Chapter VI: Part 6

"Don't you?" He turned his eyes away. "I wish to Heaven I didn't," he said, low and fiercely. The words were not intended for her, but she heard them and again the warm, beautiful color rushed into her cheeks. An answer trembled on her lips, but she struggled not to say it; struggled against the desire to bring that glow to his face, that light to his eyes, which she knew so well lay dormant, beneath the heavy lids. She knew, ah, she knew. While he stayed away she had her misgivings, but now that she saw him again, she read his heart, even as she had done at the Portrait Show. She had only to be herself, her best self, and she held him captive, he could not escape. Yet, paradoxically, her better instincts urged upon her to show him her worst side, to say the things which hurt and shocked him.

While she hesitated, people came crowding in from the next room. In the confusion that ensued, Gerard was forced away from the table. He fell back against the wall, and watched Elizabeth while, with instinctive self-command, she fulfilled the different demands made upon her. He saw Halleck go up to her gaily, flushed with his success, and bending over her, murmur a few jesting words, which she heard without a smile. Gerard could have killed him for the air of proprietorship which was even more pronounced than at the musicale. But she--how did she like it? He scanned her face eagerly. There was no softness there, no answering gleam of pleasure; rather a dull, dogged look of submission, which seemed to cover, or Gerard deceived himself, an instinctive shrinking, a powerless resentment.

"She doesn't care for him," he thought, with a quick, sharp sense of relief. "And yet--she has to be civil to him, she has to do things to help him. Why, for Heaven's sake, why?" He wandered into the other room, tormenting himself with this question, and found his hostess there.

"What do you think of my new protegé?" she asked, detaining him as he took his leave.

"What, Halleck? Oh, he sings very well," he returned, absently.

"I never before posed as a patron of rising musicians," she went on, "but Elizabeth knew him, it seems, in the country, and asked if I would mind helping him a little. She's so fond of music, you know." She spoke quite innocently. Gerard gave her a quick, searching glance. Apparently she suspected nothing. Yet she was a woman of quick perceptions. Perhaps, after all, it was he who was mistaken; his jealous, suspicious nature had led him into unnecessary torture. No wonder she had met his doubt with defiance, had not deigned to justify herself, or to dispel a distrust which he had no right to display. In the sudden, glad, unreasoning reaction, he was ready to heap all manner of insulting epithets upon himself.

"I think your efforts will be repaid," he said, inclined in his relief to be generous. "Halleck has a fine voice. I shouldn't wonder if he were quite a success."

"It was very nice of you to come in," she said. "You have been such a recluse lately. What have you been doing?"

"Oh, the whirl of excitement in which I've been living was too much for me," he declared "and so I've given up society for awhile, and am going in for hard study by way of rest."

"Good gracious! That sounds very impressive," she said. "I'm almost afraid to suggest, under the circumstances, that you should take a seat in our box at the opera to-night. And yet I wish you would, Julian, just by way of doing me a favor, for some people I've asked are not coming, and Bobby is away, and Elizabeth and I will be quite alone."

He smiled. "I don't think there's much chance of your being alone very long," he said. Yet he promised at last to take one of the vacant seats, though he had refused several other invitations for that evening. Mrs. Bobby's eyes sparkled as if she had achieved a victory.

"Julian is coming to-night," she announced to Elizabeth, when the musicale was over and the last guest had departed.

"Is he?" Elizabeth spoke without apparent interest, as she sank, with a weary look, into a chair in front of the fire.

"You are tired. Would you rather not go to-night?"

"Oh, no"--with a languid gesture. "Music doesn't tire me!"

"And yet," said Mrs. Bobby, who had taken the seat opposite her and was watching her thoughtfully, "you didn't seem to care enough about it to come in to listen to your friend this afternoon."

Elizabeth blushed. "I could hear him in the other room," she said.

"Where, besides, you seemed to be very well entertained," said Mrs. Bobby, serenely. "Still, I don't think it was nice of you. It is hard on the poor man, after flirting with him in the country, to treat him so indifferently in town."

"I didn't flirt with him," said Elizabeth, but her protest was faint, and seemed purely perfunctory. In fact, she was not sorry that Mrs. Bobby had adopted this theory, realizing that a half-truth may sometimes be the most effective barrier to a knowledge of the whole.

"Don't tell me anything so wildly improbable, my dear," said Mrs. Bobby. "My knowledge of human nature will not allow me to believe that a pretty girl and a handsome young singer, thrown together for weeks in the country, as I believe you were, did _not_ indulge in a tremendous flirtation. But seriously, Elizabeth, I am glad that it went no further, and that you have recovered so easily. For I can imagine that you lost your heart to him a little. Confess, Elizabeth, didn't you?"

"Perhaps I did," said Elizabeth, staring immovably into the fire "but one gets over such things, you know."

"Indeed one does," said Mrs. Bobby. "I was desperately in love at seventeen, and cried my eyes out when they made me give the man up; and yet had I married him, I should have been the most wretched being in the world, instead of a much happier woman than I deserve to be, thanks to a husband far too good for me. (But that, dear, is between ourselves. I always try to make Bobby think it's the other way.) But imagine how dreadful it would have been, if I had had my own foolish way at seventeen. And so I am glad, Elizabeth, that you have got over your penchant for this young artist, who is good-looking, and sings well, and all that; but who is--even if I knew anything about him, which I don't--quite the last man I should like you to marry."

Elizabeth's face was turned away. "I don't know," she said in a low voice, "why you think of that."

"Oh, I was only speculating on what might have been," said Mrs. Bobby, lightly. "I know," she went on after a moment, stealing a furtive glance at the girl's averted face, "I know the sort of man I should like you to marry, Elizabeth. He must be older than you, considerably older; of a serious disposition, with a strong will, stronger than yours, for you might be perhaps a little hard to manage; fond of music and fond of books; rich, and with a good position of course; and--and I should like him to be every bit as nice as Bobby, if such a thing is possible."

Elizabeth turned her white face towards her friend. "And you think," she said, in a low, stifled voice, "that I should come up to the standard of a paragon like that?"

"My dear," said Mrs. Bobby, wisely, "paragons don't marry _other_ paragons, or the world would be somewhat more dull than it is at present. A man who is very serious should marry a woman who is a trifle frivolous, and in that way they strike the happy medium."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth. "They would be more likely, I should think, to strike a--a discordancy. It would be fatiguing to try to please a man like that. One could never, do what one would, come up to his standard."

"You wouldn't have to," said Mrs. Bobby, softly, "he would think you perfect, if--he loved you."

"Do you think so?" said Elizabeth, with rather a dreary smile. "I think, for my part, that he would be harder to satisfy, he would exact all the more, because--he loved you." She sat pondering the idea for a moment, then with a careless little gesture, she seemed to dismiss the subject as a thing of small consequence. "It's much better not to try to satisfy people like that," she declared. "What a lot of time we are wasting! It must be time to dress." She got up and moved towards the door.

Mrs. Bobby followed her with her eyes. "I'll send Celeste to you," she said. "Wear your most becoming gown. Look your best, and do your hair the way I like it. I assure you, such trifles have their effect--even upon a paragon."

_Chapter XXI_

"Look my best!" Elizabeth repeated, standing before her muslin-skirted dressing-table, and staring at the haggard apparition that met her eyes. "Wear my most becoming gown, do my hair the most becoming way! It all sounds so easy. But what can bring back my color, what can take away these terrible dark rings, this horrible strained, anxious look? Any one can see, to look at me, that I've something on my mind....

"... I shall never tell him the truth--never, never. I may beat about the bush, but I shall always leave myself a loop-hole to crawl out of. And yet if I could only consult him--consult _some one_--find out what I really ought to do. But no, no, I don't dare risk it; it would be terrible to be advised--just the way I don't want. I must decide on some plan myself. But--Heaven knows what!" She stood for a while motionless, gazing helplessly into a mist of perplexities.

The little Sèvres clock on her mantel-piece roused her as it struck the hour, and she began hastily to dress. She drew the rippling waves of her hair into the fashion that Mrs. Bobby liked, she put on her favorite gown, a charming creation of white lace and chiffon, relieved by touches of pale green; she tried conscientiously to look her best, but still her cheeks were pale, there was the strained look in her eyes.

She was about ready when Mrs. Bobby's maid came to help her, bringing a box of flowers that had just that moment arrived. Celeste, a thrifty person, regarded them with some disgust. She could tell them, these gentlemen, that it was of little use to waste their money on Mademoiselle, who did not care about, sometimes hardly glanced at, the flowers which some other young lady would give her eyes to receive. Ah, well, that was the unequal way in which things in this world were arranged. Celeste disposed of the matter thus, with a philosophic French shrug of the shoulders.

But there was no counting on such a capricious person as Mademoiselle. To-night, as she glanced at the card in the box, she blushed beautifully, took out the flowers with care, and read with eager eyes the few lines that the giver had scrawled, apparently in great haste and in pencil:

"This afternoon I was unspeakably rude--even brutal. Forgive me--what right had I to take you to task for your actions? My only excuse is that I care--I can't help caring--so desperately. I send you white roses--they suit you best. You wore one that I gave you--do you remember?--but probably you don't--the first night I saw you. If you are very merciful, if you accept my repentance, wear one to-night--in token of forgiveness."

"In token of forgiveness?" Elizabeth pressed one of the exquisite, creamy-white roses against her glowing cheeks. "You wore one the first night I saw you--probably you don't remember?" Ah, yes, she remembered--but that was different. She could not wear one now. "Yet only in token of forgiveness?" With a quick, passionate gesture, she raised it to her lips, then fastened it carefully amidst the lace of her gown.

Celeste, whose presence she had forgotten, bent down discreetly, with a suppressed smile, to arrange the folds of her train. Ah, clearly, after all, there was one gentleman who did not waste his money on Mademoiselle.

"Madame wished Mademoiselle to look well to-night," she observed, after a moment. "I think Madame will be satisfied."

Mademoiselle glanced at herself again, and started as she looked. Could this brilliant young beauty, her small head proudly erect, her eyes brilliant, her cheeks aflame, be the same woman whose haggard reflection had stared back at her from the same mirror only half-an-hour before?

She did not feel like the same woman. The doubts, the fears, which had beset her then seemed mere chimeras, the fancies of a morbid brain. She felt gay, confident, strong enough to conquer even fate. Celeste was right--she looked her best. Mrs. Bobby's words rang in her ears. "Such trifles have their effect--even on a paragon." And then again--"He would think you perfect as you were if--he loved you." "No, he need not think me perfect," she murmured to her mirror, "but he must--he shall think me beautiful. And that is more to the point," she concluded, as she gathered up fan and gloves and left the room.

The opera that night was Carmen, which peculiarly suited her phase of mind. There is no other which so thoroughly embodies the spirit of recklessness, the triumph of the senses, the frank, impulsive, untrammeled enjoyment of life and of living. To be sure, there is the tragic ending--but before that, three acts of brilliant melody, glowing with color, with warm, sensuous pleasure.

Gerard was waiting in the box when they arrived. On the stage Carmen--that ideal Carmen of whom Mérimée dreamed and Bizet set to music--had just appeared upon the scene of Don Jose's misfortune, and was warbling, with bewitching abandon, the notes of the Habanera.

Gerard's face, which had an anxious look, brightened wonderfully, radiantly, as the two women entered the box. He murmured eagerly a few grateful words in Elizabeth's ear, and took the seat directly behind her, which he did not abandon, even though his predictions were justified, and Mrs. Van Antwerp's box was filled, after the first act, with men who looked anything but pleased at finding that particular place monopolized. Mrs. Bobby, however, seemed delighted to entertain them, was gracious, charming and piquante, and elicited from a stern dowager in the next box severe criticisms on the wiles of young married women, and their reprehensible manner of diverting to themselves the attention due to the young girls under their charge.

Elizabeth hardly noticed the men who entered the box. She sat with eyes fixed upon the stage, upon that intensely real music drama which she had seen many times already, but which never lost its fascination; yet acutely conscious all the while through every fibre of her being of Gerard's presence, of his watching her, of his bending over her, now and again, to murmur a word in her ear. And as for him, she had appealed to him most, perhaps, at least to a certain side of his nature, that afternoon in her pale languor; and yet he could not but feel his senses thrilled, his pulses throb, when she was so warmly, vividly, humanly beautiful as she was to-night. For the moment he was carried beyond himself, his doubts dispelled, or at least forgotten.

And yet, as the evening wore on, some subtle influence in the music or the play seemed to recall them. At the end of the second act she turned to him, the strains of the Toreador song still ringing in her ear, and felt, insensibly a sudden lack of sympathy, a cloud that seemed to have drifted between them. His brows were knit, his face moody.

"You don't like it!" she said, staring up at him with wondering, disappointed eyes.

"What, the opera?" He started as if his thoughts had been elsewhere. "No, I don't like it," he said, frankly. "It jars upon me somehow, brings up memories"--he paused. "Oh, it's some drop of Puritan blood, I suppose," he went on, impatiently, "that asserts itself in me. I can't view the thing from an artistic standpoint. I can't forget for a moment what a heartless creature the woman is. When I see her ruining men's lives, luring them on, turning from one to another--it's too realistic--there are too many women like that"--He was speaking low and bitterly, with a strange vehemence, but suddenly he broke off, with a short laugh. "Oh, it's absurd," he said, "to take a thing like that seriously."

Elizabeth did not smile. She leaned back in her chair as if she were suddenly weary. "Poor Carmen!" she said, in a low voice. "You're very hard on her." She held up her fan before her eyes, as if the light hurt them. A shadow seemed to fall upon her beauty, effacing its color and brilliance, bringing out again into strong relief the dark rings under the eyes, the lines about the mouth. She sat in silence for awhile, but suddenly she turned to him.

"I'm going to shock you, I'm afraid," she said, "but--do you know--somehow I can't help seeing the other side. What is a woman to do, if she changes against her will? Is she to abide always, inexorably, by the results of a mistake?" A note of passionate feeling thrilled her voice, she fixed her eyes anxiously, intently, upon Gerard. "There are so many questions that might arise," she went on, eagerly, as he did not answer at once. "One might, for instance, make a promise--a very solemn promise, and find out afterwards that it was--a mistake, that it would ruin one's whole life to keep it; and--and one might break it, and the other person might think himself very much injured; and yet--would you think the woman in that case so very much to blame?"

Gerard thought he understood. With the conviction came a sense of passionate relief, which yet he hesitated, with the fastidious scruples of a proud and honorable man, to grasp in its entirety.

"I--I don't think I'm competent to express an opinion," he said, in a low voice. "You should ask--some one else."

"There's no one else whom I can ask," she said quickly, and with her eyes always fixed imploringly upon him. "Tell me--what you think. What should a woman do in a case like that?"

"I--it's a difficult situation," he said, still holding under control his eager desire to advise her in the only way in which it seemed to him possible to advise her. But how could he trust his own judgment? "I"--he hesitated--"Personally," he said, "I can't imagine holding a woman to a promise that she has--repented of; but other men might--probably would feel differently."

"Yes," she said, sadly, "he--this man does."

"And you--the woman is quite sure she has made a mistake," he asked, eagerly.

"Yes, yes, quite sure," she said, quickly, "a terrible mistake."

"Then," said Gerard, and he drew a long sigh as of intense relief, "I don't think there could be two opinions on the subject. No one could advise you--this woman to ruin her life for a mistake, especially if the--the man were unworthy?" He looked at her questioningly.

"He seemed to her unworthy," she said, in a low voice.

"Then, for Heaven's sake," he asked, almost fiercely, "how can you hesitate?"

She did not speak, but turned her eyes towards the stage and again placed her fan so that it shielded them. All over the house there was the subdued rustle of people returning to their seats. The orchestra sounded the first notes of the third act, the curtain rose upon the gypsy camp. During Michaela's solo and the scene between the two men, Elizabeth still sat silent, her fan before her face. The act was well advanced before she turned to Gerard.

"Then," she said, "you would advise me to--to break my word?"

"Under the circumstances--yes," he said, steadily. "But don't," he went on quickly, and passionate vibration thrilled his voice, more unrepressed than ever before, "don't be guided by my opinion. In this particular case it is--impossible for me to judge impartially."

"Is it," she asked softly, and then added quickly, as if to avert an answer, "still, I'm glad to know your opinion. I feel sure you wouldn't say what you don't think. Thank you--thank you very much." Her tone was low and subdued, like that of a grateful child. She leaned back in her chair with a look of relief, that seemed both physical and mental. She did not speak again till near the end of the act, when Carmen reads her fortune in the cards. "I wonder," Elizabeth said then, softly, "what she sees in them."

"I had my fortune told once," she observed, turning to Gerard, as the curtain fell. "It was when I was at school, and I went with one of the girls to a famous palmist. He told me all sorts of strange, true things about the past, and about the future."--She paused.

"Well, about the future?" he asked, smiling. "One doesn't care about the past. But he predicted, no doubt, all sorts of delightful things about the future?"

"No." She stared thoughtfully before her with knit brows. "He said"--she spoke low and hesitatingly--"he said there was luck in my hand--plenty of it; I should have splendid opportunities. But--he said there was a line of misfortune, which crossed the other line and might make it utterly useless; that there was danger of some kind--he couldn't tell what, threatening me about my twenty-first year, and that, you know, is very near; he said there were strange lines--tragic, unusual,"--She stopped. "It sounds very ridiculous," but though she tried to smile, her voice trembled, "and yet--I remember it frightened me at the time, and does still--a little--when I think of it."

"But you don't surely," cried Gerard, "my dear child, you don't suppose he knew a thing about it?"

"I don't know. I believe I'm superstitious--are not you?"

"I'm afraid I am," he said, "but not about things like that. I've seen too many predictions of the kind prove false, to give them a thought."

"It _is_ foolish to worry about them," she admitted, but still she sat apparently deep in thought and played absently with her fan. At last she looked up with her most brilliant smile. "I don't know why it is," she said, "but we seem to be fated on unpleasant subjects. And yet the opera is so gay. Do let us try, for the rest of the evening, to think of pleasant things." She turned and held out her hand, smiling, to a man who entered the box. For the rest of the opera she was brilliant, animated, beautiful, as she had been at first.

"And now you are satisfied," she said, looking at Gerard with laughing eyes, as the curtain fell for the last time. "Carmen comes to a bad end. According to your principles! she deserved it."

"Ah, my principles!" he said, smiling. "I'm afraid I don't live up to them very much."

"Don't you?" She gave him a quick, searching glance, as he stood with her cloak in his hand. "I wish I could believe that," she murmured. "I should be a little less--afraid of you."

He placed the cloak about her shoulders. "It is I who am afraid of you," he whispered, bending over her, "and have been ever since I knew you."

Her eyes fell, and she fumbled nervously with the fastening of the cloak. "Ah, you were afraid of me?" she said, under her breath. "And now"--

"Oh, I've grown very brave," he murmured, as he followed her out of the box, "you can't frighten me away any longer." The jesting words lingered in her ear as they left the Opera House.

"Ah, if he knew!" she said to herself, as she sank into her corner of the carriage. "He doesn't know. And yet I told him the exact truth. It's not my fault, if he--misunderstood."

And Gerard meanwhile was telling himself that he understood it all.

"Poor child!" he murmured to himself, as he lit a cigar and sauntered slowly home. "So that was it. Of course, she thought she loved him--the first man she met, and when he turned up felt herself bound--I see it all! And she has suffered--had terrible pangs of conscience over this thing. And I who misjudged her all this time--imagined I don't know what--could I have advised her differently? Surely not. The fellow's not worthy of her. Neither am I. She won't look at me, probably. And yet--one can but try"--

_Chapter XXII_

It was mentioned generally, at various sewing-classes and other mild functions during Lent, that Julian Gerard was very attentive, all of a sudden, to Elizabeth Van Vorst. Some people, less accurate or more imaginative than the rest, went so far as to announce the engagement as an actual fact.

"And, if so, it's all Eleanor Van Antwerp's doing," Mrs. Hartington observed in private to her intimate friends. "She was determined to make the match from the beginning. I saw the way she threw the girl at his head at a dinner in the country, but I never for a moment thought she would succeed--with Julian Gerard of all men, who is so desperately afraid of being taken in."

Julian Gerard, by that time, had well-nigh forgotten that such a fear had ever disturbed him, or if he did remember it, it was to regard it, so far as Elizabeth was concerned, as profanation. Since that evening at the opera, his remorseful fancy had placed her on a pinnacle, which she found at times, it must be confessed, a little difficult to maintain. It was his misfortune and hers, that he could never view her in the right perspective, never realize that she was neither a saint nor the reverse, but merely a woman, and painfully human at that.

But since he chose to consider her a saint, she did her best to live up to the character. She kept Lent strictly that year as she had never done before, went to church morning and evening, denied herself bonbons and other luxuries, and worked with unskilled fingers but great diligence at certain oddly-constructed garments which were doled out to her and other young women every week as a Lenten penance, and incidentally for the good of the poor. If in most cases the actual penance fell to the lot of their maids, why, the poor were none the wiser, and certainly much the better clothed. But Elizabeth insisted on putting in all the painful stitches in the hard, coarse stuff herself, and looked very pretty bending over it, as Mr. Gerard thought when he came in one day and found her thus employed.

It pleased him, of course. He did not attach much importance, himself, to these things--this constant church-going, these small penances; yet, manlike, it seemed to him right and fitting that she should regard them differently. And then it was pleasant, after service, to meet her in the vestibule. How many incipient love affairs have been helped along, brought to a climax perhaps, by the convenient afternoon service, and the sauntering walks home in the lingering twilight!

To Elizabeth there was an indefinable charm in those ever-lengthening Lenten days, rung in and out to the music of church bells, and marked, as the season advanced and Easter approached, by the growing green of the grass, and the budding shoots of the trees, and the intangible feeling of spring in the air. That sense of dread, of impending misfortune, which had been for a short time almost unbearable, was lulled to sleep as by an opiate. She did not think of the past or the future, she simply drifted from day to day, and each of these was pleasanter than the last.

For one thing, she had grown hardened, indifferent almost to the constant meeting with Paul Halleck. She had kept her word and obtained for him all the invitations in her power, until he no longer needed her help. He was a great success. Mrs. Van Antwerp's informal little musicale had been only the first of a series of more elaborate ones, at which Halleck was often the chief attraction. Young girls admired him extremely. Elizabeth could hear him talking to them, just as he had once talked to her, about Swinburne and Rossetti and the last word in Art, and she saw that, like herself, they thought him very brilliant. It was an admiration which had tangible results, since it led to an interest in music, and a desire to take singing-lessons from the talented young barytone. Before long, he took a studio in Carnegie, near D'Hauteville's, and furnished it luxuriously, on the strength of his new prosperity. He was very much the fashion and absorbed in his success, and seldom had the time, or perhaps the inclination, to encounter Elizabeth's unflattering indifference. So for the most part he left her alone, to her intense relief.

One incident, a chance word, in a retrospect of that time, afterwards stood out in Elizabeth's mind, though at the moment it seemed to make but a slight impression.

It was one Sunday afternoon when a number of people, Paul Halleck among them, had dropped in to afternoon tea, and the conversation happened to turn upon palmistry. Elizabeth did not proffer her own experience. She listened silently to what the others said on the subject.

"I can't say I have implicit faith in it," observed Mrs. Bobby. "I was told by a fortune-teller that I should marry a dark man, who would beat me and treat me horribly; and as you see, I've married a fair man--who treats me pretty well on the whole."

Bobby, who was leaning against the mantel-piece his tea-cup in his hand, smiled serenely.

"Don't boast too soon, Eleanor," he said, lazily, "there's no knowing what brutal tendencies I may develop yet."

Mrs. Hartington, who was seated near him on a low chair, looked up into his face with a sympathetic smile. "Are you one of those long-suffering husbands who turn at last, Mr. Van Antwerp?" she asked, sweetly. "It would be good discipline, I think, for Eleanor not to have her own way _always_."

Bobby looked down at her coolly for a moment with his calm blue eyes. "No doubt, it would be good discipline for all of us, Mrs. Hartington," he said, in his pleasant, clear-cut tones, "but as my wife's way and mine are generally the same, I'm afraid I'm not likely to inflict it."

Mrs. Hartington looked down with an injured air, adding another to her list of grievances against her dear friend and neighbor, Eleanor Van Antwerp.

"I should never go to a common fortune-teller, my dear," she observed in a louder tone, for the benefit of the assembled company. "Yours was probably just an ignorant person. But I did go to ----, who, you know, charges a small fortune, and he told me the most extraordinary things. I have perfect confidence in him; every one I know thinks him quite infallible."

"Do they?" said Paul Halleck, suddenly turning from the piano. He shrugged his shoulders. "I devoutly hope you are mistaken," he said. "---- read my hand in Paris, and told me some very unpleasant things; among others that I was probably destined to a violent death. This year of my life, by the way--the twenty-seventh--was to be my fatal year."

He spoke half laughingly, but the words produced an effect. There was a general exclamation of horror, and Elizabeth, who was pouring tea, dropped the cup that she held in her hand. Julian Gerard, who was standing behind her, bent down to recover the fragments.

"It's odd," he said, as he placed them absently on the table, "his year of danger and yours seem to correspond." The words rose involuntarily to his lips, and an instant later he wished them unspoken.

She flushed a little, then grew pale. "Oh, I'm sorry you remembered that nonsense," she said. "I don't really believe in these things." But her hand trembled as she poured out the tea, glancing furtively at Halleck as she did so.

He was enjoying the sensation that his announcement had created. "Yes," he was saying, "if I live to be a year older, I am safe; but till then--Heaven knows what danger threatens me!" He shrugged his shoulders with a light laugh. The prediction did not seem to trouble him greatly. Elizabeth wondered if he had not invented it, for the sake of the effect. And then, involuntarily, the thought crossed her mind--what if it were really true, and the prediction were fulfilled? Such things had been known to happen--there might be something in it.... Quick as lightning the thought flashed through her mind of all that his death might mean to her--the merciful release, the solution of all difficulties.... Just for a moment the idea lingered, while the others talked, and she shuddered.

"You are quite pale," said Gerard, fixing his eyes upon her. He was still sensitive to any sign of feeling which Halleck seemed to arouse in her. "I believe you are really superstitious. These things seem to frighten you."

"Am I superstitious?" She looked up at him dreamily. "Perhaps I am. It would be nice, I think, if there were something in it, if one could tell what is going to happen. One could act accordingly. I should like, for instance"--her voice sank--"I should like to look into the future one year, and see what fate has in store for me."

"If I had any control over fate"--Gerard crushed back the impetuous words that followed. Not yet--the moment was not propitious. Besides, he was not sure of her. There was still at times something in her manner that was baffling, uncertain.--And just then Paul Halleck sauntered up and bent over her in that intimate manner which still annoyed Gerard's fastidious taste, even though he had long since convinced himself that he had no cause to fear him as a rival.

"Did you hear ----'s terrible prediction, Miss Van Vorst?" Paul asked, smiling, "and aren't you sorry for my untimely fate?"

_Chapter XXIII_

"Why will you never play for me?"

Gerard stood leaning on the piano, his eyes half smiling, yet with a look of mastery, fixed upon Elizabeth. She was sitting in a low chair by the fire, the book on her lap which she had been reading when he came in. It was a stormy March afternoon, and the dusk was closing in prematurely. The room was already in shadow, except where the firelight formed a little circle of radiance, illumining Elizabeth's face and hair. Seated thus in the full glow of light, with the shadows in the foreground, all the little details of her appearance--the broad sweep of rippling hair on her forehead, the soft laces at her throat, the pale, dull green of her gown, even to the buckle on her slipper, and the one white rose in her belt--each trifling part of the harmonious whole, impressed itself on his memory, haunting him afterwards with a keen sense of pain.

She looked up at him now from under her long lashes, with the old light in her eyes, half defiant, half tantalizing--that spirit of revolt which still glanced forth at times to baffle and disturb him.

"I don't want to play this afternoon. I don't--feel in the mood."

"You are never in the mood when I ask you." Silence. "Confess at once," said Gerard, with some heat--"for it would really be quite as civil--that you don't wish to play for me."

Another swift upward glance. "Perhaps I don't"--demurely.--"You're too severe a critic."

"You know," said Gerard, "that that is not the reason."

Silence again. "Will you tell me the reason?" he asked.

She answered him this time with a flash of defiance. "I don't know," she said, "what right you have to demand it. But if you insist upon it, I'll tell you. You--you don't like my playing, and--it's very absurd, of course, but I never can play for people who don't."

"I--don't like your playing?" He shielded his eyes for a moment, as if from the glare of the fire. When he spoke again his tone was peremptory. "You foolish child," he said, "come and play for me, and I'll tell you, afterwards, what I think of it."

She looked up at him--startled, rebellious, met his eyes for a moment, then rose, pouting, like the child that he called her, constrained against her will, put down her book, and moved slowly toward the piano. "You are so terribly determined," she complained.

"And you are so terribly perverse! But when I want a thing very much, I can be determined, as you say. Play me the Fire-music," he went on, "and--and 'Tristan and Isolde,' as you did--do you remember?--the first night I met you."

She paused, with her hands on the keys. "I--I thought,"--she began, and then broke off suddenly, and began to play as he bade her--at first faltering, uncertainly, with a strange hesitation; then more firmly, as the keys responded with the old readiness to her touch, and she lost herself in the music. Outside the storm increased, the rain beat against the windows, the room grew dark, and once Elizabeth paused--she could hardly see the keys. But Gerard murmured, "Ah, the love-music!" and she played on. All the terrible distress, the maddening perplexity, of the last few months seemed to express themselves, in spite of herself, in those surging, strenuous chords; all the hope, too, and the wild unreasoning happiness. She was startled, almost as if she were telling the whole story in language so eloquent that he must surely understand it without further words. But Gerard, as was natural, read into it only his own feelings. He stood leaning on the piano, his hand shielding his eyes, which were fixed intently upon her.--It was so dark now that he could hardly see her face, only the shimmer of her hair standing out against the dusk, the movement of her white hands on the keys.

She faltered at last, struck a false chord, and broke off in the very midst of the love-music. "I--I can't see," she murmured, and let her hands fall in her lap.

"Do you remember," Gerard said, "that first night you played? I had talked to you at dinner, you know, you--you repelled me a little. I thought--I am telling you the bare truth, you see--you were a little cynical, a little hard--it seemed a pity when you were so"--he paused for a moment and his voice softened as he lingered over the word--"so beautiful. I couldn't understand you. I thought--I wouldn't try. It wasn't worth while--most things were not. And then--you played"--He paused again for a moment. "You know what most girls' playing is like. Yours has a soul, a fire--I don't know where you get it. It moved me, set me thinking, as no other woman's playing has done for years."

He paused again. Elizabeth looked up quickly. "I thought," she murmured, "that you didn't like my playing, that you were bored"--

"Ah, you thought," he said, "that when a man feels very much, he can make pretty speeches? I can't, at least. Oh, I've no doubt"--he made a resigned gesture--"I've no doubt that I behaved like a brute. Women have told me that I generally do. I said to myself--that girl is dangerous, she could make a man fall in love with her--even against his will. I was in love once--but that's another story. I never wanted to repeat the experiment. And so, as you know, I avoided you; like a fool, I used to go and look at your picture, and then--keep away from you, evening after evening. I struggled--with all the strength I have--I struggled not to love you. And then, as you know"--he looked her straight in the eyes--"as you have known well these last few weeks,--I failed."

There was silence for a moment. She was very white, her hands were tightly clasped in her lap. "I"--she gave a little shuddering sigh--"it would have been better if you hadn't."

"Elizabeth!" She felt rather than saw how his face changed. "Elizabeth," he said, hoarsely, "do you mean that? Then"--as she sat silent--"you don't love me?"

Oh, for the strength to answer "No," and end this scene--this useless, perplexing scene, which she should have been prepared for, which yet seemed to have come upon her unawares! One firm, courageous "No," and a man like Gerard would not ask her twice. Instead, a compromise, useless, feeble, hovered on her lips. "I--shouldn't make you happy," she faltered out, despising her own weakness.

"Is that all?" He laughed out loud in sheer relief. "My darling,"--the triumphant tenderness in his voice was hard to bear--"don't you think that I can judge of that?"

She was silent, and he drew nearer to her and took her hands in his. "You needn't be afraid," he said. "I shall worship the ground you tread upon, if--if you will only consent. You will, Elizabeth, won't you?" She had not known before that his voice held tones so caressingly gentle.

For a moment she sat motionless, passive beneath his touch, and then suddenly: "I can't," she broke out, hoarsely, drew her hands away from him, and going over to the mantel-piece, she leaned her arms upon it and hid her face.

When he spoke again, after a long silence, his voice was entirely changed. "There is something here I don't understand," he said, coldly. "One moment you seemed to yield, and the next"----He made a step towards her. "Tell me the truth," he entreated, "don't spare my feelings. It's a false kindness. You love someone else--is that it?--then tell me so, and I won't reproach you--or--trouble you again."

She turned her face towards him. It was white, quivering with emotion; but she answered firmly: "No, you are entirely wrong. There is--no one else."

"Not Halleck?" he asked, watching her intently, his face dark with the old distrust.

She made a quick, involuntary gesture of repulsion. "Not he--not he, of all people," she said, bitterly.

He still eyed her doubtfully, unsatisfied. "You are sure?" he insisted. "You are telling me the whole truth? Don't deceive me--now, Elizabeth; I could forgive anything but that."

How many chances were given to Elizabeth, only to be thrown away! She answered him steadily; "I'm not deceiving you. I tell you frankly that when I first met Paul Halleck I thought I cared for him--he was the first man I had ever known; but now he is nothing to me, and I have told him so--I think I almost dislike him." There was no mistaking the accent of sincerity in her voice. It was fortunate for Elizabeth, since she was no adept in lying, that the truth and the falsehood were in this case so nearly identical.

Gerard was satisfied.

"Then what," he urged, eagerly--"if there is no one else--what stands between us?"

She hesitated. There were voices in the hall, some visitors requesting admission, the butler parleying a little--the discreet, intelligent butler, who had so considerately refrained, for the last quarter of an hour, from coming in to light the gas.

Gerard was too absorbed to notice anything outside of the cause he was pleading. "Tell me," he repeated, his eyes fixed intently upon her face, "what stands between us?"

She put out her hand with a deprecating gesture. That threatening interruption seemed to give her courage. She was quite herself again. "Can't a woman hesitate for no definite reason?" she asked. "You, yourself--didn't you hesitate--for reasons that I must confess seem to me rather vague and--not very complimentary."

The argument struck home. He changed color. "Don't cast that up against me, Elizabeth," he pleaded. "It's not worthy of you. I told you the plain truth, badly as it sounds, because it seemed due to you--I wanted you to know the worst. And you must remember that I had no reason to suppose that you cared, or would ever care, anything about me. It was only I who suffered when I kept away from you. But you--now that you know how--how madly I love you--don't trifle with me--be generous--give me a definite answer?"

"But I--I can't," she returned, in her old wilful way, "just on the spur of the moment, like this. I don't want to marry any one--not just now, at least. I--I like my freedom"----

The words died away on her lips. She broke off suddenly, turning very pale, as the importunate visitor, whom the butler had vainly endeavored to show into another room, drew aside the portière and entered brusquely. It was Paul Halleck. He had a strangely excited look, which increased as he surveyed the two people on the hearth-rug, whom he had evidently interrupted at a critical moment.

To one of them, at least, his entrance was most unwelcome. Not all of Gerard's carefully cultivated self-control could avail to hide his annoyance; he uttered under his breath an angry exclamation, and going over to the piano, stood moodily turning over sheets of music. Elizabeth, to whom Paul's appearance was for some reasons still more disconcerting, showed greater self-possession. She held out her hand coldly, but composedly, with a few mechanical words, to which he barely responded. There was an embarrassing pause, broken by the butler, who made his belated, majestic entry, lighted the chandeliers and drew the curtains. The effect of the illumination was startling, as it threw into strong relief the look of agitation on each of their faces.

"It--it's storming still, isn't it?" said Elizabeth, and then remembered that she had asked the same question already. Gerard started up and reflecting gloomily that it was of no use to try to "stay that fellow out," he took his leave. Paul and Elizabeth were left alone.

His presence seemed a matter of absolute indifference to Elizabeth, who sank again into the low chair by the fire, and picking up the book she had laid down, turned over its pages with an air of icy unconcern. He came and stood beside her, leaning against the mantel-piece, a look of brutality on his handsome face.

"So," he said. "I've driven Gerard away. A case of 'two is company,' evidently."

Her expression did not change. "Oh, he had been here some time," she said, coldly. "No doubt he meant to leave in any case."

"Oh, no doubt." He sneered angrily. "Do you know what I heard to-day?" he went on. "I heard that you were engaged to him."

She flushed a little. "Did you?" she said, and then, quietly: "But that means nothing, you know."

"But you are together all the time. I can't come to the house without meeting him. You encourage him, accept his flowers, lead him on.--Pray, how long is this sort of thing going to last?"

They eyed each other for a moment, he flushed with anger, she cold and hard. "You have no right," she said, icily, "to ask an account of my actions."

"No right!" he repeated, as if thunder-struck. "I should like to know who has a better."

"No right that I acknowledge, at least," she amended her first sentence.

He paced up and down the room, struggling for self-control. "Whether you acknowledge it or not, is immaterial," he said, stopping suddenly in front of her. "I claim it, and that is enough. You must give up this infernal flirtation with Gerard, or"----

"Or what?" she insisted haughtily, as he paused.

"I shall go to Gerard at once and tell him the truth," he concluded, defiantly.

Dead silence. The book she held fell from Elizabeth's nerveless hand. The steady ticking of the clock in the stillness seemed to beat an accompaniment to these words: "Don't deceive me--now, Elizabeth; I could forgive anything but that."

"Paul?" Her voice was no longer icy, but soft, with caressing tones. "Paul, you wouldn't be so unkind?"

"What difference does it make to you?" he said, eyeing her keenly, "whether I tell Gerard or not? You can't marry him, you know--it's impossible."

"I don't want to marry him," she said, gathering all her powers of resistance, "but--he's a friend of mine. I don't want him to be told things about me by--an outsider."

"Ah, you call me that!" he said, his anger roused again. "Well, outsider or not, I hold the cards. I shall go to Gerard at once and tell him that we were married--at Cranston, last July. If he doubts my assertion, the record is there, and it won't be very hard for him to verify it."

Silence again. Elizabeth sat musing, her brows knit, her under lip slightly thrust out, in a fashion that seemed to express all the obstinate resolve of her nature. "I will do as you wish, if you will keep silent."

"Will you write a note to Gerard," Paul demanded, "sending him away?"

"No," she said, sullenly. "I won't do that."

"Then there is nothing else you can do," he declared.

Elizabeth mused again. "I would give--money," she said. The last word was spoken very low.

He started and flushed. "Do you want to bribe me?" he asked, angrily.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I am quite aware that you will not do anything for nothing," she said.

Paul fell again to pacing up and down the room. His face showed traces of a mental struggle. Elizabeth watched him from the corners of her eyes; she saw that her offer tempted him more than she had dared to hope.

He stopped at last in front of her. "How much can you spare?" he asked, in a voice in which a certain bravado strove to gain the mastery over inward uneasiness and shame. "The truth is, I am most confoundedly hard up just now, what with furnishing the studio and everything, and if you could help me a little, it would be very convenient. I can pay you back later with interest a hundred times."

"I have told you," she said, coldly, "what payment I want."

He shrugged his shoulders, with an attempt at nonchalance. "Oh, as to that, I never really intended to tell Gerard." Elizabeth's lip curled.

"How much money do you want?" she asked, curtly. "A hundred? Two hundred?" Her ideas on such matters were vague. Paul's face fell.

"I should need five hundred at least, if--if it is to be of any use," he said, gloomily.

It was more than she expected, but she showed no signs of flinching. "Five hundred, then," she said, rising as if to conclude the interview. "Will it do, if I let you have it to-morrow?"

"Perfectly. Elizabeth, you are an angel. I can't thank you enough." He advanced towards her with outstretched arms, but with a gesture of repulsion she waved him aside.

"Don't thank me," she said, coldly. "This is a bargain for our mutual advantage. I will fulfil my share of it if you remember yours. And now, as we have nothing more to discuss, I think I will ask you to excuse me." She made him a stately inclination, picked up her book and sailed from the room in undiminished dignity and apparent unconcern.

But when she was alone and had locked herself into her room to think over her misery, then, indeed, the situation stared her in the face in its true colors. Her own words, "I like my freedom," rang mockingly in her ears. She was not free, but a slave; slave of a man who had her in his power, and would use it, as time went on, more and more unscrupulously. This time it was five hundred that he demanded; next time it would be a thousand. What could she do? Somehow or another, he must be satisfied. Anything was better, any sacrifice, any humiliation, than to allow him to go to Gerard with that bare statement of facts, "We were married at Cranston, last July!" The truth, devoid of any of the softening evasions by which she cloaked it to her own mind; the redeeming circumstances which excused, if they did not justify, her silence.

Her bitterest enemy must admit that the position was a hard one. A contract entered into hastily by a thoughtless girl, on the impulse of the moment; a quarter of an hour in an empty church one summer day; a few words spoken before a sleepy old clergyman and indifferent witnesses--could such things as these have power to ruin one's whole life? No, no--her heart cried out wildly to the contrary. The whole episode seemed, in the retrospect, so dream-like. It was easy to imagine that it had never happened. And yet, had she the courage to ignore it?... And, even if she had, there was always Paul to remind her of it, who would not give her up without a terrible struggle, that must, without fail, come to Gerard's ears.