Chapter IV: Part 4

As for Barb's own little life, caught in the whirl of the city's, it was full and breathless and on the whole incredibly agreeable. She typed her Aunt's eloquent pro-suffrage pamphlets and articles and listened with rapt eyes and eager ears to her Aunt's glowing speeches and all the while in her busy brain the meaning of this, too, was gradually dawning. At first it had been like a confused, jumbled picture puzzle, but little by little she was able to put the pieces together into their proper places. She was beginning to see that though one talked a great deal about the woman question and listened to a great deal about the woman question, there was really, after all, no woman question, just the human question--the human questions.

How could every man and woman and child in America--in the world--be assured enough to eat and to wear, enough and not too much? How could each have leisure to play, also just enough, neither too much, nor too little? How was each to find his own work, neither too much nor too little, but the right work, the work he could do with all his heart, not for the payment, though that must be adequate, but for the zest of the doing itself, that special, personal service which every human being should be God endowed and man fitted to perform? Above all, how could every man, woman and child be sure of happiness? Since she had come to the city happiness had come to seem a very fundamental thing, perhaps because she herself was so happy, partly also because she was so sorry for the rest who were not happy. And so few of them seemed to be happy. They looked complacent, or smug, or well-fed, or blatantly successful, some of them, but almost none looked happy, and most of them, it seemed to Barb, looked downright miserable, haunted and hunted, which was very sad.

Barb herself was happy, as has been said. In her ignorance and innocence she supposed her happiness had its roots in the fact that she was young and healthy and busy and useful and interested in her work. She had no idea that her happiness was at all bound up in the other fact that few days passed that she did not either see or talk over the telephone with a certain rather grave but very friendly young doctor from the near-by clinic, who was also interested in getting at the secret of the city, especially in trying to pluck out the heart of its physical miseries, fighting the seemingly futile battle with filth and disease and ignorance and vice and their sad consequences, attacking the Augean stables of the city with the energy of a Hercules, though there was no magic stream to turn to his aid except the magic stream of youth and courage and determination and faith, which was, after all, a fairly efficient substitute.

And if sometimes when there was a silence between the two young people and Barb's heart was almost overbrimming with a wistful, half-conscious joy in things as they were, she did not know that the grim set to Phil's mouth and the tired look in his eyes was due to the fact that his Faraway Princess was looking particularly far off just then and that he was all but oblivious of the presence of the contented little Beggar-Maid quite within hailing distance. So much for Fools' Paradises where Youth lives from preference and for Nature going quietly about her business in the background!

The city had its way with Suzanne, too, and though she loved it better than Barb, it treated her less genially. Suzanne worked hard and hopefully. The click of her typewriter resounded faithfully by night and day. But, somehow, her plays and stories did not sell. The arrival of the mails with the persistently returning long envelopes was a daily agony. She got to know all the hateful platitudinous variations of the printed slip "Does not necessarily imply lack of merit," "Not exactly suited to the needs of the magazine," and so on. How she detested the smug, smooth, complacency of those printed formulae! How she hugged to her heart the occasional kindly, personal notes of the compassionate editors who salved the pain of rejection by a brief word or two of encouragement or advice. But, alas, these favors were as few as they were precious!

The plays fared no better. The managers smiled unctuously upon her prettiness when Suzanne bearded them in their dens. Some of them even patted her on the shoulder and told her her work was "promising," and advised her by all means to keep at it. But there was always some thoroughly excellent reason why they could not take the particular play or sketch she had to offer and she had eventually to retreat from the dens, one after the other, sore, indignant, but more doggedly determined than ever to storm the citadel.

In the meanwhile Aunt Sarah's little legacy dwindled until it became a mere shadow of itself. It had never been very portly at the best of times, and living in the Village is deceptively expensive. By the first of December Suzanne moved, taking with her her "Factory re-built," which skipped a few letters for variety's sake now and then, but was, on the whole, very dependable. Certainly it could be depended upon to turn out manuscript which would return with automatic precision after the briefest allotment of days. Suzanne informed Barb about this time over the telephone that it was incomparably more picturesque to be living over a fruit vender's shop in the Alley than it was to inhabit a mere studio. It gave you loads of "copy." Miss Murray looked meditative when her niece reported this new viewpoint on Suzanne's part and suggested that that young lady be invited to take supper with them at an early date, to which Barbara joyfully acquiesced. She felt that she had seen too little of Suzanne of late. Suzanne accepted and Barb looked at her very critically and accused her of working herself to death and getting great dark circles under her eyes.

But Suzanne only shrugged and asserted that work agreed with her and sent up her plate for more salad, apologizing for her appetite on the score of having been so busy at lunch time she had forgotten to eat any.

"Oh, you genii!" laughed Barb reproachfully, but Miss Josephine Murray vouchsafed her guest a keen scrutiny which Suzanne perceiving, straightway rattled off a lot of voluble enthusiasm about the delights of the "Dutch Oven" and other Bohemian eating-places.

Later, Phil Lorrimer dropped in and took the girls to a show. He, too, looked rather hard at Suzanne later when they were having innocuous sandwiches and beer at a little German restaurant. Phil and Barb escorted Suzanne home to her alley but she would not let them come in, protesting that it was too late and she didn't want to ruin her reputation with Giovanni and Pepita downstairs, who were very proper people.

On the Bus Phil turned to Barb to ask a rather odd question.

"Roger Minot been in town lately?"

"I don't think so. Suzanne wouldn't let him see her if he did come. Why?"

"I just wondered. Suzanne is looking a little peaked, don't you think?"

"Dreadful," sighed Barb. "Suzanne is such a fiend for work. She owned up to forgetting to eat any luncheon to-day she was so interested in what she was doing. I'm afraid she forgets rather often."

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Phil. He had seen more than one young man and young woman, too, for that matter, who had developed that convenient kind of memory about food in the city when pockets were empty. He shrewdly suspected that Suzanne was "up against it" in his own parlance. He had made a fair diagnosis of her case in the garish lights of the German restaurant. "Overwork, underfeeding, devilish desperation. Something sure to snap soon." Thus he summed the matter up mentally, for he had not thought it necessary to alarm Barb about her friend's situation, since she was so obviously unsuspecting. He knew Suzanne would brook no help nor pity. "Proud as Lucifer, of course," he thought. But he made up his mind to keep his eye on Suzanne, as he put it.

To that end he made his way to the Village a few evenings later, found from Giovanni that Suzanne was out and discovered her, for himself shortly, sitting in a bench on the Square, looking pinched and blue about the lips. Phil Lorrimer was a very direct person and usually went straight for any goal he had in sight. He finally succeeded in wringing the truth out of Suzanne. She had not sold a story since she came to New York or "landed" a play. Her money was all but gone and she had been living on one meal a day for a week past.

"And the worst of it is, I'm a rotten failure. That's what I can't stand." And Suzanne had clenched her fist in her shabby little glove and set her white teeth together sharply. "I won't give up. I tell you I won't. I won't go home and I won't ask 'em for a cent. I won't let 'em say, 'I told you so.' I won't. I won't. Phil Lorrimer, if you dare to hint one word of what I've told you to-night to Rog--er--to my people, I'll borrow a stiletto of Giovanni and ram it clean through you. What did you ever make me tell you for, anyway? You hadn't any business to. I hate you!" And with an ejaculation somewhere between a snarl and a sob, Suzanne had turned and fled away from him into the night.

But it had not taken Phil's long legs many seconds to be up with her again.

"See here, Suzanne," he urged. "Don't take it like that. My knowing doesn't count. Doctors and priests are dumb as the grave. I won't peach, but do let me help you over the bad spot. I haven't much myself, as you know, but I'd be glad to ease you along a bit if you'll let me, man to man."

Suzanne smiled an April smile at him.

"Man to man, you are a darling, Phil Lorrimer. I'd let you help me if I'd let any one but I won't. My pride's all I have left, and I'm going to hang on to that like grim death. Don't you worry. I know what I can do and I'm going to do it."

"What?" Phil was somewhat dubious about the sudden flush on Suzanne's cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.

She shook her head, mischief written in every line of her thin, pretty, piquant face.

"'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till you applaud the deed,'"

she quoted gayly. "It is much better you shouldn't know. I'm not even going to tell Barb. She will only be informed that I am out of town with friends. My esteemed parents and dear Roger will hear the same. Your job is to sit tight and know nothing. You won't be responsible. Your skirts--I mean your coat-tails---will be entirely clear."

"Suzanne, I've half a mind to telegraph your father this minute--or Roger. Maybe it would be better to summon Roger." He eyed her sternly.

Suzanne giggled wickedly.

"You will do nothing of the sort, dear Dumb as the Grave. I have your sacred oath not to peach."

"Let me off, Suzanne," he begged. "Honest, I'm worried about you. You look wild."

But Suzanne only laughed again, and assured him she was saner than the statue of Liberty.

"Let you off nothing, dear sir," she added for good measure. "But please don't fret. I assure you I am not going to do a thing either desperate or immoral. I'm going on a lark, that is all. You can't down Suzanne. Like Ivory Soap--it floats. Here we are at my alley. My fruit stand's just beyond. Shake hands like a good boy and wish me luck. Don't frown like that. It spoils your leonine beauty. Good night--and good-by." And, before he could speak, Suzanne had darted into her own doorway leaving Phil staring rather ruefully after her.

"Now what in time or eternity is she up to?" he pondered. "She isn't the kind to play the fool to any great extent. Got too much head and too little heart. I may as well let her gang her own gait. She's bound to anyway. Poor old Roger! She is certainly leading him a trail. Wouldn't he curse me for letting her make a getaway like this if he knew? Out of town with friends!" he muttered as he descended into the depths of the subway. "I'd like to see the friends. And if I were Rod Minot, I would too, or know the reason why."

Thus satisfactorily can one young man sum up the whole duty of another in a recreant courtship though remaining as helpless and inefficient as a new-born infant in the management of his own.

*CHAPTER XI*

*MARGINS*

"Hello, Jack! I had no idea you were home." Sylvia, rosy and blown from a spin behind Doctor Tom's frolicsome black mare, entered the living-room at Arden Hall, bringing with her a whiff of fresh outdoor air. She threw down her muff and held out a welcoming hand to her guest who had been waiting her return.

"Bad penny, you know." Jack captured both hands instead of the one vouchsafed as he spoke. "Can't leave business very long, you see." His eyes twinkled mischievously as he looked down at Sylvia, making shameless bid for her favor. Sylvia laughed, but she withdrew her hands and shook her head at him.

"You are a dreadful fraud, Jack. You don't really care such a lot about the business all at once. You know you don't."

"Not a tinker's dam," he shrugged. "Whatever that may be."

"Then why--" began Sylvia and stopped.

"There is only one why, young lady, and you know it."

Sylvia frowned and jabbing out her hatpins a little irritably, tossed her black velvet toque on the table. She had already removed her coat and furs and stood, trim and tailored, in her simple blue serge dress; a simplicity which was exceedingly becoming and likewise extremely expensive as Jack's approving gaze, sweeping the lithe young curves of her figure, knew very well.

"I wish you wouldn't, Jack."

"Wouldn't what?" blandly.

"Wouldn't work--just because I want you to. It is so horribly like a bribe."

"It is a bribe."

"Then I don't like it. I told you I didn't promise anything."

"And I told you I didn't expect anything. You can't blame a fellow for putting all the eggs he can find into his basket."

"Put all the eggs you like into the basket, only don't blame me if they get smashed. Sometimes, Jack, I think you don't really want to marry me at all--you just want the fun of pursuing me."

"Maybe so," agreed Jack so amicably that Sylvia lifted her eyebrows at him. "I was brought up never to contradict a lady."

Sylvia laughed at that and sat down, running her hand over her hair, to brush back its turbulent ripple, a gesture Jack loved because it was so interwoven with his mental pictures of her.

"Let's not discuss ourselves," she added. "Tell me the news. Did you see Barb and Suzanne?"

"I saw Barb. Suzanne has fled the coop."

"What?"

"The report is she is out of town, traveling with friends. Barb looks worried and Phil looks wise but neither has much to say."

"Does Phil know where she is?"

"He says not, but he knows something, or I miss my guess. Not that the old oyster would open up his shell a fraction of an inch even to oblige yours truly. I pried like a good one but to no purpose. Talk about your professional secrecy! Phil's got it down to the finish. The old chap is different somehow, older and solemn as a fish. Horrible example of what work will do to a fellow!" he grinned.

Sylvia stooped to pick up the tongs and stir the fire, which was smoldering a little sulkily on the hearth. Out of the tail of his eye Jack watched her.

"He and Barb seem to be remarkably good pals," he continued. "The Aunt orders him about like a member of the family. Don't wonder he obeys. That woman is a general. I wouldn't be surprised if she took the vote away from the men and gave it to the women any day, if she took the notion. Lucky she and Napoleon didn't hitch their wagons to the same star in the same generation. The star would have dragged Aunt Josephine and ditched the emperor, that's certain."

"Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."

Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the grim December wind outside had gotten into it.

"I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published. Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they feared the worst."

"Jack!"

"Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no wonder."

"Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go off on a tangent like that?"

"Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable."

"Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely.

"Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?"

"After Christmas. Why?"

"Nothing especial. I thought a dose of you might be good for her, that is all."

And that was all the explanation that Sylvia extracted on that subject, though she guessed that there was more than Jack admitted behind his rather enigmatic remarks. Jack was incredibly clear-sighted about some things, and it was evident he saw cause to worry about his sister Jeanette, even to the extent of hurrying Sylvia to New York where he himself could not follow unless he turned back the page of the virtuous new leaf of his devotion to business. There was a puzzle behind it somewhere, Sylvia knew. She also knew she was going to be left to discover the exact nature of the puzzle for herself.

So December went its way. Suzanne continued mysteriously "traveling with friends." Barb and Phil kept hard at work in the city and managed to see a good deal of each other in their off hours. Sylvia and Phil had almost ceased to write to each other, though there was no open break in their friendship. It was rather that a wall, intangible but unsurmountable, had risen between them, as perhaps it had, for pride is a mightier barrier than a mountain peak sometimes. Gus went his quiet, successful way on his concert tour, refusing politely but conclusively to be made a lion of, keeping rather to himself in his leisure hours, living on his unspoken dreams and managing to get a great deal of pure happiness out of his star worship. To Sylvia's delight, and almost to Felicia's consternation, the latter's designs for a mural relief, which Stephen Kinnard had fairly bullied her into submitting in a competition, had been accepted and she was hard at work on the actual modeling these brief winter days, though she found time, Felicia fashion, to be an excellent "Home-keeper" and Mother along with the other task.

Early in November Lois Daly had rather astonishingly announced her intention of "doing some writing" as she put it rather vaguely. Lois was always reticent, especially about her literary work, and even her husband asked no questions, realizing it suited her better to be let alone to work out her purpose for herself. She was far too conscientious about her other duties to neglect any of them and it was consequently the long evenings when the children were in bed and the household affairs quiescent that she found most profitable for her new work. This arrangement was admirable in all but two respects. It made Lois' working day an almost impossibly long one and left her a little too weary for restful sleep when she did finally creep into bed. It also curtailed almost to a minimum the moments which she had to spare for her husband's society, which had been all too few even before the advent of this new era. Doctor Tom made no protest as to this. He was always over-sensitive to the sacrifice of her work which Lois had made for him and his, but he did beg her at times not to "bother" so much about the house and the children and himself.

But Lois always shook her head at his pleas and explained quietly that he and the house and the children were her real job and she could not neglect them for the other. And if Tom Daly found it in his heart to wonder sometimes if his wife's "real job" did not include a little closer companionship with himself he never voiced his wondering. He was no "martyr," as he had once long ago protested to Sylvia.

But human relations are never static and while Lois shut herself in her den and wrote feverishly, night after night, her husband, being only human, easily drifted into the habit of finding elsewhere than at his own home the companionship and sympathy which even the strongest and most independent of men half-consciously crave. Arden Hall and Sylvia were close at hand and it was almost inevitable that he should find his way to the two rather often. Sylvia was intensely interested in all his schemes for the hospital and other altruistic visions which made up a very large part of his wide, busy career. Often they talked eagerly for hours, either with or without Felicia's presence. Oftener still Tom Daly would sit and smoke in contented silence while Sylvia played soft music or read aloud out of some magazine stories which let his mind rest instead of wrestle.

It was all the most natural, even inevitable development. The two were old friends. Tom Daly was thirty-eight and happily married. Sylvia Arden was twenty-two questing for experience innocently enough. There was no one to question or warn, or indeed, anything to question or warn against. Yet there sat Nature spinning away at her web all the time and Tom Daly and Sylvia were near to being caught in the mesh, without even knowing there was any mesh. And the danger for Tom Daly as it happened was considerably greater than for Sylvia just because he was a man. Man is the so-called reasoning sex, but, as has been more than once noted, sex is the one subject upon which he will not reason. And so things slipped easily and pleasantly along up to Christmas time.

It was Jack Amidon who involuntarily opened Sylvia's eyes by uttering an unusually sharp protest that she went nowhere any more, either with him or any one else, but just sat in the chimney corner and played Joan to Tom Daly's Darby. "And soon there'll be the deuce to pay whether you know it or not," he had added darkly.

Of course Sylvia had flared out in quick anger at his implications.

"What do you mean, Jack Amidon, by saying such horrid things?" she had stormed. "It is perfectly ridiculous. Doctor Tom is years and years older than I am. He is just like a brother."

Jack had seen the brother dodge worked before and said so somewhat caustically, whereupon Sylvia lost what little temper she had left, and having delivered a volley of violent wrath upon her guest's imprudent head, shot out of the room, leaving him to enjoy the hospitality of the Hall in solitude or beat a retreat as pleased him best.

Meanwhile, upstairs in her own room, Sylvia threw herself on the bed, and, first of all, woman fashion, relieved her feelings by indulging in a good old-fashioned "weep," her anger dissipating with her tears. Presently she sat up and began to take stock of the situation and herself, and found to her consternation that things as they actually were, were about as safe as a child with a box of matches in a haymow.

She was a perfectly clear-eyed and sophisticated young woman and when her attention was called, however brutally, to the fact that you cannot see a man, night after night, week after week, as she had been seeing Tom Daly, without there being at least the possibility of the "deuce to pay," as Jack had bluntly expressed it, she was willing to acknowledge the fact to herself at least. She carefully analyzed her own mental processes for the past few weeks and discovered to her surprise and some chagrin that she had been ruthlessly cutting out engagements in which Tom Daly did not figure, and eagerly making those in which he did figure, that she had deliberately plunged into everything that interested him, Red Cross work, the new hospital, the needs of some of his poorer patients; everything, in short, that he cared about heartily. She even had to admit to herself that she had been a little complacent and self righteous in her genuine interest and sympathy with these things because she resented Lois Daly's apathy in the matter and felt profoundly sorry for Doctor Tom. She discovered that it is not prudent in the world as it is lived to be too sorry for another woman's husband. That way danger lies, and a signboard to that effect is in order. Beyond this, however, Sylvia knew she had little for which to blame herself. She was not a deliberate coquette. She had acted in all simplicity and naturalness, but there had been a risk to the experiment for all that and she was a bit ashamed of her hitherto state of blindness.

Being a very honest young person, Sylvia sat down, as soon as she had threshed the whole matter out to the satisfaction of her clear, fair mind, and wrote a very artistically penitent note to Jack, retracting some of the unwarrantable things she had said in her wrath and admitting rather hazily that there was a faint possibility that he might have been in the right about certain matters, implying that she was magnanimously willing even to ignore his objectionable rightness if he so desired.

And her note crossed one from Jack, begging her to forgive his "darned impertinence" and adding that he had behaved like a jackass and a dog in the manger and Heaven knows how many other kinds of animals, but if she would be good enough to overlook his misdemeanors he would be eternally grateful.

And the next evening Sylvia appeared under Jack's escort at the Honeycutt ball, wearing a marvelous new gown and looking extraordinarily pretty after her temporary estrangement from Vanity Fair. And from that time on during all the mad gayeties of Christmas week Jack was constantly in attendance, obviously the favored knight. Life is mostly made up of reactions. The pendulum having swung so far to the left, swings back an equal distance to the right. Sylvia was the kinder to Jack because of her deflection away from him in an entirely opposite direction. And he, with the wisdom born of considerable experience of the feminine sex in general, and Sylvia Arden in particular, made no comment though he perfectly understood what had happened, but sunned himself agreeably in his lady's rather uncertain grace and bided his time.

And the night of the Honeycutt ball for the first time in several weeks Tom Daly sat and smoked before his own fireside and not once did he think of the new hospital.

*CHAPTER XII*

*"SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS"*

"Phil? That you, my boy? Come up and take dinner with us to-night, won't you? I have a proposition to make to you."

Thus the smooth voice of Justin Huntley over the telephone. Justin Huntley was a famous nerve specialist, a classmate and lifelong friend of Phil Lorrimer's father, who had kept a friendly eye on the young man ever since he had come to the city.

Phil accepted the invitation, and later, as he left the Subway and strolled down Seventy-second Street toward the river, he speculated vaguely as to what the proposition might be likely to be. Doctor Huntley was quite capable of initiating any kind of a suggestion, from proposing a marriage to an heiress to the use of a new serum. Consequently Phil had little to go upon in his speculations.

It was an agreeable dinner. Dinner at the Huntleys' always was agreeable, moving by pleasant stages to a perfect end, gastronomically speaking. There were no other guests to-night and presently, Mrs. Huntley, a frail tired looking little lady who always seemed to be deprecating the weight of her silks and the brilliancy of her jewels, rose and left the two men together.

"Any curiosity about the proposition I baited my hook with to get you here to-night?" Dr. Huntley surveyed his guest a little quizzically as he launched the question.

"I didn't need any bait," said Phil. "But I admit the curiosity."

The older man leaned forward and deliberately lit his cigarette from a candle that stood close at hand.

"You don't smoke?" he remarked irrelevantly.

"No," admitted Phil. "At least, not often. Bad for the operating table."

"Bad! It's the devil. You have a deal of sense, young man. How would you like to be my partner?" The question was put as casually as if he were offering a fellow traveler, caught in the rain, a share of his umbrella, but his shrewd eyes took full account of the face of the young man. Phil flushed and his mouth opened slightly. It was a proposition to make any ambitious young man drop his jaw. Justin Huntley had one of the largest and most remunerative practices in the city. It was a dazzling prospect to open suddenly before the eyes of a small-salaried worker in a free clinic. It meant success, money--Sylvia, something to offer her, at last.

"Well?"

"It is a wonderful chance," said Phil steadily, "but I should like to think it over, if you don't mind."

"Eh?" It was Dr. Huntley's jaw that dropped this time. He had scarcely expected a young man in Phil Lorrimer's position to need to think over an offer such as he had just made. Most young men would have jumped at it quickly as a trout leaps at a shining fly lest the fascinating thing disappear from view before it could be apprehended. "What did you say?"

"I said I should have to think it over," repeated Phil. "Your kind of practice isn't the kind I am interested in, to speak frankly."

"Interested! Good Lord! Who expects to be interested in anything nowadays? A lot of damn women with nothing on earth the matter with them except fool notions, and having nothing on earth or in Heaven to occupy themselves with, dyspeptics, neurasthenics, hypochondriacs, dope fiends, gentlemen drunkards and worse! That is my kind of practice, boy. Pah! Interesting! Of course, they aren't interesting. They are fools. But they pay. Lord, how they pay! They wouldn't be sick if they didn't have so much money. You would open your eyes if you saw my books. But I've had 'most enough of 'em. I want somebody to take the brunt of their damn foolnesses off of me. That is what I want a partner for. Some day I'll be telling 'em what I really think of 'em and it wouldn't do--it wouldn't do. I've got to have an understudy. You've a close mouth and a good head and you'd like the money. Don't tell me you wouldn't like it," querulously. "Everybody wants money these days. The whole world's after it."

"Oh, I want it all right," said Phil Lorrimer honestly. "I happen to want it like the devil just at present. But I am not sure I want it--that bad. That is what I have to think over."

He took a hasty swallow of water from the glass beside his plate, then rose and made a few quick, nervous turns, up and down the room. Finally he came to a halt opposite his host.

"I don't know whether I can make you understand, Dr. Huntley, but it is like this," he said. "I have a drop or so of missionary blood in me. My father is in China now. My mother would be, if she could stand the climate. My sister is teaching in a missionary school in Turkey. I chose the kind of work I am doing here in New York partly because it interested me, but I believe it was a little bit too because of the missionary strain. Anyway, it seems to me a worth-while job. But this thing you are offering me-- Pardon me if I sound rude. I don't mean to disparage your work. It is fine--some of it, but well, the truth of it is, it doesn't look to me to measure up to what we are doing in the clinic and what some other doctors and surgeons are doing in other places. The finest man I know--doing the finest work I know--is in Greendale, a little place just outside Baltimore. He has always been a sort of standard for me--he and my father. If I went in with you, it would be not because my heart was in it, but because the money was in it, and wanted the money worse than I wanted to hang onto my dreams. That is about the whole story."

Justin Huntley smoked in silence during this, for Phil, rather long speech. Phil was not much given to eloquence.

"Well," he said. "Even so. Put it as baldly as that, if you like. It is up to you. A man can't afford to sentimentalize much in this day and generation. Let me remind you, the money is not to be despised. It buys a good deal."

Phil's eyes were lowered. Well he knew, or thought he knew, what it could buy for him. Not Sylvia, of course, Sylvia could not be bought, but the right to go in and try to win her against Jack, against the world, yes, against even his own ideals. The last thought crowded in, an unbidden guest. Suddenly he loathed his father's friend, loathed his smug success, his cynical sureness that he himself could be bought. For it was buying, and Phil knew it. If he took this offer, he sold out, to the highest bidder, his own high ideals. Was it worth it? Was even Sylvia worth it? Had he the right to win her that way? Could he do it?

"Don't give your final answer to-night." Justin Huntley's bland voice interrupted the boy's reflections. "There is no hurry. Take a week. Two--three--if you like."

Phil pulled himself together.

"Thank you. I will, if you don't object--a few days, anyway. Please don't think I am ungrateful, or don't appreciate the compliment you have paid me--or rather the kindness, for, of course, I know I'm not experienced enough to be much of a partner at present. I--"

But Huntley waved the words aside.

"It's not kindness--nothing but selfishness. I happen to want you. Come on in if you will. Anyway think it over. The madame is alone. Shall we go to her?"

Phil fancied there was an odd, wistful inquiry in Mrs. Huntley's pale eyes as she turned to meet the men as they entered the room. It was almost as if she were making some kind of plea. Whether she wanted him to accept or refuse her husband's offer was not at all clear to Phil. He made his adieus as early as he politely could on the score of a previous engagement and passed out into the night trying to adjust as best he could the confused bundle of thoughts and emotions he carried.

"Wonder if old Mephisto had any qualms," muttered Justin Huntley as the door had closed upon the tall young doctor.

"Did you speak, dear?" inquired his wife. "I didn't understand."

"No, I didn't say anything--worth repeating."

"How like Philip is to his father, isn't he?"

"Very like," somewhat dryly. "Did you say there was a girl?"

"A girl?" Mrs. Huntley always dealt in mild interrogatives as if to disclaim the responsibility of assertion. "Oh, yes. His mother told us he was devoted to Sylvia Arden--wasn't it? That lovely young girl we met once--in Baltimore, I think? She is a great heiress, isn't she?"

"H-mm. Maybe he will be back, after all," remarked her husband irrelevantly.

Phil's restlessness gave him no peace, and though the engagement had been fiction he decided to run around and see Barb a few moments before he turned in for the night. He had gotten in the habit of using Barb as an anaesthetic of late, though he had no idea he was doing it. To-night he found her alone, curled up like a sleepy kitten before the fire. She rose with a happy little exclamation of surprise as Phil came in.

For once the flood gates of his reserve were down for Phil. In five minutes he had poured out the whole story of his evening's experience, omitting nothing except the mention of Sylvia. In fact, he, hardly thought it necessary to mention Sylvia. She so fully possessed his own mind he had no conception that Barbara did not fully understand how inextricably Sylvia was woven in with the whole matter.

"But Phil," wondered Barb, "it isn't the kind of work you like, is it? I can't imagine you dealing with that kind of patients exclusively." Barb's eyes blinked and crinkled, Barb-like, as she made the statement.

"Nor I. I should be all too likely to tell 'em to go plum to thunder." He grinned a little as he made the admission.

"Then why? Phil, it can't be the money that appeals to you?" Barb's voice was startled, incredulous.

Phil had been on his feet, marching to and fro in the little room, as was his custom when excited. But suddenly he dropped into a chair before the hearth.

"Listen, Barbie. Listen hard," he said. "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl and he didn't have any money, at least not as much as he thought he ought to have, not to look like a fool and a knave, asking for her, and then suppose that, right out of a clear sky, the chap saw a chance to make a big income, perfectly respectably, if not, well, we'll say exhilaratingly, wouldn't he just naturally grab at the chance?"

Phil was not looking at Barb. He was staring into the gas log with all his might, but in any case it didn't matter much. Wherever he looked Phil saw only Sylvia that night. Barb's cheeks were pink and her breath came a little more quickly than usual. She couldn't help wondering if Phil could hear the "Blop! Blop! Blop!" her heart was making. It seemed as if he must hear, it was such a queer, loud sound, but he did not appear to notice. He did not even turn toward her.

"He might grab, but I think he would put his hand down quick again as soon as he realized the girl wouldn't want him--that way. She wouldn't want to be bought at a price--like that." Barb managed to keep her voice steady in spite of the queer thing her heart was doing.

"Maybe not," said Phil. "Somehow I thought that is what you would say, Barbie. Thank you." And suddenly Phil was on his feet. "'Night, Barb. I've got to telephone a man before it gets any later."

And before Barb caught her breath he was gone. It did not matter any more now how her heart behaved, but somehow, oddly enough it stopped "blopping" and seemed suddenly to be very, very tired and heavy, as if it were going to sink straight down into her stomach which, of course, was no place for a heart to be located.

Yet it was all perfectly natural and like Phil not to have said anything more at the moment. He had to get the taint of barter off his hands before he came to her. "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl." "Suppose a chap wanted to marry a girl." The clock on the mantel seemed to be ticking out the words very distinctly. And suddenly Barb felt very happy and contented and curled up in her chair again like a kitten. Here her aunt found her a half hour later.

"Asleep, Kiddie?" she asked, and Barbara looked up with a shy, radiant little smile.

"No, just dreaming," she said.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*INTO HAVEN*

Christmas was over, and Sylvia had hardly breathed for a week so engrossed had she been in all kinds of festivities. Even now she was preparing to depart on the morrow for an even gayer round, on the long promised visit to Jeanette Latham, Jack's sister. Perhaps it was to keep the "Booing" questions at a distance that Sylvia chose to fly from one mad whirl to another that winter.

"I almost wish you weren't going to New York, just now, Sylvia. You look tired to death and your nerves are 'jumpy,' as Doctor Tom says."

Thus Felicia addressed Sylvia at breakfast the morning of the twenty-sixth, after the children had scampered off to the delights of yesterday's new harvest of toys.

"It is nothing but the day-after feeling," said Sylvia. "I've danced until morning for four nights running. I'll be all right as soon as I can get some sleep."

"I don't know," Felicia looked dubious. "If you were seventeen instead of twenty-two, I believe I should order you to stay at home."

"Isn't it lucky, I'm not?" smiled Sylvia. "Felicia, dear, you never did really boss me in all the years you might have done it. Are you going to begin now?"

"I am afraid it wouldn't be much use at this late date," sighed Felicia. "Sometimes I wonder why you aren't more spoiled than you are. Seriously, child, you have gotten a little of your shining splendor rubbed off. Anything the matter?"

"Nothing in the world, except maybe I wish I knew whether I were going to marry Jack or not. It is a little distracting not to know. You don't happen to possess any inside information on the subject, do you?" Sylvia's smile was whimsical but her eyes were tired. It was true. She had lost a little of her "shining splendor," as Felicia described it, in the past few weeks.

"I do not. But I should on the whole say you were not going to marry him. You have seen too much of him lately. You need to get away and get a perspective."

"Well, who wanted to order me to stay away from New York, just now?"

"I retract. Go ahead with my blessing. I hope you will meet a hundred young men and let Jack Amidon get put in his place."

"That is just it. What _is_ his place?"

"Sylvia!" Felicia's tone was faintly exasperated. "You are no more in love with Jack Amidon than I am. Some day you will wake up and find it out."

"Will I? Sometimes, Felicia, I have a horrible suspicion I am just a taster--like tea tasters, you know. Only I like to go round tasting experience. I never thought I was a bit of a flirt until lately. But I'm just finding out there are ways and ways of flirting, having 'adventures in personality' as Suzanne calls it. Jack says my 'Damnable sympathetic ways' are vicious. Maybe they are. I think I must be a sort of chameleon--all things to all men, you know. I shouldn't wonder if I couldn't really love anybody--_grand style_."

"You goose! When the right man comes along you will know the difference."

"I wonder." And suddenly Sylvia remembered how she had felt that night on Lover's Leap, when she and Philip Lorrimer had been the only two individuals in a whole spacious, shining universe. It seemed now as if she had heard a kind of Hallelujah chorus, or was it that the silence had been a strange kind of music itself?

And then on the heels of this blinding sweet memory had come another, bringing with it a bitter taste, a memory of those long days after Phil had gone back to the city and she had watched the mails and pretended to ignore them.

And then she remembered Gus and Jack and Doctor Tom. Had they all been just understudies for somebody else she really wanted in her heart of hearts? How many other understudies would there be? And would she marry one of them sooner or later?

"Women are rather like cats, after all, aren't they, Felicia? They will pat their mice and keep putting their paws on them, even if they don't want to eat them."

Felicia laughed.

"What a traveler you are! Have you been half round the world since you spoke last? Shall we ask Tom and Lois over to dinner to-night? We haven't seen either of them for an age."

"Yes," said Sylvia. "You telephone, Felicia. I have to pack."

Sylvia had seen practically nothing of Doctor Tom for the past few weeks. Never once in that time had she been alone with him. Twice Doctor Tom had been over when she was in, which was not often during those full holiday evenings, and she had taken pains to be sure Felicia was present on those two occasions. Once he had called to her to come for a drive but she had had a genuine engagement with Jack to plead. She felt silly enough placing any sort of a barrier between herself and Doctor Tom but she was afraid for her own part it would be some time before she could meet him quite naturally again. Sometimes she wished Jack had kept his "darned impertinence" to himself and other times she owned it was safer this way. Better that children should not play with matches at all, since matches did sometimes ignite. At any rate, she did not mean to see her neighbor alone again until after she got back from New York.

But Fate ruled otherwise. That very afternoon, after her breakfast table philosophizing, she had gone downtown to attend to a few last errands and the delicious, crisp frostiness of the day tempted her to walk instead of having the car out. She had hardly finished her tasks and started homeward when she heard Doctor Tom's familiar whistle, and, turning, saw him reigning in black Bess by the curb.

"Game for a spin?" he asked. "I have to go a few miles out in the country and was looking for company."

His tone was so natural that Sylvia herself lost her self-consciousness and was so thankful for the loss that she was very gay and talkative. If only he needn't find out that it had not been accidental that he had seen so little of herself of late all would be well.

"Seems to me you are turning into a regular society Miss after all," he teased. "Bet you've been cutting Red Cross and everything else since this dance mania set in."

"I am afraid I have. I've been an awful backslider in pretty much everything lately," she told him soberly.

He flashed one of his quick, shrewd glances at her.

"What's this, Miss Christmas? Your own special season here and you in the dumps without even a solitary star sparkle?"

"You are as bad as Felicia," said Sylvia a little crossly. "Do you all expect me to grin like a Cheshire cat every minute?"

He chuckled.

"Sylvia touchy! What next? Indigestion or bad conscience?"

"Neither--well, maybe a bit of the latter," admitted Sylvia. "Anyway, I am not at all pleased with myself lately. I'm getting to be a selfish pig, and that's the ungarnished truth."

"Indeed! I hadn't noticed it. The McGuires had a powerful good dinner yesterday and--"

"Do hush. It is nothing to send dinners to McGuire's. It doesn't cost me anything--not even much thought. You needn't try to smooth it over. I know. I haven't been thinking about a single soul in the world lately except Sylvia Arden. I set Jack to work and I've just diddled round myself doing next to nothing. I haven't even learned to cook as I said I was going to, and since Gus went I haven't practiced and--"

"And since three weeks ago Thursday you haven't even played me a psalm tune," he jested.

Then suddenly he stared. For out of the corner of his eye he perceived that Sylvia was unmistakably blushing, blushing, of course, the more hotly because she was so furiously angry at herself for so doing.

"So it isn't my imagination. There has been some kind of fool talk somewhere. Confound me for an idiot! Poor kid! We'll settle that." So thought Tom Daly. Then aloud, "See here, Sylvia, may I say a little speech? You needn't look at me. I was a manger dog all right, a few weeks ago, without meaning to be. I had no business to be keeping the young chaps away from you. I didn't even see I was doing it. I was down and out for a while, and you, bless your kind heart, saw it and came to the rescue, like the Christmas girl you are. I shan't forget what you did for me. If you pulled me out of a rut--and you did--maybe we both came somewhere near being pulled into a bigger one. So far as I know, no man is ever old enough to be sure he's passed the fool limit, and maybe I was nearer the edge than I knew. Anyway, you were a trump as usual. The blame, if there is any, is mine. All right, little sister?" Then, at last, he turned to face Sylvia.

And suddenly and disconcertingly her eyes filled with tears. She was very tired and her nerves were unstrung by too much gayety and mental uneasiness.

"Of course it is all right. There never was anything much wrong, only--well, I thought I was beginning to plume myself and get complacent because I was the only one who patted you and smoothed your fur the right way and maybe I'd better stop before--Doctor Tom, I hate things to be as they are."

"Meaning?"

"Lots of things, but mostly why can't people--men and women--just be friends and not have anything else snarled up with it?"

"They can." Tom Daly's steady voice was like oil to the troubled waters of Sylvia's soul.

Nor did she guess that it cost him something of an effort to throw precisely the right amount of big-brotherness into his words. As he admitted, no man could safely boast that he had passed the fool limit, but he could and would be man enough himself to be sure no girl like Sylvia was going to be bothered by the folly.

"_We_ can anyway," he smiled down at Sylvia to add in the old friendly way, a friendliness whose very familiarity was steadying.

She smiled back mistily.

"Of course we can. I'm a silly idiot to-day. Ghosts seem to walk even in the sunniest, most everyday places. Thank you, Doctor Tom. I don't know why I wept. My spirit isn't weepy. It was just my eyes. My spirit feels like singing 'Yankee Doodle' this minute."

"Let her go," he approved gayly, and directed the conversation through the rest of the ride so skillfully to safe and sane and neutral matters that long before they reached the Hill Sylvia had lost the last vestige of self-consciousness, and was her old, merry, natural self, with a good many of the "star sparkles" back in their places.