Chapter VII: Part 7

"It's very imprudent to close the door," said she, calmly returning his gaze. "Nanny is at work across the hall."

"Did you break your promise to me that night?" he demanded.

"I'll answer no question--not even from you, Basil--when it's in that tone."

"First you want me to open the door, so that I can't speak out," sneered he. "Now you evade.... You admit your degradation. I knew why you were keeping away from me."

"That was not my reason," she stammered, with lowered head.

"You lie! You are doubly false. You have no shame. Now I understand why you said those bold things--why you acted so free--as no innocent woman could. You--expert!"

Her eyes were milky like a tortured sea; her face became ghastly; she trembled so that she had to steady herself at the back of a chair. "Basil!" she exclaimed. "No, it's not you. What we've suffered since he came has driven you mad. It has almost crazed me."

"Answer me!" he commanded fiercely. "Did you or did you not break your promise to me?"

Suddenly she drew herself up, and with the sad dignity of guilt that has been expiated she said: "I ask you to pity me." And she stood there, pale and haggard, a statue of wretchedness.

His fury could not hold against that spectacle--and she, the proud, asking for pity! "It's I who should be ashamed," he cried. "How I have suffered! What a coward--what a cur I am!"

She rushed to him. "Oh, my love! What we've been suffering has only made you dearer to me, dearer than ever! There's no bond like suffering."

He was about to take her outstretched hands when suspicion flamed into his eyes again. "How easily you twist me round your finger!" he said roughly. "Now, there's your making me move down to the shop. Why should you want to get me out of the house when, if I were here, we could see each other all the time?"

She showed no resentment, felt none. "It's natural you should suspect me," said she. "I'd suspect you in the same circumstances. I see now how absurd it was to dream of happiness founded on lies. No happiness for us--not even joy now and then. If we didn't love each other, we might be happy. But we do love, and misery is all we can expect. I'll tell you why I wanted you down there." She paused, went on with veiled eyes and bright red in her cheeks. "As I said to you, even dishonor has its honor. I didn't want us meeting here--with my boy--and his--so near."

Basil looked as if he were about to sink down under his shame and self-contempt. "Forgive me. What a hound I am!" he muttered.

"As for my free actions and free speech----"

"Courtney!" he begged, seizing her hands. "Don't speak of that."

"I must explain," she insisted gently, freeing herself. "I'll always explain everything to you. As I told you, I wanted to be free with you, perfectly free. So I said and did the things any woman who loved would think and feel, but most women hold back for fear of spoiling a lover's ideal. I didn't want you to idealize me, but to love me just as I was, just for what I am."

"And I do--I do!" he cried, trying to draw her into his arms.

"Yes, you do, I believe," answered she, insistently drawing back. "I know you truly love, and you know I truly love. I know you are a man any woman would be proud to have love her, and you know I'm not a low or a bad woman. Yet, see how it turns out.... Basil, we must give it up!"

"Give it up!" He was bristling with suspicion at once.

"You must go away."

He laughed scornfully. "That is your kind, considerate way of dismissing me. What vanity! I shall suffer no more than you."

"Not so much," she answered sadly.

"I shall go away and marry."

"You can't make me jealous now, Basil. Not after what you've been to me. I mean just what I say. You must go, and I'll try to be to my husband all a wife should be. If you'd been through what I've been through--that night and since--you'd understand. Basil, do you remember how I lied, how I laughed and cheated--like an 'expert,' as you say. Oh, you must have despised me! If you had done what I did, had done it as fluently, I'd have loathed you."

"And what about me? Didn't I stand there, a contemptible coward, and let him take you away?"

"What else could you have done?"

"Shown myself a man!"

"And ruined me--and my child? Oh, no, dear. You love me too well for that." She startled, listened. "He's coming," she warned, flying to the door. She opened it softly to its full width, advanced composedly into the hall, saying in her usual voice, "Then Jimmie'll take your things down about four o'clock."

Richard, on his way up, had reached the head of the stairs. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Here you are! I asked Winchie where you were, and he said he didn't know. So I've been hunting all over the place for you. I want you to take a walk with me."

"Certainly," said she tranquilly. "I'm talking business with Basil. Go down and help Winchie finish his house, and we'll take him along. I'll come in a few minutes."

"All right!" said Dick cheerfully. He shouted out, "Hey, Gallatin, how's your grouch?" and descended the stairs, laughing as he went.

As she reentered the sitting room, she said, with the quietness of the emotions that are too deep and too terrible for tumult, "Am I not 'expert'? How long do you think we could keep this sort of thing up without becoming--I tell you, Basil, looking within myself as I've lain in the dark, I've realized it takes decent people--people with nerves and imaginations and sense of right and wrong--to become frightful, if they once get on the down grade. Did you hear what he said about Winchie?"

"Yes," muttered Basil. He was at the desk, his elbows on it, his hands supporting his head.

"Winchie knew where I was. Why did he lie to his father? Already a liar!"

"I must go. You are right-- But, Courtney--you must get a divorce."

"I've thought of that. On what ground? And how can I leave him alone--take Winchie away from him?"

"You must get a divorce."

"I think so, too," assented she. "But I will not lie to do it. I'm done with lies. I'll tell him."

"No--let's go to him together." Basil's face lighted up, his manner became enthusiastic. He thought he saw a way to redeem his manhood put in pawn for this sin so dear yet so detestable. "Together!" he exclaimed. "He is generous and broadminded."

She shook her head. "Men are not generous and broadminded where women are concerned--the women they look on as theirs."

He colored and glanced guiltily at her. But it was plain that she had not in mind his own exhibition of the male attitude toward the female. His memory of it helped him to appreciate the folly of his proposal. But he would not give in at once. "I'd not suggest it, if he really loved you. But----"

"If he really loved me, he'd have felt the truth long ago. If he really loved me, he'd wish me to be happy--would give me up. But then--if he had really loved me, none of this would ever have happened. No, Basil, it's because he doesn't love me, because it's only passion that takes and gives nothing, that uses and doesn't think or care about the feelings of its creature----"

Basil, horror-stricken by this bald candor, ashamed for her, stopped her. "Let's not talk about it," he pleaded. "As for the divorce, I leave it to you. You know best how to deal with him."

His manner and its cause had not escaped her, with nerves keyed up to the snapping point. Once again he had raised in her heart the dread lest their love would not mean the perfect frankness, the perfect oneness of which she had dreamed. Did a man always demand and compel concealment and pretense in the woman? But she thrust out the doubt. "I'll do what seems best," she said to him, avoiding his eyes and speaking with constraint. "I don't know Richard very well. You see, we never got acquainted. He's like most men. They don't want the woman, but only the outside.... He's so wrapped up in his work that I think I can free myself."

He took her hands, gazed into her eyes. "Yes," he said, "you do love me. You feel that we belong to each other, just as I do. So when I'm away I'll know you are coming--as soon as you can."

"As soon as I can," she replied. And the expression of her eyes, meeting his steadfastly, and the deep notes in her sweet voice thrilled him with a new sense of her love and of her constancy. This woman had not given in whim; she would not change in whim.

"I will go--to-morrow," he said. "The sooner I go, the sooner I shall have you. Will you come to-night to say good-by?"

"Don't ask it, dear. I mustn't ever again--until I'm free."

"In the summer house, then. For a few minutes. We can't part like this."

"Yes, I'll come."

Along the hall from the foot of the stairs sounded Richard's imperious, impatient voice. "I say, Courtney! Do hurry!"

"I can't go for a walk with him now," she said, half to herself. "I'll make some excuse." She looked at Basil, he at her. In their eyes was a sadness beyond words and tears. And what would it be when he was really gone? "I mustn't linger here--I mustn't!" she cried. "And don't come near me when he's around. I can't control myself."

They clung together for an instant, then she fled.

She made vague household matters her excuse for not taking the walk. She did not see Richard alone until late that afternoon. She was in her and Winchie's big bathroom, which she also used as a dressing room. As she sat at the dressing table there, in petticoat and corset cover, doing her finger nails, he walked in. "May I come?" said he, already in the middle of the room.

She glanced at him, or, rather, in his direction, by way of the mirror and went on with her polishing. But she was not resentful of the scant courtesy of this intrusion. In the beginning of their married life she, through love, had confirmed him in his life-long habit of considering only himself and of expecting himself to be considered first. Now, indifference was making her as compliant as love had made her. And it was just as well. An attempt to assert herself would have seemed to him a revolt which pride and duty made it imperative for him to put down. The man a woman has spoiled through love, or the woman a man has spoiled, must be born again to be got back within bounds.

"You don't ask how I happen to be home so early--nearly an hour before supper," said he.

"It _is_ early," replied she absently.

"I've made up my mind not to kill myself with work and no exercise, and to give more time to my family. I had a chance to look at myself--at my way of life--from the outside while I was in the East. And I'm going to try to live a more human life, though it'll not be easy to work less, when Gallatin's leaving me."

Until he spoke Gallatin's name she had not heard a word. We are all surrounded at all times in our customary haunts by a multitude of unchanging objects, animate and inanimate. We become practically unconscious of them so long as they maintain the same relative position toward us. We notice only changes, only those changes that are radical. Richard had long been to Courtney a mere familiar part of her environment--as she of his. She could look at him without seeing him, could answer him without having really heard. She could submit to his caresses without any sense of them. This unconsciousness was not deliberate; it was far deeper, it was habitual. At Gallatin's name, however, she began to listen.

"Yes, he's going," said Richard.

She inspected the nail of her right little finger. "Is he?" she asked, head on one side critically and emery slip poised.

"For good. And I'm not sorry. He's of less and less use to me at the laboratory. His mind isn't on it." There Richard laughed.

"I thought you felt you couldn't get on without him," said she, searching in a box for an orange-wood stick.

"That was some time ago. I suppose you're glad he's going."

"Why?"

"I know you don't like him. You've been very good about it, and I appreciate your being polite to him. But I can see that you dislike him."

She glanced in the mirror, arranged a stray of hair. "You are mistaken."

"No, I'm not. You've got the good woman's instinct to please her husband, and you think you've conquered your dislike. But you haven't."

"How you understand women," said she placidly. "But then there isn't much to understand about a woman--a good woman."

"Oh, you underestimate yourself," said he generously. "You're a very clever little lady--in your own charming feminine way. I often admire it."

A ghost of a smile flitted about her lips; but she seemed more intent upon her nails than upon his half-absent compliment.

"To confess the honest truth," he went on, "I've never liked Gallatin myself. I know he's a good sort-- But-- Well, he has no depth. He has a stock of education and a stock of manners, just as he has a stock of clothes. But it's all of some one else's make; nothing of his own, except a pleasant, amiable disposition. And he lacks purpose. However, all these things--especially lack of purpose--would only recommend him to a woman. Women are so frivolously constituted that purpose is a bore to them."

"Any more of a bore than it is to most men?" inquired Courtney.

Vaughan laughed acknowledgment. "Anyhow, I couldn't warm up to him. He's going, but he keeps his partnership--at least, for the present."

"Has he gone?"

"Of course not! He'd hardly be so rude as not to say good-by to you. Do you know why I think he's going?"

"Didn't he tell you?"

"He says a business letter came at noon to-day. And no doubt it had something to do with it. But mere business would hardly take him off in such a rush. At first I thought it was a hurry call from some idle female for him to come and amuse her. All bachelors get them, and Gallatin's just the sort of gander to respond. But on second thought I suspected he's flying because he's in love with you."

Courtney, conscious that his eyes were on her face, smiled.

"It's natural that you, being a good woman, shouldn't notice it."

"Women sometimes think a man's in love with them when he isn't," said she. "But the woman never lived--good, bad, or both--who didn't know when a man was in love with her."

"Well, I may be mistaken. But he had a queer way of acting. Why, only this morning he was lowering at me like a demon." Vaughan laughed. "Poor Gallatin. But he'll pull through all right."

"No doubt," said Courtney.

"Sometimes--now and then--a man or woman in love, and staying in some dull place, where there's nothing to do but brood, does go under, with love one among the contributing causes," pursued Richard. "But not a city person. And Gallatin's going to New York." Something in her expression made him hasten to say: "Now, please don't get angry. I apologize. I admit my joking was somewhat coarse. Naturally it grated on your modesty. Really, I was only joking. I know he's going for business reasons. Then, too, he has a grouch for me because of the fearful punch I gave him. No, he--any man who has led a free life as long as he has--could no more appreciate a good woman--a woman like you than--than--a drunkard could appreciate a glass of pure, clear, sparkling spring water."

Courtney gathered her manicure set together, swept it noisily into the drawer. "Go out, and let me finish dressing," said she in a low voice between her set teeth.

And he departed, saying: "What a relief it'll be to have Gallatin off the place--to have it to ourselves again."

She sat motionless with her eyes down. Presently she lifted them, saw her reflection in the mirror. She gazed in horror. She had relaxed the instant he left her alone, and now all her anguish was in her features. "A little more of this," said she, "and I'd be an old woman." She passed her hands over her face, looked into her eyes. "Spring water" flashed to her mind. Her eyes wavered and sank; her skin burned. But her hungry heart clamored defiantly.

When she reached the dining room her husband and Basil and Winchie were already at the supper table. As they rose, Basil did not lift his eyes; her husband gave her a glance of greeting. But Richard, the married man of five years, did not really see her face as it then was, but the face that had long been fixed in his mind as hers. To have seen her as she was, he would have had to be startled out of matrimonial myopia by some shock. There was no arresting change flaunted in Courtney's features; youth has no wrinkles and hollows in which the shadows of emotion can gather thick and linger. She simply looked tired and not well. Her eyes were veiled; but in her skin there was a lack of the ruddy tinge beneath the bronze, and in her hair, which was with her an unfailing index to health or to spirits, there was a suggestion of the lifelessness that is in the last wan autumn leaves the dreary winds of November spurn. In tones that seemed to them more unnatural than they were, she and Basil exchanged the commonplaces necessary on such an occasion. Winchie watched her sympathetically. Presently he dropped down from his chair, came round to her. He put his arm about her neck, drew her head toward him, kissed her tenderly, and whispered, "Mamma is sick."

She kissed him, whispered: "Yes, dear, but you mustn't say anything."

Winchie went back to his place. The conversation was wholly between the two men, the subject being, of course, chemistry. After supper Courtney pleaded a headache and, having uttered the formulas prescribed for the parting and having heard from him the formulas embodying his part in such an exchange, withdrew. Instead of being agitated, she was in truth as calm as she seemed outwardly--and numb. She saw Winchie to bed, occupied herself mechanically for an hour, then sat at one of the windows of her front room looking out toward the lake. When she thought at all, it was of trifles; most of the time, during those two hours of waiting, she did not think, but listened to the beating of her blood as it made the ringing in the ears that climaxes the oppression of an intense silence.

At length Richard came up. He glanced in at her. "How's the headache?" he inquired, laying a caressing hand on her shoulder.

She moved; his hand fell away. "No better," replied she. "Good night."

"You'll feel all right in the morning," he said. He kissed her crown of hair and departed toward his own rooms--those that had been Basil's.

She heard him stirring about, first in his study just across the hall, then in his bedroom. Half an hour, and she went on the balcony, to the corner of the house, to see if his lights still showed. All his windows were dark. She returned, listened at his door. No sound. She stole down the stairs, unlatched the lake-front door, went out. She strolled across the lawn, in full view--for the moon was rising. At the edge of the shadows made by the bushes round the summer house, she halted.

"Basil!" she called softly.

He came from the summer house and stood before her. "It's safer to stay here," she said. "We can watch the house."

He made no protest. He took her hands, drew her to his breast. Never before had he touched her without feeling the glow and surge of passion; now he had no sense of her physical beauty, of her physical charm, only sense of the being he loved.

"Forgive me the horrible things I said, Courtney," he murmured. "It wasn't I that was speaking. It was the beginnings of what I was fast becoming."

"I know, I know," she answered. "Kiss me, dear."

Their lips met in a caress of tenderness. When she spoke again she said: "Dear love, I never felt before how much you care."

"I never realized before. I'm beginning to realize. You won't be long about arranging the divorce?"

"You must not get impatient--or misunderstand--if I'm longer than you expect."

"I'll not misunderstand."

"There's Winchie, you know. I must have Winchie."

"Yes, indeed. You'll accomplish it," he said confidently. "Be careful not to tell him too much. Even if he doesn't really love you, there's his vanity. And that's often stronger in a man than anything else."

"I'll not forget what's at stake.... He suspects that you love me."

"I was afraid so, and this evening I told him I was engaged. He looked astounded."

"I can tell him that I love you, and he will think-- No--no--what am I saying? Lies, always lies! ... I'll do the best I can, Basil."

"I know you will."

"You see now I was right in feeling you must go?"

"I felt it, Courtney, the moment we three stood together there in my room--though I wouldn't admit it to myself. If I stayed, there'd be a crime, or a scandal that'd spatter you with mud and brand you with shame. It simply could not be otherwise."

"I haven't told you the real deep-down reason why I felt you must go."

"No," he said. "Your real reason was the same as mine."

"Because it was all so vulgar and--and cheap?"

"Cheap--that's it!" he exclaimed. "Cheap!"

"I could stand it," she went on, "to commit and to have you commit, big, bold sins, scarlet and black. I might even glory in it. I wasn't a bit ashamed that first night. I think I even got a sort of joy out of defying all I'd been brought up to believe was moral and right and lady-like. But-- Not when we stood there, like two caught sneak thieves."

"That was it, Courtney," eagerly assented he. And he went on, in a tone in which a less love-blinded woman might have detected an accent of repentance for masculine thoughts of disrespect: "No wonder I love you! How happy we shall be, when you're free. How good and pure you are--and innocent. It needn't be long--in this State--need it?"

"I think not," she laughed. "Being a judge's daughter, I ought to know. But I don't."

"Look there!" he exclaimed, gazing toward the house.

She turned, saw a figure at the east corner of the house, apparently looking toward where they were standing. The figure moved. "Nanny," she said under her breath. "I must go."

He caught her to his breast; for an instant they clung together, then with a last lingering handclasp, she left him, to emerge from the deep shadow of the trees and stroll back across the lawn. Presently she pretended to catch sight of Nanny, halted, changed her course, went toward her. "What is it, Nanny?" she asked.

Nanny turned without a word, started to go back toward her kitchen.

"Nanny!" said she sharply.

The old woman stopped, turned.

"What do you mean by not answering me when I speak to you?"

"I didn't know as you expected an answer," replied Nanny, sullen and cowed, but insolent underneath.

"I asked you what you were doing here?"

The two women looked straight into each other's eyes. "I just came out to get a breath of air--like you," said Nanny. "I don't see as there's any harm in that."

"Certainly not," said Courtney. And she resumed her stroll, back and forth across the lawn for three quarters of an hour.

She did not come down to breakfast. About nine o'clock Richard, at the Smoke House, called her on the telephone.

"Gallatin cleared out on the midnight express," said he. "Now, what do you think of that?"

"Why?"

"He left a note saying good-by and explaining that he found he could make better time."

"Well?"

"Don't you think it a little queer?"

"No."

"Anyhow, he's gone. I feel better already. Don't you?"

"I can't say I do."

"Well--I'll see you at dinner."

"Yes--good-by."

She returned to her sitting room, all in a glow. Basil had gone because he, sensitive and honorable, wished to spare himself the hypocrisy of a farewell handshake with Richard--"and to end the suspense," she added. "The suspense!" And she struck her hands against her throbbing temples.

A few days and there came from New York a crate of orchids, with only his card. "That's what I call decent and very handsome," declared Vaughan, roused to enthusiasm by this attention. "I must say I rather miss Basil, now that he's really gone. Don't you?"

"Yes," said Courtney.

"Which means no. Don't even these orchids soften your heart? Think how he used to let you work him. Oh, women! women! Orchids cost a lot of money, don't they?"

"Some kinds."

"When you write thanking him, do put cordiality and friendliness into the note."

"Very well."

She sent eighteen closely written pages--a line about the orchids, the rest an outpouring of love and longing--a sad letter, yet hopeful--and ending with the injunction that it be left unanswered. "You must not write until you hear from me," she said. "And that will be soon--soon, my love, my Basil!"

Next day Dick asked, "Have you thanked Basil for those flowers?"

"Certainly."

"I wish you had let me see the letter. I'll bet you made it all frost. You don't know how cold you are, Courtney. Sometimes you chill even me, well as I know you.... I guess I'll write Basil a note, too--and let him see that we did appreciate his thoughtfulness."

"As you please."

*XIV*

Five days since the letter to Basil, a fortnight since he went, and the first move toward freedom not yet made. Each day added its strength of loneliness and longing to the resolve that became the guiding purpose of her life when she sent him away. But she must restrain her eagerness, must compel herself to wait upon opportunity--upon the favorable gust of event or emotion. To be tactless and abrupt would mean defeat; for, hard though it was to realize, she must keep ever in mind that Richard had legal right over Winchie. Moral right she denied not only because he was as much a stranger to Winchie as to herself, but chiefly because a child belonged to its mother. Indeed, if she had not been brought up in a legal family it would not have occurred to her that in any circumstances she need disturb herself about having Winchie. There was nothing of pose or effusiveness about her love for him; it was that deep and utter love which is not conscious of itself, but simply is. She and the boy were as much part of each other as when his being was still hidden within hers. She knew that she and Winchie were one; but she also knew the man-made law. So in seeking her freedom she must move carefully. Sometimes she felt she must be dreaming; it simply could not be possible that in arranging her life she must take into account a person so utterly alien and apart as this nominal husband of hers.

She had rarely seen him since Basil left. He was exercising--walking or rowing on the lake--very early in the mornings. But he spent the whole day at his work. When he occasionally came to dinner or supper, he was deep in his problems, was as unconscious of his wife and child as his child was of him. Courtney was no longer unconscious of him. As before, she did not see him when she looked at him, did not listen when he talked, answered, if answer was necessary, by a sort of reflex mental action that never involved her real mind. But she had the sense of his presence--as keen when he was out of sight as when he sat working or in a deep abstraction before her eyes. And she was constantly revolving how to begin the revolt--for she saw more and more clearly that it would be regarded by him as a revolt against womanliness, against duty, against honor, against decency, would burst upon him like thunder from clear sky, no matter how adroitly she might begin. Until then his ideas of woman had impressed her only in a vague, general way. She had avoided thinking them out or hearing them from his own lips because she knew definite knowledge would only make the struggle to be a wife to him as far as she might the more painful, the more humiliating. But now, piece by piece, his conception of womanhood and woman's place fitted itself together in her mind from stray sentences dropped by him from time to time in their five years. Every day she recalled some forgotten or ignored remark that added to the completeness of the record--and to its discouragement. As to the position of woman in the scheme of things, he was untouched of any modern idea. He was just where his grandfather had been; and Colonel Achilles Vaughan had been where the whole world had been since the Oriental contempt for women reconquered Europe under the banner of the Cross.

In one of the last warm days she half sat, half lay in the hammock on the lake-front veranda, apparently idle, really with a brain as industrious as a beehive. Gradually, however, the beauty of the scene--summer dying like a lovely woman whose mortal disease only enhances loveliness--stole in upon her and won her for the moment. She looked at the wonderful colors far and near, she drank in the last potent draughts of summer's perfume. And suddenly she thought, "I would be divorcing all this, too!" These gardens that she had created; the house that she had made over. Why, these things were part of her very soul. The same life throbbed in them that throbbed in her boy and in herself--her own life blood! The place was in Richard Vaughan's name just as she herself was, just as Winchie was. But it was not his; it--all that made it individual--was hers!

Most of us pass through the world, leaving little more trace of our individuality than a traveler leaves in a hotel room. But Courtney had the creative instinct powerfully developed. She even never dressed in exactly the same way, no matter how simple her costume or how often she wore it; and her clothes were so individual that Richard the absent spoke of hats and dresses she had worn several years back. And this place--it was like the picture the artist keeps by him and touches and retouches. Also, she now realized for the first time how profoundly domestic she was by nature. Not by chance had she avoided the life of the gadabout and meddler which is chosen by so many women when they find themselves mismated, and so, without hope of the normal life. She had always classed herself with the flyabout sort of women rather than with the domestic sort; she had fallen into the common error of taking as representative of the domestic type those dreary rotters who sit at home inert and slovenly simply because it requires less effort to stay at home than to dress and issue forth. Now she saw that she was domestic, was a home-maker and a home-lover; and she understood a deeper depth of her unhappiness--the unhappiness that comes from being cheated out of one's dearest desires; for how incomplete must be any home without love of husband and wife. And she understood why, as she made her surroundings more and more like her dreams, her longing for love had grown apace; she was like the bird that builds its nest, and has nothing to put in it.

She had built this nest; now she must abandon it. Heavier and heavier grew her heart, as she thought of the years of thought and toil she had invested, as she looked about at the results. She rebuked herself almost fiercely--in terror of the weakness to which these lamentings might tempt her; in shame at the disloyalty to Basil. "I'm utterly selfish," she said to herself. "I'm shrinking from making any sacrifice at all." There she stopped short in a kind of terror. "Sacrifice"--what a strange word to use--what an ominous word--and how clearly it warned her that delay was eating out courage, was strengthening her natural woman's inertia. Sacrifice! She began to picture what the new life would be--perfect sympathy, companionship ever closer and closer, how she would grow and expand, how Winchie would thrive in an atmosphere of ideal love--and Basil and she would together create a place, a home which would be incomparably lovelier than this.... "Yes, I must establish my life on its permanent basis." Her life must be straightened out, must be settled right. Until it was based right, nothing could be right; mind and heart would always be uneasy, and from time to time in a turmoil. "Nothing is settled," her father often used to quote, "until it's settled right." He was thinking of large affairs, but the thing was just as true of the affairs of private life. Her and Richard's relations, her and Basil's relations, and therefore her and Winchie's relations, were awry, all awry. There had been successive adjustments; they had one after the other fallen to pieces--because "nothing is settled until it's settled right."

That very evening, it so happened, for the first time Richard made a remark that gave her an opening. "Why don't you stay down in the evenings?" said he. "It doesn't disturb me for you to play and sing in the sitting room when I'm in the library."

"The last few times I did it," replied she, "you slipped away to the shop."

He reddened, laughed guiltily. "Did I? Well--perhaps in certain moods----"

"Oh, I'm not complaining," she assured him. "I've got used to our leading separate lives--long ago.... I like it as much as you do."

"Separate lives," said he reflectively. "It's true, we don't see much of each other. Husbands and wives rarely do, when the man amounts to anything, or is trying to amount to anything."

"Unless they work together."

"And that's impossible where people are of our station."

Our station! Her lip curled and her heart protested. How could a human being with a human heart talk of a station too high for love--love that was the soul of life.

"Also," continued he, reflective and absent, "it's out of the question where the husband is pursuing an intellectual occupation." Even had he not been merely thinking aloud, it would not have occurred to him that there was any slur in a statement of an elementary axiom as to the different spheres of the two sexes. "And," he went on, "it's unnecessary to married happiness, as we've proved. You had an idea once--do you remember?--"

"Yes--I remember."

"If I'd let you have your foolish, impulsive, romantic way, and you'd been at my elbow down at the shop, where I get irritable and cranky--we'd not have made our present record--would we?"

She shivered. "No," she said faintly.

"Five years with hardly a misunderstanding, and not one quarrel."

His words, his manner--complacent, content--calmly possessive--dried up her courage and her hope. But she held to her purpose. She said, "We're not interested enough in each other to quarrel."

He laughed, assuming she was jesting. "That's it! That's exactly it."

"I was speaking seriously. It's the truth. We care nothing about each other."

"Courtney!" he admonished. "Aren't you carrying the joke too far? I don't think you realize how that sounds."

"I realize how it _is_."

He looked at her curiously. "Why, I thought you were joking."

"Not in the least."

"How pale your face is. And what a strange expression round the mouth--and your eyes are circled. Are you ill, dear?"

"Absolutely well. It's the strain of getting ready to say these things to you." She saw he was observing her like a physician studying a patient. "No, I'm not insane, either," said she good-humoredly.

"What's happened to upset you?"

She put one knee in a chair, leaned toward him over its back, her elbows upon it. Said she, "It isn't a matter of to-day, but of five years--or, rather, of four years."

He straightened up in his chair. She imagined that his grandfather, old Colonel Achilles, must have looked like that at the same age. "What _are_ you talking about?" he demanded.

"About our failure as a married couple," replied she, meeting his gaze with calm courage.

"Failure!" exclaimed he. "Why, our married life is ideal. I wouldn't have it changed in the least particular." He nodded his handsome, powerful head. "Not in the least particular."

She had expected him to say something like this. But the actual words, spoken with sincerity and conviction, stopped her. Her road had ended against the face of a cliff with a precipice on either side.

"I want to be free," she said desperately. "I must be free!"

"Free? You _are_ free."

"I mean free from marriage," explained she gently, "free to make my own life."

He reflected, looked at her, reflected again. She saw, as plainly as if his thoughts were print before her eyes, that he had decided she was a spoiled child in a pet, that he was trying to find some kindly, effective way of humoring her. But to take her words seriously, to meet her on a plane of equality--the idea had not occurred to the grandson of Achilles Vaughan, and could not occur to him. Anger boiled up in her, evaporated. She laughed.

He glanced at her quickly. "Oh, you were joking!" said he in a relieved tone.

"That wasn't why I laughed. It was to save myself from doing something ridiculous--shouting out, or upsetting the table, or running amuck."

"No matter. It's clear to me that you're not yourself this evening--not at all."

"Richard," said she slowly, "I know it's hard for you to believe a woman's not a fool. I don't expect you to credit me with intelligence. Perhaps you might if I were a big, fat woman with a loud voice. But I'm not. So, assume I'm as silly a fool as--as most women pretend to be, to catch husbands and to use them after they're caught. But please assume also that, whatever I am or am not, I want my freedom. And try to realize that we women are living in the twentieth century as well as you men--and not in the tenth or fifteenth."

His expression was serious and respectful; he was not one to fail in polite consideration for the feminine--the wayward, capricious, irrational feminine with which stronger and rational man should ever be patient and gentle. But she saw that he was in reality about as much impressed as he would have been by a demand for the open cage door from a canary born and bred to captivity and helplessness. He came round the table, put his hands tenderly on her shoulders, pressed his lips in a husbandly caress upon the coil of auburn hair that crowned her small head. "You're tired and nervous to-night, dear," said he with grave kindness. "So we'll not talk about it any more. Go to bed, and get a good night's sleep. Then----"

She rose, found herself at a disadvantage standing before one so much taller, sat down in another chair. "Yes, I am tired and I am nervous. But I'm also in earnest. Why, if we weren't strangers, you'd realize. You'd have felt it long ago. Can't you see I'm nothing to you or you to me that is, nothing especial--nothing that ought to satisfy either of us?" She was trying to speak with serious calmness; the very effort overstrained her. And his face--its expression was so hopeless! She was speaking a language he did not understand, was speaking of matters of which he had not the faintest glimmer of knowledge. Her voice broke; she steadied it. It broke again. She began to sob. "This life of ours is a degradation. It's like a stagnant pool--it's death in life. I can't stand it. I want love--want to give love and get it! My whole being cries out for love! I'm dying here of the empty heart. I must go. I ask you to be just--to give me my right--my freedom----"

It was his expression that stopped her. He was not listening to her words at all. He was simply waiting for her to talk out her hysteria, as he thought it, so that he could begin to soothe the agitated child. She threw out her arms in despair.

"Go on, dear," he urged. "Say all you want. You'll feel better for it."

The cliff, with choice between turning back and leaping over one of the precipices on either side--the precipice of flight to Basil in secrecy and dishonor, with Winchie, or the precipice of a divorce with Winchie taken away from her. She buried her face in her arms and burst into wild sobs. With Winchie taken away from her! If she fled, he would follow, would take Winchie. If she divorced him, he would take Winchie. It was hopeless--hopeless. There was no escape. Sobbing, she ran round and round her prison's outer court to which she had penetrated. It had no gates--none! He waited until she was quiet, except that her shoulders heaved occasionally. "Poor dear!" he said tenderly. "Poor child!" And he took her in his arms. She felt physically and morally too weak for the least struggle. She lay passive against his breast, her heartache throbbing dully. He carried her upstairs, laid her gently on the sofa at the foot of her bed. "Now you feel better, don't you?" said he, bending over her and smiling sympathetically down.

She gazed at him with forlorn, hopeless eyes, then rested her head weakly against the cushions in the corner of the sofa.

"Of course, I understood that what you were saying a while ago was only a nervous mood. But it gave me a shock, too. I know now what was the matter."

She grew cold, rigid. Did he suspect? Would he take Winchie?

"I admit I've been neglecting you lately. Gallatin's leaving put a lot of work on me. And, too, I read an article that gave me a silly scare--made me afraid I'd be anticipated in one of my discoveries if I didn't push things. But even if I was negligent, I can't see how you could get the notion in your head that you weren't loved any more." He sat down by her on the sofa, kissed the nape of her neck. "I'll make up for it," he murmured. "Why, it'd be as impossible for me to stop loving you as for you, a good woman, to stop loving your husband. The idea of _you_ talking divorce!" He laughed boyishly. "You and I--divorced! What a naughty child it was! It seems dreadful that those pure lips could be sullied by such a word. But it never was in your heart. A woman like you, a woman I trust my honor to, and trust my boy to, couldn't think such things."

His words and manner, all tenderness, were for her reminders of the Vaughan prejudice and the Vaughan will and the Vaughan pride that lay behind; the clang of iron doors, the grate of brass keys in steel locks. She, back in her cell and prostrate on its floor, felt she must indeed have been driven out of her senses by heart hunger to imagine she could get freedom and Winchie from Richard Vaughan. How love and hope had tricked her!

"Asleep, dear?"

"No."

"You don't doubt my love any longer, do you?"

She moved restlessly.

"Still cross?" He took her in his arms in spite of her struggles, began to caress her. And she who had never resisted did not know how to resist now--did not dare to resist, so cowed was she by fear of losing Winchie, so utterly was she despising herself--"nothing but a woman." She endured till reaction stung her into crying out in anguish: "For God's sake, Richard! I am so miserable!"

"I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I thought you wanted it." He rose at once. "Would you like to be left alone?"

"Please."

"You forgive me for neglecting you?

"Anything!" she cried. "Only go. If you don't, I shall--" She pressed her lips together tightly and drew all her nerves and muscles tense to keep back the avowal that was fighting for exit.

"I'll give up my work until you feel better."

"No--no. I don't want-- Go--please go! For Winchie's sake--for mine--for your own."

He did not attach enough importance to her words to note them and inquire. When the door closed behind him, she drew a long breath--not so much relief that she was alone, as relief that, before seeing how useless it was to try to escape, she had not burst out with the whole truth. A turn of the wind of emotion before he spoke of Winchie, and she would have told all! Even after he had reminded her--yes, even until the door closed between them, she might still have been goaded by her despair or by his manner into precipitating the cataclysm----

"For he'd never have let me see Winchie again!" And--what else would he have done?--what would he not have done? She put out her lights and, without drawing aside the portiere, softly opened Winchie's door and entered. She dropped down by his bed, slipped her hand under the cover, delicately warm from his healthy young body. Her fingers rested upon his breast over his heart. That calm, regular throb of young life beat upon her spirit like the soft, insistent rain that soothes the storm-racked sea.

Winchie! If she had lost him! If she had brought disgrace upon him! She drew her hand away lest its trembling should waken him. The room was pitch dark, but she could see him lying there, his tumbled fair hair against the white pillow, his round cheeks flushed with healthy sleep. She sat on the floor beside the bed, listening to his breathing. She had gone down to the gates of the world and had led him through them into life. Claim upon him she had none--for he owed her nothing, and if his lot were not happy he would have the right to blame her. No, he owed her nothing; but his claim upon her was for the last moment of her time, for the last thought of her brain, for the last drop of her blood.

"If it were not for Winchie," she said to herself, "I'd go to Basil. I'd leave here to-night. I owe nothing to Dick. While his way of looking at life is not his fault, neither is it mine. And as it's his way, not mine, he should suffer for it, not I. But for Winchie I must stay--and live and make this house a home."

Never again would there be the least danger of her being goaded into telling Richard and defying and compelling him. No delirium, not even a fever like a maniac loose in the brain and hurling all its tenant thoughts helter-skelter through the lips, could dislodge that secret. It was sealed with the great seal of a mother's love.

When she came down to breakfast, Dick was at one of the long windows, back to the room, hands deep in trousers' pockets. At her "Good morning," he turned quickly. Before he answered, he noted her expression, and his face brightened. He kissed the cheek she turned for him as usual, and they seated themselves. In came Mazie with the coffee; it had the delicious fragrance that proclaims fine coffee well made, the fragrance that will put the grouchiest riser into an amiable frame of mind. Then she brought the spoon bread and an omelette--not the heavy, solid, yellow-brown substantiality that passes for omelette with the general, but a light and airy, delicately colored thing of beauty such as a skilled cook can beat up from eggs the hens have laid within the hour.

"Feeling all right this morning?" asked Dick when Mazie had gone out.

"Perfectly," replied Courtney, her smiling eyes like the dark green of moss round where the spring bubbles up. She was rearranging the flowers in the bowl.

"Sleep well?"

She had not slept at all. She evaded his question by saying: "I was very much upset last night, wasn't I?"

Dick made a gesture of generous dismissal. "Oh, I knew it was only a passing mood," said he, helping himself liberally to the omelette. "Everybody has moods. Do give me some of that coffee."

Strange indeed was the expression of that small, quiet face. What a chaos a few blundering words from her a few hours ago would have put in place of this domestic content of his! "I want to say one thing more," said she, "and then we'll never speak of last night--or what led up to it."

"Yes, dear?"

"We talked a lot about ourselves--and I was thinking altogether of myself, I find. But the truth is, Winchie's the only important fact in our lives. We don't belong to ourselves. We belong to him."

"That's not exactly the way I'd put it," said he hesitatingly. "Do try this spoon bread. Mazie's a wonder at making it. Do try it."

"Not just now," said she. "No, I know you wouldn't put it that way. Put it any way you like. But it must be Winchie first, last, and all the time. We must see to it that he has the right sort of example--from you--from me--from us both."

Dick nodded approvingly, and when his mouth was said: "There's no disputing that. Where is he, by the way?"

"He'll be down in a minute," replied Courtney; then went on unruffled: "If you and I had had love before our eyes in our homes when we were children----"

"But I did. And I'm sure your father and mother were an equally fine example----"

"No matter," interrupted Courtney. Then she said, in a tone that revealed for the first time how profoundly moved she was: "The point is I want you to help me make a home--of love for Winchie."

"By all means!" exclaimed Dick heartily.

He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, looked at her with puzzled eyes; and she saw that his keen, analytic mind, usually reserved wholly for his work, was curiously inspecting her words and her manner for the meaning that must be beneath so much earnestness about a passing anger over a few days of neglect. She said no more--and was glad when Winchie came rushing in to turn the current of his thoughts. As he was leaving for the shop, he hunted her out in the library to kiss her good-by--a thing he had not done in several years.

She colored, made an effort, kissed him.

"I'm sorry for my negligence since Basil left me in the lurch," said he cheerfully. "And you're sorry you flew into such a fury about it. And it's all settled--and forgotten?"

"We--make a fresh start," replied she.

"I'll come and take a walk with you before dinner."

"No--no. Please don't. You mustn't change abruptly." She stopped, confused to find herself already shrinking from the new course she had so highly resolved. "Yes--do come," said she.

"Oh--I forgot. There's one thing I simply must attend to to-day."

"Then--to-morrow."

"Yes--to-morrow we'll make the start--the fresh start."

"Very well," said she, relieved--for she felt she had done her duty.