it’s good of you to come here. We must seem to you to be part and parcel with--with the coward who left you to die!”

“You’re one of the best friends I ever had, Judge Herford, and one of the very best my mother left to me. I’ve been looking about this room and feeling--well, like a boy who’s been long from home. I’m glad indeed to be here again.”

The judge motioned to an old armchair opposite his own.

“Sit down--I’m glad you’ve come. There’s nothing else clear in my mind except the shock I’ve had. I believed in Faunce! It’s about used me up to think I’ve married my girl to--to a craven like that!”

He sat down as he spoke, and fell into an attitude of dejection so new to him that he seemed another and an older man. Overton, taking the seat opposite, hesitated. It was difficult to frame what he had to say. Meanwhile, the judge broke out again with great bitterness:

“The shame of it! I’d rather take a whipping than have Diane exposed to all this talk!”

The opening was obvious, and Overton took it, his face flushing deeply as he met the old man’s troubled eye.

“I came to speak to you of that, judge. There’s no need of publicity. I’ve arranged with Faunce and with certain other people. My return needn’t upset everything. The trouble can be so glossed over that no one will know of it. I think I can fairly say that I’ve succeeded in arranging that much already.”

The judge eyed him keenly.

“You mean that you’ve arranged all this--to shield Faunce, to hush it up, to let the public think you were found in some mysterious way? I can’t quite follow you.”

“We needn’t go into detail, need we?” Overton replied steadily. “We can leave so much in doubt that there’ll never be any certainty. In those ice-fields a thousand men might well be lost--why not one? The only danger is in what he’s already said. There are gaps--I’ve been over them, I’ve filled in some bad breaks. I believe we can save much talk, and hush it up.”

The judge leaned forward, his strong hands clenched on his knees, looking at Overton.

“You’re trying to shield him--for what?”

“For your sake, Judge Herford, and--for hers.”

“You can’t hide a fire. The smoke gets out, people smell burning. No more can you hide a coward! That’s what it is, Simon. The expedition has been held up; they’re not going to give him the command; questions will be asked.”

Overton shook his head.

“I’ve arranged that. They offered me the command. I refused to take it from him. He’ll go.”

The judge bent his brows.

“You’ve no right to do that! It’s paying a premium on falsehood. He came back here a jay in peacock’s plumes, and fooled us all; now you’re letting him carry off the prize. You’ve no right to shelter him.”

“I have the right that comes to the injured party. If I have no mind to enforce publicity, no one else should complain. You see that, judge?”

“I see you’re trying to spare him because”--he looked at his visitor keenly again--“because of Diane?”

Overton’s face changed sharply.

“Yes.”

“She has left him--you know that?”

“Dr. Gerry told me. It doesn’t constitute a reason for me to ruin him. Talk about him will involve her in the scandal.”

The judge sank back in his chair, strumming on the arms with nervous fingers.

“You propose, then, to shield him, to set him up in your place--because he has married Diane?”

Overton smiled as grimly as the judge himself.

“Not quite in my place. I’ve simply arranged to keep it quiet. After all, it’s a personal question, judge. It’s true that he abandoned me; but remember that to stay was to court death. He had no reason to die with me or for me. We mustn’t expect too much.”

“I’ve noticed you didn’t leave Rayburn. I’ve read the account, and he told us so himself. I could forgive him”--the old man laughed harshly--“I could forgive sheer fright--Gerry says it was physical panic--but I’ll never forgive him for marrying my daughter!”

“I don’t ask that.”

There was something in Overton’s tone which made the judge wheel around in his chair and look his visitor sharply in the face. What he found there gave him a shock. He got up, went to the mantel, found his old pipe, and thrust some tobacco into it. While he was fumbling for a match, he spoke over his shoulder.

“I’m going to get a divorce for her. At first I thought we should have to fight for it, but he’s willing to let her get it. He has that much grace in him. I’ll take her out West, establish a residence, and get a divorce for her. We’re done with him--she and I!”

Overton did not trust himself to reply. He rose, instead, to say good-night. The judge swung around.

“Stay, my boy, stay! I want to talk to you, to hear more of your great adventure.”

“Not now, judge. To tell you the truth, I haven’t dined yet.”

The judge broke out.

“What a fool I am! Sit down and let me order something. We’ve dined, but you mustn’t leave my house hungry!”

Overton laughed.

“No, I must be off. But it’s understood--we’ll let this matter remain hushed up?”

The judge thought, standing on the hearth-rug, his feet wide apart and his head down, the big pipe thrust into his mouth. After a while he took it out and answered.

“I’d like to expose him. I meant to do it, to set Diane right; but there might be reasons why silence would be best. I know she wants it. She shrinks with horror from the whole thing, poor child!”

His tone had in it a note of tenderness that was new to Overton. He looked up and again met the older man’s dark eyes resting searchingly upon him. It affected him strongly. There was a subtle suggestion of hope in it, a reassurance.

He turned hastily, and made his way out with an abruptness that surprised his host. He had a craving for air and space; the sudden change, the revival of hope after his despair, seemed to take his breath away. He forgot his appetite for his delayed meal, and set out for a long walk in the weird light of the half-clouded moon.

Having closed the door on his visitor, Judge Herford stood for a moment with his hand on the knob, listening to the young man’s footsteps until they finally reached the open road. He had received a new and, to him, amazing impression, and it staggered him so much that for the time being he forgot his wrath against his son-in-law. It was a new impression, but it furnished the key to situations that had previously seemed vague and perplexing. Now he understood them all, and in this new light he thought he understood his daughter.

While he stood there, before he could clear up the ponderous machinery of his judicial mind and set it in motion, he heard the swish of skirts on the staircase and became aware of her presence.

“Papa, who was it?” she demanded tremulously. “Who went out just now?”

He looked up and saw Diane leaning on the banisters. The strong light on the landing made a luminous nimbus behind her small, spirited head and outlined her slender figure in a loose evening gown, the full, short sleeves falling away from delicate forearms and slender wrists. Her whole attitude suggested suspense and trepidation, and her father felt her eyes fixed on him, feverishly bright.

“Don’t worry, my dear--it wasn’t Faunce.”

“Oh!” There was a suggestion of extreme relief in the tone, coupled with some curiosity. “Then who was it?”

“Simon Overton.”

“Oh!” It was the same sound, but with a different note--a note that spoke volumes to her father’s awakened ear.

“He came here--guess what for!”

She relaxed her hold on the banisters and sat down on the steps, her face in the shadow, but her large eyes shining luminously through it and making her face seem singularly white.

“I can’t guess. I give it up--unless he came to see you?”

The judge moved slowly over and stood near the foot of the stairs, watching her.

“He came to ask me to keep silence, to shield Faunce. He’s determined never to tell the true story.”

She did not say anything for a while. When she spoke, it was in an awed tone.

“How noble of him!”

Her father nodded, his hand on the pillar at the foot of the banisters, as he looked up at her.

“He had seen Faunce and arranged for silence. He wants to let the whole thing blow over; he’s afraid of injuring you with the scandal.”

She seemed to shrink a little, and she was no longer looking steadily at him.

“Is that all, papa?”

“No, not all. You know they’ve wanted to take the command of the new expedition from Faunce and give it to Overton?”

“Yes, I suppose they will.”

“They won’t, for Overton has refused to accept it. He has asked them to let Faunce keep it.”

She made no reply to this, but put her hand up and pushed back the soft, loose hair from her forehead with a perplexed air.

“It’s a fine thing, Di, a noble thing for a man to do. It can mean only one thing!”

She still said nothing, but leaned against the banisters, watching him.

“He’s in love with you, Diane. There’s no other reason on God’s earth for a man to do a thing like that, to shield another from the blame that’s coming to him by rights. Did you know”--he stopped and looked at her again--“before this that he cared for you?”

“I used to think he did,” she answered weakly, her head leaning against the rail.

“It’s too bad, Diane!” the judge broke out. “It’s too bad that you didn’t care for him!”

His tone, as well as his words, disarmed her. She did not even suspect him of a ruse; but, in her pent-up state, it was too much, and she broke down utterly, quite off her guard.

“Oh, I did!” she sobbed. “I did!”

She turned her head and hid her face on her arm, bursting suddenly into wild tears and sobs.

XXX

DIANE staggered to her feet and went up-stairs. Her strongest feeling was one of keen humiliation. She had made a confession that she had never intended to make, and it did not matter if her father had been the only listener. The actual admission, the spoken words, had clothed a dim specter with reality. She had heard her own voice making an admission that seemed to establish a motive--a motive at once primal and unjustifiable--for her desertion of her husband.

It frightened her. She felt as if Overton must have heard her, through the intervening night and the distance, that he must at last put the true interpretation upon the terror with which she had thrust him away when they met on the lonely mountain road. Then, as now, it had come to her with a revealing shock that she still loved him, and not the man she had married. Yet she must love Faunce, she argued wildly to herself. She did love him, she had loved him when she had married him, and it agonized her now to think of him as one who was so totally different from the man she had imagined him to be.

She found herself in the most inexplicable tangle of emotions. She did not know which way to turn. She had fled from her father, afraid to meet his pitying eyes, afraid, most of all, to hear his reassuring voice, for she knew what that meant!

She fled into her own room, and, locking the door, threw herself down before the open window, her head on the sill, the soft night air stirring the dusky hair on her forehead. It was a night for a love-dream, not for such shrinking and terror as now harassed her.

When Faunce had confessed to her, when he had torn away the last shred of her illusion about him, she had left him, overwhelmed with horror and dismay. The revulsion of feeling had been so intense that it had carried her home and swept her along in the current of her father’s rage against her husband. She had been as eager as he to get Faunce to consent to a divorce. She did not wish to bear the name of a man who had so deeply disgraced himself.

When he had assented to Herford’s demands, when he had declared that, if she wished it, she could have her freedom, the tension had snapped, and she had collapsed. She had been ready for conflict, ready to fight for her liberty; but when she found that there was to be no opposition, she experienced a sudden feeling of helplessness. She was adrift on a shoreless sea.

A beacon, indeed, shone across it--the beacon of Overton’s love, which sometimes seemed to beckon her home to the harbor of safety and happiness, but now there was this thing--this thing that had risen out of the night, unasked and unheralded, and it was pressing close upon her. She had discerned it from afar, and even in the midst of her wild revulsion, her determination to escape, it had filled her with awe and with dread.

It was imperceptible, yet it was with her. It held her back with strong hands, though it was invisible--as invisible as the angel who wrestled with Jacob. But she had no need to ask its name; she knew the name by which men called it--unless, indeed, they called it God. She felt it gaining upon her and threatening her, yet she would not yield.

She lay across the sill of her open window, exhausted and prone, but not beaten. She was fighting still, fighting for happiness, trying to guide her shipwrecked bark into that safe harbor where the beacon of love shone bright. She would not surrender, she would not admit that there was no room for her there--not yet! But she wished that she had not spoken, had not voiced her emotion. It seemed to give this impalpable thing, this invisible angel, so much more power for battle.

Then, suddenly as if the unseen wrestler had successfully thrown her in the conflict, she saw herself as the type of woman she most abhorred--the woman who divorces one man because she is in love with another.

But that could not be true, the inner voice cried; for though she loved Faunce, she had left him because she had found him to be a creature so unworthy, so cowardly, so cruel, that her soul had risen up and driven her from him. Overton had had nothing to do with it. It was Faunce himself who had torn away the thin veil that had obscured her idol’s feet of clay.

As she tried to force herself to think of her husband, to recall him in his better aspect, she could only remember his face as he had lifted it, haggard and ashamed, to confess that he had left a brave man, his friend and his commander, to die, that he might be sure to save himself, be sure to reap the profit and the glory of the fallen leader’s labor and sacrifice. She could never forget it. It had slain her love for him so completely that not even a spark lingered in the ashes.

It was not that she loved Overton now. It was her remembrance of the fact that she had loved him. The thought of what he was, compared with the man she had married, had plunged her into deeper self-abasement.

It was a fine distinction, a spiritual difference between the grosser facts of life and the old, sweet memories that were dead. She understood it; she would not forget it, but would her father understand it? She knew that he could not.

He had the hard legal acumen, the keen discernment, but his strength had the quality of granite and not of crystal. It was tremendous and solid, but not transparent enough to reflect the more exquisite emotions. He had not understood her, and he would not understand if she tried to explain away that broken and inarticulate cry of regret for the past. He would believe not only that he was doing what was just and right for his daughter, but that he was seeking her happiness, when there could be no happiness for her at all.

She could never set him straight, never convince him that she had not meant every word she said. He could not know about the invisible wrestler who still held her from the temptation of that distant happiness, who even now had made her feel that she must forego it. No one knew this but herself!

It was the feeling of helplessness, of the futility of argument, that made her unwilling to face her father again. It was with her during the long night, in her troubled snatches of sleep; it was the motive that made her plead headache in the morning, and thus escape the ordeal of another _tête-à-tête_ breakfast by having hers brought up to her room; and later it drove her out of doors for a long and solitary walk.

It was a relief to be out in the open air again, to tramp down the familiar road to the seminary, to notice the rapidity with which the leaves were changing even on the late trees and shrubs, and how many of the early autumn blossoms had thrust their way up through the earth, which was moist and dark with recent rains. A storm had come up before daybreak, and the sky was still softly clouded, while fitful bursts of rain and wind drove through the narrow lane. Diane had a moment of exhilaration, of the joy of conflict, as the boughs swayed and creaked overhead and the leaves rained down at her feet.

This feeling was still with her, stiffening her power of resistance, when she finally turned into the seminary gates and made her way to the dean’s house, with no stronger motive than a vague longing to feel that some one understood.

A little later, however, sitting in Fanny’s room, she was not sure that even another girl did quite understand the perplexity of her situation, its hopelessness and its futility. Fanny had been ready enough in her expressions of sympathy, but there was something between them that hushed confidence. There was a shy reluctance on the younger girl’s part that reminded Diane of a similar restraint when Fanny had been her bridesmaid. They talked a while in meaningless commonplaces. Then, as Fanny looked up suddenly, Diane caught the quiver of the girl’s lip and leaned forward, laying her ungloved hand on her friend’s knee.

“Fanny, do you know?” she whispered.

Fanny’s eyes sank involuntarily to the hand on her knee, and rested on the new wedding-ring. Diane saw the glance, and drew her hand back with a significant gesture of pain and repugnance.

“Do I know what?” Fanny flushed with embarrassment. “You mean that you’ve--you’ve left him, Di, or--or what he did?”

Diane, busily covering her left hand with its glove, was aware that her fingers were shaking.

“I mean both,” she replied.

“Yes, papa told us. Oh, Diane, I’m so sorry--so sorry about him!”

“You mean you’re more sorry for him than for me?”

Fanny raised her blue eyes steadily.

“Yes, I think I am. He’s lost everything, even himself!”

Diane rose to her feet and began to walk about the room. It was small and bright, with two windows looking out on the campus. It contained a book-shelf, some pretty chintz-covered furniture, and a little white bed that looked like a convent cot. There were also unnumbered girlish belongings--favors, bonbon-boxes, photographs, and knickknacks.

Diane walked about restlessly, lifting up and setting down first one thing and then another, unaware of what she did.

“I--I couldn’t stay, Fanny!”

The other girl did not follow her with her eyes. Instead, Fanny sat looking out of the window at a shower that was driving across the campus, the sun breaking through the clouds in time to make it a rain of gold.

“I suppose you couldn’t, Di. I think I know just how you felt, but--well, it makes me pity him the more!”

Diane faced her passionately.

“How can you, Fanny? How can you pity him more than I do? I loved him!”

“Yes, I know; but when you knew what he’d done, you ceased to love him. Wasn’t that it, Di? You see I--I suppose I’m a weaker mortal. I couldn’t do that. I should keep on loving him--well, just because I should feel he needed it so much!”

“Would you?” Diane came slowly nearer, looking at her friend imploringly, her face colorless. “Fanny, do you think that’s it? That’s what I’ve asked myself a hundred times. Do you think I--I never really loved him?”

“Oh, that’s too much to say! I couldn’t judge for you, Di, we’re--we’re so different. I suppose I’m like--like the dog that keeps going back to lick the hand that’s struck him. If I loved any one, I couldn’t--I simply couldn’t turn on them like that!”

“I didn’t think I could, either; but when he told me what he’d done--Fanny, I can’t tell you how I felt. I felt as if something had died in my heart. I couldn’t even look at him again without seeing him in flight and--and Overton alone, deserted in the snow and ice, left to die!” She covered her face with her hands, shuddering. “I could have forgiven him a sin against myself far more easily. I could have forgiven even dishonesty, but that--Fanny, I--I couldn’t, I can’t!”

Fanny averted her eyes. The response that rose to her lips was too pertinent.

“It’s because you always loved Overton!” she longed to cry out. Instead, she rose and put her arms around Diane. “If you feel like that, dear,” she said, “there’s only one way out.”

Diane clung to her trembling.

“You mean----”

“Your father’s way,” Fanny said firmly. “Papa told us the judge meant to get a divorce for you.”

Diane held her, looking into her eyes. The two seemed to have suddenly changed places; Fanny was the more composed and confident now.

“Then you--you don’t think it would be wrong?” Diane implored.

Fanny shook her head.

“I think it’s better than to feel as you do. I know mama’s fearfully opposed to divorce, and papa is, of course. But, no, Di, I think it would be right for you--and for him, too.”

Diane’s hands fell from Fanny’s shoulders, and she walked slowly over to the window and stood looking out. For a while they were both silent. Fanny felt that instead of reassuring her friend, she had only added to her distress. Through her very words of encouragement Diane must have felt the subtle suggestion of Fanny’s mind--her belief that Diane’s love for Overton made her marriage not only intolerable but impossible.

She was conscious, too, that her own emotion dictated her pity for Faunce, that even now she could not quite forget the hold he had always had upon her mind and heart. She was flushed and tremulous when Diane turned suddenly and kissed her.

“Good-by, dear,” she said softly. “I can’t stay here now and face your father. I know what he’d think. Oh, Fanny, I--I wish I had never been born!”

The two girls clung to each other for another moment, neither of them quite able to be coherent. Then Diane ran down-stairs and made her way out into the rain.

XXXI

IT seemed to Diane that her emotion, like the storm, had nearly spent itself, and the few fresh rain-drops that fell on her face helped to cool its feverishness, just as a sudden revival of pride and strength helped to quiet the tumult within.

Torn by conflicting emotions, she had stretched out blindly for guidance--or, at least, for some sort of sympathy that would steady her purpose and point a way in the maze. Fanny had furnished it, not so much by what she had said as by what she left unsaid; and Diane felt the sting of mortification at her own weakness. She had gone out like a mendicant asking the alms of sympathy, and she had received not bread, but a stone.

Suddenly, too, she perceived a fact that had long been only a vague idea in the back of her mind. Fanny had been fond of Faunce! She saw it plainly now, with a passionate feeling of rebellion. If love awaited him elsewhere, why had fate delivered him into her hands? It was all confused, all at cross-purposes.

If he had married Fanny, there would, perhaps, have been no question of his confession. Fanny would have helped him where she had failed. That was the cruelty of it--a cruelty that involved him as well as herself. Why had he been so blind? she cried angrily to herself. Why had he passed Fanny by to pursue her? If he had only left her alone--

She stopped short and stood still. Again she saw herself going over the edge of the abyss. She tried to steady herself, to find the guiding light, the lamp to show her the way out.

Then, just at the very moment when she was least able to endure it, least able to battle any longer, she saw Overton himself just ahead of her. He was walking fast. As he turned he caught sight of her, and, swinging around, came rapidly toward her, his face as white as hers was red with embarrassment.

As he drew nearer, she stopped, more because she did not know what else to do than from any wish to see him. Her first impulse, indeed, had been one of flight, and she suspended it only because, in the hedged lane, there was no convenient way to flee. Something of what she felt--her trepidation, which almost amounted to sheer fright--showed in her eyes and her reluctant attitude, and he saw it. He halted a few yards away and stood looking at her.

“You don’t wish to see me?”

The note of pain in his voice sent a thrill of answering pain through her heart. Unconsciously she held out her hand.

“I do--only it’s hard--after all I’ve been told!”

Her broken words touched him deeply. He realized that she felt a vicarious share in her husband’s guilt toward him, and he caught her hand in both of his.

“He should never have told you. I tried to save you that!” he exclaimed.

She drew her hand gently away.

“You did wrong, then. He was right to tell me--I had to know.”

“But why?”

He had turned with her, and they walked on through the light rain. She looked up, her mind clearing.

“It was wrong of you to urge silence on him. If he’s ever to be anything, he mustn’t be silent. A thing like that must be confessed and atoned for. Besides, he knew that I should know in the end. I couldn’t help it. I’ve felt that there was something wrong, something terrible behind it all!”

“And it has made you wretched--I see that. Why can’t you forget it? I should never have come back. It’s I who have ruined your happiness.”

“Oh, no, no! Think how infinitely worse it would have been if you had perished and I had known too late that he--that he had left you! I couldn’t have borne that.”

The passion of her tone moved him again, and for a moment he did not reply. He was keenly aware of her presence at his side, her delicate profile against the light mist that was rising like vapor about them, the curve of her brow and the oval of her pale cheek under the dusky sweep of the brown hair that waved upward under her wide hat, the meticulous simplicity of her dark dress, her grace and slightness.

She seemed so young, so girlish, and she was facing a situation so tragic and humiliating! Overton was himself a proud man, and he felt her humiliation, felt that he must lighten it.

“I’ve wanted to speak to you about this,” he managed to say at last. “You mustn’t think that he did something do unpardonable. It isn’t unpardonable to any one who’s ever been at the pole. No man has a right to expect too much from his fellows there, and”--he hesitated--“when a man drops behind, why, he’s got to perish. The stakes are too great, the price too much, to lose all for one life. I fell in my tracks, and it’s only fair to him to think that I should have stayed where I dropped. The expedition couldn’t be imperiled just for me. I wasn’t worth so much. He did what--well, what nine out of ten would have done in his place.”

She stopped and faced him, her large eyes dark with emotion.

“Did you leave Rayburn?”

He flushed under her eyes.

“That was different. Faunce was with me--there were three of us. It was different, of course.”

“I can’t see the difference.”

“It was different, though. Besides, there was no blizzard impending. In my case the storm made it doubly perilous to stay.”

“It made the going worse!” she retorted in a hard voice.

He turned his head, and their eyes met; he felt almost as keen a shame as if he, and not Faunce, had done this thing. He saw that to her it was unpardonable. She would never see any reason or excuse for it. If she had loved her husband, then Overton’s return had wrecked her life.

“I’ve made you wretched!” he exclaimed with profound emotion. “It’s come to me again and again, since my return, that it must be dreadful for a man to come back from the dead. When we die--or people think we’re dead--our places close over our graves; there’s no niche left for us any more. To come back is to disrupt the tranquillity of the life that’s begun to flow in new courses over the surface of the grave. That’s what I’ve done--I’ve come back and wrecked your happiness!”

She shook her head vehemently, tears rising in her eyes.

“No, I never had it. I know now I only imagined. I never had any happiness at all!”

“Diane!”

Her cry had gone to his heart. It was more than he could bear. He caught her hands in his again and held them.

“Don’t say that, for I can’t bear it--no man who loved you could bear to hear you say that!”

She did not answer him, but stood still, her hand quivering in his grasp. They were alone under the trees, and the sun, breaking suddenly through the clouds again, illumined the moist atmosphere until it seemed shot with golden motes.

“I’ve no right to say it,” he went on passionately; “but I’m human, and I can’t keep silence! Diane, I’d rather have died down there in the ice and snow, where he left me, than to have come back to lose you!”

Still she said nothing, but her head drooped, and she could no longer look up. She knew now why she had left her husband. Her whole subconscious being cried out:

“It was this--this! You loved this man, and not your husband!”

“I’ve always loved you, Diane!” he went on madly. The restraint he had set on himself had broken, and nothing now could stem the current of his emotion. “I loved you before I went away, but I wasn’t sure of you; I didn’t dare to risk too much. Diane, if I had spoken then, would you have listened, would all this have been saved?”

She broke down herself.

“Don’t ask me--don’t--it’s no use! It’s done--don’t you see it’s no use to ask me now?”

“It’s not done, if you’ve left him! Your father says you’ve left him. If you have, if you’re going to be free, Diane, it’s not wrong for me to speak. I can’t be silent; I’m human. I’m as bad as he is--I’m worse, for you’re his wife. But I----” He stopped, and then went on in a low voice: “Will you answer me, Diane, just one word. Did you then--before I went away--did you care?”

She looked up into his face and saw it transfigured with deep emotion--the face of the man she loved, for whom she had left her husband. She was trembling, but his eyes held hers, and she yielded.

“Yes!” she sobbed below her breath.

They swayed toward each other in the golden mist, he holding her hands in a grip that thrilled with passionate hope.

“Diane, my love!” he cried.

If she heard him, she did not answer, though she closed her eyes and her lips moved. He seemed to feel, through the impalpable veil between their two souls, that hers was struggling away from his and trying to rise by its own agony to a supreme height of renunciation. But he would not let her go.

“Then--then, if you cared once, you care--you must care again. I can’t have you speak as you did just now--about there being no happiness for you. I can’t bear that, for I’d give all that I have, the best that’s in me, to make you happy. Speak to me! It’s not wrong--I know what you think, but it’s not wrong if you’re going to begin life over again. It’s not wrong for me to try to win you again, to make you happy!”

With a sudden effort she dragged her hands from his and moved on blindly, hurrying away from him.

“Don’t!” she sobbed. “Don’t make it worse. It’s all wrong; I know it; I see it; I--I left him because----”

He had caught up with her now and walked beside her, as pale as she was.

“Because what? Tell me; I must know; I have a right to know!”

She staggered again; her hand going to her throat with a strange little gesture, as if she felt strangled.

“Because I loved you! I see it now--and it’s wicked. I hadn’t any right to judge him, for I was worse than he was. It’s one of those things that make it wrong, Simon--that make it wrong even to have cared once!”

“No, it’s not wrong! We’ll get you free. He--I’ll say it now, Diane--he had no right to marry you!”

“I was the one who did wrong--as much as he did,” she managed to say. “I--I thought I loved him; I told him I loved him. I must have. If I didn’t, I--I could never have married him!”

“But you were mistaken! That’s common; it happens often. You were mistaken--you didn’t love him!”

She stopped again, and the misty sunlight illumined her face until it appeared to him to have a purity as luminous and fragile as an alabaster lamp. Her spirit, tried beyond endurance, seemed to be shining through it, darkening her eyes and softening her lips.

“Oh, I’m not sure!” she cried. “Don’t you see how I feel? There are two roads, and I stand at the crossing. I’m bewildered; I can’t see; I can only feel----”

“But I know!” he returned with profound emotion. “I know! My love is strong enough to find the way for us both. It’s not wrong to love you, for you’ve given him up!”

For a moment, as she clung to him, he felt the slight weight of her body against him, the fragrance of her hair upon his cheek. Then she had slipped out of his arms and left him alone in the mist.

XXXII

IN a tumult of feeling deeper and more complex than ever, Diane made her way through a meadow that furnished a short cut to her own door. She was vaguely aware that the grass was long, and that she was getting drenched nearly to her knees, when she saw, in a half-conscious way, a cluster of asters blooming happily just at the spot where a lowered fence-rail made it possible for her to scramble into the end of her father’s garden.

She was scarcely conscious of what she did, and she had a new feeling of guilt. Until now she had felt that she was as supremely in the right as Faunce was supremely in the wrong; but the whole attitude of her mind was breaking down. She felt a tremor of fear, though even at that moment she could not have told what it was she feared.

Shaken as she was, she tried to let herself in without attracting attention, for she had as little courage as ever for an interview with the judge. However, she was not to escape. He heard the rear door open, and, looking out of his library, espied her at the foot of the stairs.

“Is that you, my child?” he said in the deep bass that always presaged something important. “Come in here a moment before you go up-stairs. I have something to tell you.”

She turned reluctantly and followed him into the old room, which was so full of memories that it made her shiver. Her father resumed his seat by the table, but she remained standing just inside the door, where a bit of sunshine from the window touched the edge of her wet skirt, but left her face in shadow. The judge mounted his spectacles and looked over some papers, refreshing his memory.

“My dear, of course we’ll employ counsel; you know that! I’ve just got a letter from Holt and Hickson, which seems satisfactory on the whole. Mr. Hickson--he’s the junior partner--advises us to wait until the expedition sails. He’s seen Faunce, and, as far as he can ascertain, there’ll be no opposition. Faunce has modified his first assurance to me a little, but I suppose we’ll have to expect that--to expect changes and vacillations in a man like him!”

Diane tried to steady her voice.

“What did he say--I mean, what does he say now, papa?”

The judge consulted the letter again.

“He told Hickson that it depended upon you. He has the greatest faith in you, and won’t oppose divorce if you ask it; but he wants you to ask it in writing. It’s absurd--knowing, as he does, that you’ve left him; but he seems determined, so Hickson says, to know just what you want. Of course, if that is really all he wants to know, it’s easy. You can make a statement here; I’ll have it typed and witnessed, and Hickson can let him see it.”

“And if I didn’t want to write anything, what would happen then?”

Her father looked up in amazement.

“Not want to write anything? Of course you do! The sooner you’re free of that--that coward the better. That’s what I called you in for. You can decide just what you want to say, and I’ll have it prepared for your signature.”

She lifted her head at that, looking at him, a singular expression on her face.

“But that’s just it. I--I can’t! You see, I don’t know what I want to say at all.”

Her father suppressed an exclamation of impatience.

“I should think you’d know well enough! You’ve got to say something, or else let it go, and after a while he’ll sue you for desertion; but no one knows how long it would take him to get his courage screwed up to that. I wish”--the judge let his hand fall heavily on the papers before him--“I wish we had a clean case against him to sue on at once.”

“You mean--we haven’t any case?”

He frowned.

“We’ve got case enough, in one way; but against you--well, he’s done nothing against you but to dare to marry you, knowing what a coward he was!”

Diane continued to look at him, her eyes dilating a little, but she was silent. The judge, aware of it, looked up and encountered her expression. He pulled off his spectacles and gazed at her steadily.

“What’s the matter, Di? You look ill--I’ll have to send for Gerry.”

“Oh, no! It’s nothing but the scent of those tuberoses on the table--it’s so strong, it makes me feel faint.”

She moved away as she spoke and put herself a little out of the range of his vision. The judge took the glass of tuberoses and set it on the window-ledge.

“I thought you had a craze for all kinds of weeds. This thing has been too much for you; that’s what’s the matter.”

“No, no!” she gasped weakly. “I’m strong enough to stand a great deal more than this. I----” She hesitated, beginning to walk about on the other side of the room, her figure outlined against the rich bookbindings, but her face still in shadow. “Papa, what would you say if I--if I decided to go back to my husband?”

There was a sharp little pause before the judge’s bass boomed across the table.

“I’d disown you! A woman that could go back to such a coward wouldn’t deserve recognition.”

She laughed hysterically.

“But I married him!”

“You didn’t know it, did you?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“Nor did I!” The judge controlled his anger. “I beg your pardon, Di, for my share in it. Gerry thinks I helped make the match. If I did, I’ll help unmake it. I’ll have a statement drawn up for you, and you’ll only need to sign it. I should hate to feel the marriage was my fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault--unless it’s mine. I--I had no right to think I loved him if--if I didn’t!”

“You didn’t--that’s it, my child. Mistakes like that make half the marriages. I’ve seen enough of it in my day, and I don’t mean to have your life ruined at the start. You’re getting hysterical, that’s all. I’ll see that you get out of it and have a chance to make your life over. You can trust me for that, my girl!”

“But if--if I shouldn’t feel that I wanted to--to have you do it, papa?”

He turned sharply.

“What’s the matter? Have you seen that fellow?”

“My husband? Oh, no, no!” Her face flushed painfully. “I don’t believe he wants to see me after the way I left him.”

The judge started to retort, but hesitated and reflected. He had been on the point of telling her that Faunce did want to see her, but he thought better of it.

“It was enough to cure him--I’ll admit that, my dear,” he finally replied.

Diane moved to the nearest cabinet, and lifting a little jar of ancient pottery, began to examine it as if she had never seen it before.

“Do you think that any one--that any woman who’s been through what I’ve been through can start over again!”

“Of course she can! Why not? A man can fail and fall, for that matter, and then get up and start fresh.”

“Oh, but that’s different; the man’s not the question. I’m a woman. It’s not the same thing at all!”

“You’re getting back now to the fundamental question--the double standard of morals. It’s not relevant. You’re not doing anything immoral to refuse to live with a coward.”

“I didn’t even stop to think!” she cried. “When he told me what he’d done, I”--she shuddered--“I couldn’t stay!”

“Of course you couldn’t! What’s more, I won’t let you go back to him. You understand that, Di? You’re nervous and broken down, and he may try to persuade you, but I’ll never let you go back!”

“But if--if I went, papa?”

He struck his hand down on the table.

“Understand me. If you went I’d never speak to you again as long as I lived! Don’t you see what he did? He wasn’t only a coward; he would have been Overton’s murderer if the English party hadn’t come along. It was a miracle that saved Overton; Faunce as good as left him purposely to die.”

“Yet”--she spoke with an effort--“yet Overton doesn’t blame him as you do. He tries to excuse him.”

“You’ve seen Overton?”

“Ye-es; just now. I met him on the way home,” she stammered.