Chapter V: Part 5

"No," she said, with sudden thoughtfulness "that is very true." She sat for a moment staring straight before her, with the look in her eyes which had puzzled and haunted him in the pictured eyes at which he had looked awhile before. "Do you know," she said at last, speaking very low and hesitatingly, "it's very absurd, but it--sometimes it frightens me a little. Do you remember in Greek history--or was it mythology?--there was a king who had every wish fulfilled, till he grew at last to feel that it--was dangerous; he offered up sacrifices to the gods, he tried to escape but it was all of no use. Everything went well with him, till at last--his fate overtook him. And so I think, sometimes--mine will."

"Your fate?" Gerard repeated, utterly taken aback and puzzled.

"Yes, the penalty," she said, quickly "of having too much. I have an odd idea sometimes that there is--there must be some misfortune in store for me; that I shall pay for all this yet in some terrible way which no one expects. Oh, it's perfectly absurd, I know, but still I--I can't help it." She had turned of a sudden very white, and she stared up at Gerard with a frightened, mute appeal in her eyes, like that of some dumb animal or a child.

To him she seemed all at once very young and helpless, a being to be soothed and protected; very different from the gay, self-possessed young woman of a few minutes before. "My dear child," he said, very gently, yet with a note of authority, and laying his hand ever so lightly on the delicately gloved hand that rested on her muff "you're nervous and over-wrought. You couldn't otherwise have such a morbid idea. This eternal going-out has got on your nerves. I wish you would promise me to stay at home for a day or two. You will, won't you?" he asked, persuasively.

"Yes, I--I will," she said, mechanically, and still looking very white. "I'm over-tired, as you say."

"And now don't talk," he went on, peremptorily. "I'll get you a glass of water, and then I want you to sit quietly here, and not say a word, till you are better."

She shook her head. "I'm quite well, and I don't want anything," she protested, but he brought the glass of water and made her drink it, and then watched her anxiously, while the color slowly came back to her face, and her eyes lost their strained, appealing look. They sat in silence; he would not let her speak, and as time passed, a great calm insensibly stole over her, a feeling of peace, of security, such as she had not known in all those weeks of fevered gaiety. She was conscious vaguely of a wish that she might sit thus always, saying nothing, alone with him--all the more alone as it seemed for the crowd that was beginning to surge into the room, with a murmur that broke faintly upon her ear, like the sound of the sea a long way off.

The wish was, perhaps, the result of fatigue. She was no sooner fully conscious of it than she rose to her feet.

"Shall we walk through the rooms now?" she said. "It's more than time for Eleanor to be here. Oh, I'm all right now, thank you"--she met his question smilingly. "I don't know what was the matter--it was very silly. You see I boasted unwisely about never thinking, since I have such foolish thoughts; but I won't again. Look, there is a picture of Gertrude Trevor. A good likeness, isn't it? But you've seen it before, perhaps?"

"No," said Gerard, absently. "I haven't seen any of them before." They walked on slowly through the rooms, and she did the honors, pointing out the pictures, as it was apparently his first visit. They did not seem to interest him greatly.

"Have you really never been here before?" she asked at length. She could not have explained what induced her to put the question.

He answered it absently. "Why, yes, every day"--and then suddenly stopped and turned his eyes full upon her, while that strange light gleamed in their sombre depths which she had surprised once or twice before and had interpreted many different ways, which now set her heart beating wildly, and made her wish her question unspoken. "Every day," he repeated, quietly, "about this time, or earlier, since--since the thing began."

"Then why--why"--The words died away on her lips. They had reached the head of the great staircase, and the crowd came streaming up, a confused mass, to which she paid no heed. She had again the feeling of being alone, quite alone, in the midst of it all, while involuntarily their eyes met, and his were all aglow with a fire which she had never before seen in them, or imagined; a fire that dazzled and bewildered, and filled her with a strange, unreasoning joy, as it burned away the barriers of doubt and indifference, till for one short, breathless moment, which she could have counted with her heart-beats she read his inmost soul.

"I only looked at one picture," he said.

And then with the words the spell which held her seemed broken, and the crowd closed in about her, with a sound like the roar of the sea very near at hand, and she looked down the great staircase, and saw Mrs. Bobby coming towards them.

_Chapter XVIII_

"My dear," said Mrs. Bobby, "I'm so sorry to be late. Luncheon was interminable. Why, Julian, who would have expected to see you here?" She gave him her hand demurely, with softly shining eyes. Neither her surprise nor her contrition seemed to ring quite true.

Gerard's dark eyes were again half closed beneath their heavy lids. He looked, if a trifle pale, more impassive than usual.

"I don't know why my presence here should cause so much surprise," he said. "Most people come here, don't they, some time or another. It's a--a meeting-place, isn't it?"

"It seems to have been on this occasion," Mrs. Bobby murmured under her breath. A young man had just stopped and spoken to Elizabeth, and the words might have referred to him. Gerard smiled.

"Won't you come and look at some of these pictures?" he asked. "I want to talk to you."

"You awaken my curiosity."

They walked slowly along the gallery which skirted the hall, too deep in conversation to pay much heed to the pictures which hung along their way. Elizabeth's eyes followed them, the while she was repeating mechanically "Yes, the portraits are extremely fine."

"But not one," the young man declared, with blunt gallantry "to compare with yours. It's by all odds the most beautiful picture here."

"Do you really think so?" said Elizabeth, gently. "I'm very glad." She had heard the sentiment, rather differently put, perhaps a hundred times. Yet it seemed now to have all the charm of novelty.

The young man, a very slight acquaintance, charmed to have called up that glow of pleasure to her face, redoubled his efforts to entertain her. He was sorry when Mrs. Bobby returned with Gerard, and bore her off. "She was delighted when I said that about her picture," he thought, "there's nothing like flattering a girl, if you know how to do it delicately."

"We really must be going, Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, consulting her engagement-book. "We have at least a dozen visits, and we promised, you know, to go to Mr. D'Hauteville's musicale."

"That reminds me that I did too," said Gerard. "I'm glad you spoke of it."

"We shall see you there, then," said Mrs. Bobby, as he placed them in the carriage, and they drove off. "I am feeling utterly crushed," she continued, turning to Elizabeth, and looking under the circumstances, very cheerful. "Julian has been giving me a terrible lecture. He thinks me, I see very clearly, quite unfit to have the care of you. He says that you are not as strong as you seem, that I have been dragging you around--entirely for my own pleasure, apparently--from one thing to another till you are quite worn out, and that you will be ill if I don't take care. He has quite frightened me. But there, Elizabeth, you don't look so very tired, after all."

She certainly did not. There was color in her cheeks, a light in her eyes that was at once brilliant and soft. All the lines drawn by sleepless nights had, for the moment at least, disappeared.

"You don't look badly," Mrs. Bobby repeated. "You look, in fact, infinitely better than when I saw you this morning."

"I feel better," Elizabeth admitted. "Just for a moment, at the Portrait Show, I did feel tired and depressed, and he--Mr. Gerard got alarmed about me, but it was nothing. I am quite well now. And the portraits are really very interesting. I am glad you persuaded me to look at them again, Eleanor."

"I thought you might be repaid," said Mrs. Bobby, serenely. "What did you think of your own picture? Doesn't it look better in that light?"

Elizabeth's face was turned away, so that Mrs. Bobby could only see the rounded outline of her cheek and one small, shell-like ear. "Yes, I--I thought it looked better," she said, in a low voice. "Perhaps you were right. It must have been the--the light of the studio that made me feel--disappointed in it, somehow."

"Oh, there is everything in the light in which you look at things," assented Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. And with this profound remark, the two women sank into silence, while the carriage rolled swiftly up the Avenue, stopping occasionally, as the footman left cards. To Elizabeth, as she sat gazing out of the window, the prosaic brown stone houses, and the more pretentious ones of marble which broke the monotony here and there, and the brilliant shops, which had intruded themselves like parvenus among their quieter and more aristocratic neighbors--all these familiar objects stood out in a softened perspective, which endowed them with lines almost of romance. The wide, commonplace streets had an unwonted charm, the people who walked on them wore an air of curious happiness, merely, no doubt, at finding themselves alive in this beautiful world. Yes, as Mrs. Bobby had so wisely observed, "there is everything in the light in which you look at things."

"I wonder if Mr. D'Hauteville's musicale will be pleasant," Elizabeth observed dreamily, as they neared Carnegie Hall. The remark was purely perfunctory. Pleasant? Of course it would be pleasant--she hadn't a doubt of it.

"There will be a lot of queer people there--musical, literary, and that sort of thing," said Mrs. Bobby, vaguely. "Some men with long hair will play, and the women, no doubt, will wear wonderful æsthetic gowns. If Julian were not to be there, I should not dream of going. My prophetic instinct tells me that we shall not know a soul."

"But won't that be rather amusing," suggested Elizabeth.

"Well, theoretically, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, in rather a doubtful tone, "but, practically, I'm afraid I prefer people whom I know, and who have the conventional amount of hair and lack of brains. Let me confess the truth to you, Elizabeth. I'm not really Bohemian--I only pretend to be so at odd moments, when I want to tease Bobby, or shock the Neighborhood. There isn't at heart, I believe, a more conventional little society wretch than I. However, as you say, that sort of thing is amusing--for one afternoon; and Julian will be there, and protect us from the celebrities and tell us who they all are."

Julian was fortunately on hand when they arrived, but the room was filled for the most part with people who looked very much like any one else, and only a few were sufficiently long-haired and eccentric to justify Mrs. Bobby's prediction of their being celebrities of some sort. The host, who came forward to meet them, was a well-known musician, a man with an intellectual face and dreamy eyes, which lighted up as he welcomed them with eager cordiality; but he could do no more for the present than seat them and give them programmes, for the music was about to begin.

It was a charming studio, well up near the top of Carnegie Hall, and like most studios, it was artistically furnished. The polished floor was strewn with rich rugs, the walls were covered in every nook and cranny, with plaques, and pictures, and rare tapestries, and strange Eastern weapons. A grand piano took up the whole of one corner, and in another a toy staircase seemed to have been placed entirely for ornament, till it was utilized as a seat by some picturesque-looking girls in large hats. From the broad casemented window near which Elizabeth sat, she could see an expanse of roofs and chimneys, far down from the dizzy height, and beyond them the river, and further still the winter sunset, fading in cold blues and greens and violets, on a still colder sky. Her eyes rested there with dreamy satisfaction. She had no wish to look back into the room, to where Gerard was standing close to them, on the other side of Mrs. Bobby. She was still living on the memory of that moment--was it an hour or was it years ago?--that long look of which the reflected light was still glowing on her face, and in her dreamy eyes. She had no wish to renew it; the recollection was sufficient, for awhile at least. Yet she was glad to know that he was there.

Mrs. Bobby meanwhile, having embarked on her trip to Bohemia, was disappointed to find it comparatively tame.

"I don't see any one I know," she said to Gerard, as the piano solo came to an end. "They look, most of them, depressingly commonplace. But they must be extraordinary in some way, or they wouldn't be here. Tell us who they are, Julian, and introduce them to us if you think we would like them."

"Why, there are some musical lights," he answered, rather absently "who, I hope, are going to perform for our benefit, and there are a few ordinary music-lovers like myself, and some literary people--whom I don't know that you would care about."

"You think us too frivolous, I see," said Mrs. Bobby. "But you don't realize how clever I can be if I try, and as for Elizabeth, she knows a lot more than she seems to know."

"Does she?" asked Gerard with a smile, and he glanced across at Elizabeth, who still would not meet his eyes. "She looks very innocent," he said, musingly, after a pause. "I should be sorry to think of her as--concealing anything."

A little pang, a thought sharp like a stone, struck Elizabeth for an instant. It was the first rift in the lute. She put it resolutely away from her.

"You think me too stupid, I see," she said "to have any knowledge to conceal."

He had no time to answer before some woman began to sing. She had a beautiful voice, and Elizabeth listened, yet chiefly conscious, all the while, of the fact that Gerard had managed to shift his position, and was standing directly behind her.

"I never thought you stupid," he said, under cover of the applause, in a low voice that no one but she could hear, "no, nor ignorant; but I have sometimes thought you frivolous, and flippant, and--and a little hard. You seem, I sometimes think, to take pleasure in showing these qualities to me. Why is it, I wonder?"

"I--I don't know," she murmured, in the same low voice, and gazing straight before her. "You--somehow you seem to compel it. You ought to be grateful, I think. At least you know the worst of me."

She spoke these words with an absolute unconsciousness of their falseness; and even as they died away on her lips, she glanced across the room and saw Paul Halleck standing in the door-way.

That old mythological king whom some vague reminiscence of her school-days had conjured up in Elizabeth's mind, he who had every wish fulfilled, till he grew at last to dread his own prosperity--was it, I wonder, in some such moment of foreboding that the final crash came, or was it when his fears were lulled and his senses stilled, by some delicious, over-powering sense of happiness that shut out for the moment all unpleasant thoughts? This, at all events, was the way in which fate overtook Elizabeth.

Paul Halleck stood in the door-way, having apparently just arrived. His blue eyes were wandering about the room. They did not fall, as yet, upon Elizabeth.

She did not faint, or cry out, or make herself in any way conspicuous. She turned deathly white, and her heart, which had been beating faster for Gerard's presence, seemed suddenly to stop entirely, as though a piece of ice had been laid on it. And then, in a moment, her heart began to beat again, though faintly. She drew a long breath. Gerard, who was standing directly behind her, could not see her face beneath the shadow of her large hat, yet he felt instinctively that something was wrong.

"Do you feel faint again?" he asked, anxiously, thinking to himself that she was really far from well. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, thank you," said Elizabeth. "I felt faint for a moment, but it is over." It took all the strength that she possessed to speak these words so clearly and distinctly. In making the effort she was not conscious of any plan of deception. She was merely bearing up, instinctively, to the end.

She never doubted that it _was_ the end. It had fallen at last--that sword of Damocles, which she had learned to dread as the winter wore on, of which she had always been vaguely conscious even in her gayest moments, and had only forgotten, quite forgotten, in that short, delicious hour when she had allowed herself to float off in a dream of happiness never to be realized, from which she was awakened so soon and so rudely. And yet, though it was over, she was not sorry that she had dreamed it. It had been very sweet, worth even, she thought, the bitterness of the awakening.

Meanwhile the musicale progressed. A man with long, floating hair and fingers of steel thundered out a piano solo. Elizabeth shut her eyes and leaned back in her chair. How fortunate that there was so much music to prevent conversation! But at the first pause she opened her eyes and looked up at Gerard.

"I was wrong when I told you that you know the worst of me," she said, faintly. "You'll know it, soon."

"What a terrible prospect!" said Gerard, bending over her and the jesting words had a soft intonation, which thrilled her like a caress. "I really don't think I can stand it--quite."

Had she intended to tell him the truth? The moment was not propitious. The music had stopped, and there was a murmur of conversation all over the room. People began to move about, and in the general shifting of position, Paul Halleck, for the first time, caught sight of Elizabeth.

She had had some vague, childish idea of what would happen when he saw her. She had pictured him in her unreasoning terror, as stepping forward before them all and claiming her as his wife, like a scene in a play. Nothing of the kind took place. She saw at once how absurd her expectations had been. Paul merely started and looked at her, recognition and it seemed, pleasure sparkling in his eyes; but with a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, she turned her own eyes away, as if she did not know him.

"Do you see that man in the door-way?" said Gerard, who, standing as he was behind her could not note the changes in her face,--"that handsome fellow with the light curls? He has a very fine voice, and has just been engaged as soloist at St. Chrysostom's."

"Indeed. Is he to sing this afternoon?" She brought out the question with difficulty.

"I hope so," said Gerard. "I'd like you to hear him. But perhaps you know him," he went on. "He is looking at you as if he expected you to bow."

"No," said Elizabeth. "I don't know him." She told him this, her second lie that afternoon, without deliberate intention, in sheer lack of presence of mind. It was a piteous, involuntary staving-off of the inevitable. The next moment that fascination which leads us to our own undoing made her look in Paul's direction, and this time she could not avoid his eager gaze and bent her head mechanically.

"After all, I believe I must have met him somewhere," she said hastily. Mrs. Bobby, who for the last quarter of an hour, had been determinedly ignoring them both, apparently giving her whole attention to the music and the people, now turned towards them.

"Who is that handsome man who bowed to you, Elizabeth?" she asked. "I never saw him before."

"His name is Halleck. I--I knew him in the country," said Elizabeth, who had no natural talent for deception and entangled herself at once in contradictory statements. Gerard's face darkened, and he glanced across at Halleck, whose eyes were fixed on Elizabeth with a look that seemed, to the jealous, fastidious man by her side, an intolerable presumption; a look that was not only one of admiration, but, or Gerard imagined so, held in it a curious touch of proprietorship. "Confound the fellow," chafed Gerard--he who would fain have kept the woman he loved, as he certainly would have kept her picture, shut out from all profane eyes, even admiring ones. "He looks at her as if he had discovered her and she belonged to him. Where can she have met him, and why did she say she hadn't."

Mrs. Bobby, too, looked across at Paul.

"He is certainly very good-looking," she said. "And do you mean to tell me, my dear, that such an Adonis flourished in our Neighborhood, and I never saw him. Pray, where did you keep him hidden?"

Before Elizabeth could reply, and to her great relief, D'Hauteville came up with the long-haired musician, whom he introduced to them, and who proved to be, at last, one of the celebrities upon whom Mrs. Bobby had counted. In the diversion that ensued Halleck seemed forgotten. But a few minutes later, he sat at the piano and sang songs by Schubert and Franz, which she had heard him sing before, at the time when she had thought his voice the most beautiful voice in the world. Now, as she listened it left her cold. She had changed so much, and he--no, he had not changed. His voice was not so wonderful as she had thought it, but still it was a fine barytone voice. His art no longer seemed to her remarkable, but it had, if anything, improved, and he was as handsome as ever, in his fair, effeminate style. It was not the voice nor the art that was lacking. It was the answering thrill in herself. It was not his beauty which had failed him, it was she who no longer cared for it.

His success with the audience was instantaneous. Even Mrs. Bobby was impressed. "Your friend sings well," she whispered to Elizabeth, "and yet his hair is short. You may introduce him to me if you get a chance."

And this chance immediately presented itself, as Paul, amid the applause that followed his song, walked over to Elizabeth and quietly shook hands with her. It was the moment that she had dreaded all the time that he was singing, yet now that it had come, she met it in apparent unconcern, and smiling, though with white lips.

"I thought at first," Paul said, "that you had quite forgotten me."

"Oh, no," she said, "my memory is not so short." Then she turned and introduced him to Mrs. Bobby, and went on herself quietly talking to Mr. D'Hauteville. Nothing could have been more simple. Not even Julian Gerard, who from a distance watched their meeting, could have imagined any secret understanding between them.

The handsome young singer made a very favorable impression upon Mrs. Bobby, who went so far as to ask him to call, in that impulsive way of hers, which sometimes led to consequences that she regretted. In this case she realized, almost as soon as the words had left her lips, that she had done a rash thing, or what Bobby would consider rash. Still, the invitation was given and eagerly accepted, even though Elizabeth, standing cold and indifferent, said not a word to second it. By this time the music was over. They were about to leave, when some one claimed Mrs. Bobby's attention, and she turned aside for a moment. Paul seized the opportunity, for which he had been anxiously waiting, to whisper in Elizabeth's ear.

"Darling, don't go. I must see you for a moment."

"You can't speak to me here," she said, impatiently, trying to escape from him.

"But I must see you. Can't you see that I must?"

"You have done without it," said Elizabeth, without turning her head, "some time."

"Because I couldn't help myself."

"There is such a thing as writing," she said, in the same low, bitter tone. Yet even as she spoke her conscience misgave her. It was not his neglect that she resented so bitterly, it was his return. But Paul, not understanding this was rather flattered than otherwise by the reproach.

"Darling, I will explain when I see you," he said, hurriedly. "There's no time now. Meet me to-morrow morning--at the Fifty-ninth street entrance to the Park, at eleven o'clock."

"To-morrow! Impossible! I have a hundred things to do."

"Ah, but you must," he pleaded. "I must see you. Darling you look so beautiful--fifty times more beautiful than before."

"Hush," said Elizabeth. "How dare you? Some one will hear you."

"Give me a chance of seeing you, then," he said. "It is necessary. You will meet me--will you not?--to-morrow morning?"

"If you insist upon it--yes."

"At the west entrance of the Park--you understand?"

"Oh, yes," said Elizabeth impatiently, and hastened to rejoin Mrs. Bobby, who was waiting at the door.

Julian Gerard came up gloomily. The whispered conference had not escaped his notice.

"We shall see you to-night at the Lansdownes' ball," said Mrs. Bobby. "It is the night for it, isn't it, Elizabeth? I never can keep track of these things."

Gerard looked reproachfully at Elizabeth. "You promised me," he said, "that you would stay at home for a night or two."

She smiled back at him with the old touch of wilfulness. "Did I really make such a rash promise," she said, lightly. "Ah, I'm afraid I can't keep it--not to-night. I must be amused. A quiet evening would be unendurable." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittered with feverish gaiety, there was an odd, strained note in her voice. Mrs. Bobby looked at her in some perplexity, then she glanced up deprecatingly at Gerard.

"It is her first season, you see Julian," she said, as if in apology. "You can't expect her to give up things."

"No," he repeated, mechanically. "I can't expect her to--give up things." He fell back silently, in increased gloom. Elizabeth glanced towards him involuntarily as she left the room.

"Now," she said to herself, "I have disappointed him again and he won't come near me this evening. But it is better so--far, far better," she repeated to herself, with a little sob, as she followed her hostess to the carriage.

_Chapter XIX_

The next day was unexpectedly mild. Winter, after reigning supreme, made sudden and treacherous overtures to approaching spring. The air in the Park was almost balmy, and the drives were gay, as though it were much later in the season, with carriages and riders and bicycles galore; yet the warm sunlight falling incongruously on sere, brown grass and bare branches, seemed but to emphasize their dreariness and the fact that winter had not really surrendered, and was only biding his time and the advent of the March winds, to make his power felt all the more strongly. Pedestrians, realizing this, refused to be inveigled out, even by the spring-like air, and there was no one to notice the young man and the young woman who sat on a bench in one of the secluded walks near Eighth avenue; the young woman, simply dressed in a dark tailor-made gown, with a small black hat pushed well over her face, which showed beneath it very pale and set, with hard lines about the mouth; the young man staring at her in bewilderment, a look of distress in his handsome blue eyes.

"And so," he said, "you don't love me any longer?" It had taken him some time to grasp this fact, which still seemed to him incomprehensible.

"No," she said, in a low, determined voice, "I don't love you any longer. I don't know if I--ever did. I was so young, I had never seen any men, I didn't know what I was doing. You flattered me; it was interesting, romantic. But if I had loved you, really loved you"--she stopped for an instant. "If I had really loved you," she repeated "do you think I could have hesitated--that day at Cranston? Do you think I could have let you go--without me? Why, I should have followed you--don't you see that I would?--to the end of the world." The color rushed into her face, there was a ring in her voice that he never heard before--no, not even in those early days, when she had sat at his feet, and worshipped him as a genius. Then, as he looked at her, he realized for the first time that he had lost her. The discovery was, for many reasons, unwelcome.

"Well, if you didn't love me," he said, hoarsely, "you certainly made me believe that you did. Elizabeth, you have treated me abominably. I didn't wish to leave you--do me the justice to admit that--it was your own doing entirely."

"I know it." She bent her head submissively. "I don't blame you for anything; not even for--forgetting me."

"I didn't forget you," he interrupted her, flushing hotly, and repeating assertions which she had heard already, and interpreted by that knowledge of his character, which she had acquired too late to be of value. She put them aside now with a gesture of weariness.

"What's the use," she said, "of going over that again, I have said already, I don't reproach you. We can't either of us--can we?--afford to throw stones. And yet, if you had not stopped writing"--She paused for a moment with knitted brows, as she seemed to weigh one possibility against another, in a sort of inward trial of her own conduct. An instinctive mental honesty, however, carried the day. "I don't know that that would have made any difference," she said. "I was very unhappy because you--had forgotten me, and that made me want to come to town, all the more; but--if I had been happy, and sure that you loved me, I should have come, I think, all the same. And no matter how I had felt, or what I had done, I should have known, sooner or later--oh, I couldn't but realize it--what a--what a terrible mistake we had made." She put out her hands in a sudden, despairing gesture, which hurt his vanity.

"Elizabeth, do you really mean that?"

"Yes," she said, in a low, monotonous voice, and staring straight before her with hard, hopeless eyes. "Yes, I mean it. I have been realizing it, little by little, all these months. And yet I put it away--I wouldn't think of it--till one day it forced itself upon me. I knew, all at once, that I--I dreaded your coming back, I hoped you never would--it was when I was enjoying myself, when I was thinking how delightful life was. And then, after that, the fear of your coming was always there--I could never get rid of it for any length of time, till just for a while--yesterday"--Her voice faltered, and for the first time the softening tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh, I can't help it," she cried out, "if I'm hard. When I think how happy I was--wildly, absurdly happy, just for a little while, and then to think how--how miserable I am now."

She stopped, half strangled with her sobs, and Paul sat staring at her in moody silence. He was clear-sighted enough now to grasp the truth. Such violent grief, he told himself, could have but one explanation. There was, there must be, some other man.

Yet the conviction made him only the more determined not to give her up. True, there had been a time, not long before, when he would have done so only too gladly; when he would have welcomed an opportunity to free himself from an irksome bond, which he regretted quite as much as she did. But now, since his return, when he heard her spoken of everywhere as one of the beauties of the season, when he saw her in D'Hauteville's studio in her velvet and furs, her whole appearance redolent of grace and charm, and that nameless distinction which Gerard had noticed, and which impressed the young musician even more deeply; when he saw her thus a hundred times more desirable, his fickle heart succumbed anew, with a sudden throb of joy, at the thought of the secret tie between them. She was his, this young princess, whom he had chosen when she was a mere Cinderella; he had but to hold out his hand and she would come to him. For he never doubted that she _would_ come. Her first coldness he had looked upon as mere girlish pique at his neglect, a proof of her affection. Now, a sadder and a wiser being, he had learned that the privilege of forgetfulness is not confined to men alone.

Yet the situation, unflattering though it was, had its advantages, which dawned upon him gradually, while Elizabeth still sobbed. He rose and paced up and down in front of her, thinking the matter over. After all, a wife was the last thing that he wanted--just then, when his career was opening out before him in unexpectedly brilliant colors. He realized perfectly the value of his own good looks, and the loss of prestige that marriage would involve. Matrimony is a mistake for an artist--he had told himself this many times in the last few months. And yet, having once made the mistake, having won this beautiful girl for his wife, how could he give her up. There was the chance that she might change her mind again, and return to her first love. Then it was sweet to feel that she was in his power, that he could at any time bring her to terms by threatening to publish the fact that she had concealed all this time. True, the marriage might be dissolved--he had not much doubt himself that it could be; but either this plan did not occur to Elizabeth, or she dreaded the inevitable gossip and publicity. At all events, it was not his place, he thought, to suggest it to her. He held the mastery of the situation, and he was determined to improve it to the uttermost. And having arrived at this conclusion, he suddenly stopped before her and spoke in a tone of unwonted resolution.

"Listen to me, Elizabeth," he said. "I don't know why you are making this scene. In what has the situation changed since--let us say, last week? I don't ask you to acknowledge our marriage at once--indeed it is impossible for me to do so, as I am not--worse luck--in a position just now to support a wife."

Elizabeth, in her surprise, stopped crying and stared up at him blankly. "You don't want the marriage acknowledged?" she repeated, utterly taken aback.

"Not just now," said Paul, calmly. "It would be as inconvenient for me, as it seems to be for you. No, all I ask is for you to see me occasionally, to think of me more kindly, and in time--perhaps in time, dearest, you will care for me again as you used to."

He went on to dilate on this hope. Elizabeth's tears as she listened, ceased. A feeling of relief stole over her, the reaction which follows so often upon violent distress. "In time," Paul said. Ah, yes, her heart answered, there is no knowing what wonders time may accomplish. It might even--who could tell?--find a way for her out of this terrible perplexity.

Yet the thought was illogical. Of what use was it to put off the evil day? There was a side of her nature which was brave and straightforward, which detested false pretences and evasions, and all the net-work of deception in which her secret had already involved her; which called out upon her boldly to tell the truth, since every day that she kept it hidden only made the final disclosure more difficult. But there was another side which counselled compromise, which shrank from facing the inevitable, which lived only in the present and refused to take thought for the future. And finally there was a side which did not reason, which simply remembered the look in a man's eyes, when he had spoken to her the day before of her picture.

How would it be if he knew the truth? Would he make allowances for her, would he be magnanimous enough to forgive? Ah, no, he had judged her harshly for no apparent reason. Such a discovery would put an end entirely to all his faith in her.

For she felt instinctively how it would strike him--this impulsive action of a thoughtless girl, who had rushed into marriage as if it were a mere farce, and taken upon herself, lightly, the most solemn vows, only to repent of them quite as readily. He would pronounce her hopelessly light and fickle, he would never believe that she was capable of any deeper feeling. His presentiment, distrust--whatever it was that had kept him from her--would be justified, and--and there would be the end of it. And the best thing that could happen, that stern inner voice called out.

But she would not listen to it--not yet, at least. She must see him once or twice first, probe his feelings a little more surely, prepare him a little, perhaps, to judge her more gently.... Some time--very soon, perhaps,--she would tell him herself, but--not now, not now....

Her head ached, she was physically exhausted, and Paul was waiting, impatiently, for her decision. She had an engagement, too, for luncheon--she remembered that mechanically.... In this matter-of-fact world of ours, the every-day and the tragic incidents of life jostle one another so closely.

"I--I must go," she murmured, confusedly. "I've been here too long. We can talk about all this another time."

"But you consent," he said eagerly. "You wish to keep it secret, awhile longer? That is the agreement for the present?"

She hesitated for a moment. "Yes," she said at last, "that is the agreement, till--till I have time to think it over. And now I must go." She drew out the little jeweled watch that Mrs. Van Antwerp had given her, among other valuable things, at Christmas. "I am going out to luncheon, and I am supposed at present to be in my room, recovering from last night's ball."

"What a gay person you are!" Paul said, regarding her complacently. "Ah, Elizabeth, if you wanted to be nice, you could help me a great deal in my profession."

"Help you?" she repeated, staring at him blankly.

"Yes, in a social way," he explained. "It always helps an artist to be taken up by swell people. There's your friend Mrs. Van Antwerp--can't you--there's a good girl--persuade her to do something for me?"

"I heard her ask you to call," she returned, coldly.

"Yes, but she could do more than that," he said. "She could, for instance, have me sing and ask people to hear me. I need a start, I need patrons among society people; and that is exactly, my dear girl, what you can get me."

They were walking slowly by this time towards the entrance of the Park, and suddenly she turned and faced him with one of those flashes of defiance, which he rather admired. "Let me understand," she said, quickly, and a pale, cold gleam lighted up her white face, like the glint of steel upon marble. "You want me to--to get you invitations, to persuade people to ask you to sing? This is the--the price of your silence?"

He shrugged his shoulders, not much disturbed by the scorn in her voice. "If you choose to put it so plainly--yes," he said. "After all, it is not much to ask, and you ought, one would think, to be glad if you can help me."

She walked on beside him in gloomy silence. "It's not much to ask," she said, in a low, bitter voice, "but it involves--have you thought of that?--my seeing you constantly."

"And is that so terrible?" he asked, reddening.

"It's not pleasant," she said, shortly "but I suppose I must--submit. I'm in your power; you can ask what you please." They had reached the entrance of the Park, and she turned to him, as if to dismiss him. "I promise, then," she said. "I'll do what I can to help you--socially, and in return you must promise to treat me as you would any other acquaintance--not force me to meet you again, or let people suppose that there is anything between us. Do you agree to that?"

"I suppose I must," he said, disconsolately, "though it's a harder condition, by far, than mine."

Again that cold, scornful gleam flashed across her face.

"Oh, you'll resign yourself to it," she said. "It's much more to the point to get--the invitations. I'll see that my side of the bargain is fulfilled." She drew down her veil, glancing anxiously across the wide Square, where street-cars, bicycles and wagons all converge from different directions and in inextricable confusion. "Don't come any further with me," she said. "I don't wish people to see us together."

She left him abruptly as she spoke, and he stood for a moment and watched her cross the Square and take a car at the corner. He was not quite satisfied with the interview; she had been too independent, too scornful. It hurt his pride. But the situation was full of possibilities. He felt that his rash marriage had been a stroke of genius.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, was making her way home, with a feeling of tremulous relief, much as if she had escaped unexpectedly from shipwreck, with at least a plank to cling to, and bear her perhaps to ultimate safety. Yet how slight that plank was she might have realized, had she known that Julian Gerard, as he entered the Park on horseback, had seen her walk down one of the side paths, with the man who, only a day before, had aroused his jealous suspicions.

"And she said she didn't know him," he thought, with a fierce throb of pain, and rode on, frowning, into the Park.

_Chapter XX_

"My dear Julian," wrote Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp to Mr. Gerard a week later, "you are, I think, neglecting us shamefully. What has become of you? If you are inclined to perform a charitable action, do come in to tea to-morrow afternoon. You don't generally, I know, patronize such mild functions, but we are to have a little music"--

"A little music?" mused Gerard, knitting his brows and thrusting out his under lip, as the note dropped from his hand. "That means, of course, that young Halleck. It's something new for Eleanor to go in for music. But it's _her_ doing, of course. I suppose she really cares for the fellow. And yet what a pity--what a pity that she should throw herself away like that!" He sat gazing absently before him, his pen in his hand, while the work upon which he had been engaged when Mrs. Bobby's note arrived--an article for a scientific magazine--remained without the finishing touches he had intended to bestow.

He had not seen Elizabeth since that morning in the Park.

He had carefully refrained from going where he might see her. He had denied himself, once for all, that unprofitable and mysterious pleasure of watching her across the ball-room, while he leaned inertly against the wall, or talked, in his weary way, to some woman to whom he felt himself indebted. No, thank Heaven, he had been warned in time; there was no danger of his being made a fool of a second time.

His mind wandered back across the gulf of years, to that other woman whom he had loved so desperately once, whose shadow still stood between him and the happiness which seemed, now and again, within his grasp. He thought of the mad infatuation, the bitter disillusion, the restless travelling to and fro, the final settling down into cynical indifference.... and then long afterwards, when the indifference had grown into a habit, and he dreaded nothing more than to have it disturbed, he had met this girl who had exercised upon him from the first a curious effect, half repellant, half attractive, and wholly baffling and alarming, whose hair he had objected to because it was "too red" and who played the piano with a force and fire and passion, which stirred his heart as he had resolved it should never be stirred again.

Gerard had always intended to marry, but he proposed, in spite of the efforts of Eleanor Van Antwerp and other anxious friends, to take his time about it. He had his ideal of the sort of wife he wanted--a being as different as possible from his first love, and almost as tiresome a compound of all the domestic virtues as that mythical personage whom Hannah More's hero had once gone in search of. But, unlike that estimable individual, he had fallen in love with a woman far removed from his ideal, of doubtful antecedents which he liked no better than Bobby Van Antwerp, of qualities the reverse of domestic, and the type of hair and coloring which he had long illogically, but none the less strongly, associated with a certain lack of moral sense.

Yet though Gerard could not help his feelings, he could certainly control his actions, and he was determined to keep away from Elizabeth Van Vorst--more especially now since there seemed to be some unaccountable understanding between her and that young Halleck.

Yet that very fact made him the more anxious to see her, and find out for himself how far his suspicions were justified. "Good Heavens," thought Gerard, getting up and pacing restlessly to and fro "how can she care for a fellow like that--so second-rate, so superficial, such a--such a cad? What is Eleanor thinking of to have him at the house? Some one really ought to give her a hint--not I; but--some one." ...

The end of it all was that he strolled into Mrs. Van Antwerp's drawing-room that afternoon, his usual air of well-bred impassiveness unmoved by the sight of Paul Halleck seated at the piano, and the cynosure of several pairs of admiring feminine eyes.

Elizabeth's eyes were not among them. She was in a back room pouring tea. But Gerard had no sooner assured himself of her being thus harmlessly employed, than his jealous heart suggested that there was something sinister in such apparent indifference.

He wandered into the other room as soon as he decently could. She was seated at the tea-table, for the moment, entirely alone. Seen thus off guard, for she did not at first perceive Gerard, there was something indefinably weary and listless in her attitude. She was paler even than she had been that day at the Portrait Show, and the lines beneath her eyes were not black, but purple. It would have gone ill with her reputation as a beauty had it been put to the vote that afternoon. But it was Gerard's peculiarity, his misfortune perhaps, that she appealed to him most at times when to the world at large she was looking her worst. He stood watching her for a moment. Presently she looked up. She caught sight of him. Instantly the warm, lovely color rushed into her cheeks, only to retreat, and leave her paler than before--but not till he had seen it.

His manner was very gentle as he approached her and asked for a cup of tea. She poured it out mechanically, with a hand that trembled.

"We have not seen you lately," she said, with eyes carefully riveted on the tea-things. "Eleanor was wondering--what had become of you."

"Indeed! It was very kind of her to give me a thought." Gerard stirred his tea absently. "I was busy," he said "with an article I had promised for a magazine."

"Ah! You write a great deal, don't you?" Elizabeth looked up with some interest. "I should like to see some of your articles, if I may."

He smiled. "You don't know what you're asking. You'd find them very dull."

"What, because I'm so dull myself?" she asked, with a flash of spirit.

"I told you once before," he said, in the tone that he had used to her at the studio "that I didn't think you--that."

"Ah, but you think me other things that are--worse."

"As what, for instance?" he asked, smiling.

"Oh frivolous, and vain, and heartless. A lot of horrid things."

"I only said you _seemed_ so."

"Ah, then you think I'm better than I seem?" she asked, flippantly, yet with a swift inward pang.

He seemed to consider. "I think you are very--incomprehensible," he said at last.

She bent down over the tea-things, so that he could not see her face. "Oh, that's only," she said, in a low voice "because you haven't the key to the enigma. If you had it"--She paused. "You might not like the things you understood," she concluded.

Gerard put down his untasted cup. "I'm willing to take the risk," he said, deliberately.

He waited, as if for an answer, but none came. She appeared to busy herself with the tea-things. In the next room Paul Halleck began to sing the Evening Star song. It seemed to Gerard that Elizabeth turned a shade paler than she had been before.

"He has a fine voice," he said, when the song was finished. "Don't you think so?"

She started. "Yes, I--I think so," she said, mechanically.

"I was surprised a little at Eleanor's going in for music," Gerard went on. "It isn't her line, generally."

"No, it isn't her line," Elizabeth repeated, in the same mechanical tones. Suddenly she met his eyes defiantly. "I asked her to have him here," she said.

"Ah, you asked her?" Gerard drew his breath quickly. "I _thought_ he was a--a friend of yours."

"You thought so?" she returned quickly, and then in a low voice, as if she dreaded the answer: "Why?"

"Why?" He repeated her question as if it surprised him. For a moment he seemed to hesitate; then, as if forming a sudden resolution: "I thought so," he said, steadily, and looking her straight in the face "for one thing, because I saw you walking in the Park with him one morning."

"Ah, you--you saw me?" She seemed to gasp for breath. Then, with a quick, impetuous movement, she pushed the tea-things away from her. "And so," she said, turning to him suddenly, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling "you--you put the worst construction upon that, you think more ill of me than ever?"--

He had turned very pale, but still his voice was steady. "I don't know why I should think ill of you, for such a simple thing as that. But if there is any secret about it"--he fixed his eyes upon her coldly, haughtily--"if the meeting was not intended to be known, why I--I'm sorry I should have seen it. Of course I should not mention it--to any one else."

She flushed a little, then grew pale, before the scorn in his eyes. "There is--there is no secret," she said, in a low voice. "You can mention it--to whom you please."

"I confess I was a little surprised," he went on, without heeding her, and this time a note of keen anxiety pierced through the studied quietness of his voice, his gaze softened, as if imploring her to give him the explanation which he had no right to demand. "I was a little taken aback," he said, "because I understood you to say--the day before--that you hardly knew him."

"Yes, I--I remember." She leaned back in her chair, staring before her with hard, bright eyes. "When I told you that," she said, slowly "I--I lied."

It gave him a keen shock to hear her pronounce the word. He did not speak, and she looked up at him presently with a little, deprecating smile. "Now," she said, softly "I've shocked you, haven't I?"

He was silent for a moment. "No," he said, at last "not that; but--I'm sorry. I don't like to think of you as--misstating anything, even if the matter is of no importance."

She had taken up a teaspoon, and was playing with it absently. "I don't know," she said, slowly "why you should care."