Chapter XI: Book III: I (4)

“Well, I’ll go in to please you; but I hope it won’t be too long, for I’m horribly hungry.”

“Dear, dear! Why didn’t you come a little earlier? But it won’t be more than two hours, and then I’ll have a hot luncheon prepared for you.”

She led Patience through the large church parlour and straight up to a table, lifting a chair as she passed the front row of seats.

“I don’t want to sit here,” whispered Patience, hurriedly; but Miss Beale pushed her into the chair, and seated herself beside her, at the back of the table.

“I am going to preside, and you are the guest of honour,” she said. “Young ladies,” she continued, smiling at the rows of bright and serious faces, “I am sure you will all be glad to see Patience again. I know she is glad to see you.”

Patience arose and bowed awkwardly, then sat down and tapped the floor with her foot. The young women looked surprised and pleased. One and all smiled encouragingly, sure that she had been converted at last. Many of the faces were bright with youth and even mischief; others were careworn and aging. Not one of them but looked happy.

Patience under her calm exterior began to seethe and mutter once more. Once she almost laughed aloud as she thought of the effect upon these simple-minded girls if the hell within her were suddenly made manifest.

The meeting opened at once. Miss Beale offered a prayer, in which she implored that they all might love the Lord the more. Hymns were sung, the Bible read, and reports by the various secretaries and treasurers. Then one serious and not unintelligent-looking woman of thirty read a platitudinous paper beginning: “Some one has said, ‘The time will come when it will be the proudest boast of every man and woman to say “I am an American.”’ I say that the time will come when it will be the proudest boast of every man and woman to say, ‘I am a Christian.’”

All regarded the reader with eyes of affection and approval. Each word Patience, in her abnormal state of mind, took as a personal insult to Intellect. She felt furiously resentful that in this Nineteenth Century with its educational facilities, its libraries full of the achievements of great masters of thought, there should be so low a standard of intellectuality in the middle classes. Even the fashionable women, frivolous as they were, were brighter, and keener to pierce outworn traditions. They might not be thinkers, but they had a species of lightning in their brain which rent superstition and gave them flashlight glimpses of life in its true proportions.

The girls began to give experiences. One had just joined the Y’s, and she related with tears the story of her struggle between the World and the Church, and her thankfulness that at last she had been permitted to decide in favour of the Lord. Patience remembered her as the vapid daughter of rather wealthy parents who in her own day had been devoted to society and young men. She was very faded. Many of the girls wept in sympathy, and Miss Beale mopped her eyes several times.

An extremely pretty girl stood up, a girl with black hair and pale blue eyes and rich pink colour. Patience regarded her satirically, thinking what a beauty she would be if properly gowned. Miss Beale, noting her interest, patted her hand and smiled.

“I just want to say,” began the girl, with deep earnestness, “that every day of my life I have greater confidence that the Lord loves me and hears what I ask Him. You know that I write the reports of the Y. W. C. T. U., and of course I have to get them printed for nothing. So when I sit down to write them I just ask the Lord to tell me what to say and how to say it, and all the way to the office I keep asking Him to tell me what to say to the editor so that he will print it and help our great cause along. And, girls, he prints it every time, and only yesterday he said to me: ‘I like your stuff because it’s direct and to the point, no gush, no rhetoric—it’s plain horse sense.’ Now, girls, you need not think I say that to compliment myself. I just say it to prove that the Lord writes those newspaper articles, not I.”

Patience put her handkerchief to her face and shook convulsively. She bit her lips to keep from laughing aloud; she wanted to scream.

Suddenly she became conscious of a deep murmur. Supposing it to be of disapproval, she straightened her mouth and dropped her handkerchief; but her face was scarlet, her eyes full of tears. The girls were leaning forward, regarding her earnestly. Miss Beale leaned over and placed her arm about her.

“Speak,” she said softly. “Don’t be afraid.”

“What on earth are you thinking about?” gasped Patience.

“Tell us what is in your heart,” said Miss Beale, in a tremulous voice.

And, “Tell us! Tell us!” came from the girls.

“You don’t know what you are saying,” said Patience, freeing herself angrily. “Let me go.” She was trembling with excitement. Her head felt very light. The blood was pounding in her ears. She started to her feet, meaning to rush to the door; but Miss Beale was too quick for her. She caught her firmly by the waist and led her to the middle of the space at the head of the room.

“I know she will speak,” said Miss Beale. “Patience, we all feel our awful responsibility. If you speak out now, you will be saved. If your timidity overcomes you, you may go hence and never hear His knock again.”

“Speak! Speak!” came with solemn emphasis from the Y’s.

“Oh, well, I’ll speak,” cried Patience. “And suppose you hear me out. It will be only polite, since you have forced me to speak. You have always misunderstood me. I am by no means indifferent to the God you worship. I have the most exalted respect and admiration for this tremendous creative force behind the Universe, a respect so great that I should never presume to address him as you do in your funny little egoism. Do you realise that this magnificent Being of whose essence you have not the most approximate idea, is the Creator, not only of this but of countless other worlds and systems, and furthermore of the psychic and physical laws that govern them and of the extraordinary mystery of which we are a part, and which has its most subtle expression in the Space surrounding us? And yet you, atoms, pigmies, tiny individual manifestations of a great correlative force called human nature, you presume to address this stupendous Being, and stand up and kneel down and talk to It, to imagine that It listens to your insignificant wants,—that It writes newspaper articles! Is it Christianity that has destroyed the sense of humour in its disciples?

“In each of you is a shaft from the great dominating Force—that is quite true, and it is for you to develop that force—character—and rely upon it, not upon a spiritual lover, as weak women do upon some unfortunate man. What good does all this religious sentimentality do you? Your brains are rotting. You have nothing to talk about to intelligent men. No wonder the men of small towns get away as soon as they can, and seek the intelligent women of lower strata. Men are naturally brighter than women, and girls of your sort deliberately make yourselves as limited and colourless as you can. Go, make yourselves companions for men, if you would make the world better, if you must improve the human race. Study the subjects that interest them, that fill their life; study politics and the great questions of the day, that you may lead them to the higher ethical plane on which nature has placed you. Quit this erotic sentimentalising over an abstract being to whom you must be the profoundest joke of his civilisation—”

“Hush!” shrieked Miss Beale. For some moments Patience had been obliged to raise her voice above the angry mutterings of her audience. One or two were sobbing hysterically. Miss Beale’s cry was the signal for the explosion of pent-up excitement.

“Go! Go!” cried the girls. “Go out of this church! Blasphemer! Shame! Shame!”

Patience looked out undaunted upon the sea of flushed angry faces, which a few moments before had been all peace and love. She shrugged her shoulders, bowed to Miss Beale, who was staring at her with horrified eyes in a livid face, and walked toward the door. The girls pressed her forward, lest she should speak again.

“We have a right as churchwomen to hate you,” cried one, “for we are told to hate the devil, and you are he incarnate.”

Patience refused to accelerate her steps, but reached the door in a moment. As she was about to pass out a joyous face was uplifted to hers. It belonged to a girl still sitting. Her lap was piled with loose sheets of paper. There was an excited smirch of lead on her cheek. Even as she raised her head and spoke she continued writing. “That was a corker,” she whispered, “the biggest story I’ve had in weeks.” It was Miss Merrien.

XVII

Patience was an early riser, and had usually read the “Day” through before Beverly lounged downstairs, sleepy and cross and masculine. On the morning after her day of varied experience she took the newspaper into the library and read the first page leisurely, as was her habit. The news of the world still interested her profoundly. Then she read the editorials, and, later, glanced idly at the headlines of the “stories.” The following arrested her startled eye:

AN EARTHQUAKE IN MARIAVILLE!
THE GOOD PEOPLE ARE OUTRAGED!
A SENSATION BY THE BEAUTIFUL AND BRILLIANT
MRS. BEVERLY PEELE!

The story covered two thirds of a column. Patience read it three times in succession without stopping to comment. It was graphically told, much exaggerated, and as carefully climaxed as dramatic fiction. And it was interesting reading. Patience decided that if it had not been about herself she should have given it more than passing attention. Her beauty and grace and elegance, her grand air, were described with enthusiasm. Every possible point of contrast was made to the serious and unfashionable Y’s.

At first Patience was horrified. She wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Peele would say. Beverly’s comments were not within the limitations of doubt.

“I’m in for it,” she thought. Then she smiled. She felt the same thrill she had experienced when the men looked askance at her after her assault upon her mother. The Ego ever lifts its head at the first caress, and quickly becomes as insatiable as a child for sweets. Patience glanced at the article to note how many times her name—in small capitals—sprang forth to meet her eyes. She imagined Bourke reading it, and Mrs. Gallatin, and Mrs. Lafarge, and many others, and wondered if strangers would find it interesting; then, suddenly, she threw back her head and laughed aloud.

“What fools we mortals be!” she thought. “And the President of the United States has dozens of paragraphs written about him every day. And actors and writers are paragraphed _ad nauseam_. If a woman is run over in the street she has a column, and if she goes to a hotel and commits suicide, she has two, and is a raving beauty. Rosita is persecuted for stories. The Ego ought to have its ears boxed every morning, as some old-fashioned people switch their children. Well, here comes Beverly.”

Her husband entered, and for the first time in many months she sprang to her feet and gave him a little peck on his cheek. He was so surprised that he forgot to pick up the newspaper, and followed her at once into the dining-room. During the meal she talked of his horses and his farm, and even offered to take a drive with him. He was going to White Plains to look at some blooded stock which was to be sold at auction, and promptly invited her to accompany him; but her diplomacy had its limits, and she declined. However, he went from the table in high good humour. When she left him in the library, a few moments later, he was arranging the scattered sheets of the “Day,” without his accustomed comments upon “the infernal manner in which a woman always left a newspaper.”

Patience went up to her room and wrote a note of apology to Miss Beale. She was half way through a long letter to Hal when she heard Beverly bounding up the stair three steps at a time.

“The cyclone struck Peele Manor at 10.25,” she said, looking at the clock. “Sections of the fair—”

Beverly burst in without ceremony.

“What the hell does this mean?” he cried, brandishing the newspaper. His dilating nostrils were livid. The rest of his face was almost black.

“Beverly, you will certainly have apoplexy or burst a blood vessel,” said his wife, solicitously. “Think of those that love you and preserve yourself—”

“Those that love me be damned! The idea of my wife—_my wife_—being the heroine of a vulgar newspaper story! Her name out in a headline! Mrs. Beverly Peele! My God!”

“God was the cause of the whole trouble,” said Patience, flippantly. “I thought the young women were entirely too intimate with him. The spectacle conjured of The Almighty with his sleeves rolled up grinding out copy at five dollars per column was too much for me. I have the most profound admiration and respect for the Deity, and felt called upon to defend him—the others seemed so unconscious of insult—”

“This is no subject for a joke,” cried Beverly, who had sworn steadily through these remarks. “I don’t care a hang if you had a reason or not for making a public speech—Christ!—it’s enough that you made it, that your name’s in the paper—my wife’s name! What will my father and mother say?”

“They will not swear. A few of the Peeles are decently well bred.”

“No one ever gave them cause to swear before. You’ve turned this family upside down since you came into it. You’ve been the ruin of my life. I wish to God I’d never seen you.”

“I sincerely wish you hadn’t. What had you intended to make of your life that I have interfered with?”

“If I’d married a woman who loved me I’d have been a better man.”

“I wonder how many weak men have said that since the world began! You were twenty-six when I married you, and I cannot see that there has been any change in kind since, although there certainly is in degree. If you had married the ordinary little domestic woman, you would have been happier, but you would not have been better, for you possess neither soul nor intelligence. But I am perfectly willing to give you a chance for happiness. Give me my freedom, and look about you for a doll—”

“Do you mean to say that you want a divorce?”

“I think you know just how much I do.”

“Well, you won’t get it—by God! Do you understand that? You’ve no cause, and you’ll not get any.”

“There should be a law made for women who—who—well, like myself.”

Her husband was incapable of understanding her. “Well, you just remember that,” he said. “You don’t get a divorce, and you keep out of the newspapers, or you’ll be sorry,” and he slammed the door and strode away.

A quarter of an hour after Patience heard the wheels of his cart. At the same time the train stopped below the slope. A few moments later she saw Miss Merrien come up the walk. The maid brought up the visitor’s card, and with it a note from Mr. Field.

DEAR MRS. BEVERLY [it read],—Forgive me—but you are a woman of
destiny, or I haven’t studied people sixty years for nothing. I
chose to be the first—the scent of the old war-horse for news,
you know. Peele will be furious, but I can’t bother about a
trifle like that. Just give this young woman an interview, and
oblige your old friend

J. E. F.

Patience started to go downstairs, then turned to the mirror and regarded herself attentively. She looked very pretty, remarkably so, as she always did when the pink was in her cheeks; but her morning gown was plain and not particularly becoming. She changed it, after some deliberation, for a house-robe of pearl grey silk with a front of pale pink chiffon hanging straight from a collar of cut steel. The maid had brought her some pink roses from the greenhouse; she fastened one in the coil of her soft pale hair. Then she smiled at her reflection, shook out her train, and rustled softly down the stair.

Miss Merrien exclaimed with feminine enthusiasm as she entered the library.

“Oh, you are the loveliest woman to write about,” she said. “I do a lot of society work; and I am so tired of describing the conventional beauty. And that gown! I’m going to describe every bit of it. Did it come from Paris?”

“Yes,” said Patience, amused at her immediate success. “My mother-in-law brought it to me last summer—but perhaps you had better not mention Mrs. Peele in your story.”

“Well, I won’t, of course, if you don’t want me to. I have written the story about La Rosita for the Sunday ‘Day,’ and I did not hint at your identity. It made a good story, but not as good as the one about you. Mr. Field wrote me a note this morning, complimenting me, and told me to come up here and interview you. I hope you don’t mind very much.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea whether I do or not. How do you do it?”

“Well, you see, I’ll just ask you questions and you answer them, and I’ll put it all down in shorthand, and then when I go to the office I’ll thresh it into shape. You can be sure that I won’t say anything that isn’t pleasant, for I really never admired any one half so much.”

“Very well, you interview me, and then I’ll interview you. I have some questions to ask also.”

“I’ll tell you anything you like. This story, by the way, is to be in the Sunday issue on the Woman’s Page. Now we’ll begin. Were you always an unbeliever? Tell me exactly what are your religious opinions.”

“Oh, dear me! You are not going to write a serious analysis of me?”

“Yes, but I’ll give it the light touch so that it won’t bore anybody. It is to be called ‘A Society Woman Who Thinks,’ and will be read with interest all over America.”

“But I am not a society woman.”

“Well, you’re a swell, and that’s the same thing, for this purpose anyhow. The Gardiner Peeles are out of sight, and I have heard lots of times how beautifully you entertain in summer and how charmingly you gown yourself. Tell me first—what do you think of this everlasting woman question? I hate the very echo of the thing, but we’ll have to touch on it.”

“Oh, I haven’t given much thought to it, except as a phase of current history. One thing is positive, I think: we must adjust our individual lives without reference to any of the problems of the moment,—Womanism, Socialism, the Ethical Question, the Marriage Question, and all the others that are everlasting raging. He that would be happy must deal with the great primal facts of life—and these facts will endure until human nature is no more. Moreover, however much she may reason, nothing can eradicate the strongest instinct in woman—that she can find happiness only through some man.”

“Good,” said Miss Merrien. “I’d have thought the same thing if I’d ever had time. Now tell me if you have any religion at all.”

“I suppose I should be called an anarchist. Don’t be alarmed: I mean the philosophical or spiritual anarchist, not these poor maniarchists that are merely an objectionable variety of lunatics. The religious situation is this, I think: Jesus Christ does not satisfy the intellectual needs of the Nineteenth Century. And yet, indisputably, the religionists are happier than the multiplying scores that could no more continue in the old delusion than they could worship idols or torture the flesh. Civilisation needs a new prophet, and he must be an anarchist,—one who will teach the government of self by self, the government of man’s nature by will, which in its turn is subservient to the far seeing brain. Human nature is anarchic in its essence. The child never was born that was brought to bend to authority without effort. We are still children, or we should not need laws and governments.”

“Wait till I get that down.”

“Of course these are only individual opinions. I don’t claim any value for them, and should never have thought of airing them if you hadn’t asked me. For my part I’m glad I live in this imperfect chaotic age. When we can all do exactly as we please and won’t even remember how to want to do anything wrong—Awful!”

“But you said the advanced thinkers needed this new religion to make them happy.”

“Their happiness will consist in the tremendous effort to reach the difficult goal. That will take centuries, just as the spiritualised socialism of Jesus Christ has taken twenty centuries, and only imperfectly possessed one third of the globe. When anarchy is a cold hard fact—well, I suspect the anarchists will suddenly discover that _ennui_ is in their vitals, and will gently yawn each other to death. Then the tadpoles will begin over again; or perhaps there will then be mental and moral developments that we in our present limitations cannot conceive. Haven’t you had enough?”

“No, no. I’ve a dozen questions more.”

Miss Merrien, like all good newspaper reporters, was an amateur lawyer and a harmless hypnotist. In an hour she had extracted Patience’s views of society, books, dress, public questions, and the actors in the great national theatre, the Capitol at Washington.

“Oh, this is magnificent,” she announced, when the pages had been folded. “Now can I look at the house?”

“We will have luncheon first. No, don’t protest. I am delighted. Mr. Peele is away for the day, otherwise I fear you would not have had this interview.”

“Oh, you don’t believe in the submission of wives, then?”

“I’ve never thought much about it,” said Patience, indifferently. “There is too much fuss made about it all. When a man commands his wife to do a thing she does not care to do, and when a woman does what she knows will displease her husband, it is time for them to separate.”

“Oh, that is too simple. It wouldn’t do to reduce the woman question to a rule of three. What would all the reformers do? And the poor polemical novelists! Oh, these are the famous portraits, I suppose?”

“You can look at them if the luncheon is bad,” said Patience, as they took their seats at table. “I’m not a very good housekeeper, although I actually did take some lessons of Miss Mairs. And sometimes I forget to order luncheon. I did to-day.”

But the luncheon proved to be a very good one, and Miss Merrien did it justice, while Patience explained the portraits. Afterward she showed her guest over the lower part of the house. Then they went back to the library, and Patience had her interview.

“Tell me exactly how does a woman begin on a newspaper?” she asked.

“Oh, different ones have different experiences,” said Miss Merrien, vaguely. “Sometimes you have letters, and are put on as a fashion or society reporter, or to get interviews with famous women, or to go and ask prominent people their opinion on a certain subject—for a symposium, you know; like ‘What Would You do if You Knew that the World was to End in Three Days?’ or, ‘Is Society Society?’ I have written dozens of symposiums. Sometimes you do free-lance work, just pick up what you can and trust to luck to catch on. But of course you must have the nose for news. I was at a matinée one day and sat in front of two society women. Between the acts they talked about a prominent woman of their set who was getting a divorce from her husband so quietly that no newspaper had suspected it. They also joked about the fact that her lawyer was an old lover. I knew this was a tip, and a big one. I wrote all the names on my cuff, and before the matinée was over I was down at the ‘Day’ and had turned in my tip to the City editor. He sent a reporter to the lawyer to bluff him into admitting the truth. The next day we had a big story, and after that the editor gave me work regularly.”

“How much do you make a week?”

“Sometimes forty, sometimes not twenty; but I average pretty well and get along. Still, when you have to lay by for sickness and vacations, and put about one half on your back it doesn’t amount to much. You see, a newspaper woman must dress well, must make a big bluff. If she doesn’t look successful she won’t be, to say nothing of the fact that she couldn’t get inside a smart house if she looked shabby. And then she’s got to eat good nourishing food, or she never could stand the work. Of course there’s got to be economy somewhere, so I live in a hall bedroom and make my own coffee in the morning. Still, I don’t complain, for I do like the work. If I had to go back home I’d ruin the happiness of the entire family.”

“What do you look forward to?—I mean what ultimate? You don’t want to be a reporter always, I suppose. Everybody is striving for some top notch.”

“Oh, maybe I’ll become Sunday editor, or I might fall in with somebody that wanted to start a woman’s newspaper, or magazine—you never can tell. There aren’t many good berths for women. Of course there are a good many very bright newspaper women, and it’s a toss up who goes to the top.”

“You don’t seem to take matrimony into consideration.”

“Oh, I don’t deny I get so tired sometimes that I’d be only too glad to have a man take care of me. I guess we all look forward to that, more or less. I think I’d always work, but not so hard. It would make all the difference in the world if you knew some one else was paying the bills. And then, you see, we go to pieces in eight or ten years. A man is good for hard newspaper work until he’s forty, but we women are made to be taken care of, and that’s a fact. We take turns having nervous prostration. I haven’t had it yet, but I’m looking cheerfully forward to it.”

“Now I want to tell you,” said Patience, “that I am going to be a newspaper woman.”

“Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Peele! Excuse me, but you belong here. Your rôle is that of the châtelaine in exquisite French gowns and an air half of languor, half of pride. You were not made for work.”

“That is very pretty, but I suspect you don’t want to lose me for copy.”

“Well, I don’t deny it. I wish you’d keep the ball rolling, and give me a story a month.”

“I’m afraid I’ve given you my last. In a week or two I shall be a châtelaine in a pink and grey gown no longer, but a humble applicant for work in Mr. Field’s office.”

“Is it possible that you mean it?”

“Do I look as if I were joking?”

“You don’t look unhappy—Pardon me—but—but—does he beat you?”

“Oh, no,” said Patience, laughing outright, “he doesn’t beat me. I have better grounds for desertion than that. Do you think you would do me a favour? I shall have to slip away. He would never let me go with a trunk. I am going to ask you to let me send you a box of things every few days. That will excite no comment among the servants, as we are always sending clothes to the poor. May I?”

“Of course you may. I’ll do everything I can to help you. But—I can’t imagine you out of this environment. Don’t you hate to give it up,—all this luxury, this ease, this atmosphere?”

“Yes, I like it all. I’m a sybarite, fast enough. But I’ve weighed it all in the balance, and Peele Manor stays up. I have a hundred dollars or so, and that will last me for a time. I’ll give it to you to take care of for me. I never was wealthy, but I have no idea of economy. I don’t think I should like a hall room though. Are the others so very expensive?”

“They are if you have a good address, and that’s very important. And you want to be in a house with a handsome parlour.”

“I have no friends,—none that will come to see me.”

“Oh, you’ll make friends. You’re an awfully sweet woman. I can’t bear to think—Well, there’s no use saying any more about it. I expect you’re the sort that knows your own mind. I should like to keep on seeing you a great lady, but if you can’t be a happy one I suppose you are right. Well, I’ll stand by you through thick and thin, and I’ll show you the ropes. Now I must get back to the office and work up my story. Here’s my address. There’s a spare room on the floor above mine. If you’re in dead earnest I’d better take it right away; then I can unpack your things and hang them up. But—but—do you really mean it?”

“Of course I do.”

“You know Mr. Field personally, don’t you?”

“Very well, indeed; and he told me when I was sixteen that he should make a newspaper woman of me.”

“Oh, well, then, you’ll have a lot of push, and your road won’t be as hard as some—not by a long shot. About six out of every ten newspaper women either go to the wall or to the bad. It is a mixture of knack and pluck as much as brains that carries the favoured minority through. You have brains and pluck, and you’ll have push, so you ought to get there. About the knack of course I can’t tell. Good-bye.”

XVIII

The evening mail brought from Mrs. Peele to her son a note which he read with a rumbling accompaniment, then tossed to Patience.

“Do you intend to permit your wife to disgrace your family?” it
read. “If I had my way that abominable paper, the ‘Day,’ should
never enter this house—nor any other paper that dealt in
personalities. I literally writhe every time I see my name—your
father’s honoured name—in the society columns. You may, then,
perhaps, imagine my feelings when your father handed me the
‘Day’ this morning with his finger on that outrageous column. He
was speechless with wrath, and will personally call Mr. Field to
account. I am in bed with a violent headache, in consequence,
and dictating this letter to Honora. But although I deeply feel
for you, my beloved son, I must _insist_ that you assert your
authority with your wrong-headed wife and command her to refrain
from disgracing this family. I don’t wish to reproach you, but I
cannot help saying that it is _always_ a dangerous experiment to
marry beneath one. This girl is not one of us, she never can be;
for, not to mention that we know nothing whatever of her family,
she comes from that dreadful savage _new_ Western country. In
spite of the fact that she has been clever enough to
superficially adapt herself to our ways, I always knew that she
would break out somewhere—I always said so to Honora. But I
don’t wish to add to your own sorrow. I know how you, with all
your proud Peele reserve, must feel. Only, my son, use your
authority in the future.”

Patience finished this letter with a disagreeable lowering of the brows. She made no comment, however, but opened a book and refused to converse with her husband.

On Sunday morning she found three columns on the Woman’s Page of the “Day” devoted to her beauty, her intellect, her gowns, and her opinions. It was embellished with a photograph of Peele Manor and a sketch of herself, which Miss Merrien had evidently made from memory. When Beverly came down she handed the newspaper to him at once, to read the story with the raw temper of early morning. She hoped that Mrs. Peele would read it in similar conditions.

After he had gone through the headlines he let the newspaper fall to the floor, and stared at her with a face so livid that for a moment she felt as if looking upon the risen dead. Then gradually it blackened, only the nostrils remaining white.

“So you deliberately defy me?” he articulated.

“Yes,” she said, watching him narrowly. She thought that he might strike her.

“You did it on purpose to drive me crazy?”

“I had no object whatever, except that it pleased me to be interviewed. Understand at once that I shall do exactly as I please in all things. This is not the country for petty household tyrants. I don’t doubt there are many men in this world whom I should be glad to treat with deference and respect if I happened to be married to one of them; but with men like you there is only one course to take. I have asked you to let me live abroad. If you consent to this, it may save you a great deal of trouble in the future; for, I repeat, I shall in all things do exactly as I choose.”

“We’ll see whether you will or not,” he roared. “You’ll do as I say, or I’ll lock you up.”

“Oh, you will not lock me up. You are way behind your times, Beverly. There is no law in the United States to compel me to obey you.”

“I’ll stop your allowance. You’ll never get another cent from me.”

“That has nothing whatever to do with it. Now, I ask you for the last time, Will you let me travel?”

“No!” he shouted, and he rushed from the room.