Chapter I: HAVEN’T seen her for two days. Yesterday morning I went up-stairs to

leave the hat, found her door open and her rooms empty. Emma says she has been out most of the time. I waited in all afternoon, expecting to hear Betty on the telephone in a state of wrath about the pupil. Also I had my ear trained for the postman’s light ring. At any moment I might get a letter now from Roger, announcing his engagement. Why should not Lizzie’s absences abroad be spent in walks with him?

As usual the anticipated didn’t happen. Betty did telephone but in amiable ignorance of her protégée’s revolt. She had run to earth a second pupil, who would be ready the following morning at eleven. Would I please tell Lizzie and did I know how the first lesson had gone? I prevaricated--I can do that at the telephone when Betty’s stern gaze is not there to disconcert me. I was really afraid to tell her, and besides, I, too, was getting rebellious. Let Lizzie manage her own affairs and fight her own fights. I said cheerfully she would tell Betty about it, and hung up the receiver wondering what would happen. Then I wrote a note to Lizzie about the new pupil, went up-stairs, knocked, and getting no response, pushed it under the door.

For the rest of the day I sat waiting like a prisoner in the death cell.

This morning, when I leaned out of the back window and looked down on the damp soil and bare shrubs of the yard, I felt the first soft air of spring. The sunlight slanted on the brick walls, the wet spots on the walk around the sun-dial shrunk as I watched them. On the top of a fence a scarred and seasoned old cat, at which Mr. Hamilton was wont to throw beer bottles, stretched lazily, blinking at a warm inviting world. I leaned farther out--tiny blunt points of green were pushing through the mold along the walk. Mrs. Phillips, sure in her ownership of the yard, had planted crocuses. Winter wasn’t lingering in the lap of spring--he had jumped off it at a bound.

I turned from the window and went into the front room, wondering vaguely why winter should always be a male and spring a female. The tin roof was dry, the hot bright sun had licked up the sparrow’s bath. Across the street a line of women from the tenements were advancing on the park, pushing baby carriages--buxom broad-hipped mothers with no hats and wonderful coiffures of false hair. It was a glorious morning, the air like a thin clear wine. I put on my things and went out.

The street showed sunny and clear, fair bright avenues inviting the wayfarer to wanderings. Children sped by in groups and scattering throngs. Smart slim ladies strolled with dogs straining at leashes. Friends met and stood in talkative knots, motors flashed by attended by the fluttering of loosened veils. On the fringe of benches along the park wall the idle sunned themselves, lax and lazy. Down-town, where the women shop, men would be selling arbutus at the street corners. Soon naughty boys with freckled noses would trail in hopeful groups along the curb, holding up stolen lilacs to ladies in upper windows--yes, spring had come.

I bought a bunch of daffodils at the florist’s and went into the park. The first hint of green was faint on the lawns, and points of emerald were breaking out along the willow boughs. Through the crystal air the sounds of children at play came musically--little yaps and squeals and sudden sweet runs of laughter. The glass walls of the casino were a-dazzle, and revolving wheels caught the sun and broke it on their flying spokes.

I was near the lake when I saw Lizzie. She was walking up a side path that crossed mine, her head down, her step quick and decided. She didn’t see me and I stood and waited. Then her eye, deep and absorbed, shifted, caught me, and she came to an abrupt halt. For the first startled moment there was an indecision about her poised body and annoyed face that suggested flight. If I did not share her dismay, I did her surprise. This was the hour set for the second lesson. Of course she might have told Betty that she would give no more, also she might have been hastening to the tryst with the new pupil. You never could tell. In answer to my smiling hail she approached, not smiling but looking darkly intent and purposeful.

“Which way are you going?” she said, by way of greeting.

I have been called a tactful person, and acquaintance with Lizzie has developed what was an untrained instinct into a ripened art:

“Nowhere in particular. I’m just strolling about in the sun.”

Obviously relieved, she said:

“I’m going over there--” pointing to the apartment-houses across the park. “I have business on the west side.”

The new pupil lived on the east side. So she really had given it up.

“You’ve told Mrs. Ferguson that you won’t give that lesson--the one she telephoned about?”

A sudden blankness fell on her face.

“Didn’t you get the letter I put under your door?” I cried in alarm. I couldn’t bear just now, with everything failing me, to have Betty angry.

She nodded, looking down and scraping on the ground with her foot. Then slowly raised her eyes, and glimpsing at me under her lashes, broke into a broad smile.

“I forgot all about it.”

“Oh, Lizzie! How could you? If you’ve made up your mind to end it the least you could do was to let her know. That’s really _too_ bad.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” Her hasty contrition was far from convincing. “Perfectly awful. I ought to be punished in some painful way. Look here, Evie, dearest, I’m in a hurry. Why can’t you just pop into a taxi and go down and explain it to her?”

“I’ll tell you why I can’t, simply and clearly--because I won’t.”

“Goodness, how provoking of you.” She didn’t seem at all provoked. Her only concern was to get away from me and go to the mysterious business on the west side. She bent sidewise to catch her skirt and moved away. “Then I will, this evening, to-morrow morning--”

I caught her by the arm.

“Lizzie, listen. Mrs. Ferguson is my best friend. I made her do this and I can’t have you treating her so rudely. I thought, of course, you’d told her.”

She laid her hand on my detaining fingers, and as she spoke in her most coaxing manner smoothed them caressingly, detaching them from their hold.

“Dear girl, I know all that. Every word you say is true. And I’ll fix it, I’ll straighten it all out. There won’t be the slightest trouble.”

“Will you telephone those people?” I implored.

My hand was dislodged. She drew away.

“Indeed I will, the first moment I get.” She paused, arrested by a thought. “What’s their name? I’ve forgotten.” Then backing off: “_You_ telephone them. You see I can’t now and I don’t know when I’ll be near a booth. Say I’m sick, or have left town, or anything you like. Just any excuse until I can attend to it. Good-by. I’ll probably come in and see you this afternoon.”

She turned and made off as quickly as she could, a tall vigorous figure, moving with a free swinging step. I stood and watched her hastening down the path between the trunks of the bare trees. There was not a trace upon her of the tempest of two nights before. It might never have been. Her whole bearing suggested coursing blood and high vitality. She was very like the irresponsible and endearing creature I had known when I first went to Mrs. Bushey’s.

I gave up my walk and went home to send the telephone. As I hurried along I wondered where she could be going and why she seemed so light in spirit. I was in that feverish state of foreboding when the simplest events assume a sinister aspect. The thought crossed my mind that she might be going to elope with Roger. It would be like her to elope, and though it would be very unlike him (about the last thing in the world one could conceive him doing), he might have become clay in the hands of that self-willed and beguiling potter.

“Well,” I thought, “so much the better. It’ll be over.” And I decided the best thing for me to do would be to go back to Europe and join the spinsters and widows in the pensions.

I sent the telephone, trying to soothe an angry female voice that complained of a morning “utterly ruined.” I sent another one to Betty, who was also discomposed, having heard from the mother of “the barbarous child.” Betty wouldn’t believe her, had evidently championed the teacher with heat. Betty is a stalwart adherent, a partisan, and I foresaw battles in high places.

The afternoon drew to a golden mellow close and I lay on the sofa waiting for Lizzie. I hadn’t relinquished the idea of the elopement but it did not seem so probable as it had in the morning. Anyway, if she hadn’t eloped--if she did come in to see me--I had made up my mind I would ask her pointblank what she intended to do about Roger. It was one word for Lizzie and two for myself. I really thought if things went on the way they were, I should go mad. Not that it would matter if I went mad, for nobody depends on me, nor am I necessary to the progress or welfare of the state. But I don’t want to be an expense to my friends. And I don’t know whether one hundred and sixty-five dollars a month is enough for maintenance in an exclusive lunatic asylum and I know they would never send me to any but the best.

When a knock came I started and called a husky “Come in.” The door opened--there had been no elopement. Roger stood on the threshold, smiling and calm, which I knew he wouldn’t have been if he was a bridegroom. Marriage would always be a portentous event with a conscientious Clements.

Whatever I might be with Lizzie I couldn’t be pointblank with Roger, though I had known him for fifteen years and her for six months. I explained my trepidation by a headache and settled back on the sofa. He was properly grieved and wanted me to follow Mrs. Ashworth to the south. I saw myself in a white dress on a hotel piazza being charming to men in flannels and Panama hats, and the mere thought of it made me querulous. He persisted with an amiable urgence. If my opinion of him hadn’t been crystallized into an unchangeable form, I should have thought him maddeningly stupid. I began to wonder, if the present state of affairs lasted much longer, if I wouldn’t end by hating him. I was thinking this when Lizzie came in.

I had never seen her, not even in the gladdest days before her illness, look as she did. The old Lizzie was back, but enriched and glorified. She entered with a breathless inrush, shutting the door with a blind blow, her glance leaping at me and drawing me up from the cushions like the clutch of a powerful hand. It seemed as if some deadening blight had been lifted from her and she had burst into life, enhanced and intensified by the long period of hibernation. Her lips were parted in a slight, almost rigid smile, her eyes, widely opened, had lost their listless softness and shone with a deep brilliance.

Roger gave a suppressed exclamation and rose to his feet. I think she would have astonished any man, that Saint Anthony would have paused to look, not tempted so much as held in a staring stillness of admiration. She was less the alluring woman than the burning exultant spirit, cased in a woman’s body and shining through it like a light through a transparent shell.

“Lizzie!” I exclaimed on a rising note of question. I had a sense of momentous things, of a climax suddenly come upon us all.

“I’ve been to Vignorol,” she said, and came to a halt in front of me, her gaze unwavering, her breast rising to hurried breaths.

“How do you do, Miss Harris,” said Roger, coming smilingly forward. He had the air of the favored friend who shows a playful pique at being overlooked.

The conventional words, uttered in an urbane tone, fell between us like an ax on a stretched thread. It can be said for him that he knew Lizzie too little to realize what her manner portended. He evidently saw nothing except that she was joyously exhilarated and looked unusually handsome.

She gave him a glance, bruskly quelling and containing no recognition of him. It was her famous piece-of-furniture glance, to which I had been so often treated. It was the first time Roger had ever experienced its terrors and it staggered him. In bewilderment he looked at me for an explanation. But she was not going to let any outside influence come between us. I was important just then--a thing of value appropriated to her uses.

“I’ve been two days fighting it out, trying to make up my mind to do it. And this morning, when you met me, I was going there.”

“Well?” I was aware of that demanding look of Roger’s, which, getting nothing from me, turned to her. That was useless, but how was he to know?

“I sang for him,” she said, the brilliant eyes holding mine as if to grasp and focus upon herself every sense I had.

“Lizzie!”

The premonition of momentous things grew stronger. Underneath it, in lower layers of consciousness, submerged habits of politeness made themselves felt. I ought to get Roger into the conversation.

“I sang better than I ever did before. And Vignorol, who used to scold and be so discouraged, told me I’d got it!”

“Lizzie!”

For a moment we stared at each other, speechless, she giving the useful pair of ears time to carry to the brain, the great news.

Then the subconscious promptings grew too strong to be denied and I said:

“Mr. Clements will be as glad as we are to know that.”

Thus encouraged, Roger emerged from his astonishment. He was not as debonair as at the beginning, also he evidently wasn’t sure just what it was all about, but he seized upon the most prominent fact, and said, without enthusiasm, rather with apprehension:

“This doesn’t mean, Miss Harris, that you’re thinking of returning to your old profession?”

Her look at him was flaming, as silencing as a blow. I don’t know why she didn’t tell him to hold his tongue, except that she was too preoccupied to waste a word. He flinched before it, drew himself up and backed away, dazed, as he might have been if she really had struck him.

Having brushed him aside she went on to me. The main fact imparted, her exultation burst forth in a crowding rush of words:

“It wasn’t my voice--but that’s better, he says it’s the long rest--it was the other thing--the temperament, the soul. It’s got into me. I knew it myself as soon as I began to sing. I felt as if something that bound me was gone--ropes and chains broken and thrown away. It was so much easier. Before I was always making efforts, listening to what they told me, trying to work it out with my head. And to-day! Oh, Evie, I knew it, I felt it--something outside myself that poured into me and carried me along. I could just let myself go and be wonderful--wonderful--wonderful!”

She threw out her arms as if to illustrate the extent of her wonderfulness, wide as she could stretch, then brought her hands together on her bosom, and, with half-shut eyes, stood rapt in ravished memory.

We gazed mutely at her as if she were some remarkable spectacle upon which we had unexpectedly chanced.

“I sang and sang,” she said softly, “and each time it was better. Vignorol wouldn’t let me go.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He kissed me,” she murmured dreamily.

Roger in his corner moved and then was still.

“But what did he suggest about you? What did he want you to do?”

My mouth was dry. Sitting on the edge of the sofa I clutched the sides of it as if it was a frail bark and I was floating in it over perilous seas.

“Go back to where I belong,” she said, and then came out of her ecstasy and began to pace up and down, flinging sentences at me.

“Try it again and do it this time. He says I can, and I know I can. Oh, Evie, to get away from all this--those hateful pupils, those hideous lessons--those women! To go back to my work, be among my own people.” She brushed by Roger, her glance, imbued with its inward vision, passing over him as if he was invisible. “It’s like coming out of prison. It’s like coming to life again after you were dead.”

She had expressed it exactly. She _had_ been dead. The mild and wistful woman of the last two months was a wraith. _This_ was Lizzie Harris born again, renewed and revitalized, now almost terrible in her naked and ruthless egotism.

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought yet. Vignorol wants me to study with him for nothing, pay it back when I make good. But that doesn’t matter now. I can’t think of anything but that I’m home, in my place, and that I can do it. They were all disappointed in me, said I’d never get there. I can. I will. Wait!--Watch me. You’ll see me on top yet, and it won’t be so far off, either. I’ll show you all it’s in me. I’ll wake up every clod in those boxes, I’ll make their dull fat faces shine, I’ll hear them clap and stamp and shout, ‘Brava, Bonaventura!’”

She cried out the two last words, staring before her with flashing eyes that looked from the heights of achievement upon an applauding multitude. In the moment of silence I had a queer clairvoyant feeling that it was true, that it would happen, and I saw her as the queen of song with her foot upon the public’s neck. Then the seeing passion left her face and her lip curled in superb disdain.

“And you wanted to make a _singing teacher_ out of me!”

She swept us both with a contemptuous glance, as if we were the chief offenders in a conspiracy for her undoing. I was used to it, but Roger, the galled jade whose withers were yet unwrung, winced under her scorn.

“But Miss Harris,” he protested, “we only--”

“Oh, I’m not talking to you,” she said brutally. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“Certainly, if you say so,” he replied.

There was a moment’s pause. I did not like to look at him. You can bear being insulted if no one else sees it, but one old friend mustn’t witness another’s humiliation, especially when that other is unable by temperament and training to hit back.

Lizzie, having crushed him like an annoying and persistent fly, wheeled toward the door.

“I must go. I can’t stay any longer.” Then in answer to a question from me, “Oh, I don’t know where--out to breathe. I can’t stay still. I want to walk and feel I’m free again, that I’m not cramped up in a dark hole with no sunshine. I want to feel that I’m myself and say it over and over.”

She went out, seeming to draw after her all the stir and color that she had brought in. It was as if a comet with a bright and glittering tail had crowded itself into the room, and then, after trying to squeeze into the contracted area, swishing and lashing about and flattening us against the walls, had burst forth to continue on its flaming way.

I fell back on the sofa feeling that every nerve in me had snapped and I was filled with torn and quivering ends. Stupidly, with open mouth, I looked at Roger, and he, also stupidly but with his mouth shut, looked at me. I don’t know how long we looked. It probably was a few seconds but it seemed an age--one of those artificially elongated moments when, as some sage says, the measure of time becomes spiritual, not mechanical. I saw Roger afar as if I was eying him through the big end of an opera glass--a tiny familiar figure at the end of a great vista. The space between us was filled with a whirling vortex of thoughts, formless and immensely exciting. They surged and churned about trying to find a definite expression, trying to force their way to my brain and tell me thrilling and important news. Then the familiar figure advanced, pressed them out of the way, and taking a chair by the sofa sat down and demanded explanations.

I couldn’t give them. I couldn’t explain Lizzie to him any more than I could to Betty or Mrs. Ashworth. I remembered him, before he had met her, telling me in the restaurant that I was seeing her through my own personality, and now _he_ was doing it, and he’d never get anywhere that way. I wanted desperately to make him understand. There was something so pitiful in his dismay, his reiterated “But why should she be offended with me. What have _I_ done?” And then hanging on my words as if I was some kind of a magician who could wave a wand and make it all clear. Nothing would have pleased me more than to be able to advance some “first cause” from which he could have worked up to a logical conclusion. But how could I? The lost traveler in the Australian bush was faced by a task, simple and easy, compared to Roger Clements’ trying to grasp the intricacies of Lizzie Harris’ temperament.

I was sorry for him. I was sorry (the way you’re sorry for some one inadequately equipped to meet an unexpected crisis) to see how helpless he was. I tried to be kind and also truthful--a difficult combination under the circumstances--and make plain to him some of the less complex aspects of the sphinx, only to leave him in dazed distress.

He was alarmed at her evident intention to go back to the stage, couldn’t believe it, wanted me to tell him why an abandoned resolution should come back like a curse to roost. He couldn’t get away from his original conception of her, had learned her one way and couldn’t relearn her another. It was at once a pathetic sight and an illuminating experience--the man of ability, the student, the scholar, out of his depths and floundering foolishly. The mind trained to the recognition of the obvious and established, accustomed to fit its own standards to any and all forms of the human animal, coming up with a dizzying impact against the mind that had no guide, no standard, no code, but floats in the flux of its own emotions.

I repeat I was sorry, immensely sorry. Such is the inconsistency of human nature that I was filled up and overflowing with sympathy at the spectacle of my own man, once my exclusive property, hurt, flouted and outraged by the vagaries of my successful rival.

A eight o’clock that evening I was in my sitting-room when I heard her come in. She did not stop at my door but went up-stairs, a quick rustling progress through the silence of the house. It was very still, not a sound from any of the rooms, when I heard the notes of her piano, and then her voice--“_Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix._” The register was shut, and I stole to the door and opening it stood at the stair-head listening. Before the aria was over I knew that what she had said was true. Lizzie had found herself.

After a pause she began again--_O Patria Mia_ from _Aïda_. I tiptoed forward and let myself noiselessly down on the top step, breath held to listen. As the song swelled, the cry of a bleeding and distracted heart, the doors along the passages were softly opened. Up and down the wall came the click of turned latches and stealthy footsteps. Mrs. Bushey’s lodgers were not abroad, as I had thought. The stairs creaked gently as they dropped upon them. When _Patria Mia_ was over we were all there. I could see the legs of Mr. Hamilton and the count dangling over the banisters above me. On the bottom of the flight Mr. Weatherby sat, and Miss Bliss and Mr. Hazard leaned against the wall, looking up with the gaslight gilding their faces.

In the silence that fell on the last note no one spoke. There was no rising chorus of praise as there once had been. I don’t think we were aware of one another, each rapt in the memory of an ecstatic sadness. The cautious foot of Mrs. Phillips stealing along the lower hall made me look down and I saw her stationing herself beside young Hazard, and that Dolly Bliss’ face shone with tears.

She went on--_Vissi d’Arte, Vissi d’Amore_, Musetta’s song; the habanera from _Carmen_, Brahm’s _Sapphische Ode_, sounding the depths and heights. Between each piece we were dumb, only the creaking of the banisters as Mr. Hamilton shifted, or the sniffing of Miss Bliss when the song was sad, fell on our silence. We never saw her. She was at last the diva, remote, august, a woman mysterious and unknown, singing to us across an impassable gulf.

As long as I live I shall never forget it--the narrow half-lit passages, the long oval of the stair-well, on the bottom step of my flight Mr. Weatherby’s back, broad and bent, as he rested his elbows on his knees. Against the whitewashed wall below Mr. Hazard with his eyes fixed in a trance of listening; Mrs. Phillips, her head pressed back against the wall, her lids closed, and Dolly Bliss’ little face bright with slow dropping tears.

We were Liza Bonaventura’s first audience.

XIX

THE next morning, while I yet slept, she came knocking and rattling at my door. When I let her in she upbraided me for having it locked, unmindful of my sleepy excuses that as the street door was generally open all night it was wisdom to keep one’s apartment firmly closed.

She was in the blue kimono over her nightgown, and when I got back into bed--for it was too early for breakfast--sat down on the edge of the couch and told me that she had decided to accept Mrs. Ferguson’s offer to send her to Europe.

I had expected some move but hadn’t dared to hope for this. It was impossible to hide my agitation, to wipe the expression of startled excitement off my face. She paid no attention to me, would not have noticed if I had fallen flat in a dead faint, so engrossed was she in her plans. Staring out of the window with narrowed far-seeing eyes, she developed her program, oblivious of the fact that I was not answering, more like a person thinking aloud than one consulting another. When she finally paused, I said hoarsely, afraid to believe it:

“Mrs. Ferguson may have changed her mind. You wouldn’t hear of the offer when she made it.”

She treated the suggestion as preposterous.

“What an idea! Who ever heard of any woman changing her mind on such a subject.”

“You’ve changed yours,” I answered faintly.

“I’m different, and besides I’ve changed it for the better. She’ll be only too glad to send me. Why think of what it means to her! She’ll be known as the patron of one of the greatest living prima donnas. That’s a thing that doesn’t happen to everybody. Is the morning paper down-stairs? I want to see what steamers are leaving this week. I’ll go as soon as I can get off. Oh, I won’t meet anybody, and it doesn’t matter if I do.”

The door closed on her and I fell back on the pillows like a marionette whose wire has broken. Limp as a rag I lay looking up at the ceiling, and out of my mouth issued a sigh that was almost a groan. It was all I had power for. The tension snapped, I suddenly felt myself invaded by a lassitude so deep, so vast that it went to the edges of the world and lapped over. I would like to have been removed to a far distance and lain under a tree and watched the leaves without moving or thinking or speaking. I would like to have stayed in bed and looked at the dusty circle of cement flowers from which the chandelier hung, for years and years.

She came hastening back with the paper, tore it apart, and spreading it on the table read the shipping advertisements. Several steamers were due to sail within the week. She decided on the best and throwing the paper on the floor, said briskly:

“I’ll see her about it this morning before she goes out. There’s no need to bother about it before breakfast. I’ll just take a cup of coffee down here with you and then go up and dress. Let’s get it now.”

I rose, telling her to set the table while I dressed. She put on two cups, each trip to the table impeded by the paper, over which she trampled with loud cracklings, then she gave it up and followed me, talking. My toilet, performed with mutilated rites owing to its publicity, took me from room to room, with Lizzie at my heels. When I shut the door on my bath, she leaned against it and through the crack gave me her opinion on the rival merits of Paris and Berlin as centers of musical study.

While I was making the breakfast she stood in the entrance of the kitchenette, then, squeezing by her with the coffee pot in one hand and a plate of toast in the other, she did not give me enough room and the toast slid off the plate and was strewed afar. She picked up a piece and sat down eating it, her elbows on the table, while I gathered up the rest. Hot and disheveled I took my place opposite while she watched me, biting delicately at her toast, benignly beautiful and fresh as a summer’s morn.

She was stretching her hand for her cup when a disturbing thought made her pause. She dropped the hand and looked at me in consternation:--her big trunk was no good, it had been broken three years ago coming from California.

“Oh, well”--a happy solution occurred to her and she held out her hand for the cup--“I can borrow one of yours. That large one with the Bagdad portière over it. I’ll return it as soon as I get there. You don’t mind loaning it to me, do you, dearest?”

I gave it, warmly, generously, effusively. It wasn’t like giving Mrs. Bushey the lamp. There was no necessity for diplomatic pressure. I would have given her my jewels, my miniatures, my last cent in the bank, my teeth like Fantine, each and all of my treasures, to have her go. Nobody knows how I wanted her to go. It was not that I had ceased to love her--I will do that till I die. It was not that I had hopes Roger would forget her--he may be as faithful as Penelope for all I know. I was unable to stand any more. I was down, done, ended. I wanted to creep into my little hole, curl up and lie still. I wanted to look at the wreath of cement flowers for years. I wanted immunity from the solving of unsolvable questions, respite from trying to straighten out what persisted in staying tangled, freedom to regain my poise, reinstate my conscience, patch up the broken pieces of my heart. An immovable body had encountered an irresistible force, and though the immovable body was still in its old place, it had been so scarred and torn and tattered by the irresistible force that only rest would restore it.

That was two days ago. In the interim there has been no rest--I have spent most of the forty-eight hours in taxicabs and at telephones--but relief is in sight.

Lizzie is going.

It is all arranged. Betty has dispersed the pupils and renewed her European offer. Between taxicabs she caught me here yesterday and told me that few women have the privilege of being the patron of one of the greatest living prima donnas. The privilege sat soberly upon her and she was going to make herself worthy of it by giving one of the greatest living prima donnas every advantage that Europe offers.

In the afternoon Lizzie and I went down to the steamship office and bought her ticket, and then to the banker’s to draw the first instalment on her letter of credit. It was a royally generous letter and I said so. Lizzie didn’t think it was too much and went over a list of expenses to prove it. She is to go to Berlin--Vignorol wanted Paris but as a dramatic singer she preferred Berlin. I gathered from a casual remark that Vignorol was hurt at her desertion of him and his country. But this didn’t trouble her.

“Vignorol! I don’t see that it was so kind of him to want to take me for nothing. It would have made him. He’s only known here in New York now and as my teacher he would have been known all over the world.”

The steamer sails the day after to-morrow and this afternoon I sent up the trunk. I had offered to come in the evening and help her pack and then backed out. In an offhand manner, as she was sorting piles of sheet music, she said Roger was coming in after dinner to say good-by. She seemed engrossed by the music, gave an absent-minded assent when I said I couldn’t help that night. I could not tell whether she had at last guessed and was exhibiting unusual tact or whether she was still unconscious. I knew that every minute of the next day was filled and it would be Roger’s only chance to see her alone. It was difficult to imagine him proposing in a room littered with his lady’s wardrobe. But love is said to find out a way and if a man’s in earnest he can put the question just as well in a fourth-floor parlor full of clothes, as he can by moonlight in a bower.

I had been waiting for this interview, braced and steeled for the announcement. It was the final trial and I was going to go through with it proudly and stoically if I died the day after. I did not feel quite as if I should die. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, that’s why we don’t all, sometime or other, commit suicide. Hope upheld me now: with a career beckoning she might refuse him. It was but a sickly gleam. No woman, comprehensible to me, would ever put the greatest career the world offers before Roger Clements. The hope lay in the fact that Lizzie was not a comprehensible woman.

With great inward struggle I preserved my pride and stoicism through the rest of the afternoon. They were still with me when, in the evening I lay down on the divan bed, whence I can hear all ascending footsteps. The wreath of cement flowers gradually faded, and the daylight sounds of the house were absorbed in the evening quiet. Night had possession of the city for what seemed an endless time when I heard him going up: from the street, past my floor, up the next flight, and the next, then the far faint closing of Lizzie’s door. Rigid in the dark I pictured the meeting--the room with its high blaze of gas, the open trunks and scattered garments, and Lizzie with her smile and the enveloping beam of her glance.

It was profoundly still in the back room, only the tiny ticking of my watch on the table. The old tomcat, who at this hour was wont to lift up his voice in a nuptial hymn, had gone afield for his wooing. The parlors and bedrooms in the extensions were quiet, their lighted windows throwing a soft yellow light into my darkened lair. Our little bit of the city held its breath in sympathy with me, prone with fixed eyes, seeing those two in the parlor.

Would he work up to it in gentle gradations, gracefully and poetically as men did in novels, or blurt it out in one great question which (for me at least) would have made life blossom as the wood did when Siegmund sung? They would probably stand--people didn’t sit when such matters were afoot--and if she said yes would he take her in his arms then and there? Under the same roof, just two floors above me, they might be standing now, enfolded, cheek to cheek. Pride and stoicism fell from me and I pressed my face into the pillow and moaned like a wounded animal.

The watch ticked on. It was evidently not going to be short and tempestuous. Roger was an unhurried person and he would probably proffer his suit with dignified deliberation. I was certain, if he was successful, he’d come in and tell me on the way down. I couldn’t see him passing my door and not remembering. The place was dark, he might think I was asleep and go by. I got up and lit the lights, thinking as I stretched up with the match, that they were signals telling him I was here, waiting, ready to wish him joy.

Then I looked at the watch--only just nine. He might be hours longer. I could spend the time in preparation, be ready to meet him with a frank unforced smile.

I went to the back window and looked up at the stars for courage. The sky was sprinkled with them--big ones and bright pin points. For centuries they had been gazing down at the puny agonies of discarded lovers, unmoved and cynically curious, winking at them in derision. The thought had a tonic effect. Under its stimulus I straightened my ancestors, askew after a morning’s dusting, and touched up the bunch of daffodils on the table. Then the effect began to wear off. I reached for the watch--twenty minutes past nine.

If she had refused him it would have been done by now. Lizzie wasn’t one to spare or mince her words. I’d better get ready for him. I went to the mirror and saw a ghost, and the stars’ stern message was forgotten. That I should some day be dust was not a sustaining thought now when I was so much a suffering sentient thing, sunk down in the midmost of the moment. I brushed some rouge on my cheeks and smiled at the reflection to see if I could do it naturally. It was ghastly, like the grimace of a corpse that had expired in torment.

Then suddenly I dropped my rouge and gave a smothered cry--I heard Lizzie calling my name. For a moment power of movement seemed stricken from me. I had not thought that she would be the one to tell me. She called again and I opened the door and went into the hall. Her head was visible over the banisters.

“Have you got the key of that trunk?” she said. “It’s packed and I want to lock it.”

It was a ruse to get me up there. Even Lizzie wouldn’t announce an engagement at the top of her voice down two flights of stairs. I found the key and mounted, holding to the hand-rail. It seemed a long climb. When I got to the top I had no breath, though I had gone slowly, and I trembled so that I was afraid she would notice it, and laid the key on the table.

The trunk was packed, its lid down, and another, open, with garments trailing over its sides, stood in the middle of the floor. Round it lay the unpacked remains of Lizzie’s wardrobe, in mounds, in broken scatterings, in confused interminglings. If a cyclone had descended on neat closets and bureau drawers, scooped out their contents, carried it with a whirling centripetal motion into the center of the room, took a final churning rush through it and dashed out again, the place could not have presented a more wildly disheveled appearance.

In an unencumbered corner, an eddy untouched by the cyclone’s wrath, Roger stood putting on his coat. We looked across the chaos, bowed and smiled. I knew my smile by heart. Roger’s was something new, rose no higher than his lips, leaving his eyes somber, I might say sullen. Lizzie, without words, had snatched up the key and knelt by the trunk. She looked untidy, hot and rather cross. They certainly had not the appearance of lovers.

I fell weakly into a chair and awaited revelations. None came. Roger buttoned his coat, Lizzie made scratching noises with the key. There was something strained and sultry in the silence. Could she have refused him? One of the disappointing things about people in real life is their failure to rise to the dramatic expression fitting to great moments. Had I been in a play I would have used words vibrating with the thud of my own heart-beats. What I did say was:

“Have you had a nice evening?”

“Very,” said Roger with a dry note.

“Have we,” murmured Lizzie, busy with the key. “I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve not had time to say a word to Mr. Clements.”

“I’m afraid I’ve been rather in the way,” he remarked, the dry note a trifle more astringent.

“Well, the truth is you have,” she answered. “Are you sure this is the right key, Evie?”

The gleam of hope brightened into a ray. I sat forward on the edge of the chair looking from Lizzie’s bent back to Roger’s face, which had reddened slightly and had a tight look about the mouth. I am, by nature, a shy and modest person, and under normal conditions the last thing I would do would be to force another’s confidence. But I _had_ to know. I had to drag the truth out of them if it came with a shriek like the roots of the fabled mandrake.

“Haven’t you talked _at all_?” I exclaimed, with an agonized emphasis that might have betrayed me to a child of twelve.

They did not appear to notice it. Roger moved from his corner, picking his way round a clump of boots that had been whirled near the sofa.

“Talk?” said Lizzie, still engaged with the key. “How can people talk when they’re packing to go to Europe? There! It’s in and it turns. Thank goodness the lock’s all right.”

She rose and surveyed the room with an intent frowning glance.

“That,” pointing to the other trunk, “I’ll begin on now and finish to-morrow. This,” turning to the full one, “is done. I’d better lock it at once and get it out of the way.”

She turned back to it and gave a series of tentative pushes at the lid which rose rebelliously over bulging contents.

Nothing had happened! She hadn’t let him speak--he hadn’t dared--no opportunity had offered? What did it matter how or why? The sickening thudding of my heart began to grow less. I leaned my elbow on my knees and my forehead on my hands, feeling at last as if I was going to be Early Victorian and swoon.

Under the shadow of my fingers I could see Roger’s feet stepping carefully among the boots. Skirting tangled heaps of millinery, they arrived at the trunk. I dropped my hands and watched while he addressed himself to Lizzie’s back.

“Good night.” He stretched out his hand. “Good-by.”

She turned, saw the hand and put hers into it; then, for the first time smiled, but not with her habitual rich glow.

“Good-by. I’d ask you to stay but there’s really too much to do. I’ve got to have to-morrow free to finish up in.”

The hands separated and dropped. His back was toward me and I was glad of it.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again some day.”

“Oh, surely.” The abstraction of her look vanished, her smile flashed out brilliant and dazzling. “But not here, not this way. You’ll see me soon in my right place--behind the footlights.”

He murmured a response and moved toward the door. She turned back to the trunk, pressing on it and then drawing back and pressing again. He passed me with a low “Good night, Evie,” and I answered in the same tone.

He was at the door when she ceased her efforts, and drawing herself up with a deep breath, called peremptorily:

“Come here, Mr. Clements.”

He stopped, the door-knob in his hand.

“What is it, Miss Harris?”

She stood back from the trunk, flushed and irritated.

“Just sit on this trunk, please. It must be locked to-night.”

Her eye on him was as the eye of a general or a subaltern, impersonal, commanding, imperious.

He met it and stood immovable. In the fifteen years I have known him I had never seen him look so angry.

“Hurry up,” she said sharply. “I’d ask Evie but she’s not heavy enough.”

He answered with icy politeness:

“Miss Harris, I am very sorry, but I’ve already stayed too long. There are other men in the house, who will surely only be too happy to sit on your trunk whenever you choose to command them,” and he opened the door.

“Oh, very well, if you’re going to be so disobliging,” she answered, angry now in her turn. Then to me: “Come over here, Evie, and help. If we both press as hard as we can I think we can do it. I don’t care to wait till the morning. I want this locked now.”

I rose obediently and began to steer my way through the cyclone’s track. Roger came in, shutting the door with a bang.

“Mrs. Drake’s in no condition to make such exertions. She’s been ill and oughtn’t to be asked to do such things. Evie, don’t touch that trunk.”

“That’s perfect rubbish. I’m not asking her to _lift_ it. Come on, Evie.”

I stopped, looking helplessly from one to the other. They glared at each other, his face pale, hers red. They seemed on the verge of battle and I knew what Lizzie was like when her temper was up.

“Oh, don’t fight about a trunk,” I implored.

“I’ve not the slightest intention of fighting about anything,” said Roger, looking as if, had a suitable adversary been present, he would have felled him to the ground. “But I won’t have you making efforts that are unnecessary and that you’re unable to make.”

“You talk like a perfect fool,” said Lizzie, with the flashing eye of combat I knew so well.

He bowed.

“I’m quite ready to admit it. But as a perfect fool I absolutely refuse to let you make Mrs. Drake help shut that trunk.”

“Then do it yourself.”

As usual she had the best of it. Roger knew it and bore upon his face the look of the bear in the pit at whom small boys hurl gibes. When she saw the symptoms of defeat she began to melt.

“It’ll not take five minutes--just one good pressure on this corner. There’s a hat box that sticks up and has to be squeezed down.”

With a white face of wrath Roger strode over the clothes and sat on the trunk. I have never believed that he could be ridiculous, my Roger hedged round with the dignity that is the Clements’ heritage, but he was then, boiling with rage, perched uncomfortably on the sloping lid. A hysterical desire to laugh seized me and I backed off to my chair, biting my under lip, afraid to speak for fear of exploding into a screaming giggle.

They were unconscious of anything funny in the situation, one too angry, the other too engrossed. With a concentrated glance she surveyed the trunk, directing the bestowal of his weight. When she had finally got him in the right place, she knelt, key in hand, and in answer to a curt demand he rose and flopped furiously down. To the protesting crunching of the hat box, the lid settled and the click of the lock sounded.

“Done,” she cried triumphantly, falling back in a sitting posture on the floor.

Roger got up.

“Have I your permission to go?” he asked with elaborate deference.

“You have,” said his hostess, and from the floor looked up with a bright and beaming face from which every vestige of bad temper had fled. “Good-by--good luck. And remember, the first performance I give in New York I expect to see you applauding in the bald-headed row.”

As the door shut on him my laughter came like the burst of a geyser. Lizzie, still on the floor, looking at me with annoyed surprise, made it worse. When she asked me in a hostile voice kindly to tell her what the joke was, it got beyond my control and I became hysterical. It wasn’t very bad--I always do things in a meek subdued way--but I laughed and cried when I tried to explain and laughed again.

When she saw there was no use ordering me not to be an idiot, she got up, grumbling to herself and began on the second trunk. She kept stepping round me carrying armfuls of clothes, trailing skirts over my knees, leaning forward from a kneeling posture to jerk blouses, cloaks and petticoats from the back of my chair. I tried to retreat into corners, but she worked in wide comprehensive sweeps, wherever I went coming after me to find something that was under my chair or upon which I was sitting. Finally she used me as a sort of stand, throwing things on me and plucking them off, muttering abstractedly as she worked.

I was recovering and she was inspecting a skirt outheld at arm’s length when she said musingly:

“I hadn’t the least idea Roger Clements was so bad-tempered. He’s just a self-sufficient cross-grained prig. Gets into a rage when I ask him to sit on a trunk. I can’t stand that kind of man.”

I bade her good night and went down-stairs.

The lights were burning high. I put them out and laid down on the bed. My laughter and tears were over. Fatigue, anger and pain were sensations that existed somewhere outside me, in a world I had left. I seemed to have no body, to be a spirit loosened from fleshly trammels, floating blissfully in prismatic clouds.

I floated in them, motionless in ecstatic relief, savoring my joy, knowing the perfection of peace, till the windows paled with the dawn.

XX