Chapter IX: Part 9

Those cruel headlines, those stabbing capital letters! Like points of fire in a demon dance they riot in and out of my memory yet. "Affinity or Elopement!" "Fontaine Heir Meets Enchantress on Baronia!" "Diamond King's Son in Joy-Ride to Europe!" How did the inquisition happen to overlook such exquisite weapons of torture as huge red capitals on a smooth white space?

Writing the letters down affords a mild relief. To my physical sight, not to my mind's eye. Oh yes, I actually saw the headlines that Hutchins Burley fabricated in his newspaper story. Some thoughtful enemy of Claude's took pains to have a copy of the _Evening Chronicle_ forwarded to his Paris address.

Didn't you guess at once that Hutchins was the beast responsible for the publicity we got? That vicious man has a mortal grudge to pay off against me or against Claude or perhaps against us both. But what for?

How he got on our track, heaven alone knows. Heaven and Mark Pryor.

Yes, Cornelia, our own Mark Pryor (the human embodiment of the theory of protective coloration, as Robert called him)--he it was who brought me the fateful news. In this wise.

On the second morning out, I was taking a turn around the deck by myself, while Claude was chatting with the captain. (The "Baronia's" captain is an old friend of Claude's family, the Fontaines being heavy shareholders in the steamship company. This was the connection that enabled us to get accommodations at such short notice, the purser's room having been given up to me and the second engineer's quarters to Claude.)

As I said, I was roving about the upper deck, when one of the ventilators or posts or something, suddenly became alive. Or so it seemed to my startled eyes. Walking remorselessly towards me, this no longer stationary object magically assumed the form and voice of Mark Pryor! You could have knocked me down with a feather. (By the way, I'm more certain than ever that he's a detective or a spy or a Soviet propagandist--or can he be merely an American novelist studying life for the _Saturday Evening Post_?)

Whatever the key to his inmost mystery, I've always been greatly taken with him. He's like a flash of lightning on a pitch-dark night: his comings and goings are never more sinister or mysterious than when his sudden vivid presence gives them a momentary relief.

Without letting me into the secret of his skill at sleight-of-hand (or rather, sleight-of-feet), he drew me aside and told me in a most sympathetic way of the story about Claude and me that was being headlined in the _Evening Chronicle_ and that was soon to be the gossip of two continents. The information had breezed his way--by wireless. Out of pure regard for me, he had bribed the radio man to keep mum. Wasn't it splendid of him? But he warned me to prepare for a leak. "The only thing you can keep dark nowadays is the truth," he said, in his quiet way, without a twinkle in his eye.

He also said that Hutchins Burley was certainly at the bottom of the whole scandal. He was sure of this, because he had seen Burley on the pier shortly before the "Baronia" left, and because of other reasons which he declared he was not at liberty to divulge.

After predicting that we should meet again, Mr. Pryor "faded away" as imperceptibly as usual, leaving me a prey to my thoughts. My heart was mostly in my boots and I can tell you I was getting pretty limp when I pulled myself up short with the reminder that I must pluck up a little courage if only to show that I deserved a disinterested friend like Mr. Pryor. (He's in France at present, on some dark business or other. I don't care how dark, I'm glad he's here. The mere fact gives me the sensation of being watched over. I'm confident that Mark Pryor's keen sight is at least as far-reaching as the long arm of coincidence.)

It wasn't exactly a picnic to tell Claude the news. Like most of us, Claude thrives wonderfully well on good luck but takes bad luck hard. Naturally, to a man who has so many important friends, newspaper notoriety is a bitter pill to swallow. Claude raged at his fate with a violence that frightened me. He tortured himself by anticipating the libels to which his character would be exposed, the pictures of himself and me that the yellow newspapers would print, the slanders that the busybodies would privately circulate. How his father and the Armstrongs would take the affair was another source of torment. And then there was the fear that the story might leak out on the "Baronia" and that we should become the talk of the ship.

It was a calamity. And the worst of it was that Claude appeared to think I was in some way directly responsible for it. His anger worried me far more than the notoriety did; the angrier he got, the more the notoriety sank into relative insignificance. He accused me of being callous! Wasn't that monstrously unjust? Merely because my advice was that we should make the best of a very bad matter and face the world as if nothing had happened of which we were ashamed. He took my calmness, which was all on the surface, as a personal affront. It infuriated him more (if that were possible) than the exposure, and caused him to accuse me of disloyalty and lack of sympathy. Are men ever satisfied? They pretend that they can't endure a weeping woman. Yet, give them a stoical countenance, and they'll ask for tears.

No, Cornelia, this was not the first rift. That had come on the very evening we sailed, when the passengers held a dance on deck in the moonlight. I was not feeling very well and danced only once, but Claude did full duty as a leader of the cotillion. During his absence from my side, a young British captain in mufti (he had been an ace in the war) sat down in a steamer chair next to mine and helped me, what with his charming manner and his gorgeous British accent, to while away the time.

All went swimmingly until, in an interval between dances, Claude came back to me. Can you call up an image of Claude, the magnificent, approaching at a temperature of absolute zero? His manner, of the ice icy, froze the poor captain dead away. This done, he turned on me and asked me what I meant by "picking a man up!"

You can imagine that I replied pretty tartly, and one word led to another till we reached a point where Claude threatened that he would never marry me--no, not for all the king's horses and all the king's men. At this, I burst out laughing. My laughter was immodest, unladylike, spiteful. And I should have regretted it, had Claude understood me. But Claude is in some respects a reincarnation of Kipling's famous vampire lady. He had never understood, and now, he never will understand.

But I'm running ahead of my story.

As we feared, rumor and gossip about us soon had free rein on board the "Baronia." Poor Claude had to bear the brunt of this annoyance and of the Captain's anger too. That Claude and a lady were together on the voyage had certainly been a secret, but a secret to which the old sea-dog was a party. The Captain's sense of propriety was not outraged by the secret. It was outraged only when the secret became a matter of common knowledge. And he did not permit a feeling of delicacy to restrain his indignation against his fellow conspirators.

What happened on the "Baronia" was trifling compared to the furor of our landing at Southampton. We were met by "all the latest London papers" filled with the wildest details of our "elopement." That is the way they featured our experiment over here. It was described as the elopement of a young multimillionaire with a poor plebeian stenographer, an elopement carried out in the teeth of a tyrant father with invincibly aristocratic prejudices. Shades of the Barrs and their Mayflower ancestry!

Worse remained behind. The English reporters promptly spotted Claude. You can't be six feet two in your socks and have the airs and graces of Prince Charming, without being conspicuous even amongst a crowd of first-class passengers on a fifty-thousand-ton liner. When the newspaper men plied poor Claude with questions, I began to weaken at the knees. But Claude was a trump. He kept his most nonchalant air, gave cleverly evasive answers, and even begged one of his tormentors for a cigarette quite in the style of the imperturbable villain of a screen play. Then a battery of motion picture men turned their cameras on us. Mark Pryor and the British captain swooped down to the rescue at this critical moment, which was very lucky for us, as we had just about exhausted our nerve (to say nothing of our nerves).

We stayed in London barely forty-eight hours. In spite of our assumed names we were bundled out of three hotels, thanks to the curiosity of reporters who kept after Claude as though he were a ticket-of-leave man. I had supposed that only American journalists hounded people, but evidently the London tribesmen have taken a leaf out of the New York book in the matter of pitiless persistence. Claude felt so harassed, outraged and persecuted that he could not get out of London fast enough. He saw a reporter in every strange face and lived in constant dread of another forced interview until we were safely across the Channel.

And now I had better answer the question that I know is uppermost in your mind.

We have been living as a married couple! Now it's out. Your Janet, the bold and fearless advocate of free unions, has been masquerading as a wife, a timorous and trustful, cowering and respectable wife, differing from other wives only in being a fraud.

It's a terrible comedown, a sickening fall from grace, isn't it?

But what else could I have done, short of leaving Claude entirely?

You see, Cornelia, the stark fact was that we couldn't get accommodations anywhere except by pretending that we were married. Had we declined to make this pretense, we couldn't have remained together at all unless we adopted all sorts of secret, underground, time consuming devices. It was a choice between the pretense and the secrecy--a Hobson's choice, so far as I could see.

Cornelia's lips curled with contempt. She could not escape the reflection that she had showed much more courage when _she_ had been in London with Percival Houghton.

I must add that free love, at any rate in my case, has proved a failure, a dead failure. I do not say that trial experiments in loving and living together should not be made, but I do say that the time is not ripe for them. At present, the two scores I have against free love are: First, that it simply won't work; and second, that the only thing about it that is _free_ is the undesired advertising one gets.

This conclusion has not been reached in what Mrs. Grey calls the cool, disinterested spirit of the dispassionate investigator. All the same, it is my conclusion.

Of course, it is an abominable thing that a unique, intensely individual experience like love should have to be made the subject of public inquiry and official registration before it can claim to be legitimate. In a more highly civilized nation, such a state of affairs would be unthinkable. But amongst us! Well, when you think of our housing, transport, and domestic arrangements, when you remember how primitive and rigid these still are, can you expect more fluid and elastic relations between the sexes to be welcomed or even understood?

"Huh," exclaimed Cornelia, half aloud, "she got all that from Robert."

Please don't picture me as sitting down and wringing my hands. What's done is done and can't be undone. I've made an experiment in love. And if the result hasn't been what I expected, I have, like the experimental chemist, made discoveries I never dreamed of, discoveries about myself, about other men and women, and about human institutions. I can truly say that I haven't spent four more unhappy weeks in my life, nor--mark this--four weeks that have done me more good.

I call them unhappy weeks. But suppose I had _married_ Claude!

Well, I dare say you've been thinking to yourself: "She is capable of anything; now she will try to sell out to smug respectability and settle down as Claude's duly wedded and articled wife." I admit this would be the logical sequel to my new conclusions about love and marriage. But though I'm still fond of Claude, a great streak of doubt has crossed my dreams of a happy future with him.

Shall I tell you the truth, Cornelia? Claude and I would make a very poor team. I have in mind, not his fits of bad temper, which are very annoying, nor his attacks of jealousy, which are monstrous. I have in mind his outlook on affairs and his active interests, which are in every respect different from mine. Claude is in love with the pomps and trappings of life; and I am not. He goes in passionately for elegance, luxury, all the externals which men admire in society or public institutions; and I do not. He wishes to study and master the ritual of social intercourse in all its forms (even in its Kips Bay form); and I will not. He is fond of the gay boulevards, the fashionable restaurants, the crowded promenades; I am fond of quiet places and a chair to myself in a corner of a park. Our divergence of tastes is almost absolute. We don't like the same theatres, concerts, pictures; we don't even like the same games.

The only game we ever enjoyed together was the great game of love. "What," you will exclaim, "you mean to contend that this game, which you played with such abandon, so thrilled and absorbed and united you both as to smother the thousand differences between you?" Precisely. That is what I contend, for that is what happened. It is weird, disconcerting, inexplicable, yet it is true.

Equally true is the fact that Claude lacks the talent for companionship. With women, at all events. He has no use for a woman except as a plaything or a wife. And he does not want his wife to be a companion or a partner in his work. He wants her to be an ambassador plenipotentiary, representing him in polite society, and also a species of superior twentieth-century domestic scientist taking full charge of his creature comforts at home. I don't see myself in either role. Do you? Can you picture me as a sort of mother, nurse, housemaid, valet, cook and errand girl rolled into one?

All of which means that I'm not quite ready yet to handcuff myself with Prince Charming's household keys. "Hoity-toity," say you, "isn't this a bit like piling the evidence sky-high to prove that the grapes aren't sour?" Perhaps it is, but I think not. It is true that Claude hasn't asked me to marry him yet. It is true that whenever he is out of sorts with me he tells me that my reputation is damaged beyond repair and that I need not look to him to patch it up. It is true that when I smile at this he invariably insists with explosive fury that he will never, never ask me to marry him. He repeatedly insists that he will not. Still, I believe that he will. My problem is not what will become of me if Claude _doesn't_ marry me, but what will become of me if he does.

As for my damaged reputation, I'm really not worrying about that. Say I have _sullied_ my character. In one respect, a spot on a character is like a spot on a fine satin dress: hard work will wash all spots away.

But it stands to reason that things can't go on like this much longer. The little Sorbonne _pension_ in which we are staying (as Monsieur and Madame) has its good points. And there are evenings when Claude, a little tired of all the famous and imposing Parisians he has met, expresses a longing to be quite alone with me again, and transforms himself once more into the Claude he was before we lived together. Then we walk along the Seine or drive on the wondrous roads towards Fontainebleau or Versailles. And these evenings are very delightful.

But they cannot be repeated forever. Any day I may take the step that I ought to have taken some time ago.

Write to me, Cornelia dear. Tell me all the news about the tenements. I suppose the Outlaws are as tame and bourgeois as ever. Does dear old Harry keep you fit and sylph-like with his rising exercises? And how is Lydia Dyson shaping? I see she has another serial in the _Black Baboon_ (I found a copy in Brentano's here)--she must have coined bushels of money by it. I wish I could work as copiously on _my_ diet as she does on hers of cigarettes and Haig and Haig. Charlotte Beecher, I fear, will be "through with me" as the cinema heroes say. Has she exhibited again or married Robert yet? Tell Robert I shall write to him as soon as I've done something he'll approve of.

Need I give further hints of my insatiable hunger for news? Don't let me continue to be cut by the postman. Write and write soon to

Your affectionate friend,
Janet.

*III*

"Janet's a little fool," was Cornelia's laconic comment as she folded up the letter.

Under Kelly's persuasive service, she attacked breakfast. Between mouthfuls she epitomized the contents of the letter, a proceeding that she punctuated with caustic exclamations. At the end, Harry Kelly expressed much sympathy with Janet's predicament.

"She has made her bed; she'll have to lie in it," said Cornelia.

This was a far cry from the line Cornelia used to take when she told Janet that "marriage is either a vulgar sex deal or a legalized debauch;" or when she declared in lyrical accents that "a free union is the golden key to the garden of spiritual love." Her sentiments on this subject had undergone dilution since Harry Kelly with his athletic build, fair prospects, and standing offer of marriage had become a fixture in Number Fifteen.

But then Cornelia had never really had the courage of her radical opinions. Beneath her advocacy of new forms of sex relationships there lurked a strong affection for the old forms. Essentially, her instincts fitted her for the orderly virtuous days of bustles and bust pads, not for these latter days in which established conventions were being summarily overhauled. For her, the time was decidedly out of joint.

It had been so since her affair with Percival Houghton, the artist who had "stolen her soul." This affair had been an accident of conduct and circumstances, and not, as she always declared, a logical outcome of her character and convictions. And it was as a result of this accidental episode that she was now an irritable, spiteful, new-fangled woman instead of the old-fashioned wife and mother (of seven children) that she should have been.

Some dim perception of all this stirred in the head of Harry Kelly the ex-Harlem Gorilla. Kelly's mentality fell far short of his bodily development. Still, he was no fool, and he rightly guessed that Cornelia was unfair to her former protegee. He did not approve of Janet's flight with Claude. But he had seen too much of life in the Lorillard tenements to be easily scandalized. Moreover, his fondness for Janet disposed him to put the blame, if any, on her lover. Like many amiable persons, he reserved his moral censure exclusively for people he did not know or did not like.

"The poor kid's down on her luck," he ventured gingerly. "It's not up to us to hurry the post-mortem."

"Down on her luck! With a man like Claude at her side?" cried Cornelia, the words curving by slow ascent to an unmusical top note.

"Claude's a grand looking man, that's true. But I've known many a grand looking man who was no better than a four-flusher when you had to share your bunk with him."

"Poor Hercules, what do you know about it? If Claude was a rotter, she should have left him. In all decency, she should have left him the moment she saw that her passion was merely physical. What has she done? Nothing. They are still together on the most intimate terms."

Kelly put his arm soothingly round her waist. It was a privilege she had allowed him in the dull days of late--though not often and always grudgingly.

"I don't suppose she's going to have a child," she went on, in a bitter tone, "yet that would be her one solid happiness. She's too selfish, I fear. Look how idiotically fate deals out the cards. _She_ could have a child, but she doesn't want one, while I want one so much, but--"

It was a generous hiatus, and her voice softened as she approached it. She was forever telling men that she wanted a child of her own; they were usually embarrassed or piqued by the information; and whatever the effect she enjoyed it.

For once, Kelly was not nonplussed. He drew his arm tighter.

"Listen, sweetheart," he said, sentimentally, "what's to prevent it? I want kiddies, too."

"Do you indeed," said Cornelia, with a dangerous light in her eyes. "I said I wanted a child. The difficulty is that I don't want the father for it."

"Why not, if we're married?" he proceeded with unexampled obstinacy. "I'd rather follow Janet than go on being tormented like this," he concluded, drawing the long bow at a venture.

She withdrew from him and rose, her cheeks parading an angry red. Ordinarily, a look was enough to make him quail, but, lo and behold, he was marching with unprecedented independence to the door. And how could Cornelia know that his body went hot and cold by turns for fear that she would let him walk out?

She could not afford to lose him, so she called him back.

"Here, goose!" she cried, coming swiftly down from her high horse. "Here's Janet's letter. You'd better read it through before you quarrel with me about it."

He took it happily and obediently, she getting little pleasure from such an easy victory.

While he read it, she reflected once more that she could not afford to lose him. She set small store by his doglike devotion and, though he had recently obtained an excellent position as physical trainer in a fashionable men's club, she considered him vastly beneath her. That he was physically a veritable Borghese Warrior was wholly offset by the fact that he was socially little better than a superior handicraftsman. In her eyes, that is to say, he had his points, but they were not the points of a polished gentleman.

Yet he was the one friend left to her in Kips Bay, the one friend whose constancy to her was undeviating and unimpaired.

Cornelia's decline from glory had proceeded rapidly since the departure of Janet. The renaissance of flat Number Fifteen as the social and artistic center of the Lorillard tenements had been shortlived. That renaissance (which Cornelia tried to believe was of her own making) had really begun with Janet's advent. While it lasted, the Outlaws and their cohorts had paraded back, with all flags flying, and had restored the flat to the pinnacle of importance which it had occupied when Cornelia, in the full flush of the Percival Houghton notoriety, had first settled down in Kips Bay. For a brief space Cornelia, glittering like the morning star, had been "the first lady of the model tenements," and had tasted again what she called life, splendor, joy.

But Janet had gone, and Claude had gone with her. As a direct consequence of Janet's flight, Robert had more and more often invented excuses for absenting himself from the Lorillard flats. Charlotte Beecher's visits ceased as soon as Robert's did, and Denman Page's as soon as Charlotte Beecher's. In its turn, the loss of Claude deflected a whole galaxy of feminine stars, including Lydia Dyson at the top of the scale and Mazie Ross at the bottom. And so on, ad infinitum.

Thus, almost in a week, the brilliance of Number Fifteen had been extinguished. Forever, or so Cornelia feared. True, her queenly state had ended in a burst of radiance, as a sky-rocket ends in a dazzling shower of gold. But this was cold comfort at best. Cornelia knew that, without some novel attraction, there was no hope whatever of recapturing the fickle homage of the model tenementers. And no such attraction was in sight. For once, no other adventurous young lady was ready or eager to step into Janet's shoes as Janet had stepped into those of Mazie Ross. Cornelia's stock had fallen to its nadir.

She felt deserted. In a mood of bitter, unreasoning resentment, she gave Janet full credit for dimming the splendor of Number Fifteen, the splendor she had never given her any credit for enkindling.

She was very angry with Janet on another score. This adventurous young lady, after a gorgeously romantic time abroad with Claude Fontaine, had apparently come a cropper, as her tirade against free love sufficiently betrayed. Reading between the lines, Cornelia fancied that she detected a veiled reproach. It was as if she were being held responsible for pointing out the step that had landed the writer in disaster. Cornelia repudiated this responsibility and was intensely irritated by the reproach.

What, hadn't she and Janet threshed out the whole question of sex in the most open and aboveboard fashion? And hadn't she drawn a sharp line between free love as she sincerely advocated it for the sake of a woman's rights, and free love as it was practiced among the Outlaws and in Greenwich Village for the sake of a woman's pleasure or gain? She had told Janet (and told it with some feeling) that many young women nowadays regarded free love as simply a very convenient antidote against man's growing disinclination for matrimony. It was a new bait for the old trap, and a very successful bait, too, as numberless marriages growing out of free unions attested. In Greenwich Village marriageable girls used this bait by instinct; in Kips Bay they used it with cool professional dexterity, as a surgeon uses a knife.

For Janet to insinuate that she had been taken in, was a trifle strong. If she had been duped at all, she was self-duped. And was this likely? The curve of contempt in Cornelia's lips indicated her belief to the contrary. There was such a thing as carrying a pose of artless inexperience too far. And what did Janet mean by all this talk of casting Claude off? Casting Claude off, indeed! What was she really up to?

Harry Kelly, having finished the letter, now handed it back.

"Janet's getting a bit flighty," he remarked with true male cynicism. "Seems to me Claude has got somebody else on a string."

Cornelia gave a scornful laugh.

"Don't be an idiot, Hercules," she said. "More likely, Janet has got somebody else on a string."

Kelly held his peace. Like King Lear's daughter, he adored and was silent: his love was mightier than his tongue.

*CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE*

*I*

By the time Cornelia's answer reached Paris, Claude had taken Janet to Brussels. The immediate cause of this move was a stringency in Claude's funds. A brief and somewhat acrid correspondence between father and son had followed hard on the latter's international adventure. After much shilly-shallying on Claude's part, Mr. Fontaine had laid down the terms on which alone he proposed to continue polite relations.

Mr. Fontaine proceeded on the theory that in some cases the most effective sort of moral force is material force. He did not demand that Claude abandon Janet, although this was the goal of his desire. He simply made it emphatic that until his son _did_ leave Janet, the old days of independence coupled with generous financial supplies were over.

Meanwhile, he made a point of thwarting Claude at every turn. Claude longed for leisure and also for a fairly free hand with the Fontaine Company's bankers in Europe; Mr. Fontaine offered him definite work at a far from princely salary. Claude wanted to travel (as heretofore) in the role of a commanding member of the firm; Mr. Fontaine allowed him no choice but a paltry assistancy to one of Fontaine's European agents. Claude vastly preferred the conspicuous agency in Paris, if an agency he had to be reduced to; Mr. Fontaine detailed him peremptorily to the humble agency in Brussels. And so on.

Clearly, Mr. Fontaine believed that a series of pin pricks, tirelessly administered here and there, would serve his purpose much better than a dagger inserted under the fifth rib.

Claude, having some means of his own, planned a summary rejection of his father's terms. But his available funds were pitifully inadequate to his tastes and habits. It was in vain that Janet threw herself sturdily into the task of retrenchment. She lacked experience; and as for Claude, he was born to the purple and had inherited the aristocratic idea that economy consists in making lesser people do the saving. He could not refrain from living on a handsome scale or from entertaining his Parisian friends at costly parties. The day of atonement drew swiftly nearer.

And came in due course. All his pecuniary sins were visited upon him at one and the same inopportune moment (when ordering a dinner at the Ritz in honor of the Prince de Cluny). At that moment he experienced the novel sensation of finding himself suddenly without a single penny of credit. Had the ground been abruptly withdrawn from his feet, the shock could not have been greater.

There was nothing for it but an immediate acceptance of the terms on which his father had proposed a truce. The Brussels agency was in charge of a hard-headed Walloon between whom and Claude little love was lost. The pin pricks were warranted to do their work to a nicety.

Thus it was that in no very amiable frame of mind Claude set foot in the Belgian capital and reported to the Fontaine agent there. Janet shared his contracted fortunes, accompanying him from Paris in spite of a series of quarrels which had chequered the weeks preceding their departure.

She accused herself of weakness for remaining with Claude. But she felt she could hardly leave him when he was so completely down on his luck. True, their quarrels furnished her with a pretext, but not with a worthy one. They were all in the nature of petty bickerings, trumpery matters seemingly unrelated to the real issue.

But she began to suspect that the real issue between herself and Claude would never be brought into the open.

*II*

Their hotel was in the aristocratic _Quartier Leopold_. Scarcely a year had elapsed since the armistice was proclaimed, yet the _Boulevard Anspach_ and other central highways were again the glittering rendezvous of international idlers indefatigably bent on expunging the last unpleasant memories of Armageddon. This expunging process appeared to involve the consumption of much bad food and the production of much loud noise.

Early in the morning of his seventh day in Brussels, Claude was awakened by the penetrating backfire of a motor car in the street. Having already been aroused by disturbances twice, he sprang from one of the twin beds in the room and closed each window with a furious bang. Janet, in the other bed, changed from her right side to her left, but was too deep in sleep to wake up.

"Damnation!" he called out, first towards the street and then, as this bore no fruit, in the direction of the occupied bed.

Getting no response he stalked to the sleeper's side.

"How can a man get any rest," he shouted angrily, "with pandemonium in the streets and every window in the place wide open?"

The world in general showed no interest in this conundrum propounded by a very good-looking young man in pajamas. And Janet, after stirring uneasily for a moment, returned to a motionless slumber. The street noises had kept her, as well as Claude, awake until the small hours of the morning. Once asleep, however, she slept soundly and could defy Bedlam.

Seeing no prospect of petting or sympathy from this quarter, Claude nursed his anger to leviathan size. He paced the room like a madman, distributing a liberal supply of imprecations on everything and everybody as fast as the images raced into his thoughts. This proceeding relieved him of a part of his fury. The rest he sublimated in the act of tidying up the room.

He went at this task with breakneck speed. His method was to set chairs and tables in and out of place with vicious thumps; then to pile books, newspapers, brushes, combs, wearing apparel and the like into roughly classified heaps. He took special pains to pick up Janet's scattered articles of underwear and to fling each one on top of the last with the force of an invective.

Under this steady percussion and repercussion, Janet finally woke up.

"What's the matter?" she murmured drowsily, pushing the rebellious dark curls from her face.

Claude bombarded her with reproaches.

"The matter! The matter is that you have the nerves of a rhinoceros. I can't sleep with the windows open, while you could sleep with them shut. But it means nothing to you that I haven't slept a wink for seven nights running, just because you insist upon keeping the windows open."

(Janet's hands gestured: "Oh dear, another tempest in a teapot!") She sat up in bed and, with her feet tucked under her and her hands folded over her knees, braced herself for the storm.

"I thought we agreed to compromise by changing off," she said mildly. "The windows have only been kept open every other night."

"Compromise! Compromise!" He sprang from his chair with a violent laugh. "How can oil and water compromise?"

"I'm sure I don't know. I'm not a chemist. They don't mix, but they may get along very amicably together side by side, for all I can tell. What difference does it make, anyway? The real trouble is that you've been made nervous and irritable by your father's letters. If you'd only let us talk the whole matter over sensibly and in good humor--"

"My father's letters have nothing to do with the case," he cut in savagely. "The trouble is with your idiotic superstition that the sooty, dusty air from the street is more important than peace and quiet."

"What is the use of saying the same thing over and over," said Janet, with a touch of asperity in her clear, soft tones. "You are in a perfectly childish temper, Claude. If I were your wife I'd have to put up with it. As I don't have to, I won't."

"My wife! If you were my wife, you wouldn't dare to be so selfish, or to ignore my rights so shamelessly."

"Luckily, I'm _not_ your wife."

"No, thank Heaven. It's also lucky that you're so well satisfied with your limitations and your sorry future. Like all the Barrs of Brooklyn, you may well glory in your irresponsibility. It's all you have."

"Oh, I have my freedom. I glory in that, too. If I were married to you, I dare say I should have to cringe and even ask your forgiveness. As it is, before this day is over, you will probably ask mine."

"Don't flatter yourself! I'm going for good. That'll spike your prophecy."

He began to dress posthaste in order to put time and space between his threat and its retraction.

Janet watched him through the long dark lashes of her half-closed gray eyes. He was spoilt, tyrannical, contemptible. Yet his energetic masculine beauty and the seductive ring of his voice still had power over her.

"Don't imagine I can't see through your game," he flung out, recklessly scattering the heaps he had so painfully assembled, in a frenzied search for a necktie. "Your fine pretense of not wanting to marry me is a clever way of getting me to do it. Exceedingly, overwhelmingly clever! But it hasn't fooled me. Not a bit! There are some things I don't swallow."

"Thank goodness. Perhaps you won't swallow me then, though you seem on the point of doing so."

She lay down again. Her averted face permitted only her dark curly head to show.

"I might have married you," he shouted, brandishing the recovered necktie at the bed. "I might, if you hadn't shown yourself in your true colors. Thank God, I found you out in time."

"Yet you don't seem a bit pleased."

"You little serpent! Is there no escaping your sting?"

"A minute ago I was a rhinoceros, now I am a serpent. A pretty swift evolution, isn't it? Of course, the 'Descent of Woman' _would_ beat the 'Descent of Man' all hollow."

And she turned her back upon him contemptuously. Stung by her disdain, he moderated his temper somewhat and said:

"It is the trick of women to put men subtly in the wrong. You fight, but you never fight in the open. You send us into a devil of a temper, and slyly perpetuate the quarrel until you can make capital out of our degraded condition. Patient Griseldas, martyred angels, persecuted saints! If only you'd drop the pose of injured innocence!"

This impassioned speech was really a bid for a truce. But Janet, her heart hardened, lay quite still, the back of her head expressing defiance.

The silence maddened him more than a flood of reproaches, and he continued dressing _fortissimo_. Finally, he reached for his hat, sending her, at the same time, a parting shot.

"Keep it up," he said, "and you'll be a past mistress in the art of demoralizing a man."

He went out with a spectacular exhibition of bad manners.

Poor Claude! He did not feel entirely guiltless. But he was absolutely certain that the fault lay vastly more on her side than on his. In the breviary of love, he had pledged his soul to an eternity of devotion, but not his temper to a five minutes' trial.

*III*

The door had scarcely been closed before Janet turned out of bed and began to put on her stockings. She got no further than the first one before she heard returning footsteps. Quick as a flash she resumed her former position in bed, so that when the door opened, her face was buried in the pillows and the back of her head was one obstinate, unconciliatory curve.

Claude had come back on the pretext of getting his walking stick, really in the hope of finding Janet penitent or at least willing to placate him. When he saw that all the advances would have to come from his side, he turned sharply on his heels and marched out, in his anger forgetting his cane.

Janet now waited until she was sure that he had gone in good earnest. Then she finished dressing, reflecting the while that for the third time within a week she was left quite alone. It was the discord that troubled her, not the solitude. Solitude had no terrors for her, although it had a drawback of a practical sort.

Namely, in the matter of the language. She was almost totally ignorant of French, her opportunities in Paris for acquiring the vernacular having been extremely few. She knew that Claude expected his absence to make a virtual prisoner of her. In fact, with this punishment in view, he had stayed away until late at night on the two occasions of their recent quarreling. And she did not doubt that he meant to punish her in the same manner again.

She went downstairs to breakfast full of pity for herself and of indignation against Claude.

Breakfast changed her mood completely. It occurred to her that Claude might feel the discord between them as keenly as she did, though he might not be as conscious of the reasons. This led her to feel sorry for him and to wonder whether she might not have been more conciliatory.

Her nature was so essentially sound that she was inclined to look on Claude's outbursts of rage as symptoms of a mental disorder. She told herself that her equable temper gave her an immense advantage over him, an advantage she ought not to exploit too far.

It was Robert who had first made her conscious of the worth of her well-poised temperament, not to mention other good qualities which had seemed as inevitably her own as her two arms and two legs. Lately, since realizing what a surprisingly large number of people were ill-humored and bad tempered, she had begun to prize her even-mindedness for the rare gift it was.

Her self-esteem improving, her spirits followed suit. It was too fine a day to spend indoors. And, Claude or no Claude, she made up her mind to gratify a desire to wander through the fashionable shopping district.

She bethought herself of a pocket English-French dictionary, and a little "Colloquial French in Ten Lessons," which she had picked up at Brentano's in Paris. Thus equipped, she sallied out on an adventurous journey in the direction of the Hotel de Ville.

Her course from the _Quartier Leopold_ to the _Boulevard Anspach_ was intentionally zigzag. Walking leisurely and observing critically she was able to confirm or correct impressions of the capital gathered while riding with Claude in taxis or motor buses.

It struck her that Brussels was cleaner, wholesomer and more competently managed than either New York or Paris. Had the _Bruxellois_ taken a leaf out of the book of Prussian efficiency or were they a more competently executive people?

Brussels was, of course, much smaller than Paris, less ostentatiously "grand" or "cosmopolitan." Janet did not agree with the orthodox tourist opinion that the Belgian capital was merely a pocket edition of the Gallic. Brussels was lively without being chaotic, and picturesque without being dirty. Paris, on the other hand, was in some respects a very American city. Its Rue Royales, Champs Elysees, Faubourg St. Germains and other show sections were perhaps more numerous and certainly more beautiful than the corresponding show sections in New York. But apart from these picked quarters, Paris and New York had the same tawdry glitter, the same rag-bag dishevelment, the same noisy, neurotic people, the same morbid chase after pleasure.

These results of modern civilization seemed by no means entirely missing from Brussels, but they existed in a smaller degree, even in proportion to the city's size. Life on the streets of Brussels still had an appearance of being orderly, sane. You could walk along the main thoroughfares without the sensation that you were steering your way through scurrying, erratic, homicidal pedestrians. In a crowd in New York or Paris you might well become a prey to the fear that Darwin was right, after all, and that the evolution of man was guided chiefly by the principle of chance, Nature being a sort of brute Junker force which imposed _Kultur_ on the survivors.

With these reflections, Janet sailed along, and though remembrance of the quarrel with Claude gave her an occasional sinking feeling, this was but the ground swell after the storm.

*IV*

At the Grands Magasins de la Bourse, Janet experienced little difficulty in making several minor purchases. Not because she had memorized a score of colloquial questions and answers from her little book, "French Guaranteed in Ten Lessons." For the questions and answers which she had conned so trippingly from the text were amazingly inapplicable to her needs. In the realm of trade or barter the phrases she needed always called for a subtly different twist from the high-flown phrases in the text-book. The book model advised her to say: "_Sir_ (_or Madam_), _have the kindness to direct me to the street by which one may proceed to the Rue Royale_." She actually wanted to say: "_What's a good short-cut to the Rue Royale?_" But as to this racier version the text-book was mute.

These difficulties proved no insuperable barrier to Janet. A glance, an eloquent gesture, and a copious use of the phrase _comme ca_, bridged the worst gaps in the course of communication. _Comme ca_ alone, used at the end of the index finger, so to speak, worked wonders. Single-handed, it was mightier than a whole battalion of text-book phrases. Yet Janet flattered herself that she could, at a pinch, have dispensed even with this omnipotent demonstrative. To be sure, she was far swifter at divining other people's wishes than at getting her own wishes divined. Still, though she had a genius for the first process, she had at least a talent for the second.

"It would be strange," she thought, "if a New Yorker could not talk inarticulately in more languages than one."

The shop assistants met her attempts to communicate with them fully halfway. Their friendliness and courtesy in difficult situations astonished her. So did their efforts to comply with her precise wishes.

It was all very different from the American shop men and girls that she was accustomed to. A New York salesman, who slept in a hall room in the Bronx and lunched at Child's, on a ham sandwich and tea or on griddle cakes and skimmed milk, was professionally guiltless of every effort save one, and that was an effort to convey to each customer a sense of the latter's abysmal insignificance; also an intimation of his supreme good luck in being waited on by the most distinguished clerk in the metropolis.

Standing at a counter in New York, one might be excused for supposing that the salesman accepted the purchaser's custom only as a grudging favor to the purchaser. Standing at a similar spot in Brussels, one might hope that the favor would be allowed to be the other way.

Perhaps the Brussels salesmen did not really feel favored. In view of the final disposition of the profits, they probably merely pretended to feel so. If this was the case, their pretense carried conviction, by virtue of the artistry of their politeness. Were there not, then, as many fictions in the life of New York as in the life of Brussels? Yes, but they were neither convincing fictions nor polite ones.

Artistry and politeness, Janet concluded, though they might be minor virtues, were not the minor virtues of an industrial republic.

Her last errand in the Grand Magasins was to buy Claude several pair of socks. The redoubtable _comme ca_, in a choice variety of modulations, did yeoman service in facilitating the selection of the correct color, quality, size.

She was sure Claude did not deserve the pains she was taking over him, particularly in view of his conduct that morning. But Janet's indignation had failed to blot from her mind a picture of the night before at bedtime, when Claude had pathetically drawn attention to the spectacle of both his great toes protruding rudely from the tips of his socks. This picture of Claude walking about Brussels with protruding toes offended her sense of the fitness of things. And, as she did not believe that the fitness of things should be tempered with revenge, she made the necessary purchases without pluming herself on her magnanimity.

Parcels in hand, she came close to a section set apart by a low railing. A somewhat depressed looking woman in front of the railing was talking humbly to a magnificent young man behind it. From a sign which read _Bureau d'Emploi_, Janet guessed that this was the section in which applications for employment were received.

If only she knew the language well enough to apply for a position herself, what a lot of problems this would solve!

The magnificent young man, who was patently the absolute monarch of the section, looked disapprovingly at the somewhat slatternly applicant who was abasing herself before him. With an air as superb as his sartorial equipment, he concluded the interview. So Cophetua might have concluded an interview with an unavailable beggar maid.

The dismissed applicant was the picture of dejection as she walked past Janet, who pitied her from her soul.

Suddenly Cophetua saw Janet.

Was she a lady or was she a beggar maid? He reasoned that ladies rarely burden their arms with a load of parcels, nor were they in the habit of making lingering stops in front of a _Bureau d'Emploi_. On the other hand, the object of his speculation was young, supple, well dressed; her gray eyes glancing his way thrilled him as no salesgirl beggar-maid had ever thrilled him before.

Decidedly, if she _was_ a beggar maid, she was a most uncommon one. Cophetua saw that she was still looking at him, not artfully, and yet not disinterestedly either. The problem was disconcerting and insoluble; the call of the blood was peremptory and imperious.

He resolved to chance it.

Unbending as much as so magnificent a young man could unbend, he called out to Janet in a most inviting tone.

Alas, she couldn't understand a single word. All she could catch was the note of interrogation.

"_Je ne comprends pas francais_--I'm sorry, but I don't understand," she informed him in polyglot. She wondered whether he could possibly be offering her employment, although she doubted this, for his glances were far from businesslike.

Again Cophetua spoke, more slowly. Yet on the same suave, interrogative note. He eyed her with immense favor. She understood his looks; and, as it was clearly not a case for the use of her pet _comme ca_, she lost all desire to understand his words.

Flushing and not quite knowing what to make of it all, she prepared to walk away, discretion seeming to be the better part of valor.

"Can I be of assistance?" said a gentleman who had suddenly stopped on his way past her.

She saw a short, robust, handsome man with an auburn beard and somewhat darker hair faintly tinged with gray. He took off his hat and bowed.

"I can speak a little English," he said, fluently enough, though to Janet's ears the accent sounded rather German.

Then he and Cophetua rapidly exchanged a few sentences in French. From the latter's frigid manner, nothing was plainer than that he regarded the stranger's mediation with extreme distaste.

"He merely wishes to know whether you are seeking a position," said Janet's self-appointed interpreter.

"How could I be? I don't know a word of the language, as you can see," she said, with one of her fascinating gestures.

This reply was duly conveyed to the chief of the employment bureau who, with a thousand daggers in his parting smile, withdrew majestically into his shell.

"It is impossible to know the reason for a mistake so deplorable," said he of the auburn beard, apologizing for Cophetua.

He lifted his hat again, and made as if to go. But he did not go.

"Oh, I don't mind a bit," said Janet, laughing unaffectedly. "If only I knew French, I should like nothing better than to take some position or other."

For a second, they looked into each other's eyes with mutual approval. Then he said boldly:

"In that case--would you like to be--what do the English call it--tutor to my little girl?"

From Cophetua, looming in the background, came mesmeric waves of hostility. Sensing this, they walked away together. He gave her a card inscribed with the name of Anton St. Hilaire. He told her he was an Alsatian, a widower with one child of about fourteen years. His wife had died during his absence on service at the front. His daughter having sickened, he had been to Italy with her. Now he meant to make a long stay in Brussels in order to be near a famous specialist for children. Later he and Henriette would travel.

Henriette had a nurse who for many reasons was unsatisfactory. His wish had long been to place the child in charge of a cultivated woman who should be a friend to her rather than a mere attendant, and who should inspire him with entire confidence. After a few not very searching questions, he professed to have entire confidence in Janet. He waved aside as immaterial the objection in respect of Janet's ignorance of French. She would pick up French as quickly as Henriette picked up English. Henriette had already had some English instruction; and Janet, for her part, had no doubt of her ability to manage the child as far as the linguistic difficulty went. Had she not proved up to the hilt her genius for making foreigners understand her when such was her desire?

"I could get along with a Choctaw," she said to herself, exultantly.

They talked as they proceeded along the Boulevard Anspach. The long and the short of it was that Janet agreed to consider the offer. She promised to pay a visit next day to M. St. Hilaire's apartments in order to meet Henriette. She would then make up her mind whether to take the position or not.

Upon this understanding the Alsatian left her.