Chapter VI: Part 6

"Who _are_ you?" she asked, with that same little hint of friendly curiosity in her brown eyes;--"I'm Helen Davis, Stephanie's chum. You seem to know a good deal about her."

"I'm James Cleland," he said quietly, "--her brother."

At that the girl's brown eyes flew wide open:

"Good Heavens!" she said; "did Steve expect you? She never said a word to me! I thought you were a fixture in Europe!"

He sat biting the end of his cigarette, not looking at her:

"She didn't expect me," he said, flinging the half-burned cigarette into the silver slop-dish of the tea service. "I didn't notify her that I was coming."

Helen Davis dropped one elbow on the modelling table, rested her rounded chin in her palm, and bent her eyes on Cleland. Smoke from the cigarette between her fingers mounted in a straight, thin band to the ceiling.

"So you are Steve's Jim," she mused aloud. "I recognize you now, from your photographs, only you're older and thinner--and you wear a moustache.... You've been away a long while, haven't you?"

"Too long," he said, casting a sombre look at her.

"Oh, do you feel that way? How odd it will seem to you to see Steve again. She's such a darling! Quite wonderful, Mr. Cleland. The artists' colony in New York raves over her."

"Does it?" he said drily.

"Everybody does. She's so amusing, so clever, so full of talent and animation--like a beautiful and mischievous thoroughbred on tip-toes with vitality and the sheer joy of living. She never is in low spirits or depressed. That's what fascinates everybody--her gaiety and energy and high spirits. I knew her in college and she wasn't quite that way then. Perhaps because she hated college. But she could be a perfect little devil if she wanted to. She can be that still."

Cleland nodded almost absently; his preoccupied gaze travelled over the disordered studio and concentrated scowlingly on the yellow cat. He kept twisting the head of his walking stick between his hands and staring at the animal in silence while Helen Davis watched him. Presently, and without any excuse, she walked slowly away and vanished into some inner room. When she returned, she had discarded her working smock, and her smooth hands were slightly rosy from a recent toilet.

"I'm going to give you some tea," she said, striking a match and lighting the lamp under the kettle at his elbow.

"Thanks, no," he said with an effort.

"Yes, you shall have some," she insisted, smiling in her gay little friendly way. "Come, Mr. Cleland, you are man of the world enough to waive formality. I'm going to sit here and make tea and talk to you. Look at me! Wouldn't you like to be friends with me? Most men would."

He looked up, and his slightly drawn features relaxed.

"Yes," he said with a smile, "of course I would."

"That's very human of you," she laughed. "Shall we talk about Steve? What _did_ you think of that cablegram? Did you ever hear of such a crazy thing?"

He flushed with anger but said nothing. The girl looked at him intently over the steaming kettle, then went on measuring out tea.

"Shall I tell you about it, or would you rather that Steve told you?" she asked carelessly, busy with her preparations.

"She is actually married to--Grismer--then?"

"Well--I suppose so. You know him, of course."

"Yes."

"He _is_ fascinating--in that unusual way of his--poor fellow. Women like him better than men do. One meets him everywhere in artistic circles; but do you know, Mr. Cleland, I've always seemed to be conscious of a curious sort of latent hostility to Oswald Grismer, even among people he frequents--among men, particularly. However, he has no intimates."

"If they are actually married," he said with an effort, "why does Stephanie live here with you?"

"Oh, that was the ridiculous understanding. I myself don't know why she married him. The whole affair was a crazy, feather-brained performance----" She poured his tea and offered him a sugar biscuit, which he declined.

"You see," she continued, curling up into the depths of her rickety velvet arm-chair and taking her cup and a heap of sugar biscuits into her lap, "Oswald Grismer has been Steve's shadow--at her heels always--and I know well enough that Stephanie was not insensible to the curious fascination of the man. You know how devotion impresses a girl--and he _is_ clever and good looking.

"And that was all very well, and I don't think it would have amounted to anything serious as long as Oswald was the amusing, good-looking, lazy and rich amateur of sculpture, with plenty of leisure to saunter through life and be charmingly attentive, and play with his profession when the whim suited him."

She sipped her tea and looked at Cleland meditatively.

"Did you know he'd lost all his money?"

"No," said Cleland.

"Oh, yes. He lost it a year ago. He has scarcely anything, I believe. He had a beautiful studio and apartment, wonderful treasures of antique furniture; he had about everything a rich young man fancies. It all went."

"What was the matter?"

"Nobody knows. He took a horrid little stable studio in Bleecker Street, and he lives there. And _that's_ why Steve did that crazy, impulsive thing, I suppose."

"You mean she was sorry for him?"

"I _think_ it must have been that--and the general fascination he had for her--and his persistency and devotion. Really, I don't know, myself, how she came to do it. She did it on one of her ill-considered, generous, headlong impulses. Ask her. All she ever told me was that she had married Oswald and didn't know how it was going to turn out, but had decided to keep her own name for the present and continue to live with me."

"Do they see each other--much?" he asked.

"Oh, they encounter each other here and there as usual. He drops in here every day."

"Does she go--there?"

"I don't know," said the girl gravely.

He had set aside his tea, untasted. She, still curled up in her arm-chair, ate and drank with a delightfully healthy appetite.

"Would you prefer a highball?" she enquired. "I could fix you one."

"No, thank you." He rose and began to walk nervously about the studio.

Her perplexed, brown eyes followed him. It was clear that she could not make him out.

Natural chagrin at a clandestine marriage might account for his manner. Probably it was that, because Stephanie could not have meant anything more personal and serious to him, or he could not have remained away so long.

He stopped abruptly in his aimless promenade and turned to Helen:

"Am I in the way?" he asked.

"My dear Mr. Cleland," she said, "we are a perfectly informal community. If you were in the way I'd say so. Also, I have a bed-room where I can retire when Steve comes in. Or you and she can go into her room to talk things over." She lighted another cigarette, rose, strolled over to the wax horse, with a friendly smile at him.

"I was just making a sketch," she said. "I've a jolly commission--two bronze horses for the Hispano-Moresque Museum. The Cid is on one, Saladin on the other. I was just fussing with an idea when you rang."

He came and stood beside her, looking at the sketch.

"I've a fine, glass-roofed courtyard in the rear of the studio for my animal models--horses and dogs and any beast I require," she explained. "This sort of thing comes first, of course. I think I'll get Oswald to pose for the Cid."

She stood contemplating her sketch, the cigarette balanced between her fingers; then, of a sudden, she turned swiftly around to confront him.

"Mr. Cleland, it _is_ a dreadful and foolish and irrational thing that Steve has done, and I know you are justly angry. But--she is a darling in spite of being a feather-head sometimes. You _will_ forgive her, won't you?"

"Of course. After all, it is her business."

Helen sighed:

"You _are_ angry. But please don't lose interest in her. She's so loyal to you. She adores you, Mr. Cleland----"

A key rattled in the lock; the door swung open; into the dusky studio stepped a slender figure, charmingly buoyant and graceful in the fading light.

"Helen, they're to send our costumes in an hour. They are the most fascinating things----"

Stephanie's voice ceased abruptly. There was a silence.

"Who is--_that_?" she asked unsteadily.

Helen turned and went quietly away toward her bed-room. Stephanie stood as though frozen, then reached forward and pressed the electric button with a gloved finger that trembled.

"Jim!" she whispered.

She stole forward, nearer, close to him, still incredulous, her grey eyes wide with excitement; then, with a little sobbing cry she threw both arms around his neck.

She had laughed and cried there in his arms; her lovely head and disordered hair witnessed the passionate ardour of her welcome to this man who now sat beside her in her bed-room, her hands clasped in his, and all her young soul's adoration in her splendid eyes.

"Oh," she whispered again and again, "--Oh, to have you back, Jim. That is too heavenly to believe. You dear, dear boy--so good looking--and a little older and graver----" She nestled close to him, laying her cheek against his.

She murmured:

"It seems too delicious to endure. You do love me, don't you, Jim? We haven't anybody else in the world except each other, you know. Isn't it good--good to have each other again! It's been like a dream, your absence. You gradually became unreal--a dear, beloved memory. Somehow, I didn't think you'd ever come back. Are you happy to be with me?"

"Happier than you know, Steve----" His voice trembled oddly and he drew her into his arms: "Good God," he said under his breath, "--I must have been mad to leave you to your own devices so long! I ought to be shot!"

"What do you mean, Jim?"

"You know. Oh, Steve, Steve, I can't understand--I simply can not understand."

After a silence she lifted her head and rested her lips softly against his cheek.

"Do you mean--my marrying Oswald?" she asked.

"Yes. Why did you do such a thing?"

She bent her head, considering the question for a while in silence. Then she said calmly:

"There's one reason why I did it that I can't tell you. I promised him not to. Another reason was that he was very much in love with me. I don't know exactly what it is that I feel for him--but he does fascinate me. He always did, somehow. Even as a boy----"

"You didn't know him as a boy!"

"No. But I saw him once. And I realize now that I was even then vaguely conscious of an odd interest in him. And that time at Cambridge, too. He had that same, indefinable attraction for me----"

"You _are_ in love with him then!"

"I don't know. Jim, I don't think it is love. I don't think I know what love really is. So, knowing this, but being grateful to him, and deeply sorry----"

"Why?"

"I can't tell you why. Perhaps I'll tell you sometime. But I was very grateful and sorry and--and more or less moved--fascinated. It's funny; there are things I don't like about Oswald, and still I can't keep away from him.... Well, so everything seemed to combine to make me try it----"

"Try what?"

"Marrying him."

"What do you mean by 'trying it?'"

"Why, it's a trial marriage----"

"Good God!" he said. "What do you mean?"

"I mean it's a trial marriage," she repeated coolly.

"You mean there was no--no ceremony?" he stammered.

"There wasn't any ceremony. We don't believe in it. We just said to each other that we'd marry----"

"You mean you've--you've _lived_ with that man on such terms of understanding?" he demanded, white with rage.

"I don't live with him. I live here with Helen," she said, perplexed. "All I would consent to was a trial marriage to see how it went for a year or two----"

"Do you mean that what you've done is legal?"

"Oh, yes, it's legal," she said seriously. "I've found that out."

"And--you know wh-what I mean," he said, stammering in his anger; "Was that sufficient for you? Do you want me to speak plainer, Steve? I mean, have you--lived with him?"

She understood and dropped her reddening cheek on his shoulder.

"_Have_ you?" he repeated harshly.

"No.... I thought you understood. It is only a trial marriage; I've tried to explain that--make it clear----"

"What loose-minded, unconventional Bohemians call a 'trial marriage,'" he said, with brutal directness, "is an agreement between a pair of fools to live as man and wife for a while with an understanding that a formal ceremony shall ultimately confirm the irregularity if they find themselves suited to each other. Is that what you've done?"

"No."

He drew a deep, trembling breath of relief, took her in his arms and held her close.

"My little Steve," he whispered, "--my own little Steve! What sort of trap is this he's led you into?"

"No trap. I _wanted_ to try it."

"You _wished_ it?"

"I was quite willing to try. After a year or two, I'll know whether I shall ever care to live with him."

"After a year or two!"

"Yes. That was the understanding. And then, if I didn't wish to live with him, we can be very quietly divorced. It _was_ a crazy thing to do. But there wasn't any real risk. Besides----" She hesitated.

"Go on," he said.

"No, I can't. If I don't fall in love with him, I certainly shall never live with him. So," she added calmly, "there'll be no children to complicate the parting. You see I had some sense, Jim."

She lifted her head from his shoulder and smiled at him:

"It was just an escapade of sorts," she explained, more cheerfully. "It really doesn't mean anything yet, and I fly around and have a wonderful time, and maybe I'll take up sculpture with Helen, and maybe I'll try the stage. Anyway----" she pressed closer to him with a happy sigh, "I've got _you_ back, haven't I? So what do we care whether I'm his wife or not?"

He said, holding her closely embraced:

"Suppose some other man should fall in love with you, Steve?"

"Oh!" she laughed. "Plenty do. Or say they do. I'm nice to them, and they get along very well.... Your moustache is becoming to you, Jim." She touched it curiously, with one tentative finger.

"But suppose _you_ should return another man's love some day?"

"I haven't ever!" she said, laughing back into his eyes.

"No, but suppose you did? And found yourself tied legally by a fool agreement to Oswald Grismer?"

"Oh. I never considered that."

"Consider it, now!"

"It isn't likely to happen----"

"Consider it, all the same."

"Well--but I've never been in love. But if it happened--well--that _would_ be a jolly mess, wouldn't it?"

"I should think so! What would you do about it?"

"There wouldn't be anything to do except to wait until my two years of trial marriage was up," she said thoughtfully.

"You could divorce him before that."

"Oh, no. I promised to give him two years."

"To sit saddled with this ridiculous burden for two years?"

"Yes, I promised."

"Oh, Steve! Steve! What a muddle you have made of things! What good does it do you or him to have this chain between you? You've lost your liberty. You're a legal wife without being one. You've put shackles on yourself for God knows what whim or caprice."

"But, Jim," she said, bewildered, "I _expect_ to be his wife, ultimately."

"What?"

"Of course. I wasn't absolutely sure that I could fall in love with him, that was all. I have very little doubt that I shall. I like to be with him: I am never bored when he is with me; our tastes are similar; our beliefs are unconventional. We suit each other admirably. It wasn't such a rash thing to do. You see, it is perfectly safe every way."

For a long while he sat beside her in silence. She had slipped out of his arms and now sat with one hand lying across his, watching the enigmatic expressions which flitted over his rather sombre and flushed features.

Finally he looked up:

"Steve?"

"Yes?"

"Suppose _I_ fell in love with--you?"

"Oh, Jim!" She began to laugh, then the mirth faded in her grey eyes, and her lips grew quiet and rather grave.

"_You?_" she said, half to herself.

"Do you remember some letters I once wrote you?"

"Yes."

"You wrote asking if I meant them to be love letters."

"Yes. You answered very vaguely. I think I frightened you," she said, laughing.

"They _were_ love letters," he said. "I didn't happen to know it; that is all. I _was_ in love with you then. I didn't realize it; you did not believe it. But now I know it was so."

"How _could_ you have been in love with me?" she inquired, astonished.

"You asked me that in your letters. I thought it over and I didn't see how I could be, either. I wasn't much more than a boy. Boys drift with the prevailing tide. The tide set away from home and from you.... Yet, I was in love with you once, Steve."

She bent her head and looked down gravely at her slender hand, which lay across his.

"That was very dear of you," she murmured.

After a silence:

"And--you?" he asked.

"Do you mean, was I ever in love with you?"

"Yes."

"I--don't--know. I loved your letters. There didn't seem to be any room in my heart for more affection than it held for you. I adored you. I do now. Perhaps, if you had come back----"

"I wish I had!"

"Do you?" She lifted her eyes to him curiously. "You know, Jim, I must be honest with you. I never did love anybody.... But, if you had come home--and if you had told me that you cared for me--that way----"

"Yes."

"Well, I was just a girl. You had my affections. I could have been taught very easily, I think--to care--differently----"

"And--now?"

"What?"

"Is it too late to teach you, Steve?"

"Why, yes. Isn't it?"

"Why?"

"I'm married."

"It's a flimsy, miserable business!" he began angrily, but she flushed and checked him with a hand against his lips.

"Besides--I do care for Oswald--very deeply," she said. "Don't say painful things to me.... Don't be sulky, Jim, dear. This is disconcerting me dreadfully. We mustn't make anything tragic out of it--anything unhappy. I'm so contented to have you back that I can't think of anything else.... Don't let's bother about love or anything else! What you and I feel for each other is more wonderful than love. Isn't it? Oh, Jim, I _do_ adore you. We'll be with each other now a lot, won't we? You'll take a studio in this district, and I'll fly in at all hours to see you, and you'll come in to see me and we'll do things together--everything--theatres, dances, pictures, everything! And you will like Oswald, won't you? He's really so nice, poor boy!"

"All right," he muttered.

They rose; he took both her hands into his and looked intently into her grey eyes:

"I won't spoil life for you," he said. "I'll be near you, now. The old intimacy must be strengthened. I've failed wretchedly in my responsibilities; I'll try to make up for my selfishness----"

"Oh, Jim! I don't think that way----"

"You are too generous. You are too loyal. You are quite the most charming woman I ever knew, Steve--the sweetest, the most adorable. I've been a fool--blind and stupid."

"You mustn't say such ridiculous things! But it is dear of you to find me attractive! It really thrills me, Jim. I'm about the happiest girl in New York, I think! Tell me, do you like Helen?"

"Yes, she's nice. Where are you dining, Steve? Could you----"

"Oh, dear! Helen and I are dining out! It's a party. We all go to the ball. But, Jim--do get a costume of some sort and come to the Caricaturists' Ball! Will you? Helen and I are going. It's the Ball of the Gods--the last costume ball of the season, and it is sure to be amusing. Will you come?"

He didn't seem to think he could, but she insisted so eagerly and promised to have an invitation at his hotel for him by nine o'clock, that he laughed and said he'd go.

"Everybody artistic will be there," she explained, delighted. "You'll meet a lot of men you know. And the pageant will be wonderful. I shall be in it. So will Helen. Then, after the pageant, we'll find each other--you and I!----" She sighed: "I am too happy, Jim. I don't want to arouse the anger of the gods."

She linked her arm in his and entered the studio.

"Helen!" she called. "Jim is coming to the dance! Isn't it delightful?"

"It is, indeed," said Helen, opening her door a little and looking through the crack. "You'd better tell him what you're wearing, because he will never know you."

"Oh, yes, indeed! Helen and I are going as a pair of Burmese idols--just gold all over--you know----?"

She took the stiff attitude of the wonderful Burmese idol, and threw back her slender hands--"This sort of thing, Jim? Tiny gold bells on our ankles and that wonderful golden filigree head dress."

She was in wonderful spirits; she caught his arm and hand and persuaded him into a two-step, humming the air. "You dance nicely, Jim. You can have me whenever you like----"

Helen called through the door:

"You're quite mad, Steve! You've scarcely time to dress."

"Oh, I must run!" she cried, turned to Cleland, audaciously, offered her lips, almost defiantly.

"We're quite safe, Jim, if we can do _this_ so innocently." She laughed. "You adorable boy! Oh, Jim, you're mine now, and I'll never let you go away again!"

As he went out, he met Grismer, face to face. The blood leaped hotly in his cheeks; Grismer's golden eyes opened in astonishment:

"Cleland! By all the gods!" he said, offering his hand.

Cleland took it, looked into Grismer's handsome face:

"How are you, Grismer?" he said pleasantly. And passed on out of the front door.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Cleland dined by himself in the lively, crowded cafe of the Hotel Rochambeau--a sombre, taciturn young man, still upset by his encounter with Grismer, still brooding impotent resentment against what Stephanie had done. Yet, in spite of this the thrill of seeing her again persisted, filling him with subdued excitement.

He realized that the pretty, engaging college girl he had left three years ago had developed into an amazingly lovely being with a delicately vigorous and decisive beauty of her own, quite unexpected by him. But there was absolutely no shyness, no awkwardness, no self-consciousness in her undisguised affection for him; the years had neither altered nor subdued her innocent acceptance of their relationship, nor made her less frank, less confident, or less certain of it and of the happy security it meant for both.

In spite of her twenty-one years, her education, her hospital experience, Stephanie, in this regard, was a little girl still. For her the glamour of the school-boy had never departed from Cleland with the advent of his manhood. He was still, to her, the wonderful and desirable playmate, the miraculous new brother, the exalted youth of her girlhood; the beloved and ideal of their long separation--all she had on earth that represented a substitute for kin and family ties and home. That her loyal heart was still the tender, impulsive, youthful heart of a girl was plain enough to him. The frankness of her ardour, her instant happy surrender, her clinging to him in a passion of gratitude and delight, all told him her story. But it made what she had done with Grismer the more maddening and inexplicable; and at every thought of it a gust of jealousy swept him.

He ate his dinner scarcely conscious of the jolly tumult around him, and presently went upstairs to his rooms to rummage in one of his trunks for a costume;--souvenir of some ancient Latin Quarter revelry--Closerie des Lilas or Quat'z Arts, perhaps.

Under his door had been thrust an envelope containing a card bearing his invitation, and Stephanie had written on it: "It will all be spoiled if you are not there. Don't forget that you'll have to dress as a god of sorts. All other costumes are barred."

What he had would do excellently. His costume of a blessed companion of Mahomet in white, green and silver, with its jeweled scimitar, its close-fitted body dress, gorget, and light silver head-piece, represented acceptably the ideal garb of the Lion of God militant.

Toward eleven o'clock, regarding himself rather gloomily in the mirror, the reflected image of an exceedingly good-looking Fourth Caliph, with the faint line of a mustache darkening his short upper lip and the green gems of a true believer glittering on casque and girdle and hilt, cheered the young man considerably.

"If I'm not a god," he thought, "I'm henchman to one." And he twisted the pale green turban around his helmet and sent for a taxicab.

The streets around the Garden were jammed. Mounted and foot-police laboured to keep back the curious crowds and to direct the crush of arriving vehicles laden with fantastic figures in silks and jewels. Arcades, portico, and the broad lobby leading to the amphitheatre were thronged with animated merrymakers in brilliant costumes; and Cleland received his cab-call number from the uniformed starter and joined the glittering stream which carried him resistlessly with it through the gates and presently landed him somewhere in a seat, set amid a solidly packed tier of gaily-costumed people.

An immense sound of chatter and laughter filled the vast place, scarcely subdued by the magic of a huge massed orchestra.

The Garden had been set to represent Mount Olympus; white pigeons were flying everywhere amid flowers and foliage; the backdrop was painted like a blue horizon full of rosy clouds, and the two entrances were divided by a marble-edged pool in which white swans sailed unconcerned and big scarlet gold-fish swam in the limpid water among floating blossoms.

But he had little time to gaze about through the lilac-haze of tobacco smoke hanging like an AEgean mist across the dancing floor, for already boy trumpeters, in white tunics and crowned with roses, were sounding the flourish and were dragging back the iris-hued hangings at either entrance.

The opening pageant had begun.

From the right entrance came the Greek gods and heroes--Zeus aloft in a chariot, shaking his brazen thunder bolts; Athene in helmet and tunic, clutching a stuffed owl; Astarte very obvious, long-legged and pretty; Mars with drawn sword and fiery copper armour; Hermes wearing wings on temples and ankles and skilfully juggling the caduceus, Aphrodite most casually garbed in gauze, perfectly fashioned by her Maker and rather too visible in lovely detail.

Eros, very feminine too, lacked sartorial protection except for a pair of wings and a merciful sash from which hung quiver and bow. In fact, it was becoming startlingly apparent that the artists responsible for the Ball of All the Gods scorned to conceal or mitigate the classical and accepted legends concerning them and their costumes--or lack of costumes.

Fauns, dryads, nymphs, satyrs, naiads, bacchantes poured out from the right entrance, eddying in snowy whirlpools around the chariots of the Grecian gods; and the influence of the Russian ballet was visible in every lithely leaping figure.

Contemporaneously, from the left entrance, emerged the old Norse gods: Odin, shaggy and fully armed; Loki, all a-glitter with dancing flames; Baldin the Beautiful, smirking; Fenris the Wolf; Frija, blond and fiercely beautiful--the entire Norse galaxy surrounded by skin-clad warriors and their blond, half-naked mates.

The two processions, moving in parallel lines along the north and south tiers of boxes, were overlapping and passing each other now, led in a winding march by trumpeters; and all the while, from either entrance new bevies of gods and immortals were emerging--the deities of Ancient Egypt moving stiffly in their splendid panoply; the gods of the ancient Western World led by the Holder of Heaven and Hiawatha, and followed by the Eight Thunders plumed in white escorting the Lake Serpent--a young girl, lithe and sinuous as a snake and glittering from head to foot, with the serpent spot on her forehead.

Ancient China, in bewildering silks, entered like a moving garden of flowers; then India came in gemmed magnificence led by the divine son of Suddhodana.

He bore the bow of black steel with gold tendrils--the Bow of Sinhahanu. He was dressed as the Prince Siddhartha, in the garb of a warrior of Oudh. Bow and sabre betrayed the period--the epoch of his trial against all comers to win the Sakya girl Yasodhara.

As he passed, Cleland, leaning forward, scanned the splendid and militant figure intently; and recognized Oswald Grismer under the glimmering dress of the young Buddha militant.

To left and right of the youthful god advanced two girls, all in relieved stiff gold from the soles of their up-turned sandals to the fantastic pagoda peak of their head-dresses.

They wore golden Burmese masks; their bodies to the girdles were covered with open-work golden filigree; from the fantastic pagoda-like shoulder-pieces gold gauze swept away like the folded golden wings of dragon-flies; golden bangles and bells tinkled on wrist and ankle.

With slim hands uplifted like the gilded idols they represented, the open eye painted in the middle of each palm became visible. Around them swirled a dazzling throng of Nautch girls.

Suddenly they flung up their arms: the stiff gold masks and body-encasements cracked like gilded mummy cases and fell down clashing around their naked feet, and from the cold, glittering chrysalids stepped out two warm, living, enchantingly youthful figures, lithe and supple, saluting the Prince Siddhartha with bare arms crossed above their breasts.

To one, representing his mother, Maya, he turned, laying the emblems of temporal power at her feet. And, in her, Cleland recognized Helen Davis.

But his eyes were for the other--the Sakya girl Yasodhara in gold sari and chuddah, her body clasped with a belt of emeralds and a girdle of the same gems tied below her breasts.

The young Lord Buddha laid the living Rose of the World in her hands. She bent her head and drew it through her breast-girdle. Then, silk-soft, exquisite, the Sakya maid lifted her satin-lidded eyes, sweeping the massed audience above as though seeking some one. And Cleland saw that her eyes were lilac-grey; and that the girl was Stephanie.

Suddenly the massed orchestras burst into an anachronistic two-step. The illusion was shattered; the ball was on! Assistants ran up and gathered together the glittering debris and pushed chariot, papier mache elephant and camel and palanquin through the two entrances; god seized goddess, heroes nabbed nymphs; all Olympus and the outlying suburban heavens began to foot it madly to the magic summons of George Cohan.

Under the blaze of lights the throng on the dancing floor swirled into glittering whirlpools and ripples, brilliant as sunset on a restless sea. The gaily costumed audience, too, was rising everywhere and leaving seats and stalls and boxes to join the dancing multitudes below.

Before he descended, Cleland saw Grismer and Stephanie dancing together, the girl looking up over her shoulder as though still searching the tiers of seats above for somebody expected.

Before he reached the floor he began to meet old friends and acquaintances, more or less recognizable under strange head-dresses and in stranger raiment.

He ran into Badger Spink, as a fawn in the spotted skin of a pard, his thick hair on end and two little horns projecting.

"Hello," he said briefly; "you back? Glad to see you--excuse me, but I'm chasing a little devil of a dryad----"

He caught sight of her as he spoke; the girl shrieked and fled and after her galloped the fawn, intent on capture.

Clarence Verne, colourless of skin in his sombrely magnificent Egyptian dress, extended an Egyptian hand to him--the hand he remembered so well, with its deep, pictographic cleft between forefinger and thumb.

"When did _you_ come back, Cleland?" he inquired in that listless, drugged voice of his. "To-day? Hope we'll see something of you now.... Do you know that Nautch girl--the one in orange and silver? She's Claudia Gwynn, the actress. She hasn't got much on, has she? Can the Ball des Quat'z beat this for an unconcerned revelation of form divine?"

"I don't think it can," said Cleland, looking at a bacchante whose raiment seemed to be voluminous enough. The only trouble was that it was also transparent.

"Nobody cares any more," remarked Verne in his drowsy voice. "The restless sex has had its way. It always has been mad to shed its clothes in public. First it danced barefooted, then it capered barelegged. Loie, Isadora and Ruth St. Denis between 'em started the fashion; Bakst went 'em one better; then society tore off its shoulder-straps and shortened its petticoats; and the Australian swimming Venus stripped for the screen. It's all right; I don't care. Only it's a bore to have one's imagination become atrophied from disuse.... If I can find a girl thoroughly covered I'd be interested."

He sauntered away to search, and Cleland edged around the shore of the dancing floor, where the flotsam from the glittering maelstrom in the centre had been cast up.

Threading his way amid god and goddess, nymph and hero, he met and recognized Philip Grayson, one of his youthful masters at school--a tall, handsome figure in Greek armour.

"This is nice, Cleland," he said cordially. "Didn't know you were back. Quite a number of your old school fellows here!"

"Who?"

"Oswald Grismer----"

"I saw him."

"Did you run across Harry Belter?"

"No," exclaimed Cleland, "is he here?"

"Very much so. Harry is always in the thick of things artistic. How goes literature with you?"

"I came back to start things," said Cleland. "How does it pan out with you?"

"Well," said Grayson, "I write things that are taken by what people call the 'better class' magazines. It doesn't seem to advance me much."

"Cheer up. Try a human magazine and become a best seller," said Cleland, laughing.

And he continued his search for Stephanie.

There was a crush on the floor--too many dancing in the beginning--and all he could do was to prowl along the side lines. In a lower-tier box he noticed a fat youth, easily recognizable as Bacchus. His wreath of wax grapes he wore rakishly over one eye; he sat at a table with several thirsty dryads and bestowed impartial caresses and champagne. Occasionally he burst into throaty song in praise of the grape.

"Harry Belter!" cried Cleland.

"Hey! Who?" demanded Bacchus, leaning over the edge of the box, his glass suspended. "No! It isn't Jim Cleland! I won't believe it! It's only a yearned-for vision come to plague and torment me in my old age----!" He got up, leaned over and seized Cleland by his silken sabre-belt:

"Jim! It _is_ you! To my arms, old scout----!" embracing him vociferously. "Welcome, dear argonaut! Ladies! Prepare to blush and tremble with pleasurable emotion!" he cried, turning to his attendant dryads. "This is my alter ego, James Cleland--my beloved comrade in villainy--my incomparable breaker of feminine hearts! You all shall adore him. You shall dote upon him. Ready! Attention! Dote!"

"I'm doting like mad," said a bright-eyed dryad, looking down invitingly at the handsome young fellow. "Only if he's a Turk I simply won't stand for a harem!"

"In the Prophet's Paradise," said Cleland, laughing, "there's no marriage or giving in marriage. Will you take a chance, pretty dryad? All the girls are on an equal footing in the Paradise of Mahomet, and we Caliphs just saunter from houri to houri and tell each that she's the only one!"

"Saunter this way, please," cried another youthful dryad, adjusting the wreath of water-lilies so that she could more effectively use her big dark eyes on him.

Belter whispered:

"They're from the new show--'Can You Beat It!'--just opened to record business. Better pick one while the picking's good. Come on up!"

But Cleland merely lingered to pay his compliments a few moments longer, then, declining to enter the box and join Belter in vocal praise of the grape, and eluding that gentleman's fond clutch, he dodged and slipped away to continue his quest of the silken, slender Sakya girl somewhere engulfed amid all this glitter, surging, beating noisily around him.

Frequently, as he made his devious way forward, men and women of the more fashionable and philistine world recognized and greeted him; he was constantly stopping to speak to acquaintances of what used to be the saner sets, renew half-forgotten friendships, exchange lively compliments and gay civilities.

But he failed to detect any vast and radical difference between the world and the three-quarter world. The area in square inches of bare skin displayed by a young matron of his own sort matched the satin nakedness of some animated ornament from the Follies.

As he stood surveying the gorgeous throng he seemed to be subtlely aware of a tension, an occult strain keying to the breaking point each eager, laughing woman he looked at. The scented atmosphere was heavy with it; the rushing outpour of the violins was charged with it; it was something more than temporary excitement, more than the reckless gaiety of the moment; it was something that had become part of these women--a vast, deep-bitten restlessness possessing them soul and body.

The aspiring quest for the hitherto unattainable, the headlong hunt for happiness, these were human and definite and to be comprehended: but this immense, aimless, objectless restlessness, mental or spiritual, whichever it might be, seemed totally different.

It was like a blind, crab-like, purposeless, sidling migration in mass of the prehistoric female race--before it had created the male for its convenience--wandering out into and over-running the primeval wastes of the world, swarming, crawling at random--not conscious of what it desired, not knowing what it might be seeking, aware only of the imperative urge within it which set it in universal motion. Only to weary, after a few million years of subdivision and self-fertilization, and casually extemporize the sterner sex. And settle again into primeval lethargy and the somnolent inertia of automatic reproduction.

Watching the golden human butterflies whirling around him swept into eddies by thunderous gusts of music, he thought, involuntarily of those filmy winged creatures that dance madly in millions and millions over northern rivers and are swept in sparkling clouds amid the rainbow spray of cataracts out into the evening splendour of annihilation.

He met a pretty woman he knew--had thought that he had known once--and reddened slightly at the audacity of her Grecian raiment. Her husband--a Harvard man he had known--was with her, in eye-glasses and a Grecian helmet--Ajax the Greater, he explained.

They lingered to exchange a word; she beat time to the music with sandalled foot, a feverish brilliancy in eyes and cheeks.

"The whole world," said Cleland, "seems strung too tightly. I noticed it abroad, too. There's a tension that's bound to break; the skies of the whole earth are full of lightning. Something is going to blow up."

"Hope it won't be the stock market," said the man. "I don't get you, Cleland--you always were literary."

"He means war," said his wife, restlessly fanning her flushed cheeks. "Or suffrage. Which _do_ you mean, Mr. Cleland?"

"You've got all you want--practically--haven't you?" he asked.

"Practically. It's a matter of a year or so--the vote."

"What will you do next?" he inquired, smiling.

"Heaven knows, but we've simply got to keep doing something," she said. "What a ghastly bore to attain everything! If you men really love us, for goodness' sake keep on tyrannizing over us and giving us something to fight for!"

She laughed and blew him a kiss as her husband encircled her Grecian waist and steered her out into the fox-trotting throng, her flimsy draperies fluttering like the wind-blown tunic of a Tanagra dancing figure.

The stamp and jingling din of Nautch girls rang in his ears as he turned away and looked out over the shifting crowd.

Everywhere he recognized people he had met or heard about, men eminent or notorious in their vocations, actors, painters, writers, architects, musicians--men of science, lawyers, promoters, officers of industry commissioned and non-commissioned, the gayer element of the stage were radiantly in evidence, usually in the dancing embrace of Broad and Wall Streets; artistic masculine worth and youth pranced proudly with femininity of social attainment; the beautiful unplaced were there in daring deshabille, captivating solid domestic character which had come there wifeless and receptive.

Suddenly he saw Stephanie. She was leaning back against the side of the arena, besieged by a ring of men. Gales of laughter swept her brilliant entourage of gods and demons, fauns and heroes, all crowding about to pay their eager court. And Stephanie, laughing back at them from the centre of the three-fold circle, her arms crossed behind her, stood leaning against the side of the amphitheatre under a steady rain of rose petals dropped on her by some young fellows in the box above her.

Through this rosy rain, through the three-fold ring of glittering gods, she caught sight of Cleland--met his gaze with a soft, quick cry of delight.

Out through the circle of chagrined Olympians she sprang on sandalled feet, not noticing these protesting suitors; and with both lovely, rounded arms outstretched, her jewelled hands fell into Cleland's, clasping them tightly in an ecstacy of possession.

"I couldn't find you," she explained breathlessly. "I was so dreadfully afraid you hadn't come! Isn't it all magnificent! Isn't it wonderful! Did you see the pageant? Did you ever see anything as splendid? Slip your arm around me; we can walk better together in this crush----" passing her own bare arm confidently over his shoulder and falling into step with him.

"I saw you in the pageant," he said, encircling with his arm the silken body-vestment of her slender waist.

"Did you? Did you see Helen and me come out of our golden chrysalids? Was it pretty?"

"Charming and unexpected. You are quite the most beautiful thing on the floor to-night."

"Really, Jim, do you think so? You darling boy, to say it! I'm having a wonderful time. How handsome you are in your dress of a young oriental warrior!"

"I'm the fourth Caliph, Ali," he explained. "I had this costume made in Paris."

"It's bewitching, Jim. You _are_ good looking!--you adorable brother of mine. Do you like my paste emeralds? You don't think I'm too scantily clad, do you?"

"That seems to be the general fashion----"

"Oh, Jim! There are lots of others _much_ more undressed. Besides, one simply has to be historical and accurate or one is taken for an ignoramus. If I'm to to impersonate the Sakya girl, Yassodhara, before she became Lord Buddha's wife, I must wear what she probably wore. Don't you see?"

"Perfectly," he said, laughing. "But you of the artistic and unconventional guilds ought to leave the audacious costumes to your models. But, of course, that's too much to ask of you."

"Indeed it is!" she said gaily. "If some of us think we're rather nicely made why shouldn't we dare a little artistically--in the name of beauty and of art? ... Oh, Jim!--it's the tango they're beginning. _Will_ you!--with _me_?"

They danced the exquisitely graceful measure together, her little golden-sandalled feet flashing noiselessly through the intricate steps, lingering, swaying, gliding faultlessly in unison with his as though part of his own body.

The fascinating rhythm of the Argentine music throbbed through the perfumed air; a bright, whispering wilderness of silk and jewels swayed rustling all around them; bare arms and shoulders, brilliant lips and eyes floated through their line of dreary vision; figures like phantoms passed in an endless rosy chain through the lustrous haze of motion.

They danced together whatever came; Stephanie, like a child fearful of being abandoned, kept one slim jewelled hand fast hold of his sleeve or girdle when they were not dancing. To one and all who came to argue or present fancied prior claims she turned a deaf ear and laughing lips, listening to no pleading, no claims.

She threatened Harry Belter with the flat of her palm, warning him indignantly when he attempted a two-step, by violence; she closed her ears to Badger Spink, who danced with rage in his goat-skins; she waved away Verne in all his Egyptian splendour; she let her grey eyes rest in an insolent stare at two of Belter's dryads who encircled Cleland's waist with avowed intent to make him their prisoner and dedicate him to vocal praise of the vine.

Then there was a faint clash and flash of iridescence, and the Prince Siddhartha confronted her, golden-eyed, golden-skinned, golden-haired, magnificent in his golden vestments.

"Oswald!" she cried. "Oh, I am glad. Jim! You and Oswald will be friends, won't you? You're such dears--you simply must like each other!"

They shook hands, looking with curious intentness at each other.

"I've always liked you, Cleland," said Grismer gracefully. "I don't think you ever cared for me very much, but I wish you might."

"I have found you--agreeable, Grismer. We were friendly at school and college together----"

"I hope our friendliness may continue."

"I--hope so."

Grismer smiled:

"Drop in whenever you care to, Cleland, and talk things over. We've a lot to say to each other, I think."

"Thanks." ... He looked hard at Grismer. "All right; I'll do it."

Grismer nodded:

"I've a kennel of sorts in Bleecker Street. But you might be interested in one or two things I'm working on. You see," he added with careless good humour, "I'm obliged to work, now."

Cleland said in a low voice:

"I'm sorry things went wrong with you."

"Oh, they didn't. It was quite all right, Cleland. I really don't mind. Will you really drop in some day soon?"

"Yes."

Dancing began again. Grismer stepped back with the easy, graceful courtesy that became him, conceding Stephanie to Cleland as a matter of course; and the latter, who had been ready to claim her, found himself disarmed in advance.

"Is it Grismer's dance, Steve?" he asked.

"I promised him. But, Jim, I'm afraid to let you go----"

They all laughed, and she added:

"When a girl gets a man back after three long years, is it astonishing that she keeps tight hold of him?"

"You'd better dance with her, Cleland," said Grismer, smiling.

But Cleland could not accept a gift from this man, and he surrendered her with sufficient grace.

"Jim!" she said frankly. "You're not going after that dryad, are you? She's exceedingly common and quite shamelessly under-dressed. Shall I introduce you to a nice girl--or do you know a sufficient number?"

"You know," he said, laughing, "that I ought to play my part of Fourth Caliph and go and capture a pretty widow----"

"What!"

"Certainly," he said tranquilly; "didn't Ali take prisoner Ayesha, the youthful widow of Mohammed? I'll look about while you're dancing----"

"I don't wish you to!" she exclaimed, half vexed, half laughing. "Oswald, does he mean it?"

"He looks as though he does," replied Grismer, amused. "There's a Goddess of Night over there, Cleland--very pretty and very unconcealed under a cloud of spangled stars----"

"Oswald! I don't wish him to! Jim! Listen to me, please----!" for he had already started toward the little brunette Goddess of Night. "We have box seven! Please remember. I shall wait for you!"

"Right!" he nodded, now intently bent on displeasing her; a little excited, too, by her solicitude, yet sullenly understanding that it sprang from no deeper emotion than her youthful heart had yet betrayed for him. No woman ever let a man go willingly, whether kin or lover--whether she had use for him or not.

Stephanie, managing to keep him in view among the dancers, saw the little Goddess of Night, with her impudent up-tilted nose, floating amid her scandalously diaphanous draperies in his arms through a dreamy tango, farther and farther away from her.

Things went wrong with her, too; she dropped her emerald girdle and several of the paste stones rolled away; the silk of her body-vest ripped, revealing the snowy skin, and she had to knot her gold sari higher. Then the jewelled thong of her left sandal snapped and she lost it for a moment.

"The devil!" she said, slipping her bare foot into it and half skating toward the nearest lower-tier box.

"There he is over there," remarked Grismer, indicating a regulation Mephistopheles, wearing a blood-red jerkin laced with a wealth of superfluous points. "Wait; I'll borrow a lace of him."

The devil was polite and had no objection to being despoiled; and Grismer came back with a chamois thong and mended her sandal for her while she sat in their box and watched the tumult surging below.

He chatted gaily with her for a while, leaning there on the box's edge beside her, but Stephanie had become smilingly inattentive and preoccupied, and he watched her in silence, now, curiously, a little perplexed by her preoccupation. For it was most unusual for her to betray inattention when with him. It was not like her. He could not remember her ever being visibly uninterested in him--ever displaying preoccupation or indifference when in his company.

However, the excitement of seeing her brother again so unexpectedly accounted for it no doubt.

The excitement and pleasure of seeing her--_brother_! ... A slight consciousness of the fact that there was no actual kinship between this girl and Cleland passed through his mind without disturbing his tranquillity. He merely happened to think of it.... He happened to recollect it; that was all.

"Stephanie?"

"Yes."

"Shall we sit out this dance? Your sandal string will hold."

"I don't know," she said. "Who is that dancing with Helen? Over there to the left----"

"I see her. I don't know--oh, yes--it's Phil Grayson."

"Is it? I wonder where Jim went with that woman! ... I'm horribly thirsty, Oswald."

"Shall we have some supper?"

"Where is it? Oh, down there! What a stuffy place! It's too awful. Couldn't you get something here?"

He managed to bribe one perspiring and distracted waiter, and after a long while he brought a tray towering with salads, ices and bottles.

Helen and Philip Grayson came back and the former immediately revealed a healthy appetite.

"Don't you want anything to eat, Steve?" she inquired. "This shrimp salad isn't bad."

"I'm not hungry."

"You seem to be thirsty," remarked Helen, looking at the girl's flushed face and her half-filled wine glass. "Where is Jim?"

"Dancing."

"With whom?"

"Some girl of sorts whom he picked up," said Stephanie; and the pink flush in her face deepened angrily.

"Was she worth it?" inquired Helen, frankly amused.

Stephanie's cheeks cooled; she replied carelessly:

"She had button eyes and a snub nose and her attire was transparent--if that interests you." She rested her elbow on the edge of the box, supporting her chin on her cupped palm.

They were dancing again. Grayson came and took out Helen; a number of men arrived clamouring for Stephanie. She finally went out with Verne, but not liking the way he held her left him planted and returned to the box where a number of hilarious young men had gathered.

Harry Belter said:

"What's the trouble, Steve? I never saw you glum before in all my life!"

"I'm not glum," she said with a forced little laugh, "I'm thirsty, Senior Bacchus! Isn't that enough to sadden any girl?"

Later Helen, returning from the floor, paused beside Stephanie to bend over her and whisper:

"Harry Belter is behaving like a fool. Don't take anything more, Steve."

The girl lifted her flushed face and laughed:

"I feel like flinging discretion into the 'fire of spring,'" she said. "That's where most of these people's clothing has disappeared, I fancy." Excitement burned in her pink cheeks and wide grey eyes, and she stood up in the box looking about her, poised lightly as some slim winged thine on the verge of taking flight.

Grismer rose too and whispered to her, but she made a slight, impatient movement with her shoulders.

"Won't you dance this with me?" he repeated, touching her arm.

"No," she said under her breath. "You annoy me, Oswald."

"What!"

"Please don't be quite so devoted.... I'm restless."

She turned and started to leave the box. The others were leaving too, for dancing had begun again. But at the steps she parted with the jolly little company, they descending to the floor, she turning to mount the steps alone.

"Where on earth are you going, Steve?" called back Helen, halting on the steps below.

"I want to see the floor from the top gallery!" replied Stephanie, without turning her head; and she ran lightly upward, her bells and bangles jingling.

Half way up she turned her head. She had not been followed, but she saw Grismer below looking up, watching her flight. And she made no sign of recognition, no gay gesture of amity and adieu; she turned her back and sped upward through the clamour and hazy brilliancy, turned into the first corridor, and vanished like a firefly in a misty thicket.

*CHAPTER XIX*