Chapter II: Part ONE: Spring in the World and All Things for the Young (2)

Joan's voice took on a little deeper note like that of a child who has come to the really creepy bit of his story. "Marty," she went on, "I wish you could have heard the way in which Grandmother let herself go! She held me by the scruff of my neck and hit me right and left with the sort of sarcasm that made me crinkle. According to her, I was on the downward path. I had done something quite hopeless and unforgivable. She didn't know how she could bring herself to report the affair--think of calling it an affair, Marty!--to my poor mother. Mother, who'd never say a word to me, whatever I did! She might have out-of-date views, she said, of how young girls should behave, but they were the right views, and so long as I was under her roof and in her care, she would see that I conformed to them. She went on making a mountain out of our little molehill, till even Grandfather broke in with a word; and then she snapped at him, got into her second wind and went off again. I didn't listen half the time. I just stood and watched her as you'd watch one of those weird old women in one of Dickens' books come to life. What I remember of it all is that I am deceitful and fast, ungrateful, irresponsible, with no sense of decency, and when at last she pronounced sentence, what do you think it was? Confinement to the house for a week and if after that, I ever meet you again, to be packed off to a finishing-school in Massachusetts. She rapped her stick on the floor by way of a full stop, and waved her hand toward the door. I never said a word, not a single one. What was the use? I gave her a little bow and went. Just as I was going to rush upstairs and think over what I could do, Grandfather came out and told me to go to his room to read something to him. And there, for the first time, he let me see what a fine old fellow he really is. He agreed with Grandmother that I ought not to have met you on the sly. It was dangerous, he said, though perfectly natural. He was afraid I found it very trying to live among a lot of old grouches with their best feet in the grave, but he begged me to put up with it because he would miss me so. He liked having me about, not only to read to him but to look at. I reminded him of Grandmother when she was young, and life was worth living.

"I cried then. I couldn't help it--more for his sake than mine. He spoke with such a funny sort of sadness. 'Be patient, my dear,' he said. 'Treat us both with a little kindness. You're top dog. You have all your life before you. Make allowances for two old people entering second childhood. You'll be old some day, you know.' And he said this with such a twisted sort of smile that I felt awfully sorry for him, and he saw it and opened out and told me how appalling it was to become feeble when the heart is as young as ever. I had no idea he felt like that."

"When I left him I tried hard to be as patient as he asked me to be and wait till Mother comes back and make the allowances he spoke about and give up seeing you and all that. But when I got up to my room with the echo of Grandmother's rasping voice in my ears, the thought of being shut up in the house for a week and treated like a lunatic was too much for me. What had I done that every other healthy girl doesn't do every day without a question? How COULD I go on living there, watched and suspected? How could I put up any longer with the tyranny of an old lady who made me feel artificial and foolish and humiliated--a kind of doll stuffed with saw dust?

"Marty, I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't. Something went snap, and I just flung a few things into a suit-case, dropped it out the window, climbed down the creeper and made a dash for freedom. Nothing on earth will ever take me back to that house again, nothing, nothing!"

All this had been said with a mixture of humor and emotion that carried the boy before it. He saw and heard everything as she described it. His own relations with his father, which had been so free and friendly, made Joan's with those two old people seem fantastic and impossible. All his sympathy went out to her. To help her to get away appealed to him as being as humane as releasing a squirrel from a trap. No thought of the fact that she was a girl who had rushed impulsively into a most awkward position struck him. Into his healthy mind no sex question thrust itself. She was his friend, and as such, her claim upon him was overwhelming and unarguable.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Have you thought of anything?"

"Of course I have. In the morning, early, before they find out that I've bolted, you must drive me to New York and take me to Alice Palgrave. She'll put me up, and I can telegraph to Mother for money to buy clothes with. Does it occur to you, Marty, that you're the cause of all this? If I hadn't turned and found you that afternoon, I should still be eating my soul away and having my young life crushed. As it is, you've forced my hand. So you're going to take me to the magic city, and if you want to see how a country cousin makes up for lost time and sets things humming, watch me!"

So they talked and talked, sitting in that room which was made the very sanctum of romance by young blood and moonlight. Eleven o'clock slipped by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watched by a million glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly one step nearer to maturity, this boy and girl made plans for the discovery of a world out of which so many similar explorers have crept with wounds and bitterness.

They were wonderful and memorable hours, not ever to be lived again. They were the hours that all youth enjoys and delights in once--when, like gold-diggers arrived in sight of El Dorado, they halt and peer at the chimera that lies at their feet--

"I'm going to make my mark," Martin said. "I'm going to make something that will last. My father's name was Martin Gray, and I'll make it MEAN some thing out there for his sake."

"And I," said Joan, springing to her feet and throwing up her chin, "will go joy-riding in the huge round-about. I've seen what it is to be old and useless, and so I shall make the most of every day and hour while I'm young. I can live only once, and so I shall make life spin whatever way I want it to go. If I can get anybody to pay my whack, good. If not, I'll pay it myself--whatever it costs. My motto's going to be a good time as long as I can get it, and who cares for the price?"

The boy followed her to the window, and the moonlight fell upon them both. "Yes," he said, "you'll get a bill, all right. How did you know that?"

"I haven't lived with all those old people so long for nothing," she answered. "But you won't catch me grumbling if I get half as much as I'm going out for. Listen to my creed, Martin, and take notes, if you want to keep up with me."

"Go ahead," he said, watching the sparkle in her eyes.

She squared her shoulders and folded her arms in a half-defiant way. "I shall open the door of every known Blue Room--hurrying out again if there are ugly things inside, staying to enjoy them if they're good to look at. I shall taste a little of every known bottle, feel everything there is to feel except the thing that hurts, laugh with any one whose laugh is catching, do everything there is to do, go into every booth in the big Bazaar; and when I'm tired out and there's nothing left, I shall slip out of the endless procession with a thousand things stored away in my memory. Isn't that the way to live?"

From the superior height of twenty-four, Martin looked down on Joan indulgently. He didn't take her frank and unblushing individualism seriously. She was just a kid, he told himself. She was a girl who had been caged up and held in. It was natural for her to say all those wild things. She would alter her point of view as soon as the first surprise of being free had worn off--and then he would speak; then he would ask her to throw in her lot with his and walk in step with him along the street of adventure.

"I sha'n't see the sun rise on this great day," she said, letting a yawn have full play. "I'm sleepy, Marty. I must lie down this very instant, even if the floor's the only place you can offer me. Quick! What else is there?" Before he could answer, she had caught sight of a low, long, enticing divan, and onto this, with a gurgle of pleasure, she made a dive, placed two cushions for her head, put one little hand under her face, snuggled into an attitude of perfect comfort and deliberately went to sleep. It was masterly.

Martin, not believing that she could turn off so suddenly at a complete tangent, spoke to her once or twice but got no other answer than a long, contented sigh. He stood for a little while trying to make out her outline in the dim corner of the room. Then he tiptoed out to the hall, possessed himself of a warm motor-rug, returned with it and laid it gently and tenderly over the unconscious girl.

He didn't intend to let sleep rob him of the first sight of a day that was to mean so much to him, and he went over to the open window, caught the scent of lilac and listened, with all his imagination and sense of beauty stirred, to the deep breathing of the night.... Yes, he had cut through the bars which had kept this girl from taking her place among the crowd. He was responsible for the fact that she was about to play her part in the comedy of life. He was glad to be responsible. He had passionately desired a cause to which to attach himself; and was there, in all the world, a better than Joan?

Spring had come again, and all things were young, and the call to mate rang in his ears and set his heart beating and his thoughts racing ahead. He loved her, this girl that he had come upon standing out in all her freshness against a blue sky. He would serve her as the great lovers had served, and please God, she would some day return his love. They would build up a home and bring up a family and go together up the inevitable hill.

And as he stood sentinel, in a waking dream, waiting for the finger of dawn to rub the night away, sleep tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned and went to the divan and sat down with his back to it, touched one of Joan's placid hands with his lips and drifted into further dreams with a smile around his mouth.

V

It was ten o'clock in the morning when Martin brought his car to a stop and looked up at the heavy Gothic decorations of a pompous house in East Fifty-fifth Street. "Is this it?"

"Yes," said Joan, getting out of the leather-lined coat that he had wrapped her in. "It really is a house, isn't it; and luckily, all the gargoyles are on the outside." She held out her hand and gave Martin the sort of smile for which any genuine man would sell his soul. "Marty," she added, "you've been far more than a brother to me. You've been a cousin. I shall never be able to thank you. And I adored the drive with our noses turned to the city. I shan't be able to be seen on the streets until I've got some frocks, so please come and see me every day. As soon as Alice has got over her shock at the sight of me, I'm going to compose an historical letter to Grandmother."

"Let her down lightly," said Martin, climbing out with the suit-case. "You've won."

"Yes, that's true; but I shouldn't be a woman if I didn't get in the last word."

"You're not a woman," said Martin. "You're a kid, and you're in New York, and you're light-headed; so look out."

Joan laughed at his sudden gravity and ran up the wide steps and put her finger on the bell. "I've written down your telephone number," she said, "and memorized your address. I'll call you up at three o'clock this afternoon, and if you've nothing else to do, you may take me for a walk in the Park."

"I sha'n't have anything else to do."

The door was opened. The footman was obviously English, with the art of footmanism in his blood.

"Is Mrs. Gilbert Palgrave at home?" asked Joan as if the question were entirely superfluous.

"No, miss."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure, miss. Mrs. Palgrave left for Boston yesterday on account of hillness in the family, miss."

There was an awkward and appalled silence. Little did the man suspect the kind of blow that his statement contained.

Joan darted an agonized look at Martin.

"But Mr. Palgrave is at 'ome, miss."

And that galvanized the boy into action. He had met Gilbert Palgrave out hunting. He had seen the impertinent, cocksure way in which he ran his eyes over women. He clutched the handle of the case and said: "That's all right, thanks. Miss Ludlow will write to Mrs. Palgrave." Then he turned and went down the steps to the car.

Trying to look unconcerned, Joan followed.

"Get in, quick," said Martin. "We'll talk as we go."

"But why? If I don't stay here, where am I to stay?"

"I don't know. Please get in."

Joan stood firm. The color had come back to her face, and a look of something like anger had taken the place of fright. "I didn't tell you to march off like that. Gilbert's here."

"That's why we're going," Said Martin.

"I don't understand." Her eyes were blazing.

"I know you don't. You can't stay in that house. It isn't done."

"I can do it, and I must do it. Do you suppose I'm going back with my tail between my legs?"

"If we argue here, we shall collect a crowd." He got into the car and held out his hand.

Joan ignored it but followed him in. She was angry, puzzled, disappointed, nonplussed. Alice had no right to be away on such an occasion. Everything had looked so easy and smooth-sailing. Even Martin had changed into a different man, and was ordering her about. If he thought he could drive her back to that prison again, he was considerably wrong. She would never go back, never.

The car was running slowly. "Have you any other friends in town?" asked Martin, who seemed to be trying to hide an odd kind of excitement.

"No," said Joan. "Alice is my only friend here. Drive to some place where I can call up Gilbert Palgrave and explain the whole thing. What does it matter about my being alone? If I don't mind, who should? Please do as I say. There's no other place for me to go to, and wild horses sha'n't drag me back."

"You sha'n't go back," said Martin. He turned the car up Madison Avenue and drove without another word to East Sixty-seventh Street and stopped in front of a small house that was sandwiched between a mansion and a twelve-story apartment-house. "This is mine," he said simply. "Will you come in?"

A smile of huge relief came into Joan's eyes. "Why worry?" she said. "How foolish of us not to have thought of this before!"

But there was no smile on Martin's face. His eyes were amazingly bright and his mouth set firmly. His chin looked squarer than ever. Once more he carried out the suit-case, put a latchkey into the lock and threw back the door. Joan went in and stood looking about the cheery hall with its old oak, and sporting prints, white wood and red carpet. "Oh, but this is perfectly charming, Marty," she cried out. "Why did we bother our heads about Alice when there is this haven of refuge?"

Martin marched up to her and stood eye to eye. "Because I'm alone," he said, "and you're a girl. That's why."

Joan made a face. "I see. The conventions again. Isn't there any sort of woman here?"

"Yes, the cook."

She laughed. There was a comic side to this tragedy, after all, it seemed. "Well, perhaps she'll give us some scrambled eggs and coffee. I could eat a horse."

Martin opened the door of the sitting room. Like the one in which she had slept so soundly the previous night, it was stamped with the character and personality of the other Martin Gray. Books, warm and friendly, lined the walls. Mounted on wood, fish of different sizes and breeds hung above the cases, and over the fireplace there was a full-length oil painting of a man in a red coat and riding breeches. His kind eyes greeted Joan.

For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back. Then she turned and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder. "Oh, Marty!" she said. "I AM sorry."

The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat. "I told you that this house is mine. It isn't. It's yours. It's the only way, if you're to remain in the city. Is it good enough? Do you want to stay as much as all that?"

The puzzled look came back. For a moment Joan was silent, worrying out the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words. There seemed to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to be a girl.

Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inward questions. She was only eighteen, after all.

"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no one can take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideously afraid that she would laugh at him. He had never dared to say how much he loved her.

She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief that the blood flew to his head. "Why, Marty, what a brain! What organization! Of course I'll marry you. Why ever didn't we think of that last night?"

But before he could pull himself together a man-servant entered with an air of extreme surprise. "I didn't know you'd come home, sir," he said, "until I saw the suit-case." He saw Joan, and his eyes rounded.

"I was just going to ring," said Martin. "We want some breakfast. Will you see to it, please?" Alone again, Martin held out his hand to Joan, in an odd, boyish way. And she took it, boyishly too. "Thank you, Marty, dear," she said. "You've found the magic carpet. My troubles are over; and oh, what a pretty little bomb I shall have for Grandmamma! And now let's explore my house. If it's all like this, I shall simply love it!" And away she darted into the hall.

"And now," said Joan, "being duly married,--and you certainly do make things move when you start, Marty,--to send a telegram to Grandmother! Lead me to the nearest place."

Certain that every person in that crowded street saw in them a newly married couple, Martin tried to hide his joy under a mask of extreme callousness and universal indifference. With the challenging antagonism of an English husband,--whose national habit it is invariably to stalk ahead of his women-kind while they scramble along at his heels,--he led the way well in advance of his unblushing bride. But his eyes were black with emotion. He saw rainbows all over the sky, and rings of bright light round the square heads of all the buildings which competed in an endeavor to touch the clouds; and there was a song in his heart.

They sat down side by side in a Western Union office, dallied for a moment or two with the tied pencils the points of which are always blunt, and to the incessant longs and shorts of a dozen telegraph instruments they put their epoch-making news on the neat blanks. Martin did not intend to be left out of it. His best pal was off the map, and so he chose a second-best friend and wrote triumphantly: "Have been married to-day. Staying in New York for honeymoon. How are you?" He was sorry that he couldn't remember the addresses of a hundred other men. He felt in the mood to pelt the earth with such telegrams as that.

"Listen," said Joan, her eyes dancing with mischief. "I think this is a pretty good effort: 'Blessings and congratulations on her marriage to-day may be sent to Mrs. Martin Gray, at 26 East Sixty-seventh Street, New York.--Joan.' How's that?"

It was the first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked and smiled and got very red. "Terse and literary," he said, dying to put his arms round her and kiss her before all mankind. "They'll have something to talk about at dinner to-night. A nice whack in the eye for Gleave."

He managed to achieve a supremely blase air while the words were being counted, but it crumbled instantly when the telegraphist shot a quick look at Joan and gave Martin a grin of cordial congratulation.

As soon as he saw a taxi, Martin hailed it and told the chauffeur to drive to the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. "We'll walk from there," he said to Joan, "--if you'd like to, that is."

"I would like to. I want to peer into the shop windows and look at hats and dresses. I've got absolutely nothing to wear. Marty, tell me, are we well off?"

Martin laughed. She reminded him of a youngster going for a picnic and pooling pocket money. "Yes," he said, "--quite."

She sat back with her hands crossed in her lap. "I'm so glad. It simplifies everything to have plenty to spend." But for her exquisite slightness and freshness, no one would have imagined that she was an only just-fledged bird, flying for the first time. Her equability and poise were those of a completely sophisticated woman. Nothing seemed to surprise her. Whatever happened was all part and parcel of the great adventure. Yesterday she was an overwatched girl, looking yearningly at a city that appeared to be unattainable. To-day she was a married woman who, a moment ago, had been standing before a minister, binding herself for good or ill to a man who was delightfully a boy and of whom she knew next to nothing. What did it matter--what did anything matter--so long as she achieved her long-dreamed-of ambition to live and see life?

"Then I can go ahead," she added, "and dress as becomes the wife of a man of one of our best families. I've never been able to dress before. Trust me to make an excellent beginning." There was a twinkle of humor in her eyes as she said these things, and excitement too. "Tell me this, Marty: is it as easy to get unmarried as it is to get married?"

"You're not thinking about that already, surely!"

"Oh, no. But information is always useful, isn't it?"

Just for a moment the boy's heart went down into his boots. She didn't love him yet; he knew that He intended to earn her love as an honest man earns his living. What hurt was the note of flippancy in her voice in talking of an event that was to him so momentous and wonderful. It seemed to mean no more to her to have entered into a lifelong tie than the buying of a mere hat--not so much, not nearly so much, as to have found a way of not going back to those two old people in the country. She was young, awfully young, he told himself again. Presently her feet would touch the earth, and she would understand.

As they walked up Fifth Avenue and with little gurgles of enthusiasm Joan halted at every other shop to look at hats that appealed to Martin as absurdly, willfully freakish, and evening dresses which seemed deliberately to have been handed over to a cat to be torn to ribbons, it came back to him that one just such soft spring evening, the year before, he had walked home from the Grand Central Station and been seized suddenly with an almost painful longing to be asked by some precious person who belonged wholly to him to share her delight in all the things which then stood for nothing in his life. Then and there he fulfilled an ambition long cherished and hidden away; he touched Joan on the arm and opened the elaborate door of a famous jeweler. He was known to the shop from the fact that he and his father had always dealt there for wedding and Christmas presents. He was welcomed by a man in the clothes of a concert singer and with the bedside manner of a family doctor.

He was desperately self-conscious, and his collar felt two sizes too small, but he managed to get into his voice a tone that was sufficiently matter-of-fact to blunt the edge of the man's rather roguish smile. "Let me see your latest gold-mesh bags," he said as ordinary, everyday people ask to see collar studs.

"Marty!" whispered Joan. "What are you going to do?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Martin. "You can't get along without a bag, you see."

Half a dozen yellow, insinuating things were laid out on the shining glass, and with a wonderful smile that was worth all the gold the earth contained to Martin, Joan made a choice--but not hastily, and not before she had inspected every other gold bag in the shop. Even at eighteen she was woman enough to want to be quite certain that she possessed herself of the very best thing of its kind and would never have, in future, to feel jealous of one that might lie alluringly in the window.

"This one," she said finally. "I'm quite sure."

Martin didn't ask the price. It was for his bride. He picked it up and hung it over her wrist, said "The old address," nodded to the man,--who was just about to call attention to a tray of diamond brooches,--and led the way out, feeling at least six feet two.

And as Joan regained the street, she passed another milestone in her life. To be the proprietor of precisely just such a gold bag had been one of her steady dreams.

"Marty," she said, "what a darling you are!"

The boy's eyes filled with tears.

VI

It was an evening Martin would never forget.

His suggestion that they should dine at Delmonico's and go to the Empire to see Ethel Barrymore, accepted with avidity, had stirred Joan to immediate action. She had hailed a taxi, said, "You'll see me in an hour, Marty," and disappeared with a quick injunction to have whatever she bought sent home C.O.D.

It was actually two hours before he saw her again. He thanked his stars that he had enough money in the bank to meet the checks that he was required to make out in quick succession. Joan had not wasted time, and as she got into the car to drive away from that sandwich house of excited servants, two other milestones had been left behind. She was in a real evening frock, and all the other things she had bought were silk.

They drove straight home from the theater. Joan was tired. The day had been long and filled with amazements. She was out in the world at last. Realization had exceeded expectation for the first time in history.

The sand-man had been busy with Martin's eyes too, but he led the way into the dining room with shoulders square and chin high and spring in his blood. This was home indeed.

"What a tempting little supper!" said Joan. "And just look at all these flowers."

They were everywhere, lilacs and narcissi, daffodils, violets and hothouse roses. Hours ago he had sent out the almost unbelieving footman for them. Joan and flowers--they were synonymous.

She put her pretty face into a great bowl of violets. "You remembered all my little friends, Marty," she said.

They sat opposite each other at the long table. Martin's father looked down at Martin's wife, and his mother at the boy from whom she had been taken when his eager eyes came up to the level of her pillow. And there was much tenderness on both their faces.

Martin caught the manservant's eyes. "Don't wait," he said. "We'll look after ourselves."

Presently Joan gave a little laugh. "Please have something yourself. You're better than a footman. You're a butler."

His smile as he took his place would have lighted up a tunnel.

"I like Delmonico's," said Joan. "We'll often dine there. And the play was perfectly splendid. What a lot of others there are to see! I don't think we'll let the grass grow under our feet, Marty. And presently we'll have some very proper little dinner parties in this room, won't we? Interesting, vital people, who must all be good-looking and young. It will be a long time before I shall want to see anyone old again. Think what Alice Palgrave will say when she comes back! She'll underline every word if she can find any words. She wasn't married till she was twenty."

And presently, having pecked at an admirable fruit salad, just sipped a glass of wine and made close-fitting plans that covered at least a month, Joan rose. "I shall go up now, Marty," she said. "It's twelve o'clock."

He watched her go upstairs with his heart in his throat. Surely this was all a dream, and in a moment he would find himself rudely and coldly awake, standing in the middle of a crowded, lonely world? But she stopped on the landing, turned, smiled at him and waved her hand. He drew in a deep breath, went back into the dining room, put his lips to the violets that had been touched by her face, and switched off the lights. The scent of spring was in the air.

"Come in," she said, when presently, after a long pause, he knocked at her door.

She was sitting at a gleaming dressing table in something white and clinging, doing her hair that was so soft and brown and electrical.

He dared not trust himself to speak. He sat down on the edge of a sofa at the foot of the bed and watched her.

She went on brushing but with her unoccupied hand gathered her gown about her. "What is it, Marty?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing," he said, finding something that sounded curiously unlike his voice.

She could see his young, eager face and broad shoulders in the looking-glass. His hands were clasped tightly round one knee.

"I've been listening to the sound of traffic," she said. "That's the sort of music that appeals to me. It seems a year since I did my hair in that great, prim room and heard the owls cry and watched myself grow old. Just think! It's really only a few hours ago that I dropped my suit-case out of a window and climbed down the creeper. We said we'd make things move, didn't we?"

"I shall write to your grandfather in the morning," said Martin, with almost comical gravity and an unconscious touch of patronage. How childlike the old are to the very young!

"That will be nice of you," answered Joan. "We'll be very kind to him, won't we? There'll be no one to read the papers to him now."

"He was a great chap once," said Martin. "My father liked him awfully."

She swung her hair free and turned her chair a little. "You must tell me what he said about him, in the morning. Heigh-ho, I'm so sleepy."

Martin got up and went to see if the windows were all open. "They'll call us at eight," he said, "unless you'd like it to be later."

Joan went to the door and opened it and held out her hand. "Eight's good," she said. "Good night, Marty."

The boy looked at the little open hand with its long fingers, and at his wife, who seemed so cool and sweet and friendly. What did she mean?

He asked her, with an odd catch in his voice.

And she gave him the smile of a tired child. "Just that, old boy. Good night."

"But--but we're married," he said with a little stammer.

"Do you think I can forget that, in this room, with that sound in the street?"

"Well, then, why say good night to me like this?"

"How else, Marty dear?"

An icy chill ran over Martin and struck at his heart. Was it really true that she could stand there and hold out her hand and with the beginning of impatience expect him to leave a room the right to which had been made over to him by law and agreement?

He asked her that, as well as he could, in steadier, kinder words than he need have used.

And she dropped her hand and sighed a little. "Don't spoil everything by arguing with me, Marty. I really am only a kid, you know. Be good and run along now. Look--it's almost one."

The blood rushed to his head, and he held out his hands to her. "But I love you. I love you, Joany. You can't--you CAN'T tell me to go." It was a boy's cry, a boy profoundly, terribly hurt and puzzled.

"Well, if we've got to go into all this now I may as well sit down," she said, and did. "That air's rather chilly, too." She folded her arms over her breast.

It was enough. All the chivalry in Martin came up and choked his anger and bitterness and untranslatable disappointment. He went out and shut the door and stumbled downstairs into the dark sitting room and stood there for a long time all among chaos and ruin. He loved her to adoration, and the spring was in his blood; and if she was young, she was not so young as all that; and where was her side of the bargain? And at last, through the riot and jumble of his thoughts, her creed of life came back to him, word for word: she took all she could get and gave nothing in return; and "Who cares?" was her motto.

And after that he stood like a man balanced on the edge of a precipice. In cold blood he could go back and like a brute demand his price. And if he went forward and let her off because he loved her so and was a gentleman, down he must go, like a stone.

He was very white, and his lips were set when he went up to his room. With curious deliberation he got back into his clothes and saw that he had money, returned to the hall, put on his coat and hat, shut the door behind him and walked out under the stars.

"All right, then, who cares?" he said, facing toward the "Great White Way." "Who the devil cares?"

And up in her room, with her hand under her cheek like a child, Joan had left the world with sleep.