Chapter VII: Part 7

"I know. When Jack told me--first everything went black and then it was all white and shining. I felt as if I had never really seen clear in all my life before, except maybe just once, last September out in the woods at sunset. I think Phil and I both knew then. Oh, Mrs. Lorrimer, why didn't he speak? What difference could my money possibly make? Money and love haven't anything to do with each other. They are in different kingdoms like animal, vegetable, mineral, only there must be a fourth kingdom--the love kingdom." Sylvia's eyes smiled a little, like stars through mist.

"Men do not always understand, little daughter. Perhaps they never understand quite. You must not blame Philip too much."

"Blame! Oh, I don't. The blame was mine. I shouldn't have rushed like a mad thing into the fire to save my pride. I wasn't true to love or Phil or myself or Jack. Maybe I was untruest of all to Jack. He will never tell me, but I know I have hurt him dreadfully. Sometimes I think women are the cruellest things in the world. We don't mean to be but we are."

"I am afraid we are sometimes."

"I didn't mean to be cruel. I've always wanted to be kind. Maybe that is the trouble. I've been too kind. I let myself believe I loved Jack because it pleased me to make him happy. And I haven't made him happy. That is the worst of it. I believe he has been miserable all along because he knew I was giving him counterfeit gold instead of the real thing. It was only I who did not know, and even I suspected, sometimes. That was why I wanted to keep so dreadfully busy all the time, so I wouldn't have time to think. Mother Lorrimer," in sudden contrition, "you are so tired and I have chattered and chattered until I almost feel better because I've talked. As if I mattered--beside you."

Mrs. Lorrimer pressed the girl's hand again.

"Nothing matters very much just now," she said, "except God."

"But God is so far off."

"Oh, no, He isn't, Sylvia.

"'Closer is He than breathing
And nearer than hands and feet.'

Haven't you ever felt how near He is?"

"Yes," said Sylvia, remembering again that night when she and Phil and the "shadowy third" had been so close to each other that there had not been a breath between them. And then she fell silent, led at last unto the forest where she had not dared to go for many months. And in the forest Sylvia sought God.

It seemed an endless time before they reached the great station in New York but at last they did arrive. There was no one to meet them. It was a very different arrival from the one Sylvia remembered in December. Jeanette had been there then to greet her and Barb and Phil. She had been breathless, exhilarated with happiness. She remembered how almost intoxicated with sheer delight of living she had felt when Phil had helped her into the limousine and recalled also what a queer, deserted, almost lonely feeling she had experienced, immediately after, when she leaned out of the car to wave good-by to Barb and Phil on the curb.

The thought of Barb brought a new current of reflection. For all she knew it was Barb and not herself who had the right to be with Phil now. How did she know but he might have learned to care for Barb in all those months? Wasn't it probable, natural, that he should have done so? Why should she expect him to keep on caring for her while she had given herself to Jack? A panic seized her. All the way to the hospital even Phil's desperate illness, which she had never seemed able to sense, loomed less important than this new specter which had arisen. What if Barb should be there with him? What if they should say "Who is this young person? The woman he loves is there already with him. There is no room for another."

But when they reached the hospital no such questions were raised. Mrs. Lorrimer swept everything aside with her quiet dignity. "I am his mother," she had said. "And this is Miss Arden," quite as if the authorities knew and understood why Miss Arden must be admitted. Perhaps they did understand. The doctor who challenged them shot a quick questioning look at Sylvia and bowed acquiescence. Possibly Sylvia's eyes were the password. The doctor was used to reading human faces. He had admitted many another white-cheeked, tortured-eyed young woman into the chamber of the Shadow ere this. He was gravely sympathetic. He did not expect the young man in there to live twenty-four hours. It would be a miracle, he thought, if he got well.

And so the mother and the girl who loved Philip Lorrimer sat beside him all that still night though he did not know them. Sylvia lived a thousand lives and died a thousand deaths before the gray dawn came to the quiet room. And who knows what new agonies the mother who bore the lad suffered during those long silent hours? To Sylvia at least, there was something beautiful even in the unspeakable anguish of it all. Even in death Phil would be hers and she his. Love had crowned her as it had crowned Gus. She no longer envied the young musician his Grail ecstasy. She, too, had been anointed.

Sylvia never knew whether she consciously prayed that night. It was rather that she talked with God and He in His beneficence let her share some of His eternal secrets.

And underneath it all she was crying out to Phil, "Don't die. Don't die. Don't die. I love you. I love you. Come back. Come back." And she did not seem to be saying it to the inert form on the high, narrow bed. That was not Phil at all. Phil was all strength and energy and vitality. That was a mere husk of something--what, she did not care. It had nothing to do with Phil or with herself. She was sending out her cry, not from her body to his, but from her spirit to his, wherever the latter was faring. She knew that wherever he was he would hear and almost she knew he would come back.

The strange part of it was he did come back, as if Sylvia's voice had arrested him and brought him back from those far fields to which he had been journeying. Perhaps not so strange, after all. The wisest men of all the ages have not been able to mark the metes and bounds of the power of love. At any rate, whether Sylvia's call had anything to do with it or not, Phil Lorrimer came back. The miracle was achieved.

It was early morning when Phil opened his eyes, blue as ever, though dark-circled and heavy, and the first thing he saw was Sylvia, who had just turned from the window where she had been watching the dawn come up over the city with strange unearthly light and shadow. Something of the same light was on Phil's face as he recognized Sylvia. With one swift light step she was beside him, her face bent over his, her heart in her eyes.

"Sylvia." The voice was faint as if the speaker had come back from other worlds, but distinct, wondering, happy.

"Phil!" And as he felt Sylvia's kiss on his cheek, Phil closed his eyes again as if there were now no other bliss to attain in this world or the next.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*AFTERMATH*

Three weeks later and April had surprised even the city and taken it by storm. Buds were beginning to burst in the trees in the park, hyacinths rainbowed here and there, the fountains were released from their winter bondage. The river took on a bluer hue to match the sky, or was it at the hint of the bird who arrived just before Easter giving advance notice of the latest colors in Nature's fashion house, bearing samples on his own back?

In Miss Josephine Murray's little apartment Suzanne and Barb and Sylvia were assembled, one blue and gold afternoon, with tongues flying fast as of old.

"When is Phil going to be able to be moved?" Suzanne was demanding of Sylvia. "And where is he going to move to?"

"Next week, we hope. And he is coming to Arden Hall."

"Bless us! how modern!" teased Suzanne.

Sylvia flushed and shook her head.

"It isn't so specially modern. It is just natural. The doctors say he has to get out of the city. His mother thinks she has to get back to the girls, and she also thinks there is no doctor in the world equal to Doctor Tom and wants him to set his eye on Phil. Of course, he can't go to 'Hester house.' That would be too absurd and he'd hate it anyway--with all those sympathetic females in attendance. There is always plenty of room at the Hall, and it is lovely there in April. So he's coming," she concluded.

"Reasons as plenty as blackberries," jeered Suzanne. "Perfectly well explained. What do you happen to be doing with your fiance in the meantime?"

Sylvia looked up at that, meeting Suzanne's eyes squarely.

"I haven't any," she announced quietly. "Jack has known for three weeks I wasn't going to marry him. In fact, he suggested it himself."

"More and more modern," approved Suzanne. "It is indeed well to be off with the old love before you are on with the new. When are you going to announce your next engagement?"

"Maybe never," said Sylvia so soberly that Suzanne relented and obligingly turned the fire on herself.

"Speaking of being off with the old love, it seems to be the one thing I can't manage. Roger and I have decided we miss quarreling so much when we are separated that it's simpler and more agreeable to get married and quarrel in peace."

At which last Suzannesque paradox Sylvia and Barb laughed and proffered congratulations.

"Better offer Roger condolences instead," advised Suzanne. "I shall lead him a life."

"Is he coming to New York to live?" inquired Barb, remembering her friend's urban preferences.

"He is not. He is having far too much fun stirring things up in Norton, Pa. We are going in for politics. I think I shall let him run for mayor. There will be a lovely row, for all the crocks are afraid of him now, and it isn't a circumstance to what they'll be if they suspect he wants to raise that particular tempest in their cozy, grafty teapot." Suzanne chuckled, scenting battle afar off. A "scrap" was as the elixir of life to her. "I don't want to live in New York, anyway," she continued. "I couldn't bear to be very far off from mother, and it's much more distinguished to draw my royalties and breath on some sacred Parnassian Hill in Norton, Pa. Likewise it is less expensive. I shall come up often, however, if only to see that they do not murder my precious play. Vengeance is mine if they touch one hair--that is, one line--of its blessed substance. Remember my prophecy, sweet friends? I-did-write-a-play." And, lacking a cushion, Suzanne thumped the tea table with her fist until the cups rattled ominously.

"You did," agreed Sylvia. "And here is Barbie here, an ornament to the Cause. Wait until you see her marching in the parade next fall! Wait till you know what she did to the legislators when she bearded them at Albany! She is so modest she will hide her light under a bushel, but I'm all the time hearing things about her. Phil says she's a wonderful speechifier. To the victor--in her own colors!" And Sylvia dropped the yellow jonquils she was wearing in her friend's lap and bent over her to press a butterfly kiss on her forehead.

Sylvia and Barb had come very close to each other during the latter's recent stay in the city. Phil Lorrimer's accident had been a fiery ordeal for Barbara as well as Sylvia, and Sylvia, guessing this, felt very tender toward the other girl. Never once did they reach the point of putting things into words. But words were not essential to mutual understanding. Barb and Sylvia knew all there was to know, each about the other, without communication on the subject and their love was the stronger for knowing. Perhaps the closest Barbara ever came to a confession was when she said to Sylvia once that she didn't believe there was a single woman who was a really inspired worker in the Cause who hadn't a hurt of her own somewhere underneath to make her pitiful of scars other women carried. "I guess maybe they are even thankful for their hurts when they have healed a little," she had added with Barb-like naivete. "It makes them understand so much more. You've got to understand to care."

And Sylvia had understood and cared so much for Barbara's hurt that she would not offer her the last spear thrust--the word of spoken compassion. And, after all, Sylvia could hardly help seeing that Barb scarcely needed compassion. She, too, had her Grail fire to follow and it took her to high places.

"Oh, Barb is some little wonder!" Suzanne had agreed. "Isn't it funny how much we've all been through since September and yet we aren't any of us so cock-sure about things as we were then? I was the worst--the most Sophomoric of the three--and maybe I've come the worst croppers just because I had to have the cock-sureness forcibly if not painlessly extracted. Anyway, I don't want to go back and be the Suzanne of September, nineteen hundred and fourteen again. What about the rest of you? Would you like old Time to turn back in his flight?"

"No," said Sylvia and Barb in emphatic chorus. Then they all laughed and grew sober.

"It is a vote," declared Suzanne.

When Sylvia got back to her hotel she found a message from Jeanette Latham inviting her to dinner. A little reluctantly she telephoned acceptance. She was not very anxious to see Jeanette, not only because she had rather distasteful memories of her recent visit but because she dreaded meeting any of Jack's people just now. It seemed to her they must dislike and despise her for her treatment of Jack. Not that she blamed them for that. No one could judge her more harshly than she judged herself on that score.

Arrived at the great house on the drive, Sylvia was informed that Mrs. Latham was in her own room and begged that Miss Arden would come up. The two kissed and then drew back each surveying the other woman fashion, out of the tail of her eye.

Jeanette was a little pale, Sylvia thought, but somehow prettier than she had been in December, her rich brunette glow softened and subdued a little. She was wearing an exquisite rose-colored robe above which her lovely full throat gleamed white and her eyes looked darker and more brilliant than ever.

"Sylvia, it is good to see you," she murmured. "Take off your wraps. We are going to have dinner up here if you don't mind. Francis is dining out. We can have a cozy gossip all to ourselves."

As the dainty little dinner was being served the two talked about everything in general and nothing in particular, taking pains to avoid anything that could possibly interest either. It was only after the meal was cleared away and the maid banished that they came to the really important things.

"Sylvia, I know you think I am going to be disagreeable about Jack. I'm not. I'm glad. No, don't speak yet. I want to tell you why I am glad. I knew you didn't care for Jack, at least not enough. You sort of half way cared just as I did for Francis. You thought it would be suitable and agreeable and easy and please everybody all round especially Jack. And you thought that the rest would come in time, didn't you?"

Sylvia nodded in shamed silence.

"On the whole, your reasons for getting engaged were quite as creditable as mine for getting engaged to Francis, certainly more so than Isabel's for getting engaged to her miserable count. But, even so, they weren't good enough. There is only one reason for getting engaged to a man, anyway, only one for marrying him, and that is just plain old-fashioned love. I found that out in a very expensive course of lessons. You didn't love Jack. I knew it that night. I had just sent Charlton away and I knew the real thing--what it was. I care more for Jack than almost anybody in the world and I didn't want him to be unhappy any more than you did, but he is going to be more unhappy now than if you had said no last December."

Sylvia winced at that.

"I know it, Jeanette. I am as sorry about that as you can possibly be."

"I know. I didn't mean to reproach you. I just wanted to tell you I know it was better this way, hard as it is for Jack. He'll get over it now. At least, I hope he will, but if you had married him he wouldn't have gotten over it. He would have been like Francis. Francis knows I don't care. At least he knows I didn't use to care. It has hurt him pretty badly sometimes, I'm afraid. Maybe now he'll understand. I'm not so bad as I might have been. I--Sylvia, do you know why I sent Charlton away?"

Sylvia shook her head.

"I had just found out--something--about myself. I am not much good but I couldn't go on with that kind of thing when I knew-- Sylvia, please understand. It is harder to say than I thought."

And suddenly Sylvia did understand, and came and put her arms around the other woman with real joy and affection.

"If it will only be a boy," sighed Jeanette. "It is dreadful to be a woman in this world, and Dad would like it so, and so would Francis."

When she returned to the hotel again there was a letter from Jack waiting for Sylvia, the second only since she had come to New York. The first had been in response to her telegram announcing that Phil was surely out of danger. It had been a very brief letter, expressing his relief and pleasure at the good news of Phil's recovery. "And Sylvia, Belovedest," it had added, "don't forget I meant just what I said that day. Don't bother about me. I don't count. Nothing counts except your being happy. I believe I have always known it was Phil you really cared for. Anyway, I know it now. You have always been an angel of goodness to me and I am grateful. It has been just Jack and Jill going up the hill. Jack fell down and broke his crown all right, but there is no reason in the world why Jill should come tumbling after. And in order to prevent such a disaster the best thing Jack can say is good-by."

Sylvia had written back a long, affectionate and remorseful letter blaming herself wholly and severely and accepting his proffered release from their engagement. She had not heard from him again until now. Consequently she tore open the letter with some trepidation.

"Dear Sylvia,"--So it ran--

"I am sailing to-morrow to join the American Ambulance Field Service in France. It isn't a new notion. It has been in the back of my brain a long time. I should have gone in December if you had refused me then. I am not much good at anything but driving a car. I stuck to the business because you wanted me to but my heart wasn't in it. Dad understands, and is perfectly willing I should go. Don't misunderstand me, please, sweetheart. I am not doing this for gallery play or to work on your feelings. And I'm not going to talk any tommyrot about my life being spoiled and wanting to throw it away. I don't want to throw it away. I want to find it if I can over there. It seems to me France ought to drive whip and spur into any chap and make a man of him. Anyway, I'm going to have a try at it. Of course there is a little danger--not much. You must not worry. Danger agrees with me, and I'm a lucky chap in everything but love. Best wishes to old Phil. Remember that means in _everything_.

"I would have come to say good-by in person, but it took a little more nerve than I have just now. It was easier for both of us for me to make a quiet getaway. Wish me luck, Sylvia.

"Yours, as always,
"JACK."

Sylvia read the letter, dazed, troubled but by no means surprised. It was like Jack to do the gallant, generous, splendid, impulsive thing. As she finished she made a rapid calculation. "I sail to-morrow." That must mean to-day. He was already gone. Somewhere out beyond the harbor his ship was plowing its way toward France. The tears came into her eyes. Jack was very dear to her. Why, oh why had she driven him to this unnecessary danger, this fearful carnage field overseas? And yet was he not right? Would he not find something worth the risk in the stern realities of that glorious and tragic country he went to aid? That he had not gone into it lightly she saw. He had counted the possible cost as any man who was not a fool must count it. But he had not gone in bravado or in bitterness. He had taken pains to show her that. He had gone simply, in quiet earnest to prove himself, not to throw away his life recklessly but to find it as he said. Dear Jack! No wonder Sylvia's eyes were wet as she folded his letter and put it back in its envelope.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*HIGH TIDE*

For weeks after his injury Phil Lorrimer had been too sick to care very much about anything except the agreeable fact that his mother and Sylvia hovered over him like seraphim as he assured them later. It had mattered very little to him where he was nor how he got there so long as Sylvia was there too. It might be Heaven for all he knew. For a while it had seemed quite probable it was Heaven, for he remembered quite distinctly that Sylvia had kissed him and she had never done that on earth he was quite certain.

But presently his mind had cleared and things had been explained. He heard how he had been hurt and how his mother had come at once. Neither of these things seemed hard to grasp. But why was Sylvia here? Sylvia was engaged to Jack. Why was she here spending long hours by his bedside? Sylvia was always kind. It must have been sheer kindness that brought her he concluded. But somehow there appeared to be more than kindness in Sylvia's eyes, though after that heavenly dream she had not kissed him again.

It was not until he was almost able to travel that Sylvia told him that she and Jack were no longer engaged, that they had decided it had all been a mistake and that Jack had gone to France. Phil took the news in silence and sobriety. He had very little to say on that subject or any other for the rest of the day. And Sylvia, suddenly self-conscious, had kept away from the hospital on the next day. But on the next, the day before the cavalcade was to start for Greendale, she came. Phil was sitting by the window looking somewhat like his old self though gaunt and lean as a wintered wolf.

"You weren't here yesterday," he accused sternly.

"No. What a spoiled invalid you are getting to be! You don't expect to see me every day, do you? Those carnations need fresh water. I'll get some." Sylvia turned, flowers in hand, but Phil had waxed suddenly, unexpectedly imperious.

"Put 'em down," he ordered so stentoriously that Sylvia obeyed without really intending to.

"Come here," he still further ordered. Sylvia did not come nearer but she did stand perfectly still looking at him.

"I missed you like the devil yesterday," he observed.

"You flatter me," said Sylvia.

He ignored her irony.

"I say, are you really not engaged any more?"

Sylvia admitted that she really was not.

"Why did you end it?"

"I told you. We decided that it was a mistake."

"When?"

"A few weeks ago."

"Precisely when?"

"The night I knew you were hurt." Sylvia faced him steadily now. If he wanted facts he should have them.

"Was that why you broke it off?"

"I didn't break it off. Jack did."

"You mean he didn't like your coming here to me?"

"No. It wasn't that. He just knew--well, he knew I couldn't marry him. Jack is a dear. He always sees things without being told."

"And I don't see things until they are rammed into my darn fool eyes. Is that it?"

Sylvia acknowledged that that seemed to be a fair statement of the case.

"You tried to show me a thing or two last winter?"

"Yes."

"And when I wouldn't look, you cut me good and proper as I deserved and got engaged to Jack?"

Sylvia nodded.

"Sylvia!"

"Well?"

"Barb opened my eyes as to what an idiot I'd been about the money business. She did it one night, too late though. I rushed out to see you the next day, first minute I had, and Jeanette told me you were engaged to Jack and had gone home. That cooked my goose, all right."

"Well, the silly fowl ought to have been cooked." There was a faint twinkle in Sylvia's eyes.

"Granted," agreed Phil heartily. "See here, Sylvia, I've a whole lot of things to say to you but a man in a bath robe doesn't cut a very impressive figure saying the things I've got to say and--"

"Don't say them then. I insist on being impressed. Besides, it is time you went back to bed. I'm going, anyway."

"Sylvia!"

Sylvia paused in the doorway.

"Did you kiss me that night or did I dream it?"

"The idea!" But Sylvia's cheeks were less ambiguous in their answer than her lips as she fled into the corridor.

"Bless her!" grunted Phil. "Just wait until I get on my feet. I wouldn't care if she were Miss Midas herself, I'd run off with her. I wish she'd kiss me again."

But it was May now and Sylvia had not kissed him again. Though she took very good care of her guest that particular attention did not seem to be included in the list. Up to this time, too, Phil had not been sufficiently "on his feet" either to run off with his hostess or even to have the presumption to ask her to marry him.

May in Maryland! Is there anything lovelier the world over? Roses in the gardens, wistaria dripping purple trails from the balconies, waxen, fragrant magnolia bloom! Red bud and dogwood on the hills! Green fire everywhere!

In Sylvia's garden Phil Lorrimer lay stretched at ease in a canopied hammock watching a pair of red birds carry on a lively courtship in the magnolia tree. He was getting on famously it was declared. Certainly he felt too much energy to be willing to stay recumbent much longer. He was beginning to be restless. It was a wonder he had not begun before. It was not so long ago that if any one had told him he would stay contentedly for nearly two months away from his beloved clinic he would have thought them mad and no doubt told them so. But sickness is a powerful leveller and Phil had other things on his mind beside medicine and surgery these May days.

"Enter egg nogg," announced Sylvia suddenly arriving, Hebe like, with a tray and a tall glass of foaming yellow deliciousness.

Phil sat up.

"Gee! What business has a great hulking idiot like me to loaf around and let an angel like you wait on him hand and foot?"

"Angels aren't conspicuous for their hands and feet. They are all wings like that mosquito there. Don't let him bite. He'll disfigure your beauty. And don't stop to concoct highfaluting speeches. Your business is to drink."

"All right I will, if you'll sit down too." He patted the hammock beside him and Sylvia accepted the invitation.

When he had disposed of the egg nogg he set the empty glass on the tray on the grass where Sylvia had deposited it. Then he turned to look at his companion. Sylvia was well worth looking at these days. Her old rose bloom and "moonshininess" were back again. She had returned close to the "jubilant springs" from which she had journeyed afar during the troublous winter past, though perhaps the little girl Sylvia had disappeared forever in the course of her devious wayfaring. At any rate, the new womanliness was very becoming.

"Is this a good time to propose?" demanded Phil so suddenly that Sylvia blushed like a schoolgirl and drooped her head, but her lips twitched roguishly as she averred that it was as good a time as any.

"Very well. Remember I'm scared to death. I never proposed to a girl before in my life and I'm never going to do it again. One, two, three! Sylvia, will you marry me?"

Sylvia lifted her head then and her eyes met Phil's straight and brave with the fine surrender of a proud woman.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"Thank the Lord!" Phil mopped his perspiring brow. "If you don't mind kissing me again I'd feel a little more as if it were real. I've lived a dreadfully long time on that heavenly kiss. I'd like an earth one, please."

An hour later they were still in the hammock as blissful and mutually self-absorbed as the redbirds.

"Sylvia, do you realize that I haven't any money, thanks to this heavenly-infernal smash up of mine, that even my job is knocked galley westward by all this business? If I weren't too jolly happy to think at all I should think I was an idiot and an ass if nothing worse to ask a girl to marry me under the circumstances."

"Don't think," said Sylvia. "What is the use? You will get caught up quick enough when you are well again. Don't talk about money. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth."

"All right, I won't. But, Sylvia, there is another thing." Phil's eyes strayed over the beautiful May sweet garden, on to the great red brick house whose open doors suggested hospitality and affluence and home happiness on a bountiful scale. "Have you thought you will have to give this up and come and live in a little airtight compartment in New York?"

For a moment Sylvia was startled out of her new content. Her eyes, too, followed Phil's. Never had Arden Hall seemed so dear, so infinitely desirable as now in the ripe hour of her happiness. Somehow she had never thought of that particular complication though it was obvious enough. To lose the Hall now that she had just come into the very heart of it, or to have it again for brief holidays only, snatched "on the wing" as she had said once before! A redbird flashed like a flame before her in the sunshine. The redbirds would soon be nesting. Mechanically the thought crossed her mind. Nesting! That was it. She, too, would be nesting in the heart of the man she loved. She looked back to Phil who was watching her with troubled eyes.

"I shan't care, if I have you," she said.

And it was true, would always be true for Sylvia Arden. She had been like the empty marshes, waiting for the tide to come in. The tide had come, full flood, sweeping every inlet and lagoon. There were no vacant places in her whole being. Love filled it all. Nothing mattered any more except this big, strange, beautiful, engulfing thing which had come to her and taken possession. Felicia's prophecy had come true. Sylvia had found the real thing at last, and knew the difference between it and the specious substitute with which she had striven to be content.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*WARP AND WOOF*

Early in June, Sylvia and her little circle were shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Angus McIntosh. He had gone to the office as usual but had come in early in the afternoon, and in the dusk Gus had found him sitting in the big chair beneath his mother's picture looking as serene as if he had just fallen asleep. It seemed there had been for quite a while past the probability that the very thing which had happened would happen. This Gus had known and had been in a measure prepared, though we are never fully armed against such loss. When our dear ones leave us there is always a sad surprise about it. We can never quite believe they can really go, however we think our minds are fortified.

Silent in his grief as in his love, Gus went quietly about the grave duties which his foster-father's death imposed upon him, but no one could have seen the lad and not known he was suffering acutely. To Sylvia alone he seemed able to voice the grief that possessed him and to her he turned with natural impulse to seek solace from one who knew what the dead man had meant to the lonely boy. Sylvia gave him all the comfort and friending she could in his hour of need. She felt very pitiful for him not only because of this sorrow but because she knew he had another scarcely healed hurt, though this new grief had driven it into the background.

When the old man's will was read many were surprised to learn that aside from some bequests to servants and old friends and a small annuity to "my beloved son, Augustus Nichols," the bulk of Angus McIntosh's hard earned and considerable property was left to Thomas Daly in trusteeship to found a hospital for Greendale. When people tried to commiserate Gus on his rather meager sharings he had rejected their condolences. It appeared he had for some time known of the disposition Angus McIntosh had made of his estate. It had, indeed, been by the lad's own wish that he was not burdened by the management and responsibility of a great property.

"What would I want with all that money?" he asked Sylvia. "I should have hated it. I don't want money. I've never wanted it. I've had more than my share already in my musical training. Thanks to his generosity, my violin will bring me all the income I can stand. I couldn't tend to a big property and keep on playing. I've got to play. It is all I'm fit for. He understood. We talked it over so often. And he didn't want to fritter away his money in little driblets in small charities. He wanted to leave it in a lump sum where it would really do some good. The hospital seemed to be the best. His mother died because she didn't have proper medical care. It always hurt him to think about it. He wants a room named after her. Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing. I wish people would stop sympathizing with me. I don't want their sympathy."

So surprisingly it came about that Tom Daly's castle in the air suddenly appeared convertible to brick and mortar. And the beauty of having it so minutely and perfectly planned in advance was that there need not be the slightest delay in getting the substance of things hoped for under way. Thanks to Doctor Tom's unflagging effort other bequests to the hospital were already forthcoming, including Lois Daly's gift of love, but the big unhampered lump sum provided by Angus McIntosh's will made it possible to carry out the doctor's dreams on a scale which he had hardly dared hope to contemplate hitherto.

One day Phil Lorrimer, up in New York, had a letter from Tom Daly. The latter had for some time been considering the advisability, even the necessity, of taking to himself a professional partner. His hands had been already full before the hospital project had matured. Now they were overflowing. All of which was preliminary to asking the younger man if he would consider moving to Greendale to become Tom Daly's associate.

Phil's breath came hard as he read. It was of all things the one he would have liked best if he had chosen. Tom Daly had long been a boyish idol of his, and since the boy had attained his own manhood he had seen even more clearly the bigness of the other man's vision, the scope of the service he was rendering Greendale. Nothing could have pleased or flattered the young doctor more than that Tom Daly should consider him worthy of the proffered post.

Moreover, Phil's sickness had taken heavy toll even of his abundant young vitality. It would be a year at least before he would be perfectly strong again, and he had been warned since he had been back that it was extremely doubtful whether he would be able to stand the city work and city life. Here was his release in dignified, desirable form.

There were other considerations, too. It was no small inducement that he could be near his mother in Greendale. He had realized more than ever of late how hard it was for her to have her loved ones so scattered. His father was in China, his sister in Constantinople, he himself might just as well be at the uttermost parts of the earth for all she saw of him under normal conditions. And his going to Greendale would put an end to that source of regret and anxiety.

But, chief of all naturally, was the knowledge that the arrangement would bring joy to Sylvia. In spite of her sincere willingness to go anywhere with him he knew it was hard for her to leave the beloved home of her heart. And now there would be no need of such a sacrifice. The cottage and the Hall were but a stone throw apart, an admirable proximity so far as the professional partnership was concerned.

So Phil wired, "Accept gladly, if Sylvia approves," and had hardly sent the message before an enthusiastic letter arrived from Sylvia imploring him to say yes to Doctor Tom's proposition if it were not in any way contrary to his wishes and ambitions.

"Of course it is just too heavenly to think of our living at Arden Hall," she had written, "but, Phil, don't let any thought of me influence your decision. Whatever you want, I want. You know I'd be happy going to sea in a sieve with you if you elected to be a sieve pilot. But, oh Phil, I can't help hoping you will want to come to Greendale."

All of which made Sylvia's approval fairly evident.

Soon after this Phil went to call on the Huntleys, who had been kindness itself to him and to his mother during the latter's stay in the city. The doctor was not at home but Mrs. Huntley was delighted to see him and hovered over him with tea and sandwiches and cakes as a fond female bird hovers over its offspring with juicy worms.

When Phil came to revealing his future plans he did so a little warily remembering how he had refused Justin Huntley's generous offer. But Mrs. Huntley seemed genuinely pleased.

"How lovely for you! Now you can marry that sweet girl and everything will be quite all right, will it not?"

Phil explained that everything would have been quite all right in any case since the "sweet girl" had been willing to come to him if he had not been able to come to her.

"Quite as it should be," Mrs. Huntley had declared approvingly. "But I am glad it has come out as it has just the same. Do you know, Philip, I've always been a little glad you didn't take Justin's offer, dearly as I should have loved to have you with us."

Phil hesitated to speak, not being quite certain of his hostess' course of reasoning. But she soon enlightened him.

"It isn't the kind of work for a young man," she went on. "It is too disillusioning. Don't you think so? It might have made you a little--just a little--cynical, you know. Mightn't it? It is hard to keep your faith in human nature when you have a practice like Justin's." She paused a moment then continued with unusual affirmatives. "Justin was a country practitioner in a little town once. He took his father's place. Wonderful old man--Justin's father! As much of a priest as a doctor Justin used to say. He lived among kind, simple, hard-working people and they loved him like a father. You should have seen them flocking in from the farms and mountains to his funeral. There was a kind of personal relation you don't get in cities."

"No," agreed Phil. "Anyway, you don't get it in Dr. Huntley's kind of practice. I get some few chunks of personality at the clinic."

"Sometimes I've wished Justin had stayed in the country and followed his father's steps. But I suppose it had to be this way. Justin wasn't satisfied until he had worked his way to the top, though sometimes one wonders what the top really is," she sighed. "But, anyway, I am glad your father's son is going to have a different outlook. Justin will be glad, too. He liked your refusal, though it disappointed him. He understood."

"He has been very good to me, and you, too," said Phil, warmly. "I hope you don't think I don't appreciate his kindness and was ungrateful. It was a big thing to offer a young man. But I couldn't take it. I had to hold tight for my kind of a job. And, thanks to luck and Doctor Daly, I have it."

Watching the fine, earnest, young face, with its clear, honest, blue eyes, and that firm, strong chin, Mrs. Huntley thought Phil Lorrimer owed his opportunity chiefly to his own intrinsic worth, clear head, and fine ideals, which was true. But perhaps almost more was he beholden to a big-souled missionary out in China who had set him a standard of manhood to follow and a gentle, low-voiced woman who lived at the foot of Sylvia's Hill and had a gift for mothering.

July brought Stephen Kinnard back to Greendale after much wandering, from Alaska to Mexico, from Mexico to Quebec, and finally to Maryland. He had written charming desultory letters from time to time to Felicia and had been especially rejoiced over her having won the competition as he had prophesied. But never in any of the letters had he pressed again the question he had asked in September. Among other arts Stephen Kinnard possessed the art of long patience and the power of biding his time.

Occasionally jolly, friendly, brotherly epistles had come for Hope, too. At first Hope had blushed delightfully over them and read and reread them until she fairly knew them by heart. But as the letters came less frequently she gradually ceased to watch for them. Youth needs something more substantial than a chimera to feed upon. Moreover, in June, a young architect had come to Greendale to build Doctor Tom's hospital, a rather clever young man with some Beaux Arts letters after his name and a good eye for a pretty girl. Passing up the Hill and down it as he did frequently in his interviews with the Doctor, he had occasion to go by the Oriole Inn and it took him remarkably little time to discover that it was agreeable to drop in afternoons for a cup of tea in the quaint dining-room or out under the trees which the orioles still haunted. Perhaps not the least of the charms of the place was the presence of the fair-haired, slender lily of a girl who hovered about with a pleasing anxiety that he be well served and often took the task of ministration upon herself in her zeal.

Out of the corner of her eye Martha watched this too, even as she had watched Hope and Stephen the previous summer. It had for some time been evident to Martha's astute vision that so long as Hope remained unclaimed there would always be honey seekers about her sweet rose. Much as she dreaded to have Hope marry she thought she would prefer the sad certainty of such a contingency to the eternal worrying lest Hope be somehow hurt and her white flower-likeness be made to droop in the dust. The young architect apparently meant business. By July he was spending most of his free hours in Hope's society. Martha had almost settled down to acquiesce in the idea of Hope's surrender when she heard that Stephen Kinnard was back in Greendale, news which brought the anxious pucker back to her forehead.

But she need not have worried. Hope was pleased to see Stephen as a younger sister might have been glad to welcome back a long absent brother. She had all but forgotten she had ever had any dreams about him. The real love which was daily more engrossing made the pale little phantom love so insignificant as to be scarcely a thing to be recalled. It had been love and not the lover that Hope had hungered for from the first.

As for Stephen himself, Hope had never dwelt except upon the outer margins of his consciousness. He had admired her as the artist in him always paid tribute to beauty wherever he found it. He had a fatal gift of kindness always and gave careless largess easily to lovely women whenever they had the luck to cross his path. That Hope had invested him, even temporarily, with the glamour of her sweet, shy, little dreams he had no manner of idea. He had, from the beginning, paid homage to a higher court.

Shrewdly perceiving that the chief obstacle to his suit was Sylvia, Stephen did not blunder into a premature insistence. Sylvia's wedding was set for early September. He could afford to wait a little, though he took pains to make himself very useful and desirable in little ways to the household on the Hill while he waited.

During the summer Sylvia had a few brief letters from Jack. He was well, intensely thrilled by the experience he was undergoing, rejoicing endlessly, apparently, in his luck at having at last found a genuine task which he could pursue with all the zest of play. Physical courage had always been an inherent characteristic with him. Danger agreed with him as he had said to Sylvia. In deeds of daring he had always delighted, simply, with no fuss about it. Jack was never spectacular. It was merely that being a good gambler he liked hazards. This game of life and death made an excellent substitute for the game of love in which he had gallantly lost. In fact it seemed he found even greater satisfaction in it. At any rate, he was in it, as he had been in love, with all his might and main and with all his heart.

Sylvia's engagement, expected as it had been, had appeared to disturb little less than the surface of his exultant, new found joy of service. Perhaps the larger issues swallowed up his private grief even as they had swallowed Hilda Jensen's. Certainly he had little time for thought or brooding. Life crowded thick around him. He was in the same unit with John Armstrong and that in itself was a satisfaction, for the two had long been staunch friends. Hilda, also, he saw occasionally as she was working in the hospital at Neuilly, not far from the front.

It was Hilda who wrote in August that Jack had been wounded and was in the hospital in her care. The injury, though painful, was not serious and Jack made light of it as well he might, for he had been "cite" for "distinguished service under fire" and won the Croix de Guerre.

"The men all say he has a charmed life," wrote Hilda. "The Poilus are quite superstitious about him. He goes anywhere, everywhere with his car, in the most unheard of, impossible places with the utmost disregard of it and himself. John says he never saw anything like him. He keeps them all, French and American alike, in an uproar of mirth, too. Even in the hospital it is the same. He tells his funniest stories and makes his absurdest jokes and has everybody in a good humor without trying. He is the sunniest fellow I ever knew. You can't down him. You needn't worry about him as far as you are concerned, Sylvia. I don't mean he doesn't care. He does care tremendously. He deserves the Croix de Guerre, in love, too. He has been under fire. You can see that. But what I mean is, he is so thoroughly wholesome and happy-hearted he will come out all right. He can't help it. John says it is making a man of him over here, and I believe it is true, though I think you started that process.

"But, oh, Sylvia, it is dreadful! If ever it ends I shall fly back to safe, peaceful, happy America and try to forget all the agonies I've seen and lived over here. We all hope America will manage to keep out of war, but it seems as if she could not long do so with safety and honor. It is hard to forget the _Lusitania_, and for us it is almost harder to forget Belgium. Americans at home will never fully understand Belgium. For us it has been stamped with red hot irons upon our minds and memories. We cannot forget."

As Sylvia eagerly read this letter she couldn't help hoping that somehow or other this terrible experience Hilda and Jack were going through together might, in time, bring them still nearer. Women are incorrigible matchmakers where their old lovers are concerned, and Jack and Hilda had long been good friends. They were both too essentially sane and too young to let their lives be wrecked by the hapless experiences with which they had started out. If only they might find consolation and happiness in each other Sylvia thought she would have nothing left to wish for.

And so summer days came and went, with their joys and their sorrows, their dreams and their despairs, their losses and their gains, woven all into the common web of life. And finally again came September.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*THE END AND THE BEGINNING*

Cloudless September afternoon! The same blue space of sky beyond the shining-leaved magnolia; the same pink and white riot of cosmos; the same dial dedicating itself to none but sunny hours! And again Barb and Suzanne and Sylvia on the porch at Arden Hall. Externally everything was much as it had been a twelve month ago. But the year had brought its changes and left its traces as years will. As the shell's growth is marked by its increasing number of circles so spiritual development stamps its impress upon human faces and even more on human souls. Barb and Suzanne and Sylvia were less unchanged than the outer world. All three had grown in the grace of wisdom, each according to her way and measure.

Barb was still quiet and humble of heart, but the year had given her the poise which comes from increasing self dependence and even more from depths and widths of experience. Barbara was learning to base life broad on the roots of things and faced the world serenely content if a little gravely, going the "softlier all her days for the dream's sake" as so many women do.

Suzanne was, on the surface, the least changed. She still flashed out conversational audacities and delighted in "taking a shot at the idols" as she put it. But underneath the jewel-like hardness and brilliance of the exterior there was a difference. Her theories of life were not so polished and compact and perfected. She had undergone more than one seismic upheaval of emotion during the year and her "cock-sureness" was shattered if not annihilated. But the greatest difference lay in her deepened power of human sympathy and understanding. The success of "Melissa on the Road" had not been mere accident but a logical outgrowth of its author's surer insight into life, and the play was an even more certain indication that Suzanne in finding herself had found something universal at the same time.

As for Sylvia--but let Sylvia speak for herself. Suzanne, lolling as before in Sylvia's hammock, again pronounced judgment.