Chapter XXI: Part 21

"My freedom, Morris!... My freedom ... my freedom!" It was like the breaking of the waters. It poured in a cataract of passionate, breathless words. "Oh, be kind ... be generous, let me go, without haggling ... without bitterness.... We owe it to the past to part as friends. We should be big in this big thing ... get above littleness of every sort. Just because we have made a heart-rending mistake ... why should we be like enemies?... Give me this one memory of you ... clear, great. Something I can remember all beautiful. You owe it to our love, Morris. You owe it to that wonderful dream we dreamt together...."

"Stop ... stop!..." he gasped. "It's like death.... It's worse than death...."

"Oh, my dear!..." she said. "I know.... It's horrible! To me, too, it's horrible.... But let me go ... ah, let me go, and I'll love you with a new love!... It will last ... it will bless you all your life.... Let me go, dear, let me go!..."

He stood shaking. His breath came quick and hard. He was dreadfully near to tears.

"I can't," he got out at last.

"Yes. Yes. You can ... you will...."

"No," he stuttered, "no ... no...."

She turned away, sank down again, her face in her hands. For a second or two he stood watching her. Then he went and flung himself on his knees before her as he had done that wild, windy night, three years ago. He grasped either side of her chair as he had done then, prisoning yet not touching her with his arms.

"Beautiful...." he whispered. "Beautiful...."

She cowered back as though he had struck her, her face still hidden.

"Don't you remember...." the husky voice went on. "That night ... the wind ... the wild moon!... Oh, Selene! Selene!... I've blasphemed ... but I still worship.... I still worship...."

She began to sob, desperately, helplessly, like a child.

"Forgive me ... take me back, Selene.... Only try me once more.... This one time.... You'll see.... You'll see you can trust me ... give me your love again ... this once ... this once...."

She struggled to speak. The big sobs choked her. At last, between them, the words came. "It's ... all ... emptiness," she said, "here...." She put one hand to her breast. "There's nothing...." The sobs broke in again. ".... To give...." she ended.

He knelt staring at the slight hand that still hid her face from him. Suddenly he noticed, as Amaldi had done, that her wedding ring was not on it. He dropped his head upon her knees. That broke his manhood to see that she had put aside even the symbol of their union. He felt her hand upon his hair. He wept and wept, wishing, as he had wished about Belinda--that he had never been born.

And over Sophy came the old feeling of nightmare--the sensation of having lived twice over her fatal marriage with Chesney. Just so Cecil had once clung weeping to her knees. But then she still had some hope--some love to give. Now she was beggared of all but pity. And even this pity was not strong enough to make her return once more to the unspeakable sacrifice of loveless marriage.

A sudden rattling at the door sent him to his feet, apprehensive, shamefaced. Then an impatient whine told him that it was only the collie asking to be let in again. He crossed over and opened the door with a vexed jerk. The dog always irritated him. Now he would have liked to kick it. The collie rushed over to Sophy, and pressed against her anxiously, as if he knew something were wrong with her. He whined again, nuzzling his head against her breast. Loring pulled out his watch.

"I suppose I'd better get ready for dinner," he said.

"Yes," she said, rising.

He held open the door for her, and she went out, her swollen eyelids lowered. His heart gave a great gulp as she passed him--half love, half anger. His vanity ached with resentment that she should hold out against him like this. What was left of love ached also with the dread of losing her. He was beginning to take it in that he really might lose her.

As he changed for dinner, he bruised his brain trying to recall exactly the words that he had used to her in that mad outbreak of jealousy. He could not remember half. But what he did remember made him scorch with shame. No wonder she had revolted!... No wonder!... No wonder!... He had this spasmodic burst of inward honesty. But then again she was _too_ hard ... _too_ self-righteous. Yes, damn it all ... that was what she was--"self-righteous"!

A reaction of mood began to set in. The dinner was constrained and painful to a degree. Every one was glad to go to bed early and break up the oppressive evening.

That night Belinda haunted Loring's dreams. He would wake up aflame--resentful ... then plunge back into the maze of lurid dreams again. Towards morning he had a long, hateful illusion of being married to both Sophy and Belinda. He was going up an endless church-aisle all sickly with flowers--and on either arm was a bride in veil and orange-blossoms. And one of these brides was Sophy, and one Belinda.

The dream was ridiculous and horrible as well as hateful. The clergyman was a huge negro, all in red. He wore an Oxford cap and married them out of a little box covered with red velvet, instead of out of a prayer-book. This box was a music-box. The clergyman explained. He said: "When I grind the first tune, you will be married to this woman." He pointed at Sophy. "When I grind the second tune, you will be married to this woman." He indicated Belinda. Then he ground away at the little red velvet box. The tunes were rag-time. The big negro patted with his foot as he ground them out.... Then he gave Sophy a ring, and Belinda a pointed knife. He said:

"_This is the black knife of Lur; it cuts through all things._"

And at these words, Loring broke out in the horrible cold sweat of fear that only a dream can give.

Then everything changed. He lay in the midst of a frightful, black, catafalque-like bed. On one side lay Sophy, on one side Belinda. He could see Belinda; but try as he might he could not see Sophy, though he knew that she was lying at his other side. Belinda was leaning across him and pressing down his face with her hand. She was laughing. He could see the tip of her tongue between her white teeth as in mischief. She looked very beautiful, but wicked. Her white breast showed through little petals of red flowers. He struggled to lift his head.

"Where is the black knife of Lur?" he cried; and as he cried it, again he broke into a sweat of fear. Belinda laughed more, and said:

"It is there. Look!"

She took away her hand from his face, and he rose on his elbow, and turned to see Sophy lying, white and still, with the handle of the knife protruding from her breast. Belinda was saying:

"Didn't I do it well? Not a drop of blood!"

He gave a choked scream, and woke sweating and trembling like a panic-stricken horse.

XLII

The next day Loring felt unnerved in an absurd manner by that dream. It kept coming between him and reality. Even after he was wide awake, the remembered voice of the huge negro saying: "_This is the black knife of Lur_," gave him a disagreeable shiver. The mental atmosphere of the house did not tend to soothe him. At breakfast Charlotte was icily polite, the Judge restrained and taciturn. Sophy did not come down till after ten. She suggested a ride. This ride also was very trying for them both. He began with the old arguments. She answered with a sad listlessness, but with an under note of determination which made him feel angry and discouraged.

The day was so triumphantly clear after the great wind of yesterday that it seemed to emphasize their inner gloom.

After luncheon they went for a walk together, and again they had "great argument about it, and about." They were frightfully unhappy, and one as determined as the other. Yet Belinda would keep stealing upon Loring's thought--the Belinda of that ridiculous, odious dream, with her white breasts peeping through red petals and the tip of her pretty feline tongue between her teeth. He could hear her saying: "_Didn't I do it well? Not a drop of blood!_" Damn dreams, anyway!... As if a man hadn't enough to contend with by day!...

About tea-time the camping-party returned in great spirits. Bobby came whooping in to his mother's study waving a big branch of scarlet berries. He stopped short at sight of Loring. A sort of stiffening went through him. Loring, too, stiffened. Then Bobby came forward. They shook hands coldly, more like two men than a man and a little boy. When Bobby went out again, Loring, looking after him, said bitterly:

"There goes one of the chief causes of division between us."

"Never, never have I put him before you!" cried Sophy, with a painful flush. "Be just to me, Morris; at least be just to me."

He said sullenly:

"You didn't need to 'put him' ... he was always there."

Sophy parted her lips to deny passionately, then closed them again. What was the use? They must not come to recriminating each other.

"Oh, Morris," she pleaded, a moment later, "let's be kind to each other! Let's have kindness to remember..."

He gave that short, ugly laugh of his.

"You think you're being kind, eh?"

Chesney's tone--almost his words again! Sophy, too, had her haunting nightmare.

The third day Loring decided to speak with Judge Macon "man to man." He asked for a private interview. The Judge gravely ushered him into his sanctum. As during that first "serious talk" with Sophy, he established himself in the revolving-chair before his desk. Loring sat to one side. He was pale and felt abominably nervous. The Judge looked calm and noncommittal. He waited for Loring to begin.

The young man began rather unfortunately:

"Sophy tells me she's confided in you about this teapot tempest of ours," he said. "I find it's devilish hard to get a woman to look sensibly at such things. But you're a man, Judge ..."

"Yes," admitted the Judge imperturbably, as the other paused.

".... You're a man," Loring continued. "You know that these ... a ... little lapses will occur 'in the best-regulated households'...."

The Judge's face took on suddenly the expression of a Rhadamanthus.

"May I ask what you refer to?" he said starkly.

Loring's smile became a rather foolish grin.

"Why ... a ... this ... a ... this--this.... Oh, hang it all, Judge! You've surely kissed some pretty woman besides your wife in twenty years of marriage!"

He was rather startled by the effect of this jocose insinuation. The Judge suddenly stood up. Wrath and disgust transformed his kindly face.

"I allow no liberties from any man," he said, in his deepest bass.

Loring, also, leaped to his feet. He looked genuinely dismayed and confounded.

"But ... but ... I meant no liberty...." he stammered.

"Then," said the Judge, in no wise placated, "your idea of what constitutes a liberty differs fundamentally from mine."

He remained standing.

"Do you mean to say...?" fumbled Loring.

"I mean this," retorted the Judge: "That to the best of my poor ability I strive to conduct myself according to the teaching of the Christian faith." (The Judge, like Charlotte, always became Johnsonian when righteously wrathful.) "The Founder of that Faith pronounced once for all upon the question that you refer to as a 'little lapse.' He said: 'He that looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.'"

The blood beat into Loring's face. He looked away from the other's contemptuous eyes. He was too dumfounded to feel resentful at the moment. Somehow it never occurred to him to doubt the Judge's perfect sincerity. He was dumfounded just because he believed in it. Here was actually a man who looked upon strict faithfulness in marriage as onerous on both sexes.

There is no one so fiercely chaste as the Southerner who believes in the sanctity of marriage. "Philandering" is not admitted in his code. He would call it by a plainer and a coarser name.

When Loring had recovered his wits, he apologised profusely and meekly. But the interview was not a success. The Judge was now too frankly on Sophy's side in the matter. He thought the whole situation deeply to be deplored, but he gave, as his judicial opinion, that in such cases the process of "patching up" was never successful.

Loring left the study, humiliated and downcast. He realised that he had not only lost Sophy's love but the friendship of a man whom he really valued. Somehow, though he tried to jeer at the Judge for a narrow-minded old fossil who had never known the true fire of manhood, he could not actually do so. Something in him knew that the old Virginian was every inch a man. The strength of his passions was apparent in his dark, powerful face. But these passions had been curbed by a principle--an ideal. And, drearily enough, Loring began to wonder less at Sophy's present attitude. It was from the loins of men like this that she had sprung. She came of a race that required chastity in husbands as well as in wives. What made it all so overwhelming was that Loring knew well that he "had committed adultery already in his heart." It was as though his spirit were being arraigned by these people. That he had only kissed a woman made no difference to them. To them it was adultery in the heart....

* * * * *

When he had been at Sweet-Waters a week, something happened that absolutely staggered him. He felt, when he read a certain item in a letter from his mother, as though he had received a violent blow in the midriff. He had ridden down to the station at mail-time, and opened this letter on his way back. The portion of its contents that so undid him ran as follows:

"What I am going to tell you now, my dear boy, is a family secret as yet. Eleanor is delighted. I reserve my opinion. I wish to hear what _you_ think on the subject. Of course, from a worldly standpoint the match is a very brilliant one for Belinda...." For _Belinda_?... Loring held the letter nearer his eyes. He thought that he must have read the name wrong. His mother's writing was not always easy to read. No. It was plain enough this time. The word was "Belinda." His eyes gulped the following pages. "She seems in high spirits--but then her spirits are always high. But I must explain. She is engaged to Lewis Cuthbridge. He was in your set at Harvard, he tells me. He is certainly what people would call very handsome, and, as you know, the Cuthbridges are extremely rich. But I don't care for that kind of good looks myself. He is too red and white and black for a man in your old mother's opinion. I like a more distinguished type...."

"God! Get on ... get on ... get on!..." Loring was raging in his mind. His eyes glanced avidly ahead. He read: "They certainly seem very much in love with each other. Belinda, I think, shows all her feelings far too openly. They make a very striking couple. But haven't I heard that Lewis Cuthbridge was rather 'wild'? I surely have that impression. I should have preferred a more settled character for Belinda. Some one of mature opinions--a professional man, steady in his habits...."

"Get on ... _get on_ ... can't you?..." Loring's thought was urging angrily again. He skipped ahead.

"What gives me the greatest concern, though, is that the whole affair is to be so hurried. They are to be married at Christmas, and go straight to India. It seems that Belinda is very anxious to see the East. But the engagement will not be announced until the last part of November. I am most anxious to talk with you about this young man," _et cetera, et cetera_.

Loring crammed the letter into his pocket. The glare of the sunlight on the sheet of white paper had set reddish spots dancing before his eyes. He rode on in a wild flare of outraged protest for half a mile, the horse going as it willed, at a lazy walk. Suddenly it snorted and leaped forward, feeling the jab of spurs in its sides. It ran away indignantly for quite a mile. Then Loring pulled it in, and again they subsided to a dawdling foot pace.

The spurs had been jabbed into Poor Aleck because Loring had suddenly thought of Cuthbridge's too red mouth under its too black moustache.... Of this mouth and of Belinda's....

"Engaged"!... The little devil!... So this was her way of paying him off!... The callous, revengeful little devil!... But then it couldn't be allowed.... He knew too much about Lewis Cuthbridge to think for a moment of allowing him to marry one of the women of his family.... Belinda might not be a blood-relation, but that made no difference. It must be put a stop to--at once--at once! He would write his mother. His head spun. He felt as though some one had his brain in a sling and were whirling it round and round.

When he reached the house, he went up to his own room, locked the door, and, dropping into a chair, pulled out the crushed letter and read it over. Then he jumped up and began striding to and fro in a blind fury. The crash of a chair that he flung out of his way startled him into self-realisation. He recalled Griffeth's warning after that last outbreak in Newport, and sat down again, battling for self-control. And boiling up in him with his wild rage came the old, mad passion for the girl. Those lips--those lips that he had made his own at such cost!--given to that low blackguard!... Pah! The things he knew of the brute!... And now ... now.... Perhaps at this very minute.... Oh, he understood how men could beat women!... He could have dragged Belinda out of that hound's arms by the hair of her head--and beaten her with his fists!... He remembered Griffeth's words again, and again got some sort of hold upon himself....

Morals are more a matter of geography than we like to admit. Loring, an indifferent member of Christianised society, would have made a very respectable Mohammedan.

* * * * *

He withstood for two days the gnawing, racking desire to go and see for himself just "how things were." Then he gave in. He told Sophy that he had decided to go away and think over this crisis between them by himself. Sophy, who had also heard from Mrs. Loring of Belinda's engagement, understood quite well why he was leaving so suddenly. Something in her was glad and sad both at this knowledge. "It is the end," she thought. And endings are always sad. It is said that prisoners of many years leave their cells with a certain regret. Convalescents often have this queer nostalgia on quitting the sick-room. Sophy had known far more sorrow than joy in her marriage with Loring, and yet it was with a mysterious, indescribable, contradictory pain that she held up her cheek for his farewell kiss. He said that he would see her again in two or three weeks. But she felt utterly sure that this was their final parting. Very pale, she held his hand in both hers.

"I wish you all good ... all good, Morris," she whispered. "Whatever comes ... you know that, don't you?"

"I think so ... yes. I know it," he said unsteadily.

The carriage was waiting for him. There was no one else about. She went down the old stone steps of the portico, and stood there while he got in. She was not going to drive to the station with him. Neither of them wanted to say good-by in public. As he took his seat, she put out her hand and tucked in the rug which had slipped. He caught this kind hand and his face broke into a shamed wretchedness. One of the horses plunged impatiently. Their hands were torn apart.

As he drove off and Sophy was left standing alone in the autumn sunlight, they both felt as those in old times must have felt when the sword was pulled from a wound and death came as a relief with the gush of blood. It was like death in many ways, this parting; but it was also an unspeakable relief.

XLIII

Loring's mother had written that Belinda was now with her at Nahant.

He arrived there late the next day, and learned that Lewis Cuthbridge was stopping in the neighbourhood and was expected to dinner. He did not see Belinda until she came down to the drawing-room. He was already there alone when Cuthbridge was announced. They had never liked each other. Now, instinct turned dislike to loathing. It was hard for them to be ordinarily civil. But while Loring's detestation amounted to fury, Cuthbridge only thought Loring "a sour, ill-bred cub." He was by several years the elder of the two, and showed it. As Mrs. Loring had said, he was good-looking, but too exuberantly so. He looked almost "made up," with his white forehead, red lips, shoe-black hair, and eyes of a dense, swimming blue. And he was also slightly fat. As he sat there with crossed legs, talking to Mrs. Horton, Loring thought the way that his full, pleasure-loving thigh filled tight the sleek black cloth of his trousers was one of the most obnoxious things he had ever seen. He hated that plump, self-assured thigh and the glossy black stripe that curved along it.

Belinda came down all in light yellow, with a scarf of pale green about her shoulders. She wore the knot of topazes over one ear, as at that first dance in Newport. When she saw Loring, she said "Hullo, Morry!" in her coolest voice.

Cuthbridge regarded her with an air of ownership for which Loring itched to smash him. He quoted, waving a thick, white hand with too-polished nails:

"'Daffy-down-dilly has come up to town
In a yellow petticoat and a green gown.'"

Belinda went and stood before him, shaking out her yellow petals.

"D'you really like it, Lewis? Is this the shade of green you meant?"

She held up an end of her scarf. She was very charming with this new air of almost docile appeal. Her eyes said that it mattered oh, so much to her! whether Lewis found her scarf the right shade of green or not. He came closer--took the thin stuff over his own hand--held it up against her face.

"Yes. That's it," he said finally. "It's just that foliage effect I wanted to get; throws out your hair and skin stunningly."

When Cuthbridge alluded to Belinda's "skin," Loring could scarcely keep his hands off him. He was sick with pent rage. He sat near the fire pretending to look at the evening paper. He could see them quite plainly--every gesture--without raising his eyelids.

Now Belinda had her hand in Cuthbridge's bulging, black-sleeved arm. She was cooing to him as she used to coo to Loring:

"And where's the prize I was promised for getting myself up all green-and-yellow, like a bruise?"

"Oh ... you mercenary child!" reproached Cuthbridge. "Isn't my homage reward enough?"

"Not by a long shot!" said Belinda ringingly. "You've spoiled me, you know, Santa...." She broke off, and addressed Loring over her shoulder: "I call him 'Santa Claus,' Morry, because he's always bringing me such bully presents."

Loring thought of the lines in the classic rhyme on Santa Claus:

"... A little round belly,
That shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly."

He longed to quote them. But he held on to himself. He merely said:

"Most engaging pet-name, I'm sure...." and went on with his paper.

Belinda was already coaxing Cuthbridge again.

"Come, now--fork up! I know you've got something for me hidden away in some pocket or other...."

Cuthbridge chuckled knowingly. This fat, pasha-like chuckle almost sent Loring bounding from his seat.

The next thing he heard was a little scream of delight from Belinda:

"Oh, Santa!... You dear ... you _angel_!... Oh, _you_ shall have a prize for this!... Just you wait.... Look, mater! Just _look_ what Lewis has brought me this time!"

Morris glanced up to see the girl whirling about with a necklace of great emeralds looped from hand to hand. The big, translucent stones hung like threaded coals of green fire from her white fingers. She danced up to her mother, then to Loring, thrusting the jewels under their noses.

"Emeralds! Emeralds!" she sang. "I'd sell my soul for emeralds!"

"If you had one to sell...." said Morris under his breath to her.

She didn't seem to hear him. Dancing back to Cuthbridge, she put the necklace into his hands again, and turning her back lowered her white nape and cushion of ruddy hair before him.

"Put them on for me, Santa," she said. "I must _feel_ them on me...."

Loring stifled with helpless rage, while those thick white over-manicured hands fumbled about the soft throat of Belinda. Oh!... But just wait until he got her by herself!

Now she cried out, laughing:

"Oooo ... oo! How _cold_ they are!"

Cuthbridge said low, but not too low for Loring to hear:

"Ah ... but they'll be beautifully warm in a few minutes!..."

His voice gloated. So did his hands and his heavy, dense-blue eyes. He was altogether a rather unpleasantly "gloatful" person, as a lover. Loring quivered with wrath and nausea. He would have liked to tear Cuthbridge "from the scabbard of his limbs."

"Dinner is served," said the old butler.

It was not until the next day at tea-time that Loring got a chance to see Belinda alone. He came in just as she and her mother also returned from a drive. "I must go up to have tea with Grace," said Mrs. Horton. "You give Morry his tea, Linda."

"All right-o!" said Belinda cheerfully. She was her most glittering self. Hair, eyes, brilliant skin and teeth--all were shimmering, as though she gave forth a transparent, throbbing glow like a landscape in the summer sun. She was all in green to-day, a vivid, bright green cloth that sheathed her closely. Her shining, ruddy head rose from the rich bitumen-black of costly furs. One of the many gifts of her Santa Claus--Loring guessed. He longed to snatch them from her throat and chuck them into the fire.

"Don't wonder you stare, old boy," said she, with her gayest grin. "I know I look a Katydid in all this green--but Lewis is just dotty about my wearing green...."

Mrs. Horton had left the room. Loring looked at her, narrowing his lids.

"You little light-o'-love...." he said, in a low, level voice.

"Oh, tut-tut-tut!" said Belinda, with grieved reproof. "'Sich langwidge' for a tea-party!"

".... Little heartless wanton...." Loring continued, in the same voice. "Mercenary, too ... like all your kind.... Even _he_ ... that fat louse! ... called you mercenary...."

"Really ... I shall have to put disinfectant in your tea instead of cream," mocked Belinda.

Then he pounced on her. He caught her by both wrists and jerked her to her feet before him, almost upsetting the tea-things.

"Answer me...." he said. "Has that brute kissed you?"

"Yes, dear," said Belinda, eyeing him calmly; but the garnet sparkles were in her eyes.

"You...!" He choked, controlled himself. "On the mouth?" he asked huskily.

"Oh, yes, dear!" said Belinda, and she laughed. His gaunt, furious face filled her with fierce joy. He was paying--paying--paying. Drop by drop she would wring from him all that he owed her. She had never enjoyed anything more in her fierce, wilful little life--not even Loring's kisses--than she enjoyed lying to him now. For she was lying when she said that Cuthbridge had kissed her on her lips--at least, in the way that Morris meant. Perhaps one of her chief charms for the satiated young roue to whom she was engaged was her Cossack-maiden savagery of reluctance in matters of pre-marital love-making. But she chose that Morris should think that another man with the right to do it had kissed her as he had once kissed her, with no right but what her own love had given him.

He stood now, looking at her, his face inflamed with the strange fever of mingled hatred and desire. "_Faugh!_" he said at last, turning from her as from something sickening.

She laughed again, and began calmly selecting four of the largest lumps of sugar for her tea. As she did so, she hummed an air from the latest musical comedy. Oh, she had him! She had him "where she wanted him." He might rage round the arena of circumstance like an infuriated young bull. She was the Matadora who knew how to tame him.

He was back again in a moment or two. The red gleam of her cloak of insolence maddened and attracted him at the same time--just as a real Matador's cloak maddens and charms a real bull. He stood over her, hands in pockets, "to keep from wringing her neck," he told himself.

"Look here," he said. "I suppose you mean me to believe you love that bounder?"

"Why no---- What d'you take me for?" she said, a lump of sugar in one cheek. She crunched down on it contentedly with the last words.

"Better not ask what I take you for," said Loring hotly. "You're a cool hand, Linda; but I don't think you'd stay cool if I formulated my opinion of you."

"And I wonder if _you'd_ stay _at all_ if I gave _my_ opinion of _you_?" asked she, grinning.

Loring clenched his hands that he still kept in his pockets.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you're going to marry this brute without loving him?"

"Oh, well.... Marriage 'makes the heart grow fonder,' they say," she retorted easily.

"Good God!... How dare you say such things to me ... to _me_?" burst out Loring furiously.

"And why not 'to you ... to _you_'?" she mimicked.

She slid suddenly from the edge of the table on which she had been perched, and went up close in front of him. The garnet fire blazed in her eyes now. Her black brows were drawn down close over them.

"See here, Morry," she said. "I'll give you a straight tip: You can't play dog-in-the-manger with _me_. You can behave decently to me or ... clear out!"

It was Loring's turn to laugh.

"'Clear out'?" he exclaimed. "Well, of all the cool minxes!-- '_Clear out_' did you say? ... from my own mother's house?... I'd like to know how you mean to accomplish it?"

Belinda gave him a look of supreme and contemptuous insolence.

"_I'll tell Lewis the truth about you_," said she.

Then Loring "saw red." Without a word, he seized her in his arms.

"Aren't you afraid to say such things to me?" he demanded thickly. "Aren't you afraid...?"

"No," said Belinda. But just for a second she was afraid. There had been such a gleam of dementia in his eyes.

"Yes, you are afraid," he said, still holding her fast. "Little devil ... you _are_ afraid.... And you need be ... you need be...." He laughed cruelly. "If I were an Oriental," he went on, "I'd cut off your lips for having let another man touch them...." His face suffused suddenly. He bent it down over hers. "Give them to me all the same...." he muttered. "Give me your lips, Linda. They're mine...."

For answer, she pressed them inward until they were only a thin mark in her face. Her eyes glittered up at him, defiant, rebellious, fiercely mocking.

The passion ebbed gradually from his own face. As he still held her, and she still continued to keep her full lips turned inward, he broke into a helpless, unwilling laugh. "Of all the little brutes...." he muttered unsteadily. At last he let her go. She backed away from him, then her lips curled free again, redder for their imprisonment. She smiled with impish delight at the success of her simple device.

"And yet women say they've been kissed against their wills!" she gurgled gleefully. "We _are_ liars ... we women, Morry, dear!"

Something in her tone gave him a queer hope. He went up to her again. He said in a voice that trembled a little:

"Have _you_ lied to _me_, Linda?... Was it a lie when you told me that beast had kissed you?... Had kissed your mouth?"

Belinda certainly had inspirations. She looked at him with her most melting yet most wayward look. Her dimples flickered.

"Well ... I guess he didn't enjoy the sort of kisses he _did_ get," she murmured.

"Linda...." whispered Loring. "Linda...."

The sudden revulsion of mood made him dizzy.

"Oh ... Linda," he repeated, and, putting out his arms, drew her to him again.

But she was quite serious now. Frowning a little, and swayed back stiffly in his grasp, she said:

"See here, Morry--you've called me some hard names. But I'll let that pass. I can understand that. What I can't understand, and what I won't let pass is your trying to keep me and your wife at the same time. I won't lie any more---- Yes.... I _did_ lie just now. It did me good all over, too!" And she showed her white teeth in a rather fierce little smile. "But I won't lie any more. I _don't_ love Lewis Cuthbridge-- I rather loathe him ... but as sure as I live ... as we both live ... unless you break free ... unless you get that divorce, or let her divorce ... I'll marry Lewis within two months. Mind you...." she added, as she felt his arms tighten convulsively, "I'm not lying.... I mean it."

Loring's face looked drawn and curiously hunted.

As she spoke, his eyes followed the movements of her full, soft lips. They curled into such lovely curves when she talked--now hiding her little fine, white lower teeth, now revealing them.

"And if I say I'll do it ... then ... will you kiss me?" he whispered.

A wild thrill sang through Belinda. Her arms, which had been hanging at her sides, whipped round him. She strained him to her.

"If you'll _swear_ it ... I will," she whispered back.

"And ... and ... you'll ... give yourself to me ... you'll chuck that brute ... at once?"

Respectability, the only chaperon that ever influenced Belinda, warned sharply. She relaxed her hold of him a little. Her voice took a keener note.

"D'you mean ... will I marry you when you're free?"

Loring paled, then the blood rushed to his face again.

"Yes ... damn it ... I mean that," he said.

She eyed him for a few seconds narrowly. Then she said:

"You swear it?"

"I swear it," he muttered.

"On your honour?"

"Yes ... on what's left of it."

Belinda stretched upwards against him, like a luxurious young puma, relaxing to pleasure after a long strain of crouching watchfulness.

"Ah ... Morry...." she sighed, and she held up to his her parted, vaguely smiling lips.

XLIV

But that kiss-sealed oath to Belinda did not keep Loring from "going two ways" in his heart, for some time still. He was truly between two fires. He could not bear to let Sophy go in order to keep Belinda. It was unendurable to think of relinquishing Belinda that he might keep Sophy. In the end, however, Belinda won. When it came to the final test, he found that he could more easily let Sophy slip from him into a vague future than resign Belinda to the fat arms of Lewis Cuthbridge. And he suffered. For the best in him clung to Sophy, and he knew that it was with his best that he clung to her.

Belinda saw this inward struggle quite plainly. She remained calm in presence of it. Propinquity was her staunch ally. Besides, she had refused to break her engagement with Cuthbridge, until Morris could assure her--could let her see "with her own eyes"--that a divorce between him and Sophy had been decided upon past recall.

By the middle of December he was able to satisfy her in this respect. As soon as she was convinced that matters had reached an irrevocable point, she broke her engagement as she had promised. Then she set herself to blot out all possible regret on Loring's part. For this role nature had consummately endowed her. Loring's heart had no chance to ache. His frantic passion filled every crevice of his consciousness. Memories, doubts, regrets--all went scurrying before it, like wild things before the onrush of a prairie fire.

As "Venus Victrix," Belinda was quite wonderful. Yet though she was now wholly Venus and triumphant, she still kept homespun Respectability at her elbow. Not a hair's-breadth too far did she permit her inflammable lover to venture. Belinda as Goddess would have compelled all Olympus to address her as Mrs. Vulcan.

* * * * *

And so, towards the end of December, Sophy left Bobby in the care of Charlotte and Harold Grey, and went to desolate, far-western Ontowega. After six months of that desolation she would be free again. It seemed incredible. She did not go alone, however. Susan Pickett, a second cousin of whom she and Charlotte had been very fond since childhood, went with her. Miss Pickett was a delightful spinster of fifty. She had not married, simply because she had never loved a man enough to want to marry him.

No one ever called Susan Pickett "Cousin Susan" or "Aunt Susan." She was "Sue" to all who loved her, young as well as old. She was a tall, vigorous woman, deep-breasted, and of perfect health. Her thick, brown eyebrows were masculine, her large, well-shaped mouth feminine. Her eyes, deep-set, grey, and humorous, might have been either a man's or a woman's. Eyes of this type--when they are kindly affectionate, as in Sue Pickett's case, are the sign of a big, impersonal humanity. It was never necessary to have Sue "on one's mind" even for a moment. She was always occupied in some way, and always serenely content. This is why Sophy ventured to ask her to share with her for six months the abomination of desolation called on the map of the United States Ontowega.

During the first stages of the long, tiresome journey Sophy was conscious only of a heavy, dull weight of determination and flat sadness. She hated the smell of train-smoke. Now it seemed as if this rank, clogging smoke trailed over the whole landscape of her life, past and future. She sat drearily, hour after hour, watching the telegraph poles snatch up the sagging wires as they flew past. The threads of her own life were like that, she thought--dark strands strung from one bare pole of fact to another, endlessly, monotonously. The bare poles had once been trees--living, joyous things. So had the bare facts of her life. Now lopped, stripped, rigid, they hemmed her in, guiding the thread of her destiny to some dull, conventional end--some mechanical fixture in a bleak station to which this hard, beaten road of divorce was leading.

* * * * *

After certain matters at Ontowega had been settled, they found that they could go to the Black Hills of Dakota without disturbing the course of events. They both loved riding. The lawyer told them that there was capital riding about the Black Hills. The place he suggested was called Bear Spring.

The world without lay in great curving swathes of white, pricked out by green-black pines as in an old Japanese print.

On the third day came a bundle of letters forwarded from Ontowega. The two that Sophy kept for the last were from Bobby and Amaldi. How strange it seemed to see the Italian stamp in the snowy wilderness of Bear Spring! And that seal with its arms and motto--"_Che prendo--tengo_".... In a flash there rose the memory of the struggle between Loring and Belinda for Amaldi's ring.... How things could hurt one ... things like the impression of a seal. Then she opened Bobby's letter. At the top was written, "I did not let Mr. Grey see this letter. So please to excuse mistakes. R. C. C." Among other things it said:

"Mother, since you went away, I have decided a important thing. I
have decided to be an Author--like you are. I send you a poim. It
is called 'Plantagenet.' Mr. Grey does not think my best is
poertry. He likes the best what I wrote about 'A grey day.' Please
tell me which you like best. It is most important, as I must
decide as soon as possible if I will be a statesman or a poit.--A
author anyhow."

"Plantagenet" began as follows:

"Richard of England, monarch brave,
Bold as the lion that haunts the cave,
Wielding thy battle-axe with a crash,
As into the foe thou dost boldly dash!"

"Oh, my darling little 'poit'!" murmured Sophy, as she read. But she did not think, from "Plantagenet," that Bobby would ever really be a "poit." The "Grey Day," however, was another thing. Sophy had a queer feeling about her heart as she read that.

"The day is very still. It is grey and tired. It seems old as if
the sun had risen a long time ago, and it is too tired to go on.
It seems standing there before me so tired. The clouds hang in the
air very still. The grey light creeps into the house, and the
house is still like the day. All is still and grey, even my
thoughts. Only the clock moves, and the fire. Only the fire shines
in the greyness. I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the
red of the fire in the greyness; I do not know why it is such a
sorrowful thing to hear the clock ticking very slowly, or why the
rustle of the fire makes me know I am lonely. If my dear mother
was with me she could interprit it to me like dreams in the bible.
But then if my mother was with me, I think this grey day would
seem shining. I think the still would only be quiitness if my
mother was with me."

As Sophy read these last words she raised them to her lips. It seemed to her that Bobby need not fear about becoming "a author anyhow." She could not think that it was only mother-love that made "A Grey Day" seem unusual to her.

Then she opened Amaldi's letter. Here, too, was an unexpected pleasure. She had found his letters charming from the first, but in this one it was as if he had put aside a certain reserve that she had always noticed before. He might have been talking to her over a log fire at Le Vigne---- Or, no, she corrected herself with a smile--never had Amaldi "talked" to her with the ease, the fulness, the alternate gaiety and depth with which he wrote to her in this long, delightful letter. She sat holding it in her hand when she had finished reading it, trying to recall clearly his dark, irregular face and olive eyes--the sound of his voice. And she smiled again, thinking of the Corinthians' opinion of Paul: ".... His letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; ... but his speech is contemptible." "Dear Amaldi...." she thought, still smiling. "I wonder how it is that you are such a silent man as a rule, and yet can write such perfectly adorable letters?"

She put his letter with Bobby's and laid them both away. For a long time she stood at her bedroom window looking out over the snowy wilds towards the sunset. The afterglow burned red through the inky pines. The snow shone a queer, witch-like blue in the twilight. Sophy saw it all without seeing. She was thinking that there were beautiful things in her life still ... that she ought to be very grateful ... that after a while she ought even to be happy in them....

But as she gazed at the smouldering watchfires of the west, Bobby's words came back to her: "I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the red of the fire in the greyness...."

XLV

Sophy told Miss Pickett all about Amaldi. Sometimes she would read her extracts from his letters when they were unusually delightful.

One day, towards spring, when Sophy had been thus reading to her, she said thoughtfully:

"Sophy, child--you aren't afraid of preparing a new unhappiness for yourself?"

Sophy laughed out.

"Oh, Sue," she cried, "that's the first old-maidish thing I ever heard you say!"

"Old maids are very wise sometimes," returned Miss Pickett calmly. "The Delphian Oracle was an old maid as far as I can make out."

Sophy said in a disappointed voice:

"Sue ... don't you believe in friendship between men and women?"

"I certainly do. No one has stauncher men friends than I have."

"Then why on earth don't you think I can have them?"

Miss Pickett twinkled.

"'Twasn't a question of _them_," she said demurely. "There's safety in numbers. I was referring to this particular one."

Sophy said reproachfully:

"Sue ... do you really think I'm the sort of woman to flirt with a man on paper, while I'm getting a divorce?"

Miss Pickett, still quite calm, replied:

"No, honey, you know I don't think so."

"Then what _do_ you think?" demanded Sophy, beginning to bristle a little.

"I think," said her cousin, putting down her embroidery on her lap for a moment, and looking quizzical but profound, "that _sometimes_ congeniality is more dangerous than passion."

Sophy returned her look a little loftily.

"Dear Sue," said she, "haven't you really taken in that all that side of me is dead ... quite dead?"

"No ... 'playing 'possum,'" flashed Miss Pickett.

"Oh, have your little joke by all means," said Sophy, smiling. "But after all it's '_my_ funeral' as they say out here.... I suppose the corpse knows better than any one else whether it's dead or not."

"On the contrary--the corpse doesn't know anything whatever about it," said her cousin. "If you were really a corpse, my lamb, you wouldn't know it."

Sophy looked almost hurt.

"Won't you allow me to know about my own nature, Sue?" she asked.

Now Miss Pickett smiled.

"Nature," said she, "is as fond of revivals as a nigger."

On a hot, gusty, dusty day in summer, having returned to Ontowega, they set forth with the lawyer to go before the Judge who was to give Sophy a decree of divorce. The little town looked more hideous than ever in the glare of summer. Such trees as grew along the board sidewalks were grey with dust. The pettish wind flung handfuls of grit into their eyes and nostrils. Sophy followed Mr. Dainton's tall, scraggy figure like a hypnotised "subject." She had but to follow that round-shouldered, obstinate looking back into the yellow-brick square of the "Town Hall" that loomed just ahead, and she would be free. That lank, black figure with its ravel of grey locks escaping from under a black "wide-awake" was the Nike that led on to Freedom.

Emerald Dainton, the lawyer's little nine-year-old daughter, skipped at Sophy's side, clinging tightly to her cold, gloveless hand--for Sophy's hands were very cold though the thermometer stood at 85 degrees. Emerald had a "mash" on "pa's last divorce lady." That is what Emerald called Sophy in her thought. She was a shrewdly intelligent child, not unattractive, with the most penetrating green-hazel eyes that Sophy had ever seen. She shrank from these eyes, when they fixed consideringly on her face. She could feel Emerald wondering how and why she had come to Ontowega as "pa's" client. She had an insane impulse every now and then to ask the child her views on divorce. She was sure that she held views on the subject and that they would be crisp and to the point.

They entered the Court House, and Mr. Dainton showed the ladies into a dingy room on the left. Emerald skipped in also as a matter of course. There were some plain wooden chairs, a table, a stove, and in one corner behind the stove a horsehair sofa.

From one of the wooden chairs rose a mealy tinted but clever looking man of about forty. Mr. Dainton "presented" him as Mr. Wogram. He was Loring's representative. Mr. Dainton then excused himself for a moment. He returned shortly to say that Judge Boiler was just about to dismiss a case in the Court Room, and would be with them in a few moments.

A desultory conversation on politics then began between Mr. Wogram and Mr. Dainton. Sue and Sophy sat silently side by side on two of the wooden chairs. Sue had put one of her hands on Sophy's and was gripping it tighter than she knew. Emerald had retired to the horsehair sofa behind the stove.

There was a maple tree just outside of the window. An opening in its twigs and leaves made a ridiculous profile against the white-blue dazzling sky. Sophy gazed at this profile, until when she looked away she saw it swimming in green and red on the whitewashed walls. She thought in odds and ends. Then Judge Boiler entered and was introduced. He sat down finally before the bare table and assumed his air of office. He was a heavy, impassive looking man of fifty with a pale, dyspeptic skin, pale blue eyes and thick whitey-brown hair going grey.

Just as proceedings were about to open, Sophy noticed Emerald's little many-buttoned boots and red stockings protruding from behind the stove. She looked at Dainton and the blood swept over her face.

"Excuse me for interrupting ... but your little girl is still in the room, Mr. Dainton," she said.

The lawyer jumped up and drew a protesting Emerald from her horsehair coign of vantage.

"Please, pa ... _lemme_ stay!" she whined. "_I_ might have to get divorced some time. I want to see how you fix it up. _Please_, pa!"

Mr. Dainton whispered fiercely that he'd "smack her if she didn't shut up that minute." Father and daughter disappeared into another room. Then the father reappeared alone, and the case of Loring v. Loring proceeded....

When it was all over and Mr. Wogram had taken his leave with jerky bows to friend and foe alike, Mr. Dainton turned to Sophy, with a curious reminiscence of the facetious manner in which one addresses brides, and said:

"Allow me to congratulate you ... Mrs. _Chesney_!"

Judge Boiler did likewise.

Sophy had one dreadful moment of fear, regret, grief, distaste--the awful vertigo of the irrevocable. She tried to smile conventionally. Sue slipped an arm through hers, held her close without seeming to do so, and talked for her--nice, easy, well-sounding commonplaces. While she was thus talking, Mr. Dainton stalked to the inner door and, flinging it open, called jocosely:

"Come along in, Maldy. The knot's untied...."

Emerald sidled in, looking sulky but curious. She eyed Sophy a moment, then said in a loud whisper:

"Is she really divorced?"

"Sure thing," replied her parent

"You did it quick as that, pa? Truly?"

"Truly," said he.

"My!" exclaimed Emerald, overcome with admiration. "I guess it takes longer to hitch 'em up than to unhitch 'em, when _you_ do the unhitching, pa!"

Then she skipped over to Sophy, and clung to her hand again. Her green-hazel eyes devoured the tall, pale lady's face. She was fairly a-quiver to participate in the emotions of the divorced heroine.

"Well...." she said. "Now you're _un_-married. Are you happy?"

Sue looked like a hawk about to pounce, but Sophy answered quietly:

"I really don't know, Emerald," she said.

"But you ain't _sorry_ you did it, are you?" persisted the child.

This was too much for the patience of a childless woman. Miss Pickett took Miss Dainton by the hand and led her firmly to her father.

"Please explain to your little girl,", said she, "that there are some occasions where children should not be seen, much less heard."

Mr. Dainton admitted ruddily that "he guessed that was so." But he would have liked to shake the woman who had snubbed his Emerald.

The child pouted a while, then sidled up to Sophy again as they walked through the hot, gusty streets towards the hotel. It seemed impossible for her to resist the double fascination that Sophy exercised over her, as woman and as _divorcee_. Sophy let the child take her passive hand. She was hardly conscious of it, so far was she in a world of alien thought.