Chapter IX: Part 9

"So--if you'll go with me--I'm going home--to make it a home--to be a good mother--to give Richard at least his money's worth in care and comfort and--" She looked at him with eyes suddenly solemn--"and that is all, Basil--all. It's all I can give him, all he has the right to.... I'm going home to be a good woman, if you'll come and be there too."

"There's only one life for me--to be as near you as you'll let me."

A long silence. Then she again, sadly: "I don't know how it will work out. But--what else is there for us? We're not heroes. We're human. We must do the best we can. Together we may survive. Apart, I at least will perish--and destroy those near me. I suppose I'm all wrong. But"--with a sigh--"I'm doing the best I can."

Silence again. Then he, deeply moved: "I'll try to be worthy of you, dear."

"Worthy of _me_? For God's sake, don't say those things. There isn't any pedestal I wouldn't fall off of and break to bits.... Basil--" wistfully--"you don't care for me in just a physical way--do you, dear?"

"I care for you in every way," he answered. "Courtney, I never believed I could respect a woman as I respect you. You know, men aren't brought up really to respect women--or themselves, for that matter."

"Then--couldn't we try to--" She lowered her head, faltered--"couldn't we live as if we were engaged only?"

"Why should we?" he cried.

"I know it's only a fancy. But fancies count more than facts.... I'd feel less the--" She faltered--paused.

"Yes--yes--I understand. And-- Well, it doesn't do a man any good to be pretending friendship and smiling in another fellow's face, when all the time-- I'll try, Courtney-- But--it won't be exactly easy."

Her gaze burned for an instant on his, then dropped. "I should hope not!" murmured she.

They, absorbed in each other, moved so slowly along the road that Winchie, silent, motionless, sullen, upon the sled they were trailing as far as the rope permitted, was stiff with cold. But he did not murmur. By the time they reached the door of the farmhouse, Courtney and Basil had it all planned. He was to leave immediately after supper, was to go at once to Vaughan, make the arrangements, reinstall himself. She was to come home in three or four days--unless Vaughan sent, asking her to come sooner. He dined with the family at the farmhouse, made himself so agreeable that they were all pleased with him--even sister Ann whose bitterness over her failure at what she secretly regarded as woman's only excuse for being alive, took the unoriginal disguise of aggressive man-hating. At six o'clock he drove away in the starlight with a merry jingling of sleigh bells that echoed in Courtney's happy heart. The cold was intense; but she felt only warmth--that delicious warmth that comes from within. She stood on the little front porch, with the stars brilliant above and the snow white and smooth over hill and valley. She watched the swift dark sleigh--listened to those laughing bells, their music growing fainter and fainter--but not in her heart. She was so happy that the tears were in her eyes and the sobs in her throat. It was for her one of those moments in life when she asked nothing more, could imagine nothing that would add to joy. Love again!--and oh, what exalted love, to warm the heart and fill it with light and joy, to brighten every moment of life, to guide her up and ever up.

Winchie, standing beside her and looking up at her rapt face, tugged angrily at her skirts.

*XVII*

When the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to bring a letter from Richard, she decided that prudence had been satisfied, that she need wait no longer. Toward four she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in furs and straw in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were perfect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth and firm by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The big horses, steaming as if they were engines, flew as if they were a wind. But her impatient heart was always far ahead, fretting at their laggard pace.

They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The journey was ended except the mile and a half round the curve of the lake. She became all at once serenely calm. Life her real life--was now about to begin. It was far from the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging her own fate. However--who could live an ideal life in such a topsy-turvy world? Nature and conventionality ever at war; right and wrong, not two straight paths, one up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a labyrinth. One must often travel the path of the wrong in order to reach the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right often meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys of the wrong. She was in the confused state about right and wrong characteristic of this era of transition that has seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma, and has not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace it. "Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and miserably and uselessly," thought she. "My life's to be a thistle with fig grafts. I'll do the best I can with it--Basil and I. With him to help me--his strength and character and self-denying love--with him to help, all may go well. Is my compromise--Basil's and mine--worse than those almost everyone has to make? If so, then they ought to educate women differently, and change marriage."

And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, making a dashing and musical arrival, she was in a mood of moral exaltation that might have stirred the enthusiasm of a saint--that is, a saint ignorant of the foundations of that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity do not interrogate too closely the glitter and lift of moral temples; they know humanity has only humble materials with which to build.

The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm air, redolent of the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to welcome them. "I _am_ glad!" cried he. Because of the peculiar relations long established between them--relations such as must exist in some degree between a husband and a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten--because of these peculiar relations, she had not anticipated and did not feel the least embarrassment. She was not defying or ignoring her husband; she had no husband. After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do the same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged herself from the robes and was standing beside him. He looked into her face, fully revealed by the pour of soft light from the hall. "Your trip certainly has done you good," said he.

"Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left cheek for the necessary formality of the occasion. Her attention was wholly elsewhere.

In the hall before her there had appeared two people, hanging back discreetly, so that they would not intrude upon the family reunion. Basil, she expected. The woman beside him so astonished her that she forgot to be glad to see him. _Who_ was she? This tall, slender girl with the proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, the big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, standing beside this lovely girl and making a laughing remark; her feminine sight instantly noted how the remark was received by the girl--the flattering glance and smile a marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one of her own sex or from an ineligible man. And through Courtney shot a pang that dissolved her structure of moral uplift as a needle thrust collapses a toy balloon. Who was this woman?--this _young_ woman--this _tall_ woman--this _handsome_ woman--so pleased with Basil Gallatin?

"Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here?" Dick was now saying.

Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all freckles and pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, the Helen March she had seen three years before and had not seen since--so, that prim and homely gawk had developed into this stately creature! Prim, still--unless that expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract wife hunters. But certainly neither homely nor awkward. She even dressed her hair well, and wore her clothes with quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt and thought in a few twinklings of an eye--for in such circumstances a woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and with genius's grasp of essential detail. Helen was advancing.

"Don't you recognize me, Courtney?" she asked. The voice was one of those honest, pleasant voices that disarm the most cynical pessimists about human nature--the voice that makes the _blase_ city man fall to dreaming of taking a country girl to wife.

"_Now_ I do, of course," said Courtney sweetly. And the two embraced and kissed.

To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than a head the taller. She bent with not a suggestion of condescension in manner or in thought. Nevertheless Courtney, for the first time in her life painfully sensitive about her stature, flamed and was resentful--and in her scorn of her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, Helen's figure was commonplace, the bust too high and ominously large for her age, the hips already faintly menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too short for the great length of leg. True, her own figure was--certainly better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height--could look at Basil level-eyed, could make her seem--short! And this Helen here to stay indefinitely!

There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney gave Basil as their trembling hands met in what seemed to the others a formal greeting. She turned away with a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound, was all ready to rush forward and drink--the mirage vanished. Was it to be always so? Was life to be ever a succession of mirages, vanishing at approach, only to reappear and revive hope--and cheat again? Through her mind flashed the memory of the first one--an indelible memory, always for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July when she was a very small child--how she awakened at sunrise, rushed to the window to find sky clear and world radiant and ready for the picnic that was to be her first great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best, in wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes and white bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash of pale green, and bows of pale green on her braids; how, just as she descended in all her glory to issue forth, down came the rain--in floods--and no picnic, nothing but stay at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. "It was my horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the hall too sad for bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. "Is it fate? Or, is it somehow my fault? My fault, I suppose. I must be asking of life something no one--at least, no woman--has the right to expect."

She was near the library door, with Winchie on its threshold staring round big-eyed and crying, "Oh, mamma Courtney. Look!" His eyes were no more wondering than her own. She had been too disheartened to make the library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it was transformed into a conservatory--the carpet up from the hardwood floor, plants beautiful for bloom or for foliage or for both in boxes, in jars, in pots--everywhere. A conservatory like that of former years, but more elaborate.

The others were laughing and watching her face. So she exclaimed "I am surprised!" in the indefinite tone the listener can easily adapt to his expectations. But she was not pleased--far from it. Another fierce pang of jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not realize that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her exquisite taste. To her it seemed better far than she could have done. Why, she hadn't been needed, or missed even! Things went on as well in her absence as when she was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and Helen--how she could feel them!--so well matched physically--and he fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that self-complacent, satisfied vanity which shelters so many of us from any and all misgivings and doubts.

"Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. "She's a trump, you'll find. Look out, Helen, or we'll make you do all the work."

"Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," protested Helen in her school-teacherish or collegiate speech and manner. "And Mr. Gallatin was invaluable in showing us how you had it last winter. We wanted to get it exactly the same."

Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. "So, you remembered, did you?" she ventured to say, sure her meaning and her tone would pass the others safely.

Basil flushed. "You can judge for yourself," said he.

"I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their smiling, friendly faces, all bent upon her, made her natural generosity burst forth like April's unending green at the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled. "Thank you--thank you all!" she cried. "I am so--_so_--happy!" And she kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean impulses toward one whose aloneness and poverty commanded kindness and consideration and help from another woman, especially from a woman who had known the bitterness of dependence and aloneness.

Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jealousy, held the field--not without occasional alarms and excursions, but still decisively. It was the merriest party that had gathered about the mahogany dining-room table since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond the mountains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that early day--carpets and curtains and window glass, wall paper and carved beds and crystal chandeliers. In Colonel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had been genial but austere; Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between his death and her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though bravely and resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered on after all her brightening changes. But that night, the spell was broken. Dick put aside his chemistry; Basil and Courtney forgot him and their burden of deceit. Helen belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, even jealous little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, determined to make her love him. And Courtney was gayest of all; was not that vacant place at the table filled once more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction and saw--_him_! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, listening sourly to the merriment that came through door and hall into kitchen and sounded like a burst from a ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. "Poor young man!" muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. "If he only knowed the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, what a holocaust there'd be." She did not know what holocaust meant, having got merely its vague sense from a sermon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos far beyond the scope of words she understood.

Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though they were, scrutinized Basil. Not that she really suspected him; she simply wished to fortify herself against the folly and the unhappiness of suspicion--as women look under a bed before getting into it. Having fortified herself, she concentrated on Helen--Helen, the homeless, the unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her scrutiny were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called Helen's manner mere civility; and perhaps, in strict justice, it was nothing more. But Courtney the woman, judging Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth beneath the surface truth--saw that Helen was not without an instinct for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured against the coming of an opportunity for it to expand in the garden of matrimony with the flower and leaf and fruit of wife and mother. Courtney judged fairly, conceded that Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no arts, no subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in her charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward the young man. The danger which Courtney foresaw and feared lay in the fact that Basil and Helen were both attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a very brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, Helen must fall in love with him. What then? A well-bred, pretty woman in love is always more and ever more attractive to the man she centers upon. And Helen was free--and could be honorable throughout!

As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so forbidding of aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. "I like Helen," she thought, "and it's decent and right to give her a home. If I were what I ought to be--ought to try to be--I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil. She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided for. It's mean of me to stand in her way." She found some cheer in the reflection that, while most women would straight off hate Helen and look on her as an impudent interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just in thought at least. "But I'm human," said she. "Helen has got to go. She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't need him. I do. She's got to go!"

It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her sitting room, and do her hair for the night; then she would sometimes stretch herself out flat upon her breast and read by the fire light or watch it and dream or think. She was lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and face toward the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. So absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the room until he spoke.

"It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, isn't it?" said he, seating himself on the sofa parallel to the fireplace but well back from it. He had a long dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a last cigarette.

"Special providence? What?" inquired she without turning her head. His entrance had not interrupted her train of thought. Her answer was, as usual, a reflex action from her surface mind.

"Why, Basil's coming back."

No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement of Basil's return as coming from him but as if she had herself begun to revolve it of her own accord.

"And Helen's being here."

A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here.

"It's just as we wanted it," he went on.

The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she said curtly.

Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil," said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at college----"

There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be nice to him, Courtney?--and help him and Helen along? They were intended for each other--height--contrast of coloring----"

Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His expression-- That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room.

"You are--_beautiful_!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of----"

Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not locking her doors into the hall.

"Of charm--aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most girls, I imagine."

She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new life!

"And you're so well now--so alive----"

"I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. "I must go to bed." She sprang lightly up. "Good night," she said. And to take away the sting--for, his slight wince showed her there was sting--she stood on tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned.

His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the contact, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not draw away; an instinct of prudence, not a deliberate thought, restrained her. She flushed from head to foot, her modesty wounded, her pride abased. "Good night," said he, lingeringly.

"Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the fire.

Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. She had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat up, gazed eagerly toward the window giving on the small veranda. It was open for the night; the shutters were latched, however, and through them came intensely cold air and some faint light. She thought she heard a tapping at the shutter--that shutter she had so often thrown wide in the hope that Basil had secretly returned. She listened. After a long wait, again the tapping--so soft that only the attention of an expectant listener would have been attracted.

"Basil!" she murmured. "I must have been expecting him."

She was about to dart to the window when there came a thought like a blow in the face flinging her back and making her cover her head. First the one man; now the other. "God!" she muttered. "How they will degrade me, between them."

No, it should not be! She grew angry with Basil. At the first opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt her to become what he could not but despise. _That_ was what he called _love_! And how poorly he must think of her! ... She uncovered her head, listened. No repetition of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the shutter. No one! Yes--the snow on the rail had been disturbed. She leaned out. Snow--the black boughs--the biting midnight air--stars--the crescent moon with a pendant planet--the distant muffled sound of a horse stamping in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering back to bed--heartsick with disappointment.

*XVIII*

When she at last went to sleep it was like a ship going down in a storm. But she slept nine hours without a dream; and she awakened in that buoyant mood with which perfect health of body will triumph over whatever heaviness of soul. Her troubles seemed largely fanciful, were certainly anticipatory; she would push steadily forward, and all would be well.

When she descended, the two men had breakfasted and gone, and Winchie was out on the lawn playing at snow man with the Donaldson children and their governess. Helen, still at table with coffee and newspaper, greeted her so honest of eye and of voice that she was altogether ashamed of her thoughts of evening and night before. Also, Helen did not look especially well in the mornings. Sleep swelled her face, her eyelids; her skin inclined to be cloudy; her hair hung rather stringily about her brow. And in negligee the defect of too much bust and too short waist seemed worse than it was. "I must see that she gets a proper corset," thought Courtney. "Like so many women, she doesn't realize that corset is three fourths of the battle for figure." She studied Helen with an artist's eye and an artist's enthusiasm for bringing out the best, the beautiful. "Yes," she said to herself, "Helen can be made a perfect wonder for looks. I _must_ try it." And then she knew she had never really intended to send Helen away. She who had suffered so much from the tyranny of dependence--it would be impossible for her to exercise that tyranny over another. "I don't want to send her away. But if I did want to, I couldn't, no matter what happened. I might think I would, and try to compel myself to do it. But when it came to the pinch, I'd remember--and I couldn't. No other human being shall ever know through me the sort of humiliation I bear."

She was ashamed of her fears about Basil, too. "As if he hadn't known lots of women. As if our love were just the ordinary thing that passes for love. And Helen'll help brighten things up--this house must not and shall not be gloomy." Then too--and this idea she did not definitely express to herself--Helen would give her and Basil more freedom by pairing off with Richard when they were all together.

Still more cheering were the thoughts that came from her mail. From the bank's monthly statement she learned that Richard had for the first time fixed an allowance sufficient for the position she was expected to maintain. There is a minimum amount on which a family can live in a certain style; every dollar below that means pinch, every dollar above it luxury. Courtney had at times been hard put to keep from going into debt. Many a woman, bred as she had been, as most American women are--with small practical knowledge, with only the silly useless "education" the usual school and college give, with no notion of values or mistaken notions, with contempt for realities and reverence for inanities--has in the same circumstances become hopelessly involved. But whatever the shortcomings in Mrs. Benedict's system of bringing up her children, she had certainly inculcated a horror of debt. And as human life and character are grounded upon material things if they have any substantial foundation at all, this dread of debt had been and continued to be one of the main factors in Courtney's development. It is amazing how far a single cardinal _real_ principle, such as a fixed aversion to debt, will go toward keeping any human being straight, toward bringing them back to sense of the just and the right, when they have been swerved by emotion or irresistible gale of circumstance. But in human affairs all the truly great powers are forces so quiet and move so close to the ground that their existence is unsuspected; or if pointed out, it is denied and scouted, and some windy fake of philosophy or politics or superstition is hailed as the god in the machine. Instead of going into debt and playing the "refined, cultured lady," Courtney had set about learning to economize without privation or meanness or tawdry pretense, acquiring the supreme art of living--the getting of its full value for every dollar. It had been a hard schooling; she began to realize how valuable, how invaluable. With this additional allowance Richard was now making, she saw what wonders of improvement she could work--she who had been getting out of the smaller income what many women in Wenona, spending four and five times as much, had not got. Certainly, the sky was brightening.

"If you haven't taken a dislike to me," Helen was saying, "and are going to let me stay a while, I'll make myself useful. In fact, I'll not stay if I don't. I must pay my way, and I can't pay in money."

"Whatever you like," said Courtney, "if you'll only stay. We want you. We need you."

Helen never forgot the warmth that cordial genuine tone sent through her. She didn't try to put her thanks into words, for there are no words for such real and deep feeling. She simply looked at Courtney--a look that more than rewarded her. After a moment she went on in an unsteady voice, "I could help--with Winchie. I took a course in kindergarten work at Tecumseh--and in housekeeping, too. They really teach things--real things--there. Then, I sew beautifully--the finest kind of sewing."

"So I see," said Courtney, looking at the sacque Helen was wearing. She did not like the sacque, because she did not like flummery and elaboration--and Helen had the poor girl's weakness for both. But she did admire the quality of the work that had been put into it.

"You must let me do some sewing for you. Do you like fine underclothes?"

"Crazy about them."

"I knew you were," said Helen who, judging by Courtney's dress and light way of talking, had already clearly and finally made up her mind that the verdict of "serious people" as to her cousin was just--a sweet, light, pretty creature, fond of dress and all the frivolities. "Just you wait! Mrs. Hargrave up at our town brought back some things from Paris--perfectly wonderful! All the women were excited about them. Well, I know how to make them--and where the goods can be got. Not expensive, either."

"I'll get the material," said Courtney, "and you can make some for both of us."

"Then I took a course in fitting. Don't judge by the things I wear. I somehow can't fit myself."

"It's the corset," said Courtney.

"I suppose so. I could never afford to have them made--or to buy the best ready-made kind. But I can do well for others. I can teach your dressmaker how to behave herself. That'll save you a lot of time and worry, won't it?"

"And work. Now, I have to remake most of my things."

Courtney began to respect Helen. The evening before, the girl, bent upon making a favorable impression, had been a wholly different person. She had seemed to Courtney stuffed to bursting with the familiar, everywhere admired and nowhere admirable "idealism" that chokes thought with cant and cumbers action with pretense. She had displayed a disquieting fondness for the "cultured" drivel about art and literature, about morals and manners, that destroys sincerity and simplicity's strength, and creates the doleful dreary lack of individuality characteristic of the so-called educated classes throughout the world. Courtney had always had the courage to confess that these honored frauds seemed to her ridiculous and wearisome. She assumed that Richard's and Basil's admiring attention, as Helen "showed off" after the manner of young girls, was politeness--or tribute to Helen's good looks. Now that she had discovered real virtues in Helen, she was not alarmed; for, she had learned that men are not interested in such virtues in young women but only in surface charms that stimulate their sex illusions. "It'd take a man who had been married at least once to appreciate Helen," thought she.

By the time Courtney finished breakfast, she had explained her plans and Helen had made many intelligent suggestions. They lost no time in getting to work. The morning flew, dinner was ready before they had given it a thought. Yes, Helen was a genuine addition, was just what she needed. "Yet I've no doubt Basil'll think her stupid once he gets used to her beauty and her sweetly pretty romantic pose for the matrimonal game."

Dick and Basil came, and the merry party of the night before was repeated. Courtney noted with pleasure that Dick and Helen had taken a fancy to each other. Without her realizing it, this was a thorough test of her absolute apartness from him; for, many a woman who is not in love with her husband, who actively dislikes him, will yet be furiously jealous of him--and by no means entirely from the sordid motive of fear lest his being attracted elsewhere will end in lessening her own portion of the income. Dick showed that he thought Helen, tall of stature and serious looking, an appreciative listener to his discourses on chemistry; and Helen's manner was indeed well calculated to deceive--a man. After dinner Dick led her up to his study further to explain some things they had been discussing. Winchie hurried away to resume play with the Donaldsons, their governess having come for him--and Courtney and Basil were free.

"It seems too good to be true," said Basil. "How much better this is--in every way--than what we've been condemning each other to.... Courtney, I did a very indiscreet thing last night. I came to your window--climbed up by a ladder Jimmie had forgotten to lock up in the woodshed."

Courtney, rosy red, lowered her head.

"I don't wonder you're angry. I'll never do it again. When we have such happiness as this, we must do nothing--_nothing_--to endanger it. And I want to say, you were right about--about what's best for us. The very resolve to try has made everything seem entirely different. I'm not ashamed when I look at Richard. I can meet his eyes. And with your help I think I can wait patiently--and hope! ... Don't you think it possible those two might fall in love?"

She was startled, then fascinated by the idea. "Why not? If they only would!"

"It's just possible--barely possible." They sat silent, reflecting on this new hope. Presently Basil went on, "They're both very serious minded. And Miss March would be a real companion for him. She's thoroughly intellectual, has quite a remarkable mind--more like a man's."

At "intellectual" Courtney thought he was joking. She began to smile, rather reluctantly--for, she did not like to laugh at so sweet and honest a girl as Helen, even with one so near to her, so like another self. Then his expression warned her that he was in earnest, that he really regarded Helen's "cultured" conversation as an indication of intelligence, did not see that it was merely education of an elementary and commonplace sort--the sort the colleges, those wholesale dealers in ready-made mental clothes, dressed out all minds in, so that usually one could tell a college man just as one could tell a ready-made suit. It was at her face to laugh at him. What an instance of woman's good looks blinding susceptible man to the truth about her internal furnishing, as different from the real thing as a hotel parlor from the drawing-room of a person of taste and individuality. But she did not laugh; that would have seemed meanness toward Helen--and Courtney, no lenient critic of her own character, rather suspected herself of a sly ungenerous envy of Helen's stature.

"Yes," pursued Basil, "Miss March has a remarkable mind. But I'm afraid there's no hope--about her and him. You see, she's not at all that sort of girl. She'd rather die than commit any impropriety--that is, I mean of course," he stammered, "she's horribly prim."

Courtney would have thought nothing of it, had he not stumbled and hastened on to explain. But that agitated, apologetic embarrassment changed "she'd rather die than commit any impropriety" from a commonplace into a tribute to Helen which was a slur upon herself. For her love's sake she resisted the temptation to pretend not to have heard or felt. "You like that sort of thing in a woman, don't you?" said she, with a lift of the eyebrows, those deep notes in her voice ominous.

"In Miss March--yes," blundered he. "That is, in a young girl." He halted, burst out desperately, "You're always suspecting me of not respecting you."

There began to gather in Courtney an emotion that terrified her. It was not anger; it was not shame. It seemed, rather, a sort of dread--though of what she did not know--did not wish to know. "Please, no protests," she said hurriedly. "Let's drop the subject."

"I do respect you," he said, doggedly. "But if I didn't"--there, he looked at her--"I feel for you something that's so much more than respect--I love you."

She drew in her breath sharply, and her eyes gleamed and glistened as they opened wide. She had a way of opening her eyes upon him that made him feel as if he were standing on a high place and about to plunge dizzily into the sea at the call of a mermaid. The silence that followed was interrupted--rudely it seemed to them--by the return of Helen and Dick.

"I need somebody in addition to you, Gallatin, to help out down at the shop," said Dick, "and Helen is going to try."

"If Cousin Courtney is willing," said Helen. "She may need me here, as I told you."

Courtney had been standing with her fingers on the edge of the chimney-piece, gazing between her arms into the fire. She slowly turned and regarded Richard. Basil and Helen working together!

"Oh, no, she doesn't need you here," asserted Vaughan. And catching Courtney's eye, he glanced from Basil to Helen and winked.

Courtney seemed not to see. "Helen doesn't want to go down there," said she. "Richard imagines, if people listen politely to his talk about chemistry, that they're as interested as he."

"Really I'd like it," said Helen, a good deal of nervousness in her enthusiasm.

"She could try it anyhow," urged Vaughan. "We need some one--don't we, Basil?"

"Yes," said Basil. "You remember, I suggested you ought to ask Mrs. Courtney to take a hand."

"Courtney!" Vaughan laughed gayly. "She has no fancy for anything serious. Now, Helen is masculine minded."

"Not a bit," declared Helen, much agitated by such an accusation, in presence of an eligible young man. "I'm so much a woman that I'm what's called a woman's woman."

"Helen prefers to stay here," said Courtney. "So, I think _I'll_ try."

Richard stared and frowned.

She smiled at Basil. "Richard is getting broad minded," she went on slowly, selecting her words. "A short time ago the idea of a woman in that laboratory of his would have upset him quite. I remember, when we were first married, I made the most desperate efforts to get him to let me help. He was finally quite rude about it." She spoke with no suggestion of resentment; and, indeed, that time seemed so remote, so like a part of another life or another person's life that she felt no resentment.

"I'm sure--we'll--both--be glad to have you," stammered Basil. He was confused before the instinct-born thought that those few apparently simple words of hers, so quietly and so good-humoredly spoken, were in fact the story of the matrimonial ruin he had found when he came--and was profiting by.

"I'll come down to-morrow," Courtney went on. "Helen can look after things here."

Helen could not conceal her relief; when the men were gone she said: "I'm so glad you got me out of that. Dick would have discovered what a stupid I am in about one hour, and he'd have despised me. I'd hate that, as I think he's wonderful. How proud you must be of him. Of course, Basil is very sweet--and _such_ a gentleman--and how well he does dress! But Dick-- They're not in the same class."

"No," said Courtney.

Just then Vaughan came hurrying in. "I forgot something I wanted to say to you, my dear," he began. "Come in here----"

Helen took the hint and hastened away. Vaughan went on, "Why on earth didn't you help me?"

Courtney looked interrogative. She felt a curious impersonal anger against him for having blunderingly interfered in her affairs.

"Didn't you see," explained Richard somewhat irritably, "I had it all fixed to bring those two together?"

"How dull of me!"

"It's not too late. All you have to do is back out and send her."

"And have her exhibit herself before him at her worst. And get him sick of the very sight of her." Richard began to look foolish. Courtney went on in the same tone of light mockery: "If you want a girl to marry a man, or a man a girl, you mustn't let them see too much of each other. If possible, make it hard for them to get at each other." The emerald eyes were mockingly mirthful now. "No such love-inducer in the world as holding two people apart. And when two can see each other freely--to their heart's content--and satiation--why--" She finished with a shrug, her eyes looking straight into his.

"All right. You women know each other best," said he, uncomfortable, without being able to locate the cause.

"Helen will stay at home, like the homebody she is," pursued Courtney. "And I'll come to help you. I've had it in mind for several days."

"You're not in earnest about that!" cried Vaughan in alarm. "Why, what'd you do there? You'd be in the way."

"More than Helen?"

"Frankly--yes," said Richard bluntly. "As I said before, serious things interest her. You know, I dislike that sort of thing in a woman--am glad to see that you've gotten entirely over it, as I knew you would. But I could have put up with it--for a while--to help Helen to a good husband and Basil to a fine wife. It wouldn't have taken long--at least, I thought not. I admit I was probably wrong, and you right."

"Well--now that I've said I'd come, I'll come," said Courtney. "Helen'll take most of the detail here off my hands."

"If you really want to come--" said Dick, reluctant. "I suppose--after what I've said-- Well, you can come for a few days."

Courtney was looking into the fire. Not for a "few days" but for as long as Basil worked with those dangerous chemicals. If anything happened--they would be together. Richard was looking at her; but he thought it was the fire light that was giving her the strange, somehow terrible expression which yet enhanced her beauty and her charm.

"How serious you look," said he. "Really, quite tragic--in that light."

"Yes, it must be the way the light falls," replied she. "Or is it because I've mislaid my pet powder rag?"

Next morning as soon as Courtney dispatched her household routine she went down to the Smoke House and appeared before Richard in his laboratory for the first time since that morning after the homecoming, long, long ago in that other life. With a platinum rod he was slowly stirring some fiery mixture of a dark purple color in a big iron crucible. She saw that the fumes were poisonous, as his nose and mouth were protected by a respirator. As on the previous visit she stood silent in the doorway watching him. She had long since passed the stage of comparisons and contrasts; and her mind was altogether upon the present and the future, as an intelligent young mind is extremely apt to be. So, she was not thinking of that previous visit, but was simply interested in what he was doing--in his work, which she had now resolved, with an experienced woman's determination, to make her own work also, no matter what opposition she might encounter. Her achievements in house and gardens, in bringing up Winchie, in breaking through the barriers of moral convention so powerful round a woman born and bred as she had been--these feats had wonderfully developed her will, had replaced shyness and timidity with quiet self-confidence.

When the contents of the crucible cooled and he took off the respirator, she spoke. "I see you've run up a partition."

He glanced at her with a frown--not severe but irritated, as at the persistent naughtiness of a sweet and charming child. "Oh, you've come--have you? ... Yes--the partition gives Basil and me each his own shop. I like to work alone, whenever it's possible."

She advanced calmly, indifferent to his unfriendliness. "Then you don't want me to help _you_?" She put all her diplomacy of tone and manner into that little speech. She knew how much depended upon this "entering wedge"--this getting tolerated within those walls.

"What a whimsical creature you are!" Dick was still vexed, but half laughing, too. She was so delicate and graceful, so fascinating to the eye; and she seemed to him absurdly, quaintly out of place there. "Basil!" he called. "Gallatin!"

Gallatin, in a blouse, rubber apron and gloves appeared from the other part of the shop.

"Well--here's the--the 'prentice," said Dick. "You're not busy nowadays. Take charge of her."

"It'll be a great pleasure, I'm sure," he stammered. He looked about as uncomfortable at sight of her as had Richard. Demurely she followed him into his compartment. As the partition did not extend to the ceiling, they had to content themselves with an exchange of eloquent glances. Then, taking the tone of gentleman chemist to not overbright and densely ignorant lady visitor at a laboratory, he began to explain to her the names and uses of things, and to demonstrate how to use them.

For the entire morning he talked and illustrated, thoroughly enjoying himself at making a fine impression with his display of superior knowledge. He told her little she did not already know. But she was not so tactless as to spoil his pleasure or hurt his vanity. She listened and tried; and when he complimented her on her quickness in learning, she showed delight at being praised. In the afternoon he allowed her to practice his teachings unassisted--set her at weighing a little nitrate of potassium precipitate in the gold and ivory and aluminum balances. She had done this sort of things a hundred times, but was meek under his elaborations of cautioning and explaining.

"I worked a lot in laboratories at school," said she ingenuously, when his guidance became a little tiresome. "It's beginning to come back to me."

He smiled in a way that reminded her of Richard. "All right. Do the best you can," said he. "We'll not expect much of you for the present. I'm afraid you'll soon give up."

She looked at him. "I'm here to stay," said she, "You'll not get rid of me."

"But the work's very hard--not at all feminine."

"That suits me. For, I'm not at all feminine, myself--what men mean by feminine."

He laughed, went about his own business. As she sat at the balances, her whole mind on the needle she was watching through the reading glass, she felt herself caught from behind. She turned her laughing face upward and backward, and they kissed. "Isn't it splendid!" he exclaimed under his breath. "Yes--you must stay." It had been part of her plan of life that they should never caress. Suddenly she realized how impossible this rule was--and how foolish. On occasions--such occasions as this joy in the unexpected kindness of fate--the rule must be suspended.

"How long it's been!" he said in a low voice. "Not since early September have I kissed you--and this is almost February."

She glanced warningly toward the top of the partition.

"Away at the other end," Basil assured her, "and doing something that can't be left an instant for an hour or more."

"Well then--" She blushed, hesitated, gave him a passionate, longing look. "One more kiss--and we go to work."

He seated himself and drew her to his lap. With their heads close together, they talked--of anything, of everything, of nothing--and hardly knew what they were saying--and cared not at all. "Oh, the happiness of it," she murmured. "And we are to work side by side, too. It seems a dream. I can't believe it."

"And soon it will be spring again, and we shall be a little freer."

"Be patient until I get everything settled," she answered, "and we shall be free almost all the time. I have thought it out."

"You think of everything."

"I think of nothing but you--always you," she answered. "What have I but our love? I want to make the house comfortable, your apartment comfortable, myself attractive--all, so that love will never begin to think of taking flight."

"Flight!" He laughed softly. "How absurd! Can't you feel that I'm just wrapped up in you?"

She touched his tight encircling arms. "I can feel that I'm just wrapped up in you," she retorted. "Now, let me go. I am not to keep you from the work--or you me."

"Not just yet."

"Yes"--firmly. "You don't take me any more seriously than Richard does. But I don't in the least care. If I am serious, what does it matter whether anyone thinks so or not?" She laughed a little. "And I'm feminine enough, I'll admit, to want to be what the man who wants me wants me to be."

He was not listening. He held her more tightly, and she knew what was coming before he began to speak. "Let me come to-night, Courtney. Just this once. I simply want to be alone with you----"

"Not yet," she replied. "Don't let's tempt each other to risk years of happiness for a frightened moment." And, afraid she would yield if he kept on urging, she abruptly freed herself and sent him back to his seat.

An hour, and he came to her again. "I've been doing nothing but watch you, and you haven't looked round once."

"This work is interesting," replied she--and it was the simple truth.

"No--not once!"

"What a good example I'm setting you. I always used to like chemistry. And I was a harum-scarum girl then. Now, I see I'm going to be tremendously fond of it."

"Courtney--I can't stand--our--our compact. I simply can't. I feel as if you had thrust me out of your life. And-- Have you no memory, sweetheart? Courtney, we're only human beings, after all. And we've the right. Aren't you my wife?"

"Don't tempt me, Basil," she answered with a sigh. "Do you suppose I don't feel it? Sometimes I get to thinking what might be-- But I will not! You do not wish it." And she glanced meaningly at the partition.

"You are mine!" he whispered, moved by the reminder but not abashed. "If I had never known love in its fullness, I might be able to endure this cold, repellent pretense of virtue--for, it's nothing but a flimsy pretense. Courtney, if you love me----"

"Is your love only--_that_!"

"If you loved me," he repeated, "you'd not calculate so puritanically. If I weren't seeing you, dear, I could bear it. But seeing you all the time--touching you--kissing you--Courtney, Courtney, how can you make me, and yourself too, suffer so needlessly? If you really love, how can you keep me out of your inmost life--as if I were not everything to you?"

"I explained to you----"

"Explained! Explained!" he said, impatiently. "We explain and explain, but it's all sophistry. The truth is--what? That we are lovers. And, if our love is a sin, why not take all its reward since we'll have to take all its punishment?"

"Don't harass me now," she begged, agitated and trembling.

"Harass you!" He drew away offendedly. "I thought I was pleading for you, as well as for myself. If I am not, please forget what I said."

"I didn't mean that!"

"Then I may come to-night--or you to me?"

She gave him a sad, pleading look. "Not to-night, dear. Not just yet. We _must_ wait till things are going quietly in a routine."

"How easily you put us off!"

"Basil!--_Please_!"

He stared sulkily out of the window. "It does sting my pride that you care so much less than I. It does make me--almost doubt."

"Not so loud!"

"You don't realize how far away he is, and how absorbed.... I take back all I said." And he straightened himself coldly and went to his own part of the room.

A moment, and she followed him. "You are offended, Basil."

"No--hurt."

She sighed. "I will come to-night."

"You do not wish to come!"

"To be honest, no. I should feel--" She hesitated. She wished to be frank; but how could she be, when he was in that mood of doubt? How could she explain again that, in some respects, she loathed the memory of the times they had been stealthily together--the alarms, the narrow escapes from discovery--the commonness of it all--like those low intrigues that get into the newspapers, to make coarse mouths water and vulgar eyes sparkle? If she tried to tell him, he would misunderstand. "Not just yet," she went on. "I'm in a queer mood--not myself. You----"

She was so tender, so loving, so deeply distressed that, in shame and contrition, he embraced her. "I'm sorry I said anything. But you'll understand. How can I help longing for you? It's your own fault--you beautiful, wonderful _woman_!"

And their first clash ended in kisses, in serenity restored, with him saying--and thinking--"How much braver and better you are than I! Yours is the love that makes a man stronger and decenter."