Chapter VII: Part 7

At three in the morning the Ball of the Gods was in full and terrific blast and still gathering momentum. A vast musical uproar filled the Garden; the myriad lights glittered like jewels through a fog; the dancing floor was a bewildering, turbulent whirlpool of colour.

Few if any of the dancers had reached the point of satiation; a number, however, had attained the state of saturation.

As far as Cleland could see the only difference between this and a more miscellaneous assemblage seemed to be that the majority of people here knew how to ignore unpleasant lapses in others and how to efface themselves if surprised into accidental indiscretion.

With Lady Button-eyes on his arm he had threaded his way into the supper-room, where the gods, demi-gods and heroes were banqueting most riotously.

It was becoming very rapidly a dubiously mixed affair; Bacchus, with his noisy crew, invaded the supper-room and pronounced Cleland's snub-nosed, button-eyed goddess "tray chick," and there arose immediately a terrific tumult around her--gods and satyrs doing battle for her; but she persisted in her capricious fancy for Cleland. He, however, remained in two minds; one was to abandon Button-eyes, retire and find Stephanie again, in spite of the ever-smoldering resentment he felt for Grismer; the other was to teach himself without loss of time to keep away from her; school himself to do without her; preoccupy himself casually and recklessly with anything that might aid in obliterating his desire for her companionship--with this snub-nosed one, for example.

The desire to see Stephanie remained, nevertheless, sometimes fiercely importunate, sometimes sullenly persistent--seemingly out of all proportion to any sentiment he had ever admittedly entertained for her--out of proportion, also, to his sulky resentment at the folly she had committed with Oswald Grismer.

For, after all, if she ultimately married Grismer in the orthodox way her eccentric pre-nuptial behaviour was nothing more serious than eccentric. And if she didn't, then it meant annulment or divorce; and he realised that nobody outside of the provinces paid any attention to such episodes nowadays. And nobody cared what clod-hoppers thought about anything.

His button-eyed goddess had a pretty good soprano voice and she was using it now, persuaded into a duet by Belter. Cleland looked at her sideways without enthusiasm, undecided, irritated and gloomy. She was Broadway vulgarity personified.

Badger Spink dropped onto a chair on the other side of him:

"Who's your transparent lady friend?" he inquired lazily. "She looks like a gutter-angel. Who is the depraved little beast?"

"I don't know--some actress, I believe--Sonia something-or-other. Do you want her?"

"Thanks. What does she represent? A Kewpie behind a pane of glass?"

"She's a goddess of sorts, I believe. This is getting rather raw, isn't it, Spink?"

Spink yawned and gazed leisurely about him, the satyr's horn emerging from his thick, wavy pompadour hair, accentuating his clever, saturnine features. His expression was slightly Satanic always.

"Yes," he said, "it's turning out rather rough. What do you think of this sort of thing in New York, Cleland? We're drifting toward Babylon. That's the trend since the dance craze swept this moral nation off its moral feet into a million tango joints."

"There's something the matter with us, that's sure," said Cleland. "This sort of thing doesn't belong in the new world."

"It's up to our over-rated American women," sneered Spink. "Only a few years ago we were slobbering over them, worshipping them, painting pictures of 'em--pictures influenced by the French naturalistic school--a lot of cow-faced American females suckling their young. Everybody was yelling for the simple life, summoning the nation back to nature, demanding that babies be produced in every family by the dozen, extolling procreation and lauding the American woman. That's the sort of female we celebrated and pretended to want. Now, look what we've got!--a nation of dancing dolls! A herd of restless, brainless, aggressive, impudent women proclaiming defiance and snapping their fingers at us!

"I tell you there burns here in the Garden to-night something more than the irresponsible gaiety of a lot of artists and Philistine pleasure-seekers. The world is on the verge of something terrifying; the restlessness of a universal fever is in its veins. Our entire human social structure is throbbing with it; every symptom is ominous of social collapse and a complete disintegration of the old order of civilization!"

"What's your other name, Spink?--Jeremiah?" asked Cleland, laughing.

"No. I'm merely on my favourite topic. Listen to me, my young friend; all England faces strikes and political anarchy in Ireland and India; the restless sex is demanding its rights in London and menacing the Empire. France, betrayed by one of the restless ones, strangling in the clutch of scandal, is standing bewildered by the roar of the proletariat; Russia seethes internally, watching the restless Empress and her accursed priest out of millions of snaky, Asiatic eyes; Portugal has just fallen crashing into fragments around a terrified Queen; China splits open from end to end and vomits forth its dynasty on the tomb of the dead Dowager; Austria watches for the death of an old, old widower--an Imperial mummy long since dead in mind and spirit. Germany, who uses the lesser sex for breeding only, stares stolidly out of pig-like eyes at the Imperial litter of degenerates and defectives dropped with stolid regularity to keep the sty-supply of Hohenzollerns unimpaired. Only radicals like myself feel the cataclysmic waves deep under the earth, symptomatic, ominous of profound and vital readjustments already under way.

"And here in our once great Republic of the West, the fever of universal unrest is becoming apparent in this nation-wide movement for suffrage. State after state becomes a battle-ground and surrenders; accepted standards are shattered, the old social order and balance between the sexes--all the established formalism and belief of a man-constructed status--totters as door and gate and avenue and byway are insanely flung open to the mindless invasion of the restless sex! Don't stop me, Cleland; I am magnificent to-night. Listen! I tell you that political equality, equal opportunity, absolute personal liberty are practically in sight for women! What more is left? Conscious of the itching urge of its constitutional inclination to fuss and fidget, the restless sex, fundamentally gallinaceous, continues to wander on into bournes beyond its ken, hen-like, errant, pensively picking at the transcendentally unattainable, but always in motion--motion as mechanical and meaningless as the negative essence of cosmic inertia! ... Now, I'm through with you, Cleland. Thanks for listening. I don't think I want your goddess, after all. She looks too much like a tip-up snipe!"

And he took himself off, yawning.

The rushing din of the orchestra far below came up softened to Stephanie's ears, where she stood at the rail of the topmost gallery and looked down into the glimmering depths of the Ball of all the Gods.

Her jewelled fingers rested on the rail, her slender body pressed against it; she stood with bent head, gazing down into the vortex, pensive, sombrely preoccupied with an indefinable anger that possessed her.

The corridor behind her was full of shadowy figures scurrying to hazardous rendezvous. She was vaguely aware of encounters and pursuits; stifled laughter, sudden gusts of whispering, hurried adieux, hasty footfalls and the ghostly rustle of silks in flight.

She turned restlessly and went up into the corridor. A dryad was performing flip-flaps there and a gale of laughter and applause arose from her comrades watching her in a semi-circle.

The Olympians, too, all seemed to have gathered there for a frolic--Zeus, Hermes, the long-legged Astarte, the amazingly realistic Aphrodite, and Eros, more realistic still--all clasping hands and dancing a ring-around-a-rosy while Bacchus and Ariadne in the centre performed a breakdown which drew frantic shouts of approval from the whirling ring.

Then, in this hilarious circle, Stephanie caught sight of the snub-nose and transparent raiment of the button-eyed Goddess of Night, and next her, hand clasping hand, she recognized Cleland as another link in the rapidly rotating ring.

Aphrodite and Eros, hand locked in hand, were singing the song they had made so popular in "The Prince of Argolis" early in the winter:

"Mrs. Aphrodite
Gave her pretty sonny
Lots of golden curls
But little golden money,
Dressed him in a nightie!--
(Listen to me, girls!)
Love of golden curls
Leads the world astray!
(Listen to me, honey!)
Love of golden money
Acts the selfsame way!"

Breathless with laughter the Grecian gods galloped round and round in a dizzy circle, flushed faces flashed past Stephanie, flying draperies and loosened hair fluttered and streamed and glimmered in confused sequence before her angry eyes.

Suddenly the mad dance broke up and flew into fragments, scattering its reeling, panting devotees into prancing couples in every direction.

And straight into this wild confusion stepped Stephanie, her pretty eyes brilliant with wrath, her face a trifle pale.

"Jim!"

He let go of Lady Button-eyes in astonishment and turned around.

Stephanie said very coolly:

"If you're going to raise the devil, raise him with me, please!"

Lady Button-eyes was not pleased and she showed it by stamping, which alone had sufficiently fixed her level if she had not also placed both hands on her hips and laughed scornfully when Cleland took leave of her and walked over to Stephanie.

"Where are the others?" he inquired, rather red at being discovered with such a crew. "You're not alone, are you, Steve?"

"Not now," she said sweetly; and passed her left arm through his and clasped her right hand over it. "Now," she said with an excited little laugh, "I am ready to raise the devil with you. Take me wherever you like, Jim."

The insulted gods gazed upon her with astonishment as she lifted her small head and sent an indifferent glance like an arrow at random among them. Then, not further noticing them, and absolutely indifferent to the button-eyed one, she strolled leisurely out of Olympus with her slightly disconcerted captive and disappeared from their view along the southern corridor. But once out of their range of vision her hot wrath returned.

"It was abominable," she said in a low, tense voice, "--your going off that way, when I told you the whole evening would be spoiled for me without you! I am hurt and angry, Jim."

But his smouldering wrath also flickered into flame now.

"You had Grismer, didn't you!" he said. "What do you care whether I am with you or not?"

"What do you mean? Yes, of course I had him. What has that to do with _you_?"

He replied with light insolence:

"Nothing. I'm not your husband."

His words fell like a blow: she caught her breath with the hurt of them; then:

"Is that why you have avoided me?" she demanded in a tone of such concentrated passion that the unexpected flare-up startled him. It surprised her, too: for, all at once, in her heart something contracted agonizingly, and a surge of furious resentment flooded her, almost strangling speech.

"Why are you indifferent? Why are--are you unkind?" she stammered. "I've just found you again after all these years, haven't I? What do other people matter to us? Why should Oswald interfere between you and me? You and I haven't had each other for years! I--I can't stand it--to have you unkind--indifferent--to have you leave me this way when I want you--so desperately----"

"I didn't leave you," he retorted sullenly. "You went away with--the man you married----"

"Don't speak of him that way!" she interrupted hotly. "Nobody speaks of that affair at all!"

"Why not? You _did_ marry him, didn't you?"

"What of it!" she flamed back. "What has that to do with you and me! _Why_ do you refer to it? It's my personal affair, anyway!"

He turned toward her, exasperated:

"If you think," he said, "that your behaviour with Grismer means nothing to me, you'd better undeceive yourself! ... Or I'll do it for you in a way you can't mistake!"

"Undeceive me?" she repeated uneasily. "How do you mean?"

"By making a fight for you myself," he said, "by doing my best to get you back!"

"I don't know what you mean, Jim," she repeated, her grey eyes intent on his flushed face.... "Do you believe you have been insulted by what I did? Is that what you mean?"

He did not answer. They walked on, slowly pacing the deserted corridor. Her head was lowered now; her lips a trifle tremulous.

"I--didn't suppose you'd take--what I did--_that_ way," she said unsteadily. "I--respect and love you.... I supposed I was at liberty--to dispose of--myself. I didn't imagine you cared--very much----"

Suddenly he freed his arm from her clasped fingers and passed it around her waist; and she caught her breath and placed her hand tightly over his to hold it there.

"You adorable boy," she whispered, "am I forgiven? And you _do_ care for me, don't you, Jim?"

"Care for you!" he repeated in a low, menacing voice. "I care for nobody else in the world, Steve!"

She laughed happily, yielding confidently to his embrace, responding swiftly and adorably and with a frank unreserve that told a more innocent story than his close caress and boyish heart on fire confirmed.

And, for the moment, she let him have his way, gaily enduring and humorously content with a reconciliation somewhat exaggerated and over-demonstrative on his part.

But presently his lips on her flushed face, on her hair, on her throat, disconcerted her, and her own lips parted in dismayed and laughing protest at an ardour entirely new to her.

He merely kissed her fragrant mouth into silence, looking steadily into her grey eyes now widening with perplexed and troubled inquiry.

"I love you," he said. "I want you back. Now, do you understand, Steve? I love you! I love you!"

Confused, crushed hotly in his embrace, she stared blankly at him for one dizzy instant; then, in silence, she twisted her supple body backward and aside, and with both nervous hands broke loose the circle of his arms.

They were both rather white now; her breath came and went irregularly, checked in her throat with a little sob at intervals. She leaned back against the wall, one jewelled hand against her breast, looking aside and away from where he stood.

"I _told_ you," he said, unsteadily.

She remained silent, keeping her gaze resolutely averted.

"You understand now, don't you?" he asked.

She nodded.

Then he caught her in his arms again, and she threw back her lovely head, looking at him with frightened eyes, defending her lips with a bare, jewelled arm across them.

He laughed breathlessly and kissed the partly clenched fingers.

"Don't," she whispered, her grey eyes brilliant with fear.

"Do you understand that I am in love with you, Steve?"

"Let me go, Jim----"

"_Do_ you?"

"_Don't_ kiss me--that way----"

"Do you believe me?"

"I don't want to!----" Suddenly she turned terribly white in his arms, swayed a moment against him. He released her, steadied her; she passed one arm through his, leaning heavily on him.

"Are you faint, Steve?" he whispered.

"A--little. It's nothing. The air here is stifling.... I'm tired." ... She dropped her head against his shoulder. Her lids were half closed as they descended the steps, he guiding her.

It seemed to her an interminable descent. She felt as though she were falling through space into a glittering, roaring abyss. In their box sat Helen and Grayson, gossiping gaily together and waiting for another dance to begin. Cleland warned Stephanie in a whisper, and she lifted her head and straightened up with an effort.

She said mechanically:

"I'm going home; I'm very tired."

Helen and Grayson rose and the former came toward her inquiringly.

Stephanie smiled:

"Jim will take me back," she said. "Don't let me disturb your pleasure. And tell Oswald I was very sleepy.... And not to come to the studio for a day or two. Good night, dear."

She made a humorously tired little gesture of farewell to Grayson also, and, taking Cleland's arm again, sauntered with him toward the lobby.

"Get your overcoat and my wraps," she said in a colourless, even voice. "I have a car outside. Here's the call-check. I'll wait over there for you."

Her car, a toy limousine, was ultimately found. Cleland redeemed his overcoat and her wrap. When he came back for her she smiled at him, suffered him to swathe her in the white silk cloak, and, laying her dainty hand lightly on his sleeve, went out with him into the lamp-lit grey of dawn.

"You are feeling better," he said as they seated themselves in the limousine and the little car rolled away southward.

"Yes. It was the stifling atmosphere there, I suppose."

"It was horribly close," he assented.

They remained silent for a while. Then, abruptly:

"Have I made you angry, Steve?" he asked.

She looked up and laughed:

"You adorable boy," she said.

"You don't mind if I'm in love with you?" he asked.

"I haven't any mind. I can't seem to think.... But I don't think you'd better kiss me until I collect my senses again.... Please don't, Jim."

They became silent again until the car drew up before her door. She had two keys in her cloak pocket; she paused to give the chauffeur an order, turning to ask Cleland whether he didn't want the car to take him to the Hotel Rochambeau.

"Thanks; it's only a step. I had rather walk."

So the car drove away; Cleland opened the front door for her, then her own studio door. She felt around the corner in the darkness and switched on the electric bulb in a standing lamp.

"Good night, Steve," he said, taking her hand in both of his.

"Good night.... Unless you care to talk to me for a little while."

"It's four o'clock in the morning."

"I can't sleep--I know that."

He said in a low voice:

"Besides, I am very much in love with you. I think I had better go back."

"Oh.... Do you think so?"

"Don't you?"

"I told you that I haven't recovered enough sense to think."

She crossed the threshold and walked into the studio, dropping her cloak across a chair; and presently halted before the empty fireplace, gazing into its smoke-blackened depths.

For a few moments she stood there in a brown study--a glittering, exquisite figure in the subdued light which fell in tiny points of fire on gem and ring, bracelet and girdle, and tipped the gilded sandals on her little naked feet with sparks of living flame.

Then she turned her charming young head and looked across at him where he stood on the threshold.

"What do you think?" she said. "Ought you to go?"

"I ought to. But I don't think I shall."

"No, don't go," she said with a little laugh. "After all, if we're not to remain brother and sister any longer, there's a most fascinating novelty in your being here."

He came in and closed the door. She made room for him on the sofa and he flung his coat across her cloak and seated himself.

"Now," she said, dropping one silken knee over the other and clasping her hands around it, "how much can we care for each other without being silly? You know I have a dreadful intuition that I'd better not kiss you any more. Not that I don't adore you as much as I always did----"

She turned squarely around and looked at him out of her lovely eyes:

"You took me by surprise. I didn't understand. Then, suddenly I lost my senses and became panicky. I was scared stiff, Jim--you kissed me so many times----"

He reddened and looked down. Under his eyes her bare foot hung in its golden sandal--an exquisite, snowy little foot, quite perfectly fashioned to match her hands' soft symmetry.

"If you loved me," he said, "you would not care how many times I kissed you."

"But you kept on--and you kissed my eyes and throat----"

"You wouldn't care what I did if you loved me."

"But they were unusual places to be kissed. I was scared. Did you think me ridiculous? It was rather startling, you know. It was such a complete novelty."

She admitted it so naively that he laughed in spite of his chagrin.

"Steve," he said, "I don't know what to do about it. I'm falling more deeply in love with you every moment; and you are merely kind and sweet and friendly about it----"

"I'm _intensely_ interested!" she said.

"Interested," he repeated; "yes, that describes it."

"A girl couldn't help being interested when a man she had always adored as a brother suddenly takes her into his arms and kisses her in unusual places," she said, "--and does it a great number of times----"

"Probably you kept count," he said with boyish sarcasm.

She laughed outright:

"I wish I had. It was a perfectly shameless performance. If you ever do it again I shall keep count--out loud!"

"Is that all you'll do?"

"What else is there to do?" she inquired, smiling a trifle uneasily.

"You might find it in your heart to respond."

"How can my heart hold any more of you than it does and always has?" she asked with pretty impatience.

"_Can't_ you love me?"

"I don't know how to any more than I do."

"But you did not find it agreeable when I kissed you."

"I--don't know what I felt.... We always kissed." She began to laugh. "I enjoyed _that_; but I don't think you did, always. You sometimes looked rather bored, Jim."

"I'm getting well paid back," he said.

This seemed to afford her infinite delight; there was malice in her grey eyes now, and a hint of pretty mockery in her laughter.

"To think," she said, "that James Cleland should ever become sentimental with poor little Stephanie Quest! What an unbending! What condescension! What a come-down! Oh, Jim, if I've really got you at last I'm going to raise the very devil with you!"

"You're doing it."

"Am I? I hope I am! I mean to torment you! Why, when I think of the long, long years of childish adoration and awe--of the days when I tagged after you, grateful to be noticed, thankful when you found time for me----" She clapped her hands together delightedly, enchanted with his glum and reddening face. For what she said was the truth; he knew it, though she did not realize how true it had been--and meant merely to exaggerate.

"Also," she said, "you leave me quite alone for three whole years when you could have come back at the end of two!"

His face darkened and he bit his lip.

"You're quite right," he said in a quiet voice. "A girl couldn't very well fall in love with that sort of man."

There was a silence. She had been enjoying her revenge, but she had not expected him to take it so seriously.

He sat there with lowered head, considering, gnawing at his under-lip in silence. She had not intended to hurt him. She was inexperienced enough with him to be worried. His features seemed older, leaner, full of unfamiliar shadows--disturbingly aloof and stern.

She hesitated--the swift, confused memory of an hour before checking her for an instant, then she leaned toward him, quite certain of what would happen--silent and curious as he drew her into his arms.

She was very silent, too, listening to his impetuous, broken avowal--suffering his close embrace, his lips on her eyes and mouth and throat once more. The enormous novelty of it preoccupied her; the intense interest in his state of mind. Her curiosity held her spellbound, too, and unresponsive but fascinated.

She lay very quietly in his arms, her lovely head resting on his shoulder, sometimes with eyes closed, sometimes watching him, meeting his eyes with a faint smile.

Contact with him no longer frightened her. Her mind was clear, busy with this enormous novelty, searching for the reason of it, striving to understand his passion which she shyly recognized with an odd feeling of pride and tenderness, but to which there was nothing in her that responded--nothing more than tender loyalty and the old love she had always given him.

The grey tranquillity of her eyes, virginal and clear--the pulseless quiet of the girl chilled him.

"You don't love me, Steve, do you?"

"Not--as you--wish me to."

"Can't you?"

"I don't know."

"Is there any chance?"

She looked out across the studio, considering, and her grey eyes grew vague and remote.

"I don't know, Jim.... I think that something has been left out of me.... Whatever it is. I don't know how to love--fall in love--as you wish me to. I don't know how to go about it. Perhaps it's because I've never thought about it. It's never occupied my mind."

"Then," he burst out, "how in God's name did you ever come to marry!"

She looked up at him gravely:

"That is very different," she said.

"Then you _are_ in love with him!"

"I told you that he fascinates me."

"Is it _love_?" he asked violently.

"I don't know."

"You _must_ know! You've got a mind!"

"It doesn't explain what I feel for him. I can't put it into words."

He drew her roughly to him, bent over her, looked into her eyes, and kissed her lips again and again.

"Can't you love me, Steve? _Can't_ you?" he stammered.

"I--want to. I wish I did--the way you want me to."

"Will you try?"

"I don't know how to try."

"Do your lips on mine mean nothing to you?"

"Yes.... You are so dear.... I am wonderfully contented--and not afraid."

After a moment she released herself, laughed, and sat up, adjusting her hair with one hand and resting against his shoulder.

"A fine scandal if Helen should come in," she remarked. "It's odd to think of myself as married. And that's another thing, Jim. It never occurred to me until now, but I've no business to give myself up to you as I have to-night." She leaned forward on one elbow, musing for a while, then, lifting her head with a troubled smile: "But what is a girl to do when her brother suddenly turns into her lover? Must she forbid him to kiss her? And refrain from kissing him?----" She flung one arm around his neck impulsively. "I _won't_ forbid you! I would have to if I were in love with you in the same way. But I'm not and I don't care what you do. And whatever you do, I adore anyway."

A key rattled in the lock; she sprang to her feet and went toward the door. Helen came in, and she saw Grayson and Grismer standing in the hallway.

"Come in everybody!" she cried. "Shall we all have breakfast before we part? Don't you think it would be delightful, Phil? Don't you, Oswald? And you know we could take up the rugs and dance while the coffee is boiling. Wait! I'll turn on the music-box!----"

Helen and Grayson deliberately began a tango; Grismer came over to where Cleland was standing:

"They're still dancing in the Garden," he said pleasantly. "Did you and Stephanie get enough of it?"

*CHAPTER XX*

Cleland, being young, required sleep, and it was not until noon that he awoke.

Cool-headed retrospection during tubbing and dressing increased his astonishment at the manner in which he had spent his first day in New York after the years of absence. For into that one day had been crowded a whole gamut of experience and of sensations that seemed incredible when he thought them over.

Every emotion that a young man could experience seemed to have been called into play during that bewildering day and night--curiosity, resentment, apprehension, anger, jealousy, love, passion. And their swift and unexpected sequence had confused him, wrought him up to a pitch of excitement which set every nerve on edge.

He could not comprehend what had happened, what he had experienced and said and done as he stood at his window looking out into the sunshine of the quiet street; and yet, just around the corner the girl who was the cause and reason of it all lay still asleep, in all probability.

Breakfast was served in his room and he ate it with a perfectly healthy appetite. Then he lighted a cigarette and walked to the window again to stare silently put across the sunny street and marshall his thoughts into some semblance of order.

The aromatic smoke from his cigarette curled against the window pane and he gazed absently through it at the vague phantom of a girl's face which memory evoked unbidden.

What had happened? Was it really love? Was it anger, wounded amour-propre, jealousy? Was it resentment and disgust at the silly, meaningless thing that one whom he had considered as his own kinswoman had done in his absence? Was it a determination to tear her loose that had started the thing--an unreasoning, impulsive attempt at vengeance, born of hurt pride that incited him to get her back? For the bond between her and Grismer seemed to him intolerable, hateful--a thing he would not endure if he could shatter it.

Why? Was it because he himself had fallen in love with a girl whom, heretofore, he had regarded with the tranquil, tolerant affection of a brother? Was it love? Was there any other name for the impulse which had suddenly overmastered him when he caught this girl in his arms, confused, frightened, stunned her with hot, incoherent declarations? Had he even really meant what he had said--not in the swift hurricane of passion which had enveloped him like a flame when he held her waist enlaced and the sweetness of her face and throat and hair blinded him to everything else--but in the cold after-light of retrospection did he now mean what he had said last night?

Or had it all been due to the place and the hour--the relaxing of convention in the shattering din of music and laughter--the whirlwind of gaiety and excitement--the girl's beauty--the sudden thrill of his contact with her? Was that what had accounted for what he had done and said?--brute impulse loosed by passion born out of nothing more noble than the moment's mental intoxication--nothing more real than ephemeral emotion, excitement, sheer physical sensation?

It was not like him. He realized that. Hitherto his brain had been in control of his emotions. His was a clear mind, normally. Impulse seldom tripped him.

He had never been in love--never even tried to persuade himself that he had been, even when he had, in his boyish loneliness in Paris, built for himself a bewitching ideal out of a very familiar Stephanie and had addressed to this ideal several reams of romantic nonsense. That had been merely the safety valve working in the very full and lonely heart of a boy.

Even in the gay, ephemeral, irresponsible affairs that occurred from time to time during his career abroad--even when in the full tide of romantic adoration for his mundane Countess, and fairly wallowing in flattered gratitude for her daintily amused condescension, did he ever deceive himself into believing he was in love.

And now, in the lurid light of the exaggerated, bewildering, disquieting events of the preceding day and night, he was trying to think clearly and honestly--trying to reconcile his deeds and words with what he had known of himself--trying to find out what really was the matter with him.

He did not know. He knew that Stephanie had exasperated him--exasperated him to reckless passion--exasperated him even more by not responding to that passion. He had declared his love for her; he had attempted to drive the declaration into her comprehension by the very violence of reiteration. The tranquil, happy loyalty, which always had been his, was all he evoked in her for all the impulsive vows he made, for all his reckless emotion loosened with the touch of her lips--so hotly ungoverned when her grey eyes looked into his, honestly perplexed, sweetly searching to comprehend the source of these fierce flames which merely warmed her with their breath.

"It's a curious thing," he thought, "that a man, part of whose profession is to write about love and analyze it, doesn't know whether he's in love or not."

It was quite true. He didn't know. Accepted symptoms were lacking. He had not awakened thrilled with happiness at the memory of the night before. He awoke dazed and doubtful that all these things had happened, worried, searching in his mind for some reason for his behaviour.

And, except that a man had taken her out of his keeping, and that resentment and jealousy had incited him to recover her, and, further, in the excitement of the attempt, that he had suddenly found himself involved in deeper, fiercer emotions than he had bargained for, he could come to no conclusion concerning his actual feeling for Stephanie.

He spent the day hunting for a studio-apartment.

About five o'clock he called her on the telephone; and heard her voice presently:

"Have you quite recovered, Jim? I feel splendid!"

"Recovered? I was all right this morning when I woke up."

"I mean your senses?"

"Oh. Did you think I lost them last night, Steve?"

"Didn't you?"

Her voice was very sweet but there was in it a hint of hidden laughter.

"No," he said shortly.

"Oh. Then you really were in your right senses last night?" she inquired.

"Certainly. Were you?"

"Well, for a little while I seemed to have lost the power of thinking. But after that I was intensely, consciously, deeply interested and profoundly curious." He could hear her laughing.

"Curious about what?" he demanded.

"About your state of mind, Jim. The situation was such a novelty, too. I was trying to comprehend it--trying to consider what a girl should do in such a curious emergency."

"Emergency?" he repeated.

"Certainly. Do you fancy I'm accustomed to such novelties as you introduced me to last night?"

"What do you think about them now?"

"I'm slightly ashamed of us both. We _were_ rather silly, you know----"

"_You_ were not," he interrupted drily.

"Is that a tribute or a reproach?" came her gay voice over the wire. "I don't quite know how to take it!"

"Reassure yourself, Steve. You were most circumspect and emotionless----"

"Jim! That is brutal and untrue! I was not circumspect!"

"You were the other, then."

"What a perfectly cruel and outrageous slander! You've made me unhappy, now. And all day I've been so absolutely happy in thinking of what happened."

"Is that true?" he asked in an altered voice.

"Of course it's true!"

"You just said you were ashamed----"

"I was, very, very slightly; but I've been too happy to be very much ashamed!"

"You darling!----"

"Oh! The gentleman bestows praise! Such a kind gentleman to perceive merit and confer his distinguished approval. Any girl ought to endeavour to earn further marks of consideration and applause from so gracious a gentleman----"

"Steve, you tormenting little wretch, can't you be serious with me?"

"I am," she said, laughing. "Tell me what you've been doing to-day?"

"Hunting for lodgings. What have you been doing?"

"Watching Helen make a study of a horse out in the covered court. Then we had tea. Then Oswald dropped in and played the piano divinely, as he always does. Then Helen and I started to dress for dinner. Then you called. Where did you look for lodgings?"

"Oh, I went to about all the studio buildings----"

"Aren't you going to open the house?"

"No. It's too lonely."

"Yes," she said, "it would be too lonely. You and I couldn't very well live there together unless we had an older woman."

"No."

"So it's better not to open it until"--she laughed gaily--"you marry some nice girl. Then it will be safe enough for me to call on the Cleland family, I fancy. Won't it, Jim?"

"Quite," he replied drily. "But when I marry that nice girl, you won't have far to go when you call on the Cleland family."

"Oh, how kind! You mean to board me, Jim?"

"You know what I _do_ mean," he said.

"I wonder! Is it really a declaration of serious and respectable intentions? But you're quite safe. And I'm afraid you know it. Tell me, did you find an apartment to suit you?"

"No."

"Why not come here? There's a studio and apartment which will be free May first. Oh, Jim, please take it! If you say so I'll telephone the agent _now_! Shall I? It would be too heavenly if we were under the same roof again!"

"Do you _want_ me, Steve? After--and in spite of everything?"

"_Want_ you?" He heard her happy, scornful laughter. Then: "We're dining out, Jim; but come to-morrow. I'll telephone now that you'll take the studio. May I, Jim dear?"

"Yes," he said. "And I'll come to you to-morrow."

"You angel boy! I _wish_ I weren't going out to-night. Thank you, Jim, dear, for making me happy again."

"_Are_ you?"

"Indescribably. I don't think you know what your kindness to me means. It makes a different person of me. It fills and thrills and inspires me. Why, Jim, it actually is health and life to me. And when you are unkind--it seems to paralyze me--check something in my mind. I can't explain----"

"Steve!"

"Yes?"

"Could I come in for a moment now?"

"I'm dressing. Oh, Jim, I'm sorry, but I'm late as it is. You know I want you, don't you?"

"All right; to-morrow, then," he said in happy voice.

He had been sitting in his room for an hour, thinking--letting his mind wander unchecked.

If he were not really in love with Stephanie, how could a mere conversation over the wire with her give him such pleasure?

The day, drawing to its close without his seeing her, had seemed colourless and commonplace; but the sound of her gay voice over the wire had changed that--had made the day complete.

"I believe I _am_ in love," he said aloud. He rose and paced the room in the dusk, questioning, considering his own uncertainty.

For the "novelty"--as Stephanie called it--of last night's fever had not been a novelty to her alone. Never before had he been so deeply moved, so swept off his feet, so regardless of a self-control habitual to him.

Perhaps anger and jealousy had started it. But these ignoble emotions could not seem to account for the happiness that hearing her voice had just given him.

Even the voice of a beloved sister doesn't stir a young man to such earnest and profound reflection as that in which he was now immersed, indifferent even to the dinner hour, which had long been over.

"I believe," he said aloud to himself, "that I'm falling very seriously in love with Steve.... And if I am, it's a rather desperate outlook.... She _seems_ to be in love with Grismer--damn him! ... I don't know how to face such a thing.... She's married him and she doesn't live with him.... She admits frankly that he fascinates her.... There _are_ women who never love.... I seem to want her, anyway.... I _think_ I do.... It's a mess! ... Why in God's name did she do such a thing if she wasn't in love with him--or if she didn't expect to be? Is she in love with him? She isn't with _me_.... I'm certainly drifting into love with Steve.... Can I stop myself? ... I ought to be able to.... Hadn't I better?"

He stood still, thinking, the street lamps' rays outside illuminating his room with a dull radiance.

Presently he switched on the light, seated himself at the desk, and wrote:

STEVE, DEAR:

I am falling in love with you very seriously and very deeply. I don't know what to do about it.

JIM.

He was about to undress and retire late that night when a letter was slipped under his door:

You sentimental and adorable boy! What is there to do? The happiest girl in New York, very sleepy and quite ready for bed, bids you good night, enchanted by your note.

STEVIE.

*CHAPTER XXI*

To have returned after three years abroad and to have slipped back into the conventional life of the circles to which he had been accustomed in the city of his birth might not have been very easy for Cleland. To readjust himself among what was unfamiliar proved easier, perhaps. For his family circle existed no longer; the old servants were gone; the house had been closed for a long time now.

At his college club unfamiliar faces were already in the majority, men of his own time having moved on to the University, Union, Racquet and Knickerbocker, leaving the usual residue of undesirables and a fresh influx from his college. And he was too young in letters to be identified yet with any club which meant anything except the conveniences of a hotel.

Among friend and acquaintances of his age there had been many changes, too; much shifting and readjustment of groups and circles incident to marriages and deaths and the scattering migration ever in progress from New York.

It was an effort for him to pick up the threads again; and he did not make the effort. It was much simpler to settle down here in these quiet, old-time streets within stone's throw of the artists' quarter of the city where Stephanie lived--where a few boyhood friends of artistic proclivities had taken up quarters, where acquaintances were easily made, easily avoided; and where the informalities of existence made life more easy, more direct, and, alas, much more irresponsible. Chelsea, with a conscious effort and a lurking smirk, mirrored the Latin Quarter to the best of its ability.

It did pretty well. There were more exaggerations, more eccentricities, less spontaneity and less work in Chelsea than in the Latin Quarter. Too many of its nomadic denizens were playing a self-conscious part; too few of them possessed the intelligence and training necessary for self-expression in any creative profession. Otherwise, they were as emotional, as casual, as unkempt, as vain, and as improvident as any rapin of the original Latin Quarter.

Cleland met many of the elect even before he had settled down in his new studio-apartment on the top floor of the same building where Stephanie and Helen lived.

The quarter was peppered with tea-rooms and cafes and restaurants sufficiently cheap to attract artistic youth. Also, there reigned in that section of the city a general and resolute determination to be bohemian; a number of damsels errant and transplanted, shock-headed youths cooked in their own quarters, strolled about the streets in bed-room slippers, or visited one another bare-headed and adorned with paint-smeared smocks.

And there was, of course, much deviltry with cigarettes and cheap claret in restaurant and cafe--frequent outbursts of horse-play and song, especially if Philistine visitors were detected in the vicinity. And New York French was frequently though briefly employed as the limited medium for exchanging views on matters important only to the inmates of Chelsea and its purlieus.

"But Washington Square bohemians are a harmless, friendly people," remarked Helen to Cleland one morning late in May, when he stopped on his way out to breakfast to watch her modelling a horse in clay. "They're like actor-folk; they live in a world entirely self-created which marvels at and admires and watches them; they pose for its benefit, playing as faithfully as they know how their chosen roles--painter, writer, critic, sculptor, composer. Nobody in the outside real and busy world notices them; but they think they're under incessant and envious observation and they strut happily through the little painted comedy of life, living an unreal existence, dying undeceived. The real tragedy of it all they mercifully never suspect--the utter lack of interest in them taken by real people."

She went on modelling, apparently amused by her own analysis.

"Where is Stephanie?" he inquired, after a slight pause.

"Out somewhere with Oswald, I believe."

"It's rather early."

"They sometimes get up early and breakfast together at Claremont," remarked Helen, working serenely away. The freckled livery-stable lad who held the horse for her and occasionally backed him into the pose again continued to chew gum and watch the pretty sculptor with absorbed interest.

"I've got such an interesting commission," she said, wetting down her clay with a huge and dripping sponge. "It's for the new Academy of Arts and Letters to be built uptown, and my equestrian figure is to be cast in silver bronze for the great marble court."

"What is the subject?" he asked, preoccupied by what she had told him about Stephanie, yet watching this busy and efficient young girl who, with the sleeves of her blue blouse rolled up, displaying her superb young arms, stood vigorously kneading a double handful of clay and studying the restless horse with clear and very beautiful brown eyes.

"The subject? 'Aspiration.' I made some sketches--a winged horse taking flight upward. A nude female figure, breathless, with dishevelled hair, has just flung itself upon the rearing, wide-winged Pegasus and is sticking there like a cat to the back fence--hanging on tooth and nail with one leg just over and the other close against the beast's ribs, and her desperate fingers in the horse's mane.... I don't know. It sounds interesting but it may be too violent. But I've had that idea--hope, aspiration, fear and determination clinging to a furious winged animal that is just starting upward like a roaring sky-rocket----"

She turned her head, laughing:

"Is it a rotten idea?"

"I don't know," he said absently. "It's worth trying out, anyway."

She nodded; and he went on about the business of breakfast. But had now no appetite.

There was one thing, Cleland soon found out, against which he was helpless. Stephanie frequented Grismer at any hour of the day and evening that her fancy prompted.

This perplexed him and made him sullen; but when he incautiously started to remonstrate with her one evening her surprise and anger flashed like a clear little flame, and she explained very clearly what was the essence of personal liberty, and that the one thing she would not tolerate from him or anybody else was any invasion of her freedom of thought and action.

Silenced, enraged, and humiliated at the rebuke he had retired to his studio to sulk like Achilles--a sullen mourner at the bier of love. For he fully and firmly determined to eradicate this girl from his life and devote it to scourging the exasperating sex of which she was a beautiful but baffling member.

The trouble with Stephanie, however, was that she could not seem to see the tragedy in his life or understand that a young man desired to suffer nobly and haughtily and at his own leisure and convenience.

For there came a knock at his door after his second day of absenting himself, and when he incautiously opened it, she marched in and took him gaily into her unembarrassed arms and bestowed upon his astonished countenance a hearty, wholesome and vigorous smack. Moreover, she laughed and jeered and tormented and poked merciless fun at him until she had badgered and worried and hectored and beaten the sulkiness out of him. Then she admonished him:

"Don't ever do it again!" she said. "We are free, you and I. What we are to each other alone concerns us, not what we may choose to do or be to others."

"You don't care what I do, Steve," he said.

"I care what you do to me!"

"How I behave otherwise doesn't concern you?"

"No. It would be an impertinence for me to meddle. For," she added in smiling paraphrase:

"If you are not nice to me
What care I how nice you be--

to other girls?"

"Do you really mean that it wouldn't make any difference to you what I do? Suppose I take you at your word and become enamoured of some girl and devote myself to her?"

"You mean a nice girl, don't you?" she inquired.

"Any old kind."

She considered the matter, surprised.

"I couldn't interfere with your personal liberty," she concluded, "--whatever you choose to do."

"How would you feel about my frequenting some pretty studio model, for example?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"It wouldn't affect you one way or the other, then?"

"It ought not to--provided you are always nice to me."

"That," he exclaimed, "is a cold-blooded, fishy creed!"

"That's the creed of tolerance, Jim."

"All right. Live up to it, then. And I'll try to, too," he added drily. "Because, sometimes when you're off, God knows where, with Grismer, I feel lonely enough to drift with the first attractive girl I come across."

"Why don't you?" she asked, flushing slightly.

"The reason I haven't," he said, "is because I'm in love with you."

She was standing with head bent, but now she looked up quickly.

"You adorable infant," she laughed. "What a child you really are, after all! Come," she added mischievously, "let's kiss like good children and let the gods occupy themselves with our future. It's their business, not ours. I'm glad you think you're in love with me. But, Jim, I'm in love with life. And you're such an important part of life that, naturally, I include you!"

She bent forward and touched his lips with hers, daintily, deftly avoiding his arms, her eyes gay with malice.

"No," she laughed, "not that, if you please, dear friend! It rumples and raises the deuce with my hair and gown. But we _are_ friends again, aren't we, Jim?"

"Yes," he said in a low voice, "--if you can give me no more than friendship."

"It's the most wonderful thing in the world!" she insisted.

"You've read that somewhere."

"You annoy me, Jim! It is my own conclusion. There's nothing finer for anybody--unless they want children. And I don't."

Neither did he. No young man does. But what she said struck him as unpleasantly modern.

He met Grismer here and there in the artistic channels of the city; often in Stephanie's studio, frequently in other studios, and occasionally amid gatherings at restaurants, theatres, art galleries.

At first he had been civil but cool, avoiding any tete-a-tete with his old school-fellow. But, little by little, he became aware of several things which slightly influenced his attitude toward Grismer.

One thing became plain; the man had no intimates. There was not a man Cleland met who seemed to care very much for Grismer; he seemed to have no frank and cordial friendships among men, no pals. Yet, he was considered clever and amusing where people gathered; he interested men without evoking their personal sympathy; he interested women intensely with his unusual good looks and the light, elusive quality of his intelligence.

Always amiably suave, graceful of movement, alert and considerate of feminine fancies, moods and caprices, he was welcomed everywhere by them in the circles which he sauntered into. But he was merely accepted by men.

So, in spite of his resentment at what Grismer had done, Cleland felt slightly sorry for this friendless man. For Grismer's was a solitary soul, and Cleland, who had suffered from loneliness enough to understand it, gradually became conscious of the intense loneliness of this man, even amid his popularity with women and their sympathetic and sentimental curiosity concerning him.

But no man seemed to care for closer intimacy with Grismer than a friendly acquaintanceship offered. There was something about him that did not seem to attract or invite men's careless comradeship or confidence.

"It's those floating golden specks in his eyes," said Belter, discussing him one day with Cleland. "He's altogether too auriferous and graceful to be entirely genuine, Cleland--too easy and too damned bland. Poor beggar; have you noticed how shabby and shiny he's getting? I guess he's down and out for fair financially."

Cleland had noticed it. The man's linen was visibly frayed. His clothes, too, betrayed his meagre circumstances, yet he wore them so well, and there was such a courtly indifference in the man, that the shabby effect seemed due to a sort of noble carelessness.

Cleland had never called on Grismer. He had no inclination to do so, no particular reason except that Grismer had invited him several times. Yet, an uneasy curiosity lurked within him concerning Grismer's abode and whether Stephanie, always serenely unconventional, ever went there.

He didn't care to think she did, yet, after all, the girl was this man's legal wife, and there was no moral law to prevent her going there and taking up her abode if she were so inclined.

Cleland never asked her if she went there, perhaps dreading her reply.

As far as that was concerned, he could not find any of his friends or acquaintances who had ever been in Grismer's lodgings. Nobody even seemed to know exactly where they were, except that Grismer lived somewhere in Bleecker Street and never entertained.

At times, when Stephanie was not to be found, and his unhappy inference placed her in Grismer's company, he felt an unworthy inclination to call on Grismer and find out whether the girl was there. But the impulse was a low one, and made him ashamed, and his envy and jealousy disgusted him with himself.

Besides, his state of mind was painfully confused and uncertain in regard to Stephanie. He was in love with her, evidently. But the utter lack of sentimental response on her part afforded his love for her no nourishment.

He traversed the entire scale of emotions. When he was not with her he often came to the exasperated conclusion that he could learn to forget her; when he was with her the idea seemed rather hopeless.